Scientists sound the alarm after new research points to growing invisible threat putting coastal cities at risk: ‘We need very dramatic action’
Susan Elizabeth Turek – July 19, 2024
A new study that accounts for seawater intrusion between ice sheets estimates that other projections about future sea level rise could be too modest.
What’s happening?
As detailed by the Guardian, researchers used computer models to analyze how ocean water intruding into ice sheet cavities impacted melting rates. They believe this could create a “tipping point” where the sheets lose ice much faster than expected.
“[Seawater intrusion] could basically be the missing piece,” study leader Dr. Alexander Bradley told the news outlet. “… And there’s a lot of evidence that when you do include it, the amount of sea level rise the models predict could be much, much higher.”
The Guardian also highlighted a previous study that suggested seawater intrusion could cause some Antarctic ice sheets to lose ice around two times more quickly. The latest findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Why is this concerning?
As it stands, models by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration project large swaths of the West and East Coasts will eventually succumb to the oceans, but the latest analysis suggests the tipping point could be closer than initially believed.
Almost 40% of the global population lives less than 65 miles from a coast, according to the UN Environment Programme. If sea levels continue to rise, those communities could be at a further increased risk of property and livelihood loss, as well as displacement.
Human activities have directly impacted our seas, with the burning of dirty fuels like gas, oil, and coal overwhelmingly driving the overheating of our planet.
According to NOAA, the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the past decade, with 2023 being the warmest ever recorded. These warmer temperatures are causing ice sheets to melt and ocean water to expand, thus contributing to rising sea levels.
The higher water levels also increase the risk of costly damage and deadly flooding during extreme weather events. Strong hurricanes, for example, have become more frequent as a result of our changing climate, with rapid intensification a growing phenomenon.
What can be done about rising sea levels?
Floating homes and land reclamation projects are among the initiatives providing hope that we can adapt to rising sea levels. However, Dr. Bradley also called for bold action to help preserve our coastal communities.
“With every tenth of a degree of ocean warming, we get closer and closer to passing this tipping point…” Dr. Bradley told the Guardian. “So we need very dramatic action to restrict the amount of warming that takes place and prevent this tipping point from being passed.”
The global community still has a ways to go to reduce its reliance on dirty fuels and meet its agreed-upon pollution-reduction goals, but there have been promising developments. For example, in 2023, clean energy accounted for a record 30% of electricity worldwide, with wind and solar installations leading the way, according to a report by Ember.
While the appointment of 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference president Mukhtar Babayev has been criticized because of his past ties to an oil company, there is also optimism that November’s COP29 event will lead to continued cooperation to protect our planet.
Supporting eco-friendly policymakers at home can support efforts at a systemic level. There are also simple ways to reduce the pollution you generate, like by unplugging energy vampires. Doing this can even save you around $165 on your electric bills every year.
Teamsters exec announces challenge to O’Brien after RNC speech
Lauren Irwin – July 19, 2024
International Brotherhood of Teamsters Vice President at large John Palmer announced he is mounting a challenge to current President Sean O’Brien after he gave a speech at the Republican National Convention.
In a letter, Palmer said he was officially announcing his candidacy for Teamsters national office in the 2026 election and invited all Teamsters to join him in forming an opposition slate to “send Sean O’Brien back to the truck.”
“This administration rode into power on a wave of excitement generated by our members’ desires and frustration. We were promised a more engaged leadership and a more militant union. What we have received so far is a PR blast furnace of misinformation and betrayal,” Palmer wrote in the letter, first reported by In These Times’ Kim Kelly.
Palmer also appeared to post the letter to a Teamsters Facebook group.
Of the many speeches given at the RNC this week, one of the first ones was delivered by O’Brien.
Palmer laid out several reasons why O’Brien has shown he is not fit for his leadership position, including fear of retaliation among members and failing to support members in contracts.
“This has all culminated in his presence at the anti-union, anti-worker Republican national convention, kissing the ring of a man that scabbed a picket line, failing to pay workers, discriminating against people of color as a landlord, falsely accusing five black men in New York of murder, orchestrating an insurrection against the United States, dodging the draft, and appointing Union busters from the Jones Day law firm to create the most anti-union Labor Board in history,” Palmer wrote.
Palmer argued that its “naïve to believe” that people who attended the RNC will support unions in “any way, shape, form, or manner.”
“We have successfully estranged ourselves from the rest of the labor movement through the actions of one man. Should we really go out and seek more enemies right now?” his letter said.
What JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism adds to Trump’s ticket
Vance ticks boxes with anti-abortion groups upset that the RNC watered down the party platform by removing its long-stated goal of a nationwide abortion ban.
Besides running alongside Trump, Vance and former Vice President Mike Pence have one thing in common: both have adult conversion stories. Pence was raised Catholic and converted to evangelical Christianity as an adult. Vance was raised Protestant and was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2019 by Dominicans.
