Virginia Beach confronts inescapable costs of rising seas
Ben Finley – October 29, 2021
FILE – A worker retrieves a grappling hook on the dock next to Bubba’s restaurant on the water in Virginia Beach, Va., Monday, Oct. 29, 2012. Voters in Virginia Beach will consider whether to vote for a $500 million bond on election day that would be used for protection against flooding from rising seas and intensifying hurricanes.(AP Photo/Steve Helber)More4 min read
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Voters in the sprawling coastal city of Virginia Beach will decide whether to approve one of the larger municipal bonds in the U.S. that would be used to protect against rising seas and intensifying hurricanes.
If it passes Tuesday, the $568 million would fund anything from elevating roads to closing a 100-acre (40-hectare) city golf course to collect stormwater.
If it fails, economists say the city could lose billions of dollars in the next half-century as recurrent flooding inundates roads, businesses and homes.
The referendum underscores the mounting costs of adapting to climate change for U.S. cities. But it will also be a measure of Americans’ willingness to approve such bonds as more communities seek funding.
“I’m not confident that it will pass,” said Virginia Wasserberg, whose Virginia Beach home was among 1,400 houses and businesses flooded by heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
Wasserberg, 41, is a conservative Republican who home-schools her children and supports the bond. She’s campaigned for more flood protections ever since her neighborhood’s drainage systems were overwhelmed by weeks of rain that culminated with Matthew.
Homes that are miles from the city’s beaches on the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay were inundated for the first time. Wasserberg said she and her family fled to the second floor and called 911 — only to be told that responders couldn’t reach them.
“I like to say it took a disaster to wake me up,” Wasserberg said.
Voter approval is far from guaranteed in this city of nearly half a million people, which some political observers say can lean libertarian. If the bond passes, property taxes would rise by $115 to $171 a year for a home of median assessed value, city officials say.
The need for money to protect communities against climate change is growing across the globe, particularly in the world’s poorest countries. It will be an area of discussion at an upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, which starts Sunday in Glasgow.
In the U.S., 26% of ZIP codes are “highly exposed to floods,” according to Moody’s ESG Solutions, which tracks climate risks and sustainable finance.
“As climate change becomes a greater threat, more governments will focus on climate adaptation and resilience projects,” said Matt Kuchtyak, the group’s vice president of outreach & research.
Several cities have already approved significant bonds. For instance, Miami residents voted in 2017 to fund a $400 million bond, nearly half of which would pay for such things as storm drain upgrades and sea walls.
San Francisco voters passed a $425 million bond to pay for the first phase of strengthening a sea wall that protects against earthquakes and rising oceans. The same year, Houston-area voters supported $2.5 billion in bonds for flood-control projects in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
Bonds could emerge as the principal vehicle for funding, said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, which argues that oil companies should cover such costs because of fossil fuels’ link to climate change.
“None of these cities has hundreds of millions of dollars hanging around,” Wiles said, adding that Virginia Beach has proposed one of the biggest bonds.
The city could prove to be an interesting testing ground.
A 2021 telephone survey of 400 residents found that just over half were willing to pay more in taxes for flood-protection projects, according to a report by Old Dominion University. But half also agreed that people who do not experience flooding on their properties should not have to pay for such projects.
And yet, the land in Virginia Beach is sinking and the seas are rising at an alarming rate. Since 1960, sea levels have risen by nearly a foot (0.3 meter). And they’re likely to rise by 1.5 feet to 3 feet (0.5 to 1 meter) over the next half-century.
Much of Virginia Beach sits on low coastal plains. Water can drain slowly into tidal rivers and tributaries, sometimes with nowhere to go during heavy rains and high tides.
The bond-funded projects could help the city avoid up to $8 billion in losses to flooding as well as associated economic impacts in the coming decades, according to the Old Dominion University report. The losses are equivalent to about a quarter of Virginia Beach’s gross domestic product — or its total output of goods and services.
“As flooding becomes more prevalent, insurers will raise premiums, refuse coverage and at some point exit Virginia Beach entirely,” economics professor Robert McNab said. “Businesses will have more difficulty in moving goods to market and, of course, residents will have more problems moving around the region.”
John Moss, a city councilman who’s been a large force behind the referendum, said Virginia Beach could still complete the flood-protection projects if the referendum fails. But he said it would take 25 years instead of about a decade.
And even if the bond passes, the projects will make up about a third of what’s needed overall protect to against 1.5 feet of sea-level rise, Moss said.
“It’s a big ask,” Moss said of the bond. “But the threat is real.”
These Aren’t Justices. They’re Used Car Salesmen, and They’re Coming for Your Abortion Rights.
Erin Gloria Ryan October 25, 2021
Photo Illustration by Kristen Hazzard/The Daily Beast/Getty
One of the oldest sales tricks in the book is the one where the salesperson presents the potential buyer with an extremely crappy option first, and follows that up with an only moderately crappy second option. The potential buyer, dazzled by the jump in quality between options one and two, won’t scrutinize option two as much, because it’s so much better than option one. This has been employed by slimy realtors, wedding planners, and used car salesmen.
And now, we’ve reached the point in the American experiment where the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority has resorted to a cheap sales tactic in an attempt to rehabilitate its image. Lower the customer’s expectations enough, conventional wisdom goes, and they’ll thank you for ripping them off.
This week, the court agreed to hear a legal challenge to SB8, the Texas law that bans abortion once a “fetal heart rate” is detected—usually around the sixth week of gestation, which is actually around three weeks after the implantation of a fertilized egg in the wall of a uterus, or a little over a week after a missed menstrual period in a person with a predictable schedule. The law empowers any ol’ Yosemite Sam to enforce said ban by filing a lawsuit against anybody who “aids or abets” an abortion. This means doctors, receptionists, advocates, and even Uber drivers who bring a patient to a clinic could be on the hook.
The high court agreed to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to the law on Nov. 1, on an expedited schedule. Legal observers predict that the court will toss the law out. I—and many wary pro-choicers—predict that after tossing the law out, the media will fawn over the court’s newfound social moderation, and the Susan Collinses of the world will crow that they were right, the hysterical feminists were wrong, and the Supreme Court was never going to toss abortion rights on—as Mike Pence would say—“the ash-heap of history.”
The following month SCOTUS will hear oral arguments in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health, testing the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that directly confronts Roe v. Wade by banning abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation. Roe established in 1973 that the government has no right to interfere with abortion access prior to fetal viability—around 24.5 weeks’ gestation (a full-term pregnancy takes 40 weeks). Dobbs is the direct challenge to Roe that conservative activists have had a hard-on for since Reagan.
John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett do not look like or live like the people whose rights they are about to strip. None of them are women of childbearing age. None of them are poor. Five of those six are Roman Catholic. Five of them are men. Five are white. None of them are from Texas or Mississippi. They would not be on the court in the first place had they not impressed conservative advocacy groups like the Federalist Society with their fringe bona fides that put their beliefs in opposition to the supermajority of American voters who believe that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned, and that access to abortion should be preserved.
Without the smokescreen of SB8, it would have been more difficult for the court’s conservative majority to pass off their inevitable favorable ruling in Dobbs as anything less than a wildly undemocratic ruling by a judicial body that has gone irretrievably off the rails. But thanks to SB8, we’re going to get a taste of “See, America? We could have done Option 1 (overturn Roe as hard as we possibly can!) but instead we did Option 2! (overturn Roe, but less hard).” As though the rights of women to choose whether or not they want to go through childbirth were a used car.
Tossing SB8 is a distraction. It is less than the least I previously believed the Supreme Court could do in its desperate quest to re-establish public trust and a sense of nonpartisan legitimacy. SB8 is an objectively crazy law. If the court were to uphold it, and by extension grant that it is a-OK for states to enact laws that allow ordinary citizens to enforce unconstitutional mandates, there’s nothing but small-time, cable hit-hungry legislators’ nonexistent capacity to feel shame stopping a free-for-all across the country. California’s Democratic supermajority could pass a law that would pay citizens tens of thousands of dollars to turn in people who “aid or abet” the sale or trade of any firearms. Conservative strongholds like Idaho could empower citizens to sue people who facilitate same-sex weddings.