The similarities end there. Pence was of the Republican establishment, but Vance has embraced MAGA and Trump just like he has the Catholic Church. And he may ultimately end up the vanguard of the next MAGA generation.
Vance has the fervor that new converts to religion always have when they want to change the world. In a piece about his conversion, titled “How I joined the Resistance: On Mamaw and becoming Catholic,” Vance says that after his Protestant upbringing, he became an atheist out of a desire for social acceptance among American elites. His conversion to Catholicism came not as a blinding flash of light, he says, but by reading Augustine and being persuaded by a passage from Augustine’s “City of God” on Genesis.
The senator said that another pivotal part of his journey to Catholicism was an encounter he had with Peter Thiel, who gave a talk at Yale Law school when Vance was a student there. Thiel, founder of PayPal, Palantir Industries, one of the first investors in Facebook and a bigfinancialsupporter of MAGA, is a venture capitalist with a particular kind of religiously inflected axe to grind. Thiel, a staunch supporter, donated $15 million to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign. Just last month, Thiel said, “If you hold a gun to my head, I’ll vote for Trump,” but he said he wouldn’t donate to Trump’s super PAC. That may change now that Trump has chosen Vance.
Perhaps most importantly, Vance ticks boxes with anti-abortion groups upset that the RNC watered down the party platform by removing its long-stated goal of a nationwide abortion ban. Vance is strongly opposed to abortion. Although his views on the specifics of how anti-abortion restrictions should work have sometimes shifted — his office declined to tell NBC News what his current abortion stance is — he has previously voiced support for a nationwide ban on abortion and has likened abortion to slavery.
What’s the need to put a nationwide abortion plan on the platform when the vice presidential pick has been vocal about wanting one? Having Vance on the ticket signals to Republicans who are upset at the way the platform was changed that a national abortion ban is still on the table.
Vance has a story that lends itself to a triumphal American story. His first book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was a hit, but the second book he was contracted to write, titled “A Relevant Faith, Searching for a Meaningful American Christianity,” was called off with mutual agreement of publisher Harper Collins and Vance before his successful Senate run in 2022.
Vance seems to always be looking for acceptance through belonging to what he perceives to be powerful groups or leaders. By going from faith to atheism to a different faith, and by going from a full-on criticism of Trump to a full-on embrace of Trumpism, Vance keeps remaking himself. His obsequiousness to Trump includes pledging to do what Mike Pence would not do in 2020 and 2021: accept an alternate slate of electors. That fealty has led to Vance becoming the vice presidential candidate despite his withering critiques of Trump in the past.
Vance may be the perfect MAGA candidate, yet some would also squarely place him as a political religious actor. In May 2024, in “First Things,” Matthew Schmitz called Vance a “religious populist” because he’s not only concerned with abortion but also with economic and religious issues, and has shown a willingness to work with senators he disagrees with to achieve his aims. I believe, however, that Vance is more aligned with what is called Catholic integralism, the belief that Christians can use a “soft power” approach to exert influence over society. Wallace Throckmorton talks about the potential for Vance to be an integralist and to use his religious views to influence government. This falls in line with how Vance is not only concerned with curtailing reproductive choices but also with promoting economic prosperity for families.
Vance may not tick every box of what the Republicans wanted as a vice presidential candidate, but he will be able to tap into his Catholicism and his story of poverty to wealth. He is also a much more fervent MAGA believer, someone who can bridge the intellectual and populist wings of the Republican Party. Most importantly, he is the perfect white male candidate because of his antiquated beliefs about women and reproductive rights. It will be instructive to see how Catholics, as well as other religious groups in the party, receive Vance as running mate and if his presence will give absolution to Trump the same way Pence’s did.
The worst thing about Ted Cruz’s dystopian RNC speech
From immigration to crime to fentanyl, stoking fear mattered a lot more than getting the facts right.
By Radley Balko, investigative journalist – July 18, 2024
Ted Cruz on the second day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Tuesday. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last nine years, it’s that when reality proves inconvenient for MAGA, MAGA simply creates its own reality. This was certainly true of Tuesday’s “Make America Safe Once Again” night at the Republican National Convention, at which the speaker’s podium was the rhetorical equivalent of a wrench-opened fire hydrant, as one speaker after another recklessly sprayed lies, fear and demagoguery in every direction.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s undiluted rage was particularly dishonest, and because it was Ted Cruz, it was as awkward as it was angry. His clumsy attempt to coax the crowd into a refrain of “every damn day” — a reference to how often he claimed that “teenagers, girls and boys” are raped, murdered and “sold into a life of sex slavery” because of “our open border” — mostly fell flat.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s undiluted rage was particularly dishonest, and because it was Ted Cruz, it was as awkward as it was angry.
There are, of course, some documented examples of horrific crimes committed by undocumented people, as there are with any demographic group that numbers in the millions. But on the whole, immigrants both legal and undocumented commit crimes (violent crimes, in particular) at rates lower — often much lower — than the native-born population.
The much-maligned “sanctuary cities” have lower crime rates than other cities. Cities that have been hospitable to migrants seeking asylum have seen less crime than other cities. Crime in most of those cities has dropped since they began receiving migrants from the most recent wave of immigration, including the cities where Republican governors have been shipping migrants.
If such gruesome crimes were really happening “every damn day,” you’d think Cruz, R-Texas, could find more a recent horror story than, for example, the death of Kate Steinle, who died, as Cruz put it, after a man who “had been deported five times” fired a bullet that “ripped through her heart.”
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Donald Trump also mentioned Steinle in his acceptance speech at the 2016 RNC. Steinle died nine years ago, after a man named José Inez García Zárate found a gun wrapped in cloth under a bench on a pier in San Francisco.
It’s true that Zárate had been deported five times. He was also a felon, though for nonviolent drug crimes. The gun had been stolen from an agent with the Bureau of Land Management, who left it unsecured in his car. Zárate testified at his trial that the gun went off when he picked it up. Ballistics reports confirmed that the bullet ricocheted off a concrete block and struck and killed Steinle, who was 90 feet away. There is no evidence that he intentionally fired the gun, much less that he intended to kill Steinle. A jury acquitted him on all charges but one (being a felon in possession of a firearm), and that charge was later thrown out by a judge. He pleaded guilty to related federal charges in 2022 and was deported this year.
Steinle’s family has repeatedly asked politicians to stop politicizing her death. For politicians like Cruz, a family’s grief is legitimate only when it can be harnessed to hoover up votes.
Cruz also claimed that “Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” reiterating the central claim of conspiracists who push the racist “great replacement theory.” There is, of course, no evidence that undocumented people vote in significant numbers, that there’s some coordinated campaign to get them to the polls or that voting plays any role in the Biden administration’s immigration policy. (There is also evidence that Biden has actually been tougher on illegal border crossers than Trump.)
Beyond immigration, speaker after speaker attempted to terrify viewers into the voting booth with claims about crime that have been disproven over and over again.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., repeated Trump’s brazen lie about other countries’ “emptying prisons” by sending their felons to the U.S. (Trump often includes “mental institutions” in his claim). There’s no evidence this is true. Ironically, it’s a line first used by Fidel Castro to denigrate refugees fleeing his communist regime and that Republicans today often use to slander Venezuelan migrants fleeing the socialist government of Nicolás Maduro.
Several speakers also repeated the tired claim that fentanyl has been flowing through the border because of the Biden administration’s lax enforcement.
According to data compiled by Dan Bier of the Cato Institute, just 2 of every 10,000 people caught trying to enter the country illegally possess any fentanyl at all. Over 90% of fentanyl seizures come at legal points of entry, and 86% of people convicted of smuggling the drug are U.S. citizens. Moreover, smuggling of fentanyl, which is easier to conceal and far more concentrated than other illicit drugs, actually increased during the Covid travel restrictions. The idea that Biden has been lax on border enforcement will come as a surprise to the immigrant advocates who are furious with him.
There’s also no evidence that progressive or reformist prosecution policies more broadly correlate with an increase in violent crime.
There’s also zero evidence that terrorists are traipsing across the southern border, as several speakers claimed. There has yet to be a single documented case of an American citizen killed or injured by a terrorist who illegally crossed the southern border, and since 1975 there have been only nine documented cases of any person’s ultimately being convicted of terrorism after illegally entering the country.
Beyond immigration, speaker after speaker attempted to terrify viewers into the voting booth with claims about crime that have been disproven over and over again. We heard much about “Soros-funded” prosecutors’ unleashing a wave of crime and violence on America’s cities. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lamented that these prosecutors “care more about coddling criminals than protecting their own communities” and that they “impose their will on us without our consent.”
This is a particularly rich accusation to come from DeSantis, who removed two prosecutors overwhelmingly elected (and re-elected) by their constituents and replaced them with the very sort of law-and-order prosecutors those voters had rejected. Though DeSantis accused the prosecutors of being “soft on crime,” there’s little evidence that crime has been higher in their districts than in similar districts around the state. There’s also no evidence that progressive or reformist prosecution policies more broadly correlate with an increase in violent crime.
Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde claimed the Biden administration has “made us less safe at home with their ‘defund the police’ movement.”
That statement may be the most impressive lie-to-word-count ratio yet.
Biden didn’t support the “defund” movement; he was openly critical of it. The Biden administration hasn’t cut federal funding to law enforcement; it has increased it (sometimes over the objections of Republicans). In the two years after the George Floyd protests, 8 in 10 departments’ funding increased at least 2%. A handful of departments saw marginal cuts in funding, but no police department was “defunded.” There’s also zero evidence that more police funding corresponds with a reduction in crime or that less funding corresponds with an increase. (Otherwise, Hovde’s claim is accurate!)
Finally, here’s some context you didn’t hear: When Trump took office in 2017, he inherited the lowest murder rate of any president in half a century. He was then the first president in three decades to finish his term with a higher murder rate than when he started.