But Mississippi’s 15-week ban is inhumane and patriarchal as well. Almost all abortions occur at or before 12 weeks, because most women who are pregnant and don’t want to be would like to end the pregnancy as soon as they possibly can, plus the procedure is less costly and complicated if it is performed early. But banning abortions after 15 weeks is a particularly cruel move considering that many serious birth defects can’t be detected before then. Fifteen weeks is less than halfway through pregnancy, and months before fetal viability. Unless the state of Mississippi plans on covering the cost of expensive early genetic testing for every pregnant person, a 15-week ban will force some women to carry and eventually give birth to wanted but nonviable pregnancies, unless they can afford to travel out of state.
If somebody showed up at your home and declared that they were going to beat you up and burn your house to the ground, and then had a change of heart and decided instead to merely burn your house to the ground, it would be—at the very least—tacky of them to expect gratitude in response. Hallmark does not make Thank You (For Doing The Second Worst Possible Thing) cards.
Similarly, the Supreme Court upholding Mississippi’s law while striking Texas’ does not cure the court of its partisan blight. This transparent sales tactic approach is designed to trick the American people into accepting the unacceptable.
California Vineyards Use Owls Instead of Pesticides
EcoWatch – October 20, 2021
Graduate students at Humboldt State University are using owls to protect vineyards from rodents. Barn Owl Research HSU / Facebook
Winemakers must pay close attention to their soil, the rain, the heat, and the sunlight. But rodents like gophers and mice can wreak havoc on a vineyard. Rather than turning to rodenticides to deter pests, graduate students at Humboldt State University in California are testing a more natural approach by using owls.
The experiment is part of a long-term research study under the direction of professor Matt Johnson of the university’s Department of Wildlife. The current cohort, including students Laura Echávez, Samantha Chavez, and Jaime Carlino, has placed around 300 owl nest boxes sporadically through vineyards in Napa Valley. They are documenting the impact of relying on owls to deter and remove pests rather than rodenticides.
The researchers have surveyed 75 wineries in Napa Valley, and four-fifths now use the owl nest boxes and notice a difference in rodent control. The barn owls have a four-month nesting season, during which they spend about one-third of their time hunting in the fields. A family of barn owls may eat as many as 1,000 rodents during the nesting season or around 3,400 in a single year.
So far, the graduate students have found that the barn owls in vineyards are reducing the number of gophers, but not mice. They are also evaluating the owls’ impact on voles, but that is inconclusive at this time.
But the most important part of the study is whether or not the presence of these owls has led to a decrease in the use of rodenticides in Napa Valley. As of January 2021, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation placed tougher limits on rodenticide use, which can kill birds and other animals that eat rodents poisoned by the rodenticides. These pesticides lead to gruesome deaths via internal bleeding for the rodents that ingest them.
The researchers say that most of the vintners in their study no longer use the rodenticides since adding nest boxes to their properties. But whether relying on owls is reducing pesticide use in Napa Valley isn’t certain. One recent study found that of farmers growing wine grapes in Napa Valley, about 80% use nest boxes and about 21% use rodenticides.
“Whether the use of barn owl boxes caused that reduction in rodenticides is, of course, not proven,” Johnson told Bay Nature. “Nonetheless, this result is encouraging.”
Farmers have been using owls and other raptors to hunt rodents for centuries, but modern chemical pesticides have taken precedence over natural methods in recent times. In an effort to leave less of a negative impact on the environment, farmers around the world are reverting back to relying on raptors to control pests, rather than toxic pesticides. Nest boxes are popping up in agricultural fields across the U.S., Malaysia, Kenya and Israel to help naturally remove rodents that destroy crops.
In Napa Valley, nest boxes aren’t the only tactic for creating more sustainable farmland. Wine grape growers are also trying to minimize water usage and tilling. They’re also planting perennial grasses between rows of grapes, as this may reduce soil erosion and improve nutrient and carbon cycling.
Still, there’s a long way to go in improving sustainable agriculture, including in the wine industry. Napa Valley has over 40,000 acres of vineyards, and only 3,800 acres are certified organic. With the increasing use of nest boxes, there’s hope that farmers will rely on these more natural methods over the rodenticides.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/6uTZcdeXd8w?feature=oembed Barn Owls: The Secret Saviors of Napa Valley’s Vineyards
Bill Maher Warns of Donald Trump’s ‘Slow-Moving Coup’ Ahead of 2024 Election
Brad Callas – October 9, 2021
On the latest episode of his HBO show Real Time, Bill Maher laid out a scenario in which Donald Trump could return to the White House in 2024.
After reminding viewers that Trump unsuccessfully tried to convince the country that he won the 2020 election, Maher warned of the former president attempting a “slow-moving coup,” proclaiming that he believes Trump will get the Republican nomination in the next election.
“And that’s what he’s been working on fixing ever since,” Maher told the crowd, claiming that Trump’s spent the past year “figuring out how to pull off the coup he couldn’t pull off last time.”
Maher continued, “He’s like a shark who’s not gone but has quietly gone out to sea. But he’s been eating people this whole time, methodically purging the Republican party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn’t he agree he’s the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.”
The HBO host then compared his hypothetical theory to Al Qaeda’s first, less successful, attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
“The Ding Dongs, who sacked the Capitol last year? That was like when Al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center the first time with a van,” he explained. “It was a joke. But the next time they came back with planes.”
“I hope I scared the shit out of you,” Maher ended the segment. Watch the full clip up top.
A Glum Bill Maher Details Why Things Are Going To Hell In The USA
Bruce Haring – October 8, 2021
The country is in crisis, and Real Time host Bill Maher is predicting that things could descend into even more chaos by 2024, when a potential election coup could generate violence in the streets and a total Constitutional crisis.
Maher outlined the steps he saw leading up to that awful moment in his “New Rules” closing monologue. At the end, he made his point: “I hope I scared the shit out of you.”
But it’s a long way to that moment, and the HBO show started with an examination of why things are devolving into a potential crisis, to the point where talk of civil war and politicians being chased into bathrooms are part of the regular news cycle.
Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of the book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, pointed out that the current situation seems so gloomy because we really don’t notice the good news.
Why? There’s not a certain day that it’s announced. “Good things are things that don’t happen,” Pinker said, “and a lot of improvements are incremental.” He noted that there’s never a day where the headlines scream, “137,000 Escaped From Extreme Poverty.”
The nostalgia for a “golden age” by the left and the right in this country is largely an illusion, Pinker argued. “The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory,” he said to applause.
The national divide on so many issues comes from having to rely on institutions. For instance, Pinker said, “None of us knows enough about atmospheric chemistry to retrace human climate change” and get to the truth.
Things continued in the same vein when Maher brought out Washington Post reporter and Peril co-author Robert Costa, along with Michael Render (aka Killer Mike), an activist and musician that’s half of the group Run the Jewels.
Costa argued that we’re in a critical moment, and claimed that his book’s interviews show that President Donald Trump played a key role in the Jan. 6 uprising at the Capitol.
Maher countered that the current hearings on that won’t amount to much, since no one will be arrested for not showing up to a hearing, both sides knowing full well the unspoken rule that arrests would open a can of worms when the other party is in power, boomeranging back on them.
Render made several strong points in the discussion. He cited the comedian George Carlin, who made the point that “We need to admit that this country that started out to become a republic is now run by oligarchs.” Render said that “They share jet planes and laugh behind our backs.” Until the working class unites and realizes that, bad things will continue, he argued.
Maher then brought up the “F**k Joe Biden” chants breaking out at football games and other public events, asking where the pushback is from decent people, and noting that “many people don’t want to hear that as a chant.”
Render defended the chants on First Amendment grounds. Biden “parades himself as a tough guy,” Render said. “Under rap rules, you can get a “f**k you” for that behavior.” He added; “You play tough, you get tough talk.”
The talk also covered broken campaign promises, and then turned to a startling news story that recently came out, revealing that police killings may be double the official statistics, with the actual cause of death covered up by medical examiners.
Costa and Render both have policemen as relatives. Costa wanted more sunlight on the killings, noting how police names involved in these incidents often aren’t brought out into the light. “You can’t hide it from the sunlight,” he said.
Render was more blunt, saying that he didn’t want rogue police to have a “get out of jail free” card, calling for life sentences and pension cutoffs on convictions, as well as longer training. All of that would avoid a “hunter and prey” situation, he argued.
American Democracy Is Sick. Can Colleges Be Part of the Cure?