Trump isn’t to blame for all of that. He presided over a once-in-a-generation pandemic that disrupted black markets, took witnesses off the streets and brought a wave of desperation and despair. His term also included the largest civil rights protests in U.S. history, which only reinforced the (understandable) antipathy toward police in many marginalized communities.
Back in 2016, Trump and his surrogates blamed Obama for a surge in crime that never happened.
For the most part, presidents and their policies have little effect on crime. But there is some research suggesting that crime tends to go up when people see the government as corrupt, incompetent or hostile to their interests, particularly among marginalized groups. The theory here is that when people lose faith in government, they’re less likely to cooperate with state institutions like police and the courts. And it seems safe to say that from 2017 to 2021 there was ample reason to see the government as corrupt, incompetent and discriminatory. Immigrants, in particular, were less likely to report crimes and cooperate with police during the Trump years, most likely out of fear that they or their families would be subjected to immigration investigations.
All of that having been said, most of what drove the surge in crime was beyond Trump’s control. But this isn’t a courtesy Trump has given his opponents.
Back in 2016, Trump and his surrogates blamed Barack Obama for a surge in crime that never happened. They’re now doing the same thing to Biden. So it only seems fair to point out that the only major surge in crime in 40 years occurred while Trump was in the White House.
There is at least one class of crimes that has increased exponentially since Biden took office: crimes committed by former presidents. But that probably isn’t a trend the RNC wants to emphasize.
Jon Stewart still has some soul-searching to do. His first RNC show proved it.
Stewart interviewed his longtime interlocutor, frenemy and sparring partner Bill O’Reilly, but failed to address the most important question of all.
By Jacques Berlinerblau, MSNBC Columnist – July 17, 2024
Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” on Tuesday executed what Deadline.com called a “Milwaukee pivot” — a programming change forced upon them by last weekend’s tragic violence in Butler, Pennsylvania. Originally, the idea was to air thepopularfake news show live from the site of the Republican National Convention. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Stewart revealed, scuttled the plan. His Milwaukee venue was placed under lockdown. With “cages built around the theater,” Stewart and his team decided that it wouldn’t be prudent to perform live comedy “without,” the host deadpanned, “people.”
What exactly are entertainers as influential as Jon Stewart supposed to be doing at a point in American history as troubling as this one?
Taped on Tuesday, the episode was stuck rehashing RNC highlights from Monday. Stewart thus missed an opportunity to skewer the speeches of former Trump detractors Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio. Each performed variations, albeit less deserving of our enduring awe, of JD Vance’s ability to forget he once called his new boss “America’s Hitler” and “cultural heroin.” (Vance’s opioid analogy must be the most remarkable observation I’ve ever read about Trump).
Stewart also interviewed his longtime interlocutor, frenemy and sparring partner Bill O’Reilly, and quipped about the two of them being “somewhat fossilized practitioners of the rhetorical arts.” In relation to their past popularity and influence on this generation of political rabble-rousers, Stewart observed, “We made a pretty spectacular living pushing those envelopes.”
This isn’t the first time Stewart has wondered aloud whether he is predator or prey (or peripheral) in the new social media ecosystem. In February he called himself “the captain of this dying medium.” He does seem to intuit that what worked artistically, and maybe even politically, in the Bush and Obama eras is perhaps outdated or irrelevant or actually not entirely helpful in this MAGA moment.
If Stewart is pondering that, then good on him. I guess the venue change, and the terror that prompted it, should compel him to pose hard questions about the intersection between art and politics. Questions like: What exactly are entertainers as influential as Jon Stewart supposed to be doing at a point in American history as troubling as this one?
I’m starting to believe that Stewart and his team actually don’t know how to answer this question. No disgrace in that. I don’t either. The current moment is as baffling as it is frightening. Although, when your theater is caged in and your audience can’t attend for their own safety because yet another young white male tried to murder people with a perfectly legal killing machine — then, well, maybe it’s a good time to reflect.
Tuesday night’s program indicated that the usually self-aware Stewart is still thinking this through, and has not yet made any discernible pivot. His jokes about odd noises made by Marjorie Taylor Green were funny enough. The analysis of how Lee Greenwood refused to cede the stage while introducing Trump was fairly hysterical. Trump himself gestured that the long-winded singer-songwriter should move this along (“Is it possible to bring out another band to play a band off?” Stewart quipped).
The Bill O’Reilly interview best encapsulated many of these contradictions that Stewart has to confront. These men, by my count, have interviewed each other some two dozen times over the years. They have excellent chemistry. They like each other. (Or, perhaps, they like to hate each other.) O’Reilly even recently attended Stewart’s show. The hard-charging conservative “newsman,” who was fired by Fox News in the wake of five sexual harassment suits (which he has denied), is sort of avuncular when conversing with Stewart.
O’Reilly made reasonable points about rage and today’s politics. “We are now in a society,” he opined “where hatred is rewarded.” Stewart jumped in: “It’s incentivized, it’s monetized!” Dialogue. Consensus. I like it!
I am going to say that Jon Stewart has to figure something out. When he’s choppin’ it up with Bill O’Reilly is he: a) fostering open and honest discussion across the ideological divide, thereby enriching our liberal democracy? Or, b) platforming a voice that is both cause and effect of the lethal danger that is threatening the existence of liberal democracy itself? Because it sure as hell can’t be both.
When O’Reilly started reading off unflattering statistics about Biden’s economy, Stewart did push back, literally. He prompted his guest to explain how Biden is solely responsible for high food prices, gas prices, mortgage rates, etc., given what he inherited from his predecessor. When O’Reilly responded he didn’t know, Stewart guffawed, comically pushed back his own chair, got up and walked away.
An interesting gesture, that was. No one is asking Stewart to walk away from his comedic throne. But I’d hope the events of the past few months might stimulate deeper reflection on what artists are supposed to do in dark times.
Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. He has authored numerous books about the subject of secularism, including the recent “Secularism: The Basics” (Routledge). He has also written about American higher education in “Campus Confidential: How College Works, and Doesn’t, For Professors, Parents and Students” (Melville House). With Professor Terrence Johnson, he is a co-author of “Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue” (Georgetown). His current research concentrates on the nexus between literature and comedy on the one side and cultural conflicts on the other.
It’s easy to understand why “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2016 memoir by JD Vance, piqued the interest of the American people. It recycles a narrative America has relied on for a century to sleep soundly despite the everyday horrors of our society: Rich people do well because they are morally better than the poor.
Add some powerful tropes — a firebrand “pistol packing lunatic” mamaw who protects at all costs, a rags-to-riches story in which Vance, a Marine, escapes the “worst of my cultural inheritance” (p. 253) of unsophisticated, drug-addicted, murderous hillbillies — and you’ve got a bestseller.
You’ve also got a dangerous lie, one relying on ugly stereotypes that harm real Appalachians in order to advance a political career. Former President Donald Trump announced Monday that Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, is his pick for his running mate.
Unlike me, Vance is not Appalachian. He was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, well outside any maps of the distinct geographical and cultural region. Trump picking this Rust Belt charlatan as his running mate Monday sparked a resounding and unifying rant among conservative and liberal hillbillies alike in my social media feed: We do not acknowledge him.
Why would we? Vance introduces his reader to Appalachia by immediately profiling the worst behaviors of each of his uncles, including a scene of grotesque violence. He calls us a “pessimistic bunch” living in a “hub of misery” (p. 4), and over and over again he uses a wide brush to paint Appalachians as lazy, ignorant and unwilling to try at life.
Though there are dozens of offensive stories to choose from in “Hillbilly Elegy,” perhaps the most ridiculous one occurs when, during boot camp, Vance says he meets an eastern Kentuckian who, never having heard the term, asks “What’s a Catholic?” because, as Vance presents it, “down in that part of Kentucky [where he says that man is from], everybody’s a snake handler.” (p. 160). It’s an addictively stereotypical image: the ignorant, isolated, snake-handling hillbilly. But it’s not reality. There are a half dozen churches in that Kentuckian’s county seat, mostly Baptist and Methodist. Just 20 miles away, in Hazard, there’s a Catholic Church. Another 20 miles away, where Vance’s family lives, there’s a Catholic Church with more than 4,000 Facebook followers.
Vance’s memoir of Appalachia, full of gun-toting, drug-addicted “lunatics” aimlessly awaiting death, is at best a cherry-picking of the worst moments of his life. At worst, it’s a concoction of real memories and some of television’s worst stereotypes of what Appalachia is.
Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll’s “Appalachian Reckoning,” a response to Vance’s bestseller, anthologizes more than 400 pages of responses from real Appalachians describing their lives in all the nuance they deserve.
But nuanced stories aren’t useful in politics.
Appalachia is simply a rhetorical device for Vance that he used to launch a political career. If your political goal is to blame the poor for their own problems, then using the regional ethnicity of your grandparents to present yourself as “authentic” can compel readers to believe your narrative or to feel good about having already believed it. After all, the narrative of the lazy hillbilly has existed for as long as rich folks outside of Appalachia needed an explanation for mountain poverty that doesn’t include blaming themselves.
Did the poverty come from the rest of the country ignoring a region they thought had no resources?
Did the poverty come from coal barons stealing resources once they were discovered.
Did the poverty come from outside coal companies not paying coal miners actual money for decades?
Why blame complex issues that implicate rich white folks when “lazy” is only two syllables?
Vance builds on this narrative, ignoring nuance and context, presenting supposed anecdote after supposed anecdote of cultural depravity and portraying himself as a hillbilly who survived and knows the answer to what ails Appalachia is political conservatism.