By Rebecca Koenig October 7, 2021
Students register to vote in Austin, Texas, in 2016. Shutterstock
Nancy Thomas has plenty of experience talking to college students about American democracy. Still, she didn’t expect the question one student asked her during a recent symposium at a university.
Was the election stolen?
“I was stunned. This is a person on a college campus. I said, ‘Unequivocally, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or that the election was stolen,’” recalls Thomas, the director of the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University. “The mere fact that a student is asking me that is evidence that student isn’t getting the memo on how to spot disinformation and lies.”
Thomas has long worried about whether higher education prepares students for the responsibilities of democracy. These days, she’s not alone. Educators are alarmed, and surveys of people ages 18 to 24 about the state of America’s democracy and values show “there is sort of a consensus among young people that they’re worried,” says Kelly Siegel-Stechler, a senior researcher at the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
There’s long been a belief that a more perfect civic education can lead to a more perfect union. Colleges tried service learning. Then they pushed to get out the vote. But the political events and rhetoric of the past few years—culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol—have heightened the sense of urgency that higher education do something more to patch the widening cracks in American democracy. In an era of viral digital disinformation, eroding governance norms and increased political violence, the same old campus “civic engagement” programs no longer seem sufficient.
So now colleges are rethinking their efforts. In June, the University of Virginia announced that a new Institute of Democracy is in the works. In July, the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University won a grant to create a research framework about colleges and democracy. September saw the birth of the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement coalition, led by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Complete College America, College Promise and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
“We see this as central: to preserve democracy by drawing people together in civic discourse grounded in the civic purpose of higher education,” says Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Several of these new initiatives have a specific focus on racial equity. The idea is to educate students “for a strong and inclusive democracy,” says Thomas, the Tufts researcher. “It’s not the democracy we have, it’s the democracy we want and need. A more aspirational democracy.”
And even as some observers may critique new efforts as going too far, others worry they won’t go far enough toward equity—by teaching more explicitly about extremism, or embracing the political participation of student activists, or addressing the needs of students who lack resources.
“Oftentimes when people invoke ‘democracy,’ they want it to be for everybody, and then we depoliticize it,” says Morgan, an assistant professor of higher education at Loyola University Chicago. “What are we not going to equivocate on and not be willing to settle on?”
‘No Consensus’ About Citizenship and College
Ask how U.S. colleges got into the democracy business, and you may get a bit of a history lesson. There was President Truman’s “Higher Education for American Democracy” report from the 1940s. There was John Dewey’s book “Democracy and Education” from 1916. Laurent Dubois, who directs democracy programs at the University of Virginia, takes it back further, to the period he studies, the Age of Enlightenment.
“The idea that you could study humanity, understand humanity—and therefore contribute to better societies, better systems, better government—suffuses the work of the American founders,” Dubois says. “The modern university has roots before the 18th century, but a lot of it is shaped from that kind of culture, basically of optimism, that you could study the world and improve it by studying it.”
The very process of studying “can really embody some democratic ideals,” Dubois adds. On a campus—at least, in theory—students and professors are free and encouraged to explore, express and exchange ideas with others who have different backgrounds and perspectives—making it, Dubois says, the type of “shared space of compromise” required for a democracy to work.
Then there’s the fact that colleges are institutions of great social and economic influence, both within local communities and nationwide. Millions of people learn at them, work for them, and live near them.
“It gives them stature—or at least a toehold—as conveners, problem-solvers, educators,” Thomas says.
Research has indeed found links between higher education and participation in and attitudes toward democracy. People who complete college are more civically active and knowledgeable. In the U.S., people with at least a bachelor’s degree have “especially weak inclinations toward authoritarian political preferences,” according to a 2020 report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Why exactly this is the case is not totally clear, however. It may be because of the liberal arts curriculum, the Georgetown report suggests. Or perhaps because a college degree often improves people’s economic security. Bringing different types of people together to learn from each other and “communicate across differences” might also help. So could the influence of peers on voting and other civic behaviors.
The list goes on and on. Higher education is bursting with classroom and extracurricular “interventions” that can “spur these civic engagements and attitudes,” says Matthew J. Mayhew, a professor of educational administration at The Ohio State University who studies the effects of college on the worldviews of students.
But ultimately, he adds, “there’s no consensus on exactly what citizenship is deconstructed to look like.”
The interventions colleges have intentionally tried haven’t all been especially successful. The rise of campus service learning—education that incorporates volunteering—may be one example. A 2012 report from the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that more than 70 percent of college students reported participating in service learning—yet also that, over time, students’ actual civic learning “is neither robust nor pervasive.”
It’s very easy to do a service learning experience but not learn that we don’t have free and fair elections in some parts of this country.
—Nancy Thomas
“It’s very easy to do a service learning experience but not learn that we don’t have free and fair elections in some parts of this country, or our judiciary may or may not be independent at this point,” Thomas says. “There are many acts of citizenship that colleges promote, but where do they go?”
The most recent civic engagement trend to sweep higher education has been “a hyper-focus on voter engagement,” according to Morgan, a focus largely agnostic about who students actually vote for. And in recent elections, youth voter turnout has been notably high.
Yet if the Jan. 6 insurrection is a kind of report card on higher education’s efforts to strengthen democracy—and Morgan argues that it is—driving students to the polls may have failed to improve the country’s civic health.
In the aftermath of that violent episode, experts offer varying diagnoses and prescriptions. Educators need to be better trained to help students grow into citizens, Mayhew argues. Courses need to teach more explicitly about white nationalism and “creeping authoritarianism,” Thomas says. Colleges need to be bolder, Morgan adds.
“Who could be against voting? Who could be against volunteerism?” Morgan asks. “Every time there’s a rousing cry and call for higher education to be more engaged in safeguarding democracy and democracy building, what we see is higher ed chooses this safe, apolitical route.”
What About Activism?
Talk to college leaders and researchers about American democracy, and you’ll hear the same word repeated: “aspirational.” Democracy and higher education have that in common. Both systems boast of soaring ideals that don’t always match reality.
It’s true that, compared to the days when many colleges were largely reserved for wealthy white men, “access to higher education is far more democratic than it used to be,” Thomas says. Participation broadened notably after WWII, when federal education benefits helped (mostly white) veterans go to college, and in the late 1970s, when women passed men as the majority on campus. Meanwhile, historically Black colleges have long been champions of what scholar Monica P. Smith calls not civic engagement, but “liberation engagement”—efforts that “address systemic problems that oppress people within the democracy.”
“When you educate historically marginalized groups, you are educating for empowerment. You are educating for leadership. And it’s their reason for being,” Thomas says. “They have the corner on the market in doing it, just by virtue of the constituencies they serve.”
Now, about two-thirds of high school graduates enroll immediately in higher education (although a much smaller share end up completing a degree). Still, race and class disparities persist at colleges. And just as people left behind by democracy have had to push the system to live up to its promises, the same seems true in higher education. Yet even as the field shifts to thinking about “equity-committed civic learning”—in the words of the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement coalition—that kind of activism is not always welcomed on campus, or viewed as a legitimate form of political participation.
“Nobody wants to be in the newspaper,” Thomas says. “It’s almost like one force pushing for issue awareness and knowledge and discussion and leadership, but then this countervailing force stops at the doorstep of activism and protest or anything disruptive to the college environment.”
Charles H. F. Davis III studies student organizing—he and Morgan co-edited a book on the subject. And his research makes him skeptical of what campus civic engagement programs can offer to student activists.
Activism at its best is what makes democracy accountable to itself.
—Charles H. F. Davis III
“Activism at its best is what makes democracy accountable to itself,” says Davis, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. “Electoral politics, service learning, or civic engagement I think are very different.”
Sometimes, Davis argues, college leaders use institutional systems that have a civic engagement veneer to co-opt students’ political power. It might look like inviting a prominent activist to serve as student body president. Or creating a task force to study student policy demands slowly, over many years. Or turning a Black cultural space on campus into a multicultural center for all students.
Davis also isn’t convinced that college campuses—where segregation exists in majors, housing and social life—are inherently democratic environments. Or that encouraging college students to communicate across their differences typically leads to positive outcomes for students of color.
“They don’t want their lives to be made intellectual matters,” Davis says. “We reduce things that are deeply racist, sexist, homophobic to ‘matters of opinion,’ as if those don’t have consequences.”