For Vance, issues of poverty, drug abuse and neglected children are “issues of family, faith, and culture.” (p. 238) He goes so far as to claim that these “problems were not created by governments or corporations or anyone else.” (p. 255)
He puts the blame entirely on poor Americans, on mothers on food stamps and on fathers who are out of work, extending the roots of that blame directly to Appalachians and some inherent moral flaw. In convincing readers outside of Appalachia that they need the solution he is selling, he paints the Appalachian as the moral problem in America:
The dog whistle is pretty clear: The immoral hill folks are already in your area. Trust me, I escaped them. I know the answer to save you from them.
“If there is any temptation to judge these problems as the narrow concerns of backwoods hollers, a glimpse at my own life reveals that Jackson [Kentucky]’s plight has gone mainstream. Thanks to the massive migration from the poorer regions of Appalachia to places like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, hillbilly values spread widely along with hillbilly people.” (p. 20)
The “hillbilly” twist is a particularly clever political move because it allows poor white folks living in swing states (like those listed above) to draw a quick line of demarcation around themselves — hardworking but poor Americans — and the supposed immoral, lazy welfare queens and absent, violent hillbilly fathers spreading into their cities and towns.
Vance paints himself as having narrowly escaped “the deep anger and resentment” (p. 2) of those who raised him and laments the supposed white working class feeling that “our choices don’t matter.” (p. 176)
Wednesday morning, my sister, who has known overwhelming pain and difficulty, signed up for nursing classes at a community college. Last week, my nephew, a young man with everything stacked against him, asked me to meet him to talk about vocational school.
I see people making choices.
I see no anger.
Vance confuses frustration in a difficult system with anger and resentment.
Vance confuses frustration in a difficult system with anger and resentment; he misrepresents Appalachians acknowledging that the choices they have are few and far between and require great levels of personal sacrifice as their belief that the choices they make don’t matter.He sees the drowning person and decides they lack determination in swimming. He ignores those creating the flood.
Vance does identify one hillbilly trait that I will, at this moment, agree with: We can be distrustful of outsiders. I might add that I am most distrustful of outsiders pretending to be insiders and of outsiders with a political agenda.
Today’s GOP has no past, present, or future. It’s just Trump.
It’s as if MAGA wiped the GOP slate clean and made 2016 its Year Zero.
Michael A. Cohen, MSNBC Columnist – July 17, 2024
Delegates hold up signs during the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, on July 16, 2024.Jim Watson / AFP – Getty Images
In his seminal dystopian novel, “1984,” George Orwell wrote “who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
Indeed, there is no better example of former President Donald Trump’s hold over the modern GOP than this week’s near-total erasure of the Republican Party’s past.
You might not be aware of it by watching the Republican convention this week, but the Republican Party is, in fact, 170 years old. It was formed in 1854 as an abolitionist movement opposed to the expansion of slavery into western territories. Its first standard-bearer was Abraham Lincoln, which is why the GOP is sometimes referred to as the “Party of Lincoln.” Nineteen presidents have been Republicans.
But if you watch the 2024 Republican convention, you are likely to hear about only one: Donald Trump. It’s as if MAGA wiped the GOP slate clean and made 2016 its Year Zero.
Other than Trump, there’s only one other living Republican ex-president: George W. Bush. He’s one of only four Republican presidents in history to win two presidential elections and serve eight years in office. And the chances of hearing Bush’s name mentioned in a positive light by convention speakers in Milwaukee this week are close to nil.
Twenty years ago, Bush was a revered figure within the GOP (for those of you who are younger, you’ll have to take my word for it).
But in the 16 years since he left office, Bush’s presidency has largely been stuffed down the memory hole — and it has been a bipartisan effort. Even Democrats don’t bother talking about his disastrous presidency anymore. While Bush left office with a historically low approval rating and a cratering economy, that’s not necessarily why he is persona non grata in the party he once led.
Bush was an internationalist. Trump is an isolationist. W was pro-immigration and, by and large, opposed to demonizing people of color. Trump is, of course, the exact opposite. And Bush is part of a multigenerational political dynasty. In other words, for MAGA he is the embodiment of the dreaded political establishment.
But it’s not just Bush who has been kicked to the curb. There are also three living Republican vice presidents not in attendance — Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence. Quayle has been out of the limelight for years; Cheney is the father of Liz Cheney, whom Trump despises for her role in co-chairing the House Jan. 6 committee, and, of course, on Jan. 6 Trump helped whip up a mob that threatened the life of Pence, his former vice president — so it’s probably best he didn’t make the trip to Milwaukee. (Incidentally, it was Quayle who told fellow Hoosier Pence that he didn’t have the authority to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election.)
How about the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney? He’s retiring from the Senate, in large measure because of his revulsion at the direction the party has taken since Trump won its presidential nod in 2016. (Of course, Trump hates him, too, as Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict at both of Trump’s impeachment trials.)0 seconds of 2 minutes, 38 secondsVolume 90%
Romney’s 2012 running mate, Paul Ryan, a former speaker of the House, might be in attendance in Milwaukee (he is, after all, from Wisconsin), but he’s not speaking. The same goes for 2008 nominee Sarah Palin. Her running mate, John McCain, passed away in 2018, but there won’t be any glossy tributes for him. Trump, infamously, mocked McCain’s time as a POW in Vietnam. The national convention where McCain is most likely to show up is the Democratic National Convention. McCain’s widow, Cindy, spoke there in 2020.
The 1996 presidential nominee (and 1976 vice presidential nominee), Bob Dole, passed away in 2021. What are the chances that there will be a tribute to him at this year’s Republican convention? There wasn’t one in 2020 to honor former President George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018. Will there even be a reference to Ronald Reagan, the president to whom Republicans tied themselves for decades after he left office? It’s hardly a guarantee, which once would have been sacrilegious at a GOP event but today is practically par for the course (although if one wants to see the new Reagan biopic starring Dennis Quaid, it’s showing every day in Milwaukee).
Historically, political parties have a tendency to turn their backs on failed presidents or losing candidates. There weren’t many Republican conventions that extolled the virtues of Herbert Hoover after his disastrous one term in office. The same goes for Richard Nixon, the only president who was forced to resign. But even Nixon got a shoutout from the party’s presidential nominees in 1992 and 1996.
For Democrats, Jimmy Carter might have lost re-election in 1980 and is generally considered a failed president — but that didn’t stop Democrats from giving him a prime-time speaking slot at the next three conventions. This year, one can fully expect prime-time speeches from Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Al Gore, John Kerry or Tim Kaine made appearances.
But at this year’s RNC, it’s as if there was no Republican Party before Trump came along. And, in a sense, that’s true. The current incarnation of the GOP bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln, Reagan or the Bush family. The only real blast from the past is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. I could identify only two speakers who worked in the Bush administration. It’s now the party of Trump and Trumpism, of political outsiders and rebels — and the only price for entry is pledging one’s fealty to the leader (not the party).
Of the dozens of speakers over four days in Milwaukee, virtually all came to prominence in just the past decade or so — and largely on Trump’s coattails. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Matt Gaetz are the faces of the modern GOP. Their rises to prominence have little to do with adherence to GOP policy orthodoxy or even their political chops but rather their willingness to prostrate themselves before Donald Trump — and fully embrace his many lies.
In Trump’s GOP, there are no legacy, no coherent ideological beliefs and no enduring political tradition. There is no past, present or future. There’s just Trump.
Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for MSNBC and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the most recent being “Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.”
Picture this: A former Republican president is attempting a comeback into politics. Despite leaving office four years ago, he’s busy trying to convince the American people that his successor has been a disappointment. During an event on the campaign trail, a shot rings out as a would-be assassin attempts to end his life.
On Saturday, that scene played out for the second time in American history. Former President Theodore Roosevelt survived that 1912 shot, fired as he attempted to mount a strong third-party challenge to return to the White House. So too did former President Donald Trump when a single gunman fired at him during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. It’s a dire reminder that in a country where political violence is never too far from the forefront of the nation’s consciousness, and guns remain widely available, those campaigning for the highest office in the land have long been considered prime targets.
While Trump’s wound was reportedly superficial, a few inches to the left would have likely been deadly. The latter was also true for Roosevelt, who was shot in the chest by his assailant. It was only thanks to the items in his jacket pocket — the 50 pages of his prepared remarks, folded once, and his steel eyeglass case — that the bullet was slowed. Though Trump was rushed offstage, Roosevelt concluded that the bullet had not pierced anything important. He then continued to deliver an off-the-cuff speech for close to an hour, only being taken for medical treatment afterward.
Roosevelt himself first ascended to the presidency because of an assassin’s bullet. He was vice president when President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist in 1901 while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The resulting wound turned gangrenous thanks to poor handling from doctors, leaving Roosevelt the youngest president in history.
Decades later, Teddy’s distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt was the target of another would-be assassin. A month before he was sworn in as president in 1933, a man fired six shots at the car carrying the president-elect; Roosevelt was unscathed, but five other people were hit, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who would later die from his wounds.
Despite the attempt on Teddy Roosevelt’s life, Secret Service protection was only extended to former presidents in 1965. That level of security was only extended to “major presidential candidates” in 1968 when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., was assassinated while campaigning for the presidency. (His son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was assigned Secret Service protection for his long shot independent presidential campaign on Monday.) But the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Alabama Gov. George Wallace when he campaigned for the Democratic nomination in 1972 weren’t enough to prevent an attempted assassination that left Wallace paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
We still don’t know the motives of the shooter who fired at Trump. The motives of other assassins or would-be assassins of presidential candidates are a mixed bag. For some, like Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan, there has been a distinct political target, in his case Kennedy’s support for Israel. Others, like the man who shot Wallace, literally did it for the fame, or infamy, involved in trying to kill a famous figure. John Schrank, the person who tried to kill Theodore Roosevelt, did so because he claimed McKinley’s ghost told him that Roosevelt had murdered McKinley and ordered Schrank to avenge his death.