Equity in Action
What student activists do tend to want is access to resources—or shifts in how universities use their resources within their broader communities, Davis explains. And that’s not necessarily what institutions are prioritizing in the latest iteration of their democracy-focused programs.
“We’re finally seeing conversations about equity. My opinion is, it’s pretty lukewarm,” Morgan says. “It’s not reflected in the leadership of organizations. It’s not reflected in the model they’re putting forth.”
But what if some of the goals of student activists and higher education leaders are more closely aligned than they realize? What if rethinking access to resources could actually make a difference in civic learning outcomes—a bigger difference than the other strategies colleges have tried in the past?
“If I grow up in a school where I feel like my voice is heard, I know who to go to for change, and I see that effected, that’s going to give me a much greater sense of political efficacy throughout my life than if I don’t have those kinds of experiences as a young person,” says Siegel-Stechler of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
In this framing, students come into colleges expecting to be treated in certain ways, and having access to a more-equitable and responsive experience might change their trajectories, especially for students who didn’t grow up accompanying their parents to the polls or talking about elections around the dinner table. Maybe the key to getting students to vote and participate in public life later on is not to give them more or different civics courses or volunteer opportunities, but to empower them—all of them.
“College can level that playing field by creating really positive experiences for minoritized students—pathways and models for how students can engage in those experiences—and translate that to other democratic practices,” Morgan says. “How do we create higher-ed spaces where minoritized students can be successful and flourish?”
Naming equity as a goal in civic learning is one challenge. Figuring out what that looks like in action is another.
But Morgan thinks it’s worth the effort for higher education: “It’s one of the few institutions left, arguably, that can ameliorate the challenges of democracy—but also produce and establish a citizenry that is prepared for building democracy anew.”
Rebecca Koenig (@becky_koenig) is an editor at EdSurge covering higher education. Reach her at rebecca [at] edsurge [dot] com.
I traveled 2,100 miles across the state to figure out if she is doomed — and to glimpse the future of the Republican Party.
By David Montgomery – October 7, 2021– Photos by Katherine Frey
A Trump sign in Cody, Wyo.
In Wyoming, even Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid want to give Liz Cheney the boot. On a recent evening, they’re out committing mayhem in downtown Cody as part of a tourist attraction, the “Wild Bunch Gunfight” show. The gunfighters play cards, drink whiskey, rob a bank and take on the law. The script of their show is tuned to the political pitch of the Cowboy State, where 70 percent of voters chose to reelect Donald Trump, making it the Trumpiest state in the nation. At one point, when Sundance’s spirit flags, Butch scolds him: “I swear you give up your guns faster than somebody from California! … Haven’t you heard of BLM?” Sundance replies: “Butch’s Life Matters!”
Afterward, still in his Butch Cassidy costume, Bob Ferguson is relaxing on the porch of the Irma Hotel, a frontier landmark founded by Buffalo Bill Cody. I ask him about Cheney, 55, elder daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and Wyoming’s lone representative to Congress. She’s been locked in a high-stakes political gunfight with Trump ever since she voted to impeach him for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. “It’s kind of like a line in the sand was drawn,” says Ferguson, who voted for Cheney in 2020 but now sounds viscerally offended by her. “She hasn’t just turned on Donald Trump — she has turned on Donald Trump’s supporters. … She has insulted constituents in a very conservative state, called us insurrectionists. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Paul Lanchbury (Sundance) saunters over, spurs jangling. “She’s a puppet,” he practically spits. “Hell, she wants to be president.”
Cheney has insisted that her sole focus is serving the people of Wyoming and protecting the democracy from Trumpism, not angling to ascend to the White House as potentially the moral leader of a post-Trump GOP. But there’s no question that her showdown with Trump has assumed dimensions far beyond a sleepy midterm reelection campaign in the country’s least-populated state.
Since entering the House in 2017, Cheney has not had a close primary or general election. She was embraced by the Republican establishment in D.C., and quickly rose to the No. 3 position of leadership in the GOP caucus, giving Wyoming outsize clout for such a small population. She was reelected in November with nearly 69 percent of the vote.
Her problems began when she cast doubt on Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen. Cheney circulated a 21-page white paper highlighting the judicial decisions striking down fraud claims by Trump’s allies, and describing why the Constitution doesn’t allow Congress or the vice president to overrule certified state electoral votes.
On Jan. 6, Trump called out Cheney by name during his speech on the Ellipse. She was on the House floor when rioters broke into the Capitol. When leading Trump advocate Rep. Jim Jordan from Ohio offered to help her from the aisle, she later recalled smacking his hand away and telling him, “Get away from me. You f—ing did this,” according to the book “I Alone Can Fix It” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
Cheney went on to vote for Trump’s second impeachment in January (she had voted against the first impeachment, in 2019). She was ejected from the House leadership in May, but has since doubled and tripled down on her anti-Trump stance, taking a key role on the Democratic-led committee to investigate Jan. 6 and firing volley after gleeful volley at the former president. She tweeted in August that Trump “continues to use the same type of language he knows provoked violence in the past.” Five days later, she told the Commonwealth Club public affairs forum in San Francisco that Trump “continues to be an ongoing, clear and present danger to this Democracy.”Bob Ferguson, who acts in the “Wild Bunch Gunfight” show in Cody. He voted for Liz Cheney in 2020 but now says: “She has insulted constituents in a very conservative state, called us insurrectionists. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Meanwhile, in the months after the impeachment, a hodgepodge of seven state legislators, activists and novices came gunning for Cheney with primary bids. Such an early start to a congressional campaign, nearly two years before the general election, is unheard of in Wyoming.
Trump invited contenders to his New Jersey golf club to decide whom he would endorse to take down his No. 1 target in the midterms. In September he picked Harriet Hageman, who wasn’t even in the race yet, a land-use lawyer who had placed third in the 2018 GOP primary for governor. Trump’s endorsement of Hageman caused three of the others to drop out. At last count there are six in the race, including Cheney. “Unlike RINO Liz Cheney, Harriet is all in for America First,” Trump said in his endorsement. “Harriet has my Complete and Total Endorsement in replacing the Democrats number one provider of sound bites, Liz Cheney.” Responded Cheney on Twitter: “Here’s a sound bite for you: Bring it.”
Cheney’s conservatism is not in doubt; she is pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro-fossil fuels, pro-tax cuts, pro-defense spending, and voted with Trump 93 percent of the time. “If you look at it from a political philosophy standpoint, Liz Cheney is absolutely a conservative, right across the board,” says Matt Micheli, a former chairman of the Wyoming GOP who calls Cheney “a phenomenal representative for our state.” As he puts it, the question at stake in next year’s primary will be: “What is the future of the conservative movement in America? Is it one that’s styled after the Ronald Reagan brand of conservatism, or the more populist, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene brand of conservatism?”
I recently spent 10 days traveling 2,100 miles up and down the state, talking with more than 60 residents to see how Wyoming is processing this choice. Nearly everywhere I went, rage against Cheney erupted as regularly as a Yellowstone geyser. Support for her was harder to find, though equally passionate. But whatever side they are on, Wyoming voters draw their heat for this race from the same source: their knowledge that this is no ordinary political grudge match, but rather a test of the party’s future.A collection of animals lines the wall of the Valley Foods grocery store in Saratoga, Wyo.Harriet Hageman at a GOP dinner in Cody in September. Hageman, a land-use lawyer who had placed third in the 2018 GOP primary for governor, was endorsed by Trump to unseat Cheney in the midterm elections.
Early September was a strange time to be in Wyoming. California forest fires that scientists increasingly blame on climate change were belching a haze over a state where the economy has long relied on oil, gas, coal and cows. You couldn’t smell the smoke, but daily news bulletins updated air quality levels. The iconic Teton and Big Horn mountain ranges looked like ghosts of themselves. You’d wake up with a little tightness in the chest and wonder if it was the onset of covid-19 or just the smoke. Hardly anyone wore a mask, as far as I could tell, except in Teton County (which includes Jackson Hole) where — cue eye roll from the rest of the state — the ruling local Democrats insist. And yet even with the smoke and the virus, the land was beautiful — endless prairies, terrifying heights, infinite solitude.
The first person I interviewed, in Cheyenne at the southern edge of the state, was a retired elementary school teacher walking her dog near the state Capitol. She said she admired Cheney for standing up to Trump. She added, “I don’t know anyone else in Wyoming who supports her except me.” Passing the storefront office of the state GOP, I couldn’t help noticing a poster celebrating “Premier Wyoming Republican Women.” Of the seven women listed, two were dead and none was Liz Cheney.
To understand the origins of the grass-roots anti-Cheney movement, I knew I had to head west into Carbon County. Despite its name, the county is home to some of Wyoming’s most impressive wind farms. Herds of beef cattle grazed placidly beneath swooping turbines tilting at a carbonless future. I pulled into the town of Saratoga (population 1,615), where I found the Whistle Pig Saloon. Joey Correnti IV, chairman of the Carbon County GOP, was waiting for me. He wore a cap with a red, white and blue buffalo on the front, a white shirt, black vest, jeans, cowboy boots and a pistol on his hip. I mention the gun only because it was the first of many that I saw in this open-carry state, and soon I stopped noticing them. “I don’t see any reason not to have a firearm with me at all times,” Correnti told me in a rust-bucket baritone that I recognized from his appearances on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
If anyone gets credit for helping spark the prairie fire of resistance to Cheney, it’s Correnti. The day of the impeachment vote, Correnti found himself fielding spontaneous impassioned rants from members of the party in Carbon County. That night he put together a Zoom meeting with maybe 50 people. They vented and began to brainstorm. Three consecutive nights of Zooms culminated in a virtual town hall with about 150 people from around the state. “Being rural Wyoming, if you have 150 people in a captive audience, you’re actually talking to about 15,000 people,” Correnti says. “It’s literally some people’s jobs in communities to be the person to know about this and bring it back to the coffee shop or whatever.” The next day, Jan. 16, the county party passed the first censure of Cheney. In coming weeks, all but a few of the state’s 23 county GOP chapters followed, modeling their resolutions on Carbon County’s, and so did the state GOP.
“It’s not because we’re Trump fanatics,” Correnti insists. “My problem with my representative is she’s continuing to focus my voice as my representative on somebody who’s not president and may never be president again, and not focusing on fixing election concerns and the problems facing Wyoming.” Correnti lit one cigarette after another and drank diet soda as he continued. “If [Trump] chooses to never come back to running for office or politics again, he has still left us with … a reawakening of the grass-roots voice. It’s our responsibility to pick up that ball and run with it.”
I left Saratoga and headed north toward Buffalo. On the way, rocketing past Casper at the state speed limit of 80 mph, I spotted a Joe Biden banner outside a house beside the interstate. It would be the only Biden sign I saw in all of Wyoming. I made a mental note to go back and visit.
Buffalo is nestled below the Bighorn Mountains on the old Bozeman Trail gold rush route, where I met David Iverson at the Bozeman Trail Steakhouse. As creator and host of the “Cowboy State Politics” podcast, Iverson offers grass-roots conservative perspectives on a wide variety of topics, including local tax referendums and Washington follies. I knew how significant he considers this contest because earlier, on the phone, he had said: “If Liz Cheney wins this race, that’s going to send a signal to the left that they’ve pretty much flipped Wyoming, because Liz Cheney is by far the most liberal representative that we could possibly have right now. … If you can do it in Wyoming, you can do it across the country, no matter what the electoral makeup of that state happens to be.”
Cheney’s conservative credentials are not spotless, in Iverson’s view, citing her support for foreign interventions by American forces. Yet few had wanted to kick her out for that. Why, I asked him, in light of Cheney’s solid conservative record, has her vote on impeachment made all the difference? It’s complicated, but in the first place, Iverson said, by voting to impeach Trump, she was not “defending the Constitution.” Her action was constitutionally suspect because she voted before there was any time for hearings or investigations, he said, denying Trump “due process.”Joey Correnti IV, chairman of the Carbon County GOP, which passed the first censure of Cheney after her impeachment vote in January.
Correnti had said the same thing. As I would discover, masses of people across Wyoming fervently insist that Cheney’s vote was somehow unconstitutional or illegal. Those people are misinformed: The Constitution says the House can basically run an impeachment any way it wants; there are no rules to break. Meanwhile, the Fifth and 14th Amendments define where due process pertains: No one shall be deprived of “life, liberty or property” without due process of law. Cheney’s vote, and the impeachment itself, deprived Trump of none of those things. Can a Cheney critic make a political argument that the Democratic-led impeachment was unfair or unnecessary? Sure. I began to think of “unconstitutional” as Wyoming-speak for “unfair.”
Two other reasons that Iverson and others say Cheney’s vote is so unforgivable are less rebuttable and may ultimately have more impact. First, on a matter of utmost importance to many residents, she unapologetically, enthusiastically went the other way. In the process, an unspoken bond was broken. Why should they trust her again? And second, the people of Wyoming are sensitive to any hint of someone talking down to them. To their ears, Cheney’s lectures about Trump are beginning to have that ring. “The reason why people live here is so we don’t have to be told how to live, how to believe,” Iverson said. “When you have a representative who’s saying, ‘President Trump is a bad person, President Trump started this riot, President Trump needs to be impeached’ … you’re telling people what they are to believe.”
The next day I reached Cody, a hotbed of bubbling-up anti-Cheney resistance, and attended the Park County GOP’s regular meeting in the Cody Cowboy Church. Bob Ferguson, former managing director of a major Wall Street investment firm, and Paul Lanchbury, a retired transmission lineman who raises cattle, were still wearing their Butch and Sundance get-ups because there was no time to change after that evening’s performance. The church walls were decorated with coiled ropes to which American flags had been tied with bandannas. County GOP chairman Martin Kimmet, a self-described “old cowboy” who raises cattle, called the meeting to order.
New business included planning for the upcoming Patriot’s Day Dinner fundraiser, with a live auction featuring a buffalo hunt, a pair of guns and other items. Cheney had not been invited; Hageman was scheduled to give a non-political talk on patriotism. Cheney used to be welcome at events like this. Kimmet recalls how she would give him a hug when they greeted. Not anymore; not since the Cody chapter of the party voted in August to tell Cheney she was “fired” as their representative. She can’t be trusted to represent the people anymore, Kimmet told me: “Seemingly she just doesn’t really care what we want her to do.”Bev Hempel at Rustic Bar in Saratoga.Deer in downtown Cody.
Cowboys were roping steers and riding bucking broncs on an emerald field in the Bighorn foothills of Sheridan, at the northern edge of the state, as the campaign entered its retail-politics phase over Labor Day weekend. Three of Cheney’s challengers in the Aug. 16 primary worked the crowd of thousands gathered for this annual rodeo held in honor of a revered local saddle-making family. Wyoming primaries themselves are a bit like rodeos, with lots of contenders and dark-horse surprises. The state’s distinctive electoral mechanics present both tactical challenges and opportunities for Cheney, and all were on display at the rodeo.
Marissa Selvig, a musician and former mayor of Pavillion, greeted voters with her husband and four children in tow. She has musical notation for part of the chorus of the Christian anthem “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” tattooed on her arm. “I’m running against Liz Cheney,” she told a woman at the rodeo. “Yay, yay, yay!” the woman cheered in return. “I want to give the people of Wyoming someone who is like them,” Selvig said in an interview. “I’m just a mom and a musician who loves Wyoming and who loves America, just like they do. And I think that I could be a more relatable voice in Washington than what we currently have.”
Robyn Belinskey, who runs a business organizing people’s homes, arrived in her campaign car painted red, white and blue; “Don’t Tread on Me” was printed on the back. “This is a grass-roots conservative effort,” she told me. “I’m not a politician. I’m not an attorney. I am a we-the-people person, a patriot.”
Candidate Denton Knapp was at the rodeo, too, somewhere, but I missed him and caught up with him later in Gillette. The retired Army colonel told me that his 30-year military career — including deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq — gave him leadership experience that the other challengers lack. “I’m the best for Wyoming,” he said. “If [Cheney] wins, Wyoming is going to take a hard look at itself because that’s the last thing you want to happen.”
Analysts consider those candidates less formidable so far because of their relative lack of political experience and fundraising. But all have refused to drop out despite Trump’s endorsement of Hageman. A potentially stronger contender is Anthony Bouchard, a Republican state senator and gun rights advocate whom I’d met earlier at a Chick-fil-A in Cheyenne. “With the highest financial support coming from ordinary folks, and over a thousand donors in Wyoming, I’m not leaving this race,” he vowed. In the spring it emerged that nearly 40 years ago, when he was 18, he impregnated a 14-year-old girl. The couple married and had a child. The woman later died by suicide. “When push comes to shove, [voters] are going to see that I have the experience, not to mention the fortitude, to stand up to what’s really wrong,” he said.