We also can’t easily use the past to judge what effect this incident will have on the election. Tony Diver, The Telegraph’s U.S. editor, looked to the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 as a touchstone. Reagan had only been in office for less than a year when John Hinckley Jr. shot him in a delusional attempt to win the attention of actor Jodie Foster. “If history tells us anything, the events of Saturday will only increase his support,” Diver wrote. “In the months after Mr Reagan was shot, the newly-elected Republican president saw a poll boost of eight points.”
While that may have been the last credible assassination attempt on a president, there are a lot of differences here that make me skeptical about the bounce Trump might see. For one, no matter what has happened to him, there’s always been a ceiling for him in the polls and a floor from his die-hard supporters. In addition, the “rally around the flag” effect that often occurs after an attempt on a sitting president’s life is less frequently seen when the target is a candidate for the office, even one who has held the job before. Both Roosevelt and Wallace lost their presidential races.
In the end, there are only two main things that unite all the attempts on presidential candidates’ lives. The first, and most within our grasp to change, is access to guns in this country. The other, though, is harder to address. Every assassination undertaken or attempted, whether for personal glory or ideology, can rightly be seen as an attack on a symbol. For what else is a candidate for the presidency but a symbol of what the country might next be? It is the reaction to the attack on that symbol that they seek, be it praise and attention, or to spark a revolution. It’s not yet clear what reaction the man who fired at Trump wanted when he pulled the trigger — but I fear it won’t be long before we find out what tinderbox he hit as well.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
Trump campaign sues Michigan Gov. Whitmer over new voter registration sites
Dareh Gregorian and Selina Guevara – July 15, 2024
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee sued Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and others Monday for allowing federal Veterans Affairs and Small Business Administration sites to be used for voter registration efforts.
In papers filed in federal court in Michigan, the campaign and the RNC contend Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson exceeded their authority when they struck agreements to use the VA and SBA offices as “voter registration agencies,” or VRAs.
“Under Michigan law, the authority to make such designations is held solely by the Legislature,” the filing said.
Michigan is a state that Trump won in 2016 and then flipped to back Joe Biden in 2020. It is expected to be a pivotal battleground state in this year’s election.
Trump has long sought to sow the seeds of doubt about elections before they occur, and he leveled unfounded accusations at several states in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which he then repeated as part of baseless claims to overturn the outcome when he lost.
Trump’s campaign echoed complaints that voter integrity was at risk in the suit filed Monday.
“The RNC and its members are concerned that Defendants’ failure to comply with Michigan statutes governing VRA designation undermines the integrity of elections by increasing the opportunity for individuals to register to vote even though they are ineligible to do so, and by sowing confusion regarding whether the agencies purporting to offer assistance in registering voters are doing so in accordance with applicable law,” says the suit, which was first reported by MLive.com.
It also contends that the “SBA and VA’s continued unlawful operation as VRAs have caused economic, financial, and political injury to the Plaintiffs, including by forcing them to allocate additional resources and misallocate their scarce resources in ways they otherwise would not have.”
The suit seeks a judgment declaring the move unlawful, as well as a “permanent injunction barring the State Defendants from designating any VRAs without express authorization from the Michigan Legislature.”
Whitmer’s and Benson’s offices for comment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“We don’t think at all and don’t believe that the attempt to eliminate the presidential candidate Trump was organized by the present power,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters, per Russian state media outlet TASS.
“But it is the atmosphere that has been created by this administration during the political struggle, the atmosphere around the candidate Trump, prompted what America is facing today,” he continued.
On Saturday, Trump was left wounded after a gunman tried to shoot him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin.”
But Trump’s life, Peskov said, had long been in danger.
“After numerous attempts to remove candidate Trump from the political arena using legal instruments at first, courts, the prosecutor’s office, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was obvious to all outside observers that his life was in jeopardy,” Peskov said on Sunday, referencing Trump’s conviction in his Manhattan hush money criminal trial on May 30.
The Kremlin’s remarks on Sunday echo that of Trump acolytes like Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia.
The trio were quick to point fingers at Biden following Saturday’s failed assassination.
“The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination,” Collins said in an X post on Saturday.
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., also ripped the Democratic Party and accused them of inciting tensions before Saturday’s assassination attempt.
“Don’t tell me they didn’t know exactly what they were doing with this crap. Calling my dad a ‘dictator and a ‘threat to Democracy’ wasn’t some one off comment. It has been the MAIN MESSAGE of the Biden-Kamala campaign and Democrats across the country!!!” Trump Jr. wrote on X on Sunday.
This isn’t the first time Russia has sought to paint a picture of a dysfunctional America while weighing in on the country’s political developments.
Last month, Putin said that Trump’s Manhattan felony conviction was politically motivated and that the former president’s rivals were “simply using the judicial system in an internal power struggle.”
“They are burning themselves from the inside, their state, their political system,” Putin told reporters at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, per Reuters.
Representatives for Russia’s foreign ministry and the Biden administration didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