Hageman, a lawyer who has specialized in protecting property rights and water rights, has better statewide name recognition than other challengers after her 2018 primary race for governor, though she got less than 22 percent of the vote. Trump’s endorsement should open a spigot of outside cash and assistance for her. The former president has dispatched a team of political advisers to boost her campaign, and Donald Trump Jr. will serve as honorary chair of a super PAC aiding the effort, Politico reported.Rep. Liz Cheney on Capitol Hill in Washington in July. Since entering the House in 2017, Cheney has never had a close primary or general election. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Hageman supported Cheney in earlier races. “When Liz Cheney voted to impeach President Trump, she betrayed Wyoming, she betrayed this country, and she betrayed me,” Hageman said in an email, in response to questions I sent via a former Trump campaign official who is now assisting her. “At a time when we needed all hands on deck, Liz Cheney jumped ship, dogpaddled to the other side, and is now shooting back at us.”
When I asked who she thinks won the presidential election, Hageman replied that there are “legitimate questions about what happened in 2020. … It won’t change the outcome, Joe Biden is the president today, but we ought to know what happened going forward so that people can begin to have faith in our electoral process again.”
Beyond Trump and the impeachment, I wanted to know what Hageman would do differently on conservative issues that matter to Wyoming. She offered few specifics but said Cheney’s prominent role in investigating Jan. 6 serves to generally enable Democrats and “deflect attention from the abject and total disaster that is the Biden administration.”
Cheney declined to comment for this story. Her campaign distributed a transcript of a recent conversation she had with Wyoming reporters. She called Hageman’s entry into the race with Trump’s endorsement “tragic opportunism” and said her old ally is “abandoning her duty to the people of Wyoming in order to pledge loyalty to Donald Trump. … If Harriet wants to cast her lot with those folks, you know, I would note that they’re the same people who were involved in misleading millions of Americans about the election in 2020.”
While not stepping back from her skirmishes with Trump and his congressional acolytes, Cheney is also trying to make the race about the rest of her conservative record. This year she has introduced bills to block moratoriums on oil and gas leases and to protect property rights — and she has taken advantage of every microphone and camera to bash Biden over Afghanistan and other issues. “Liz has been a rock star for our state,” says Landon Brown, a Republican state representative. “There is no better determination of Trump’s stranglehold on this country than the Liz Cheney race.”
In the end, though, Cheney’s fate may lie with those three candidates at the rodeo, and with Bouchard. Hardly anyone I talked with thinks she can win a head-to-head race against Hageman — not because Hageman is so strong, but because Cheney’s war with Trump has made her so vulnerable. If two or more challengers remain in the race, “it will be much closer than any of us would like, but Liz will walk away with the win,” says Brown. “If it goes down to a two-way race … I think Harriet wins.”
There’s no parallel pro-Cheney grass-roots movement working to counteract the anti-Cheney activists at the local level. Hard-right pro-Trump Republicans have taken control of the party apparatus in nearly all the counties. Still,more moderate (by Wyoming standards), less doctrinaire Republicans remain successful at getting elected to the state legislature — suggesting that plenty of Wyoming voters haven’t given up on the Cheney wing of the GOP.
Cheney herself is not holding any events that the general public can get into. Her supporters acknowledge that a public meeting in Wyoming would likely get ugly. Instead, she is attending small, private gatherings and holding invitation-only conference calls. She raised $3.4 million in two record fundraising quarters this year. Former president George W. Bush was scheduled to headline a fundraiser for her this month in Dallas.
A number of Cheney’s supporters told me that she could change the tone and improve her chances if she would lay off Trump. But she shows no inclination to do so. Last month on “60 Minutes,” Cheney offered an explanation for her continued drumbeat on the subject. “If Republican leaders don’t stand up and condemn what happened, then the voices in the party that are so dangerous will only get louder and stronger,” she said. “Silence enables the liar, and silence helps [misinformation] to spread. … If we do that we are contributing to the undermining of our system.”
Dee Bott, a retired hospital executive in Torrington, told me over the phone she thought Cheney’s vote for impeachment was a mistake: “Why would you hang your hat on something that wasn’t going to do anything but cause you grief?” And yet, “I will definitely vote for her again,” Bott said, citing a list of Cheney’s accomplishments for her state. “She knows exactly what Wyoming is. How can you put that in your back pocket and be upset because she voted to impeach Trump?”
Bott also thinks significant Cheney support is flying under the radar because of all the hostility. “We have a ton of friends who are saying the same thing,” she said. “ ‘We’re not going to get out there and get yelled at and have eggs thrown at us. We’re just going to the polls and we’re voting for Liz.’ ”
There’s one more Wyoming primary dynamic to take into account: Democrats. They are so vanishingly rare in the state that they hardly count for anything — except, potentially, on primary day. Wyoming law allows people to change their affiliation right up to the primary. Past races have featured thousands of Democrats and unaffiliated voters doing so, conceivably to back more-moderate Republicans. There’s no evidence they’ve swung a major race before, but they could make the difference in a close one.
In the spring Cheney attended a small gathering in the Cody area. Scott Weber, who works in firearms sales, got a chance to talk with her about the race. “She is the most charismatic speaker, and she captivates the room,” he told me. “She’s got the right amount of humor. She knows everything about Wyoming. She’s deeply committed. She hates liberals, so she has all these jokes about” them. Weber was impressed and thought she might be running for president, which he said she denied when they chatted at the event. As they spoke, Weber made the obvious observation that she had so many challengers. She looked at him with a twinkle, he recalled, and said, “The more, the merrier!”Martin Kimmet, a self-described “old cowboy” who raises cattle, says, “Seemingly she just doesn’t really care what we want her to do.”
Toward the end of my trip I headed to Jackson Hole, Cheney country. I commuted through Yellowstone National Park, past buffalo that looked noble even while chewing, stopping to check that the geysers remained faithful in spite of everything. The famous postcard view of the Grand Tetons appeared wan in the smoky exhales from California.
Across the Snake River from Jackson lay Wilson, the little community where Cheney has a house. I climbed onto the wooden front porch of Hungry Jack’s General Store. “I feel much more positive about her now than I have ever felt for her or any of the Cheneys ever,” said Jana Stearns, whose family has owned Jack’s for nearly 70 years. She told me she would consider changing her registration from Democrat to Republican to vote for Cheney in the primary. “I admire her courage to stand up for what’s right,” she said.
The front porch of Hungry Jack’s was the only place in the state where, in my experience, Cheney supporters — including Republicans — slightly outnumbered detractors. Photographer Jeff Foott stopped by. “I never thought I’d be rooting for Liz Cheney, but I am,” he said. He’s also thinking about changing his registration from Democrat to vote for her. “I don’t agree with most of her politics, but what she’s done is pretty courageous.” Registered Republican Caryn Haman said: “She comes closer to the old style of working back-and-forth when necessary to get something done.”
Until now, I’d experienced pro- and anti-Cheney sentiment as existing in separate bubbles, where separate realities prevailed. Back across the Snake, at the historic Wort Hotel in downtown Jackson, the bubbles merged.
Mary Martin, chair of the Teton County GOP, assembled a focus group in a private dining room at the Wort and invited me to listen and ask questions. Martin was one of a handful of state party officials who withstood enormous pressure and voted against censuring Cheney. But Martin’s vote didn’t necessarily mean she approved of Cheney’s vote for impeachment. Martin is a proud Trump supporter who feels her trust in Cheney has been damaged. (As a party official, she’s neutral in the primary.) Nevertheless, one of her personal missions is to create space in her party where people can disagree and, hopefully, learn from one another.
The group consisted of three Cheney critics and one supporter. For 90 spirited minutes the group batted around Cheney’s merits and demerits: Jan. 6, the impeachment, her service on the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. “She decided that she did not want to be on the team,” said John Fox, an active conservative retired from Wall Street. “And I think Trump commands loyalty and deserves loyalty. … Now she’s not just off the loyalty train, but she’s actually, in my opinion, a Democrat.”
“We’re all Republicans here, so we’re very unhappy with what’s happened in the leadership in Washington, D.C., and yet I’m going to have a different perspective,” said Paul Vogelheim, a former county commissioner. He told the story of his late friend, the Rev. Ubald Rugirangoga, a Rwandan priest and survivor of that nation’s genocide, who died of covid the day after the Capitol riot. When the priest learned of the riot, among his last words to Vogelheim were how America must not tear itself apart like his country. “The violence that occurred in our capital, and how the world looked at that … really hit me,” Vogelheim said. “So I appreciate that she’s made a stand.”
Steve Duerr, a lawyer, spoke up. “Conservative people have different ways of showing it. Trump’s conservatism was, in my opinion, individual rights, American enterprise, self-reliance, business, a strong military. Take care of America first, make America great again.” He continued: “Paul can say on principle, she’s defending the Constitution by voting to impeach Trump and giving her name to ‘Eva’ Pelosi on this committee. I don’t buy it. It’s pure hubris. … She wants to be the Trump opponent in 2024. … She’s not thinking about Wyoming.”Mary Martin, chairman of the Teton County GOP, aims to create space in her party where people can disagree and, hopefully, learn from one another.
Vogelheim has certainly considered whether Cheney’s motivations include political gain. “But I still believe that she is coming from this place of principle, Constitution first,” he said. “ ‘This man has done something wrong and I’m going to expose it.’ ”
When the conversation was over, no one had changed their fundamental position, but they realized they had something in common that made them so passionate — on both sides — about the subject of Liz Cheney. “Just hearing the anger here today,” Vogelheim said, “a lot of [it] is a broader issue, a big-picture issue of: What’s happening to our country?”
One fan of Cheney’s couldn’t make it to the gathering, so I spoke to him by phone. His name is John Turner, and he’s a former wildlife and environmental official in both Bush administrations. “It’s absolutely insane that Wyoming voters would even consider jettisoning one of the most articulate, experienced, eloquent spokesmen for conservative values in Washington,” he told me. “There’s a lot at stake for this country. We’re really at a crossroads. We need experienced conservatives like Liz to stay in the saddle to combat the frightening foolishness we see in Washington right now.”
Turner and Vogelheim had both made explicit the subtext of many of the conversations I’d had in Wyoming: What has gone wrong in America? Pulling the lever for or against Cheney would be a Wyoming voter’s way of trying to answer that question. I recalled the anxious things Wyomingites had said. From Tim Wade, a fly fishing outfitter in Cody, who disapproves of Cheney: “The freedoms that we Americans expect under the Constitution are riding on this.” From Drew Perkins, a state senator finishing nine holes of golf after work in Saratoga, who admires Cheney: “We need problem solvers in Washington; we don’t need people back there making political statements.” From Joseph McGinley, a radiologist and entrepreneur in Casper, who also approves of Cheney: “We have to get rid of the extremism. We have to get back to principles.”Paul Vogelheim, a former Teton County commissioner, says: “The violence that occurred in our capital, and how the world looked at that, really hit me.” He says he appreciates that Cheney has made a stand.
Just before my flight out of Casper, I made it back to that Joe Biden banner I had seen a week earlier. It was partially furled on a wire fence enclosing a lot filled with cars and equipment on the edge of the plains. Two dogs galloped toward me while I toed the property border, marked by a no-trespassing sign.
A shirtless man emerged from the house and hollered at me to state my business. I hollered at him about my story on Liz Cheney. He hollered that he couldn’t hear me and waved me forward. “They won’t bite,” he said of the dogs. As I crossed the fence line, a sudden gust of wind unfurled the banner. I saw a word I had missed before, above Biden’s name, in screaming capital red letters: “F—.”
The man introduced himself as Tom Hood. He had the same four-letter political analysis of Cheney. Didn’t care too much for the state’s senior U.S. senator either. To Hood, most politicians blur into one figure of indifference toward people like him. He’s 63 and had worked for 35 years in the oil fields, until a chunk of ice landed on his head and disabled him. He’d had to sell the cattle he used to keep behind his house. But he still owned the land where the cattle once grazed, he said proudly. Whatever else might have gone wrong, a piece of the American plains was his.
Trump and Cheney have done a lot to frame this race as a duel between two sworn enemies, but the people I talked with instinctively realize there’s more to it than that. In Hood’s case, if he votes in the primary — the challenger he mentioned liking has since dropped out — it’ll be for someone he thinks understands the view from his patch of ground. The Wyoming primary will be one of the first times voters get to have their say about the events of Jan. 6. People on the losing side will feel, I suspect, not just that their candidate has lost, but that it may no longer be their America.
David Montgomery is a staff writer for the magazine. Katherine Frey is a Washington Post staff photographer.
The Villages is a retirement ‘paradise’ — so why is that a problem?
Paul Irving October 2, 2021
More older adults realize that intergenerational connections are not just valuable for them but for their communities and country.
Residents watch presidential election returns at an Election Night party organized by a group called Villagers for Trump. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The Villages, a master-planned retirement community in central Florida, is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S., we learned from the 2020 Census. In a demographically changing and urbanizing America, this predominantly white, politically conservative stronghold bucked the trend as retirees lured by warm winters and pastel-hued homes surrounded by golf carts and pickleball courts, flocked in.
We are all free to choose how and where we want to live, of course, and new housing solutions for the rapidly growing population of older Americans are needed. But, to be honest, if communities like the Villages represent the future of aging, please count me, and many of us, out.
We want to live in diverse, multigenerational communities, remain engaged and contribute to a better future for the generations ahead.
Florida’s “friendliest hometown,” in the words of real-estate agents, the Villages features extremely popular 55-and-older residential offerings and was the subject of the award-winning 2020 film, “Some Kind of Heaven.” Reports indicate that Disney DIS, -0.67% may soon create a similar age-restricted community in Florida. It is not surprising that the creative minds behind a “fantasyland” for kids might be eyeing a lifestyle development for older adults as its next frontier.
Concerns about this retirement community
So, what’s my concern about the Villages, and why do others feel as I do?
At our Center for the Future of Aging at the Milken Institute, we have promoted the benefits of diverse cities and the case for intergenerational living, which are very different from the Villages.
It is understandable that so many people in their sixth, seventh and eighth decades find Villages-type developments a logical next step for their lives. These places can seem safe choices in a youth-focused America that stigmatizes aging, regularly pushes older adults to the sidelines and sees getting older as defined by dependency and decline. In the past year alone, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted ageist attitudes, as “OK, boomer,” “boomer remover” and similar memes spread across social media.
So why wouldn’t older adults want to live in communities where they can feel comfortable and accepted — in age-restricted places focused on their needs and wants?
From the beginning, shrewd developers recognized the opportunity to provide an antidote to the challenges of aging.
Del Webb of Sun City fame recognized that, rather than rocking away their “golden years” in the northern cold, older adults could be convinced to pull up roots, leave empty nests and move to communities of similar people and lives of leisure. A radio jingle promoting this new model of living sang out: “Don’t let retirement get you down! Be happy in Sun City, it’s a paradise town.”
But is a town without the sounds of children and a diversity of races and styles really a paradise?
A growing number of older adults say no, recognizing that living with neighbors of all ages and from all walks of life just makes sense. They realize that intergenerational connections are not just valuable for them but for their communities and country.
They recognize that ageism will not be defeated by a retreat to age-segregated corners, but only by engagement, collaboration and dialogue across age, race and class divides. They believe that there is more to graying than playing.
Ed McGinty, a 71-year-old Villages retiree from Philadelphia, made headlines last year by staging a daily, one-man protest against Donald Trump in the Trump stronghold retirement community. McGinty endured multiple assaults and threats throughout his protest. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A fast-growing number of university-oriented retirement communities and co-housing arrangements are improving the lives of all residents. At Lasell Village on the campus of Lasell University in Newton, Mass., for example, older residents commit to studying with students in their teens and 20s. The new Mirabella community at Arizona State University promotes physical, emotional, spiritual, social and vocational wellness, offering what it calls “a retirement experience sure to be unlike any other.”
Studies confirm that the intergenerational connections and sense of purpose associated with these types of living and learning arrangements foster health, positive attitudes and well-being. The benefits for both brains and bodies are increasingly clear.
College towns across America provide advantages for residents of all ages. From larger cities such as Boston; Madison, Wis.; and Austin, Texas, to smaller places like Ann Arbor, Mich.; Iowa City, Iowa; and Boulder, Colo., young people and retirees share spaces and learning opportunities.
There are benefits to intergenerational connections. ISTOCK
Beyond the campus, the Modern Elder Academy launched by Chip Conley (a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging) is employing the lessons of its Baja California pilot as it plans a network of regenerative communities, with a goal of cultivating purpose and intergenerational bonds. The first one will be in Santa Fe, N.M.
What the success of the Villages makes clear
Opportunities for retirees to employ both experience and empathy are emerging in places such as Bridge Meadows in Portland, Ore., which offers affordable living arrangements for older adults and foster families designed to promote interaction, connection and mutual support.
For those committed to sustainable living, Eco Village in Ithaca, N.Y., offers a multigenerational platform for engaged action and education. Agrihood in Santa Clara, Calif., plans mixed-use housing and a working farm, enriching the lives of its older residents through intergenerational gardening activities and access to healthy organic foods and produce.
Clearly, Villages residents must find meaning and joy in their lives. But many of us feel a need for more — sharing a thirst for new ways to learn, work, serve and transform our later years. We want to live in diverse, multigenerational communities, remain engaged and contribute to a better future for the generations ahead.
The Census and the Villages success makes it clear: There is a demand for new living options for older Americans. For those of us who want something different from age-restricted, nondiverse places, however, now is the time for community leaders and business innovators to design, develop, spread and scale models that enable us to realize our goals.
Paul Irving, a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging, is chairman of the Center for the Future of Aging at the Milken Institute, chairman of Encore.org and distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology.
‘A Total Clusterf—‘: Oval Office Speech That Sparked Covid Airport Panic All Ivanka’s Idea, New Book Claims
Tessa Stuart – October 1, 2021
Donald Trump – Credit: Seth Wenig/AP Images
On March 11th, 2020, as new cases of coronavirus were popping up around the United States at an alarming rate, the president, seeking to reassure Americans that everything was under control, delivered a primetime address from the Oval Office. “To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days,” Donald Trump said.
His words instantly sparked a panic around the world. Americans in Europe rushed to airports, worried they would be shut out if they didn’t return home immediately. And that rush would later fuel the outbreak stateside: epidemiologists would later assert that the U.S. outbreak was driven, overwhelmingly, by the European strain — not the Chinese
A new memoir from the Trump White House’s communications director offers a backstory to that disastrous presidential address. The whole thing was Ivanka Trump’s idea, Stephanie Grisham writes in I’ll Take Your Questions Now. An excerpt of the book, which goes on sale next week, was published by Politico on Friday morning.
Grisham, who describes the Trump White House as “a clown car on fire running at full speed into a warehouse full of fireworks,” served as Melania Trump’s press secretary and later her chief of staff. In between, she worked as the White House’s communications director, a position she likened to “sitting in a beautiful office while a sprinkler system pours water down on you every second and ruins everything on your desk.”
The Oval Office address, Grisham writes, was “a total clusterf— from start to finish because Ivanka and her crew wanted her father to be on TV.”
She recounts that the morning of March 11th started with a Coronavirus Task Force meeting, featuring Covid experts like Robert Redfield, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, and administration figures like Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin arguing over whether or not to close the border to Europe.
“After about an hour of going around in circles,” Grisham says, “The president told us all to go to the Cabinet Room and ‘figure out what to do.’”
There, Grisham writes, “Ivanka was also doing her ‘my father’ wants this and ‘my father’ thinks that routine, making it impossible for staff members to argue a contrary view. At some point I think Birx decided she’d ridden on the crazy train long enough and excused herself to get back to work. I used that opportunity to leave as well.
“I instructed one of my deputies to call the networks to reserve airtime for that evening — which no one else had even thought to do. Katie Miller, an aide to the vice president, was married to speechwriter Stephen Miller. So she went into Stephen’s office and sat there while Jared Kushner frantically dictated the address to Stephen, who wrote something out. Katie did her best to keep us looped in, sending me updates as she knew them.”
It’s worth noting that, as White House communications director during Trump’s disastrous Oval Office speech, Grisham has obvious motivations for publicly placing the blame for one of the biggest communications blunders of her tenure on someone else. (She writes, “One of my other biggest personal regrets is that I didn’t have the courage to speak out against Jared, Ivanka and Hope [Hicks] about the potential dangers of addressing the nation without any Covid response strategy in place, and what a disservice it could be to the country and the president.”)
But Grisham’s account is still entertaining, if only for the metaphors she uses to describe her time in Trump’s inner circle (like “living in a house that was always on fire, or in an insane asylum where you couldn’t tell the difference between the patients and the attendants, or on a roller coaster that never stopped”) and for the brief glimpses into the former president’s inner world.
She writes, for example, that once when she and Trump were sitting on Air Force One, he turned to her, and commented, seemingly unprompted: “Trudeau’s mom. She fucked all of the Rolling Stones.’ (In fact, Margaret Trudeau denied having affairs with any members of the Rolling Stones, but later said, ‘I should have slept with every single one of them.’)”
Grisham also shared that, during her time as communications director, a teenager challenged the president to go vegan for one month in exchange for a $1 million donation to veterans groups. Trump refused, she said, explaining “It messes with your body chemistry, your brain.” Before adding: “And if I lose even one brain cell, we’re fucked.”
The drought will remain the worst from California to the Northern Plains, according to the report.
PHOTO: A car passes forest closure signage along the Angeles Crest Highway in the Angeles National Forest which, along with all national forests in California, is closed due to dangerous wildfire conditions, Sept. 2, 2021 near La Canada Flintridge, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)
Precipitation totals in the Southwest over the 20 months from January 2020 and August 2021 are the lowest on record since at least 1895, according to the report. The 2021 to 2022 winter season is forecast to be drier than average.
The new NOAA report did not outright blame warming temperatures across the globe for the regional drought, but stated the drought is occurring due to “successive seasons of below average precipitation that appear to have come from natural, but unfavorable, variables in the atmosphere.”
PHOTO: A graphic shows the fall forecast for temperature and precipitation in the U.S. (Tribune News Service via Newscom)
NOAA scientists did concede that continued greenhouse gas emissions will exacerbate drought conditions in the Southwest and that “increasing atmospheric demand for water” will only end if human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
“Continued warming of the U.S Southwest due to greenhouse gas emissions will make even randomly occurring seasons of average- to below-average precipitation a potential drought trigger and intensify droughts beyond what would be expected from rainfall or snowpack deficits alone,” the report stated.
PHOTO: A buoy rests on the ground at a closed boat ramp on Lake Mead, Aug. 13, 2021, at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Boulder City, Nev. (John Locher/AP)
La Nina is expected to develop in the coming months will bring some relief to the drought in the Pacific Northwest, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has announced.
While the impacts from La Nina can vary and be hard to predict, it typically brings drier than average conditions across the southern U.S., including parts of the Southwest, and above average rain conditions in the Pacific Northwest, especially along the coast, which could help to alleviate drought conditions there.
ABC News’ Julia Jacobo contributed to this report.
Bob Ferguson, who acts in the “Wild Bunch Gunfight” show in Cody. He voted for Liz Cheney in 2020 but now says: “She has insulted constituents in a very conservative state, called us insurrectionists. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
A collection of animals lines the wall of the Valley Foods grocery store in Saratoga, Wyo.
Harriet Hageman at a GOP dinner in Cody in September. Hageman, a land-use lawyer who had placed third in the 2018 GOP primary for governor, was endorsed by Trump to unseat Cheney in the midterm elections.
Joey Correnti IV, chairman of the Carbon County GOP, which passed the first censure of Cheney after her impeachment vote in January.
Bev Hempel at Rustic Bar in Saratoga.
Deer in downtown Cody.
Rep. Liz Cheney on Capitol Hill in Washington in July. Since entering the House in 2017, Cheney has never had a close primary or general election. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Martin Kimmet, a self-described “old cowboy” who raises cattle, says, “Seemingly she just doesn’t really care what we want her to do.”
Mary Martin, chairman of the Teton County GOP, aims to create space in her party where people can disagree and, hopefully, learn from one another.
Paul Vogelheim, a former Teton County commissioner, says: “The violence that occurred in our capital, and how the world looked at that, really hit me.” He says he appreciates that Cheney has made a stand.
