Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 121

2018’s blue wave must be as big as what followed Nixon’s 1974 resignation to retake House

FILE - In this July 15, 1979, file photo, President Jimmy Carter delivers his energy speech, which became known as the "malaise" speech, on television. When Carter felt beset by pessimism amid the energy crisis in 1979, he gave a startling speech warning that a “crisis of confidence” posed a fundamental threat to U.S. democracy. With a mix of alarm and dismay, President Barack Obama has started musing about the dangers of cynicism in nearly every major public appearance. The cautionary note has showed up in speeches to students and civil rights groups, at Democratic fundraisers, even in his meeting with Pope Francis. (AP Photo/Dale G. Young, File) (Credit: AP)

On the eve of the Supreme Court hearing its second major gerrymandering case this term — a Democratic power play in Maryland to grab a House seat — new research on Republican extreme gerrymanders in swing states is underscoring that a blue turnout wave in November must be a political tsunami in order to retake the House majority.

“Because of [political district] maps designed to favor Republicans, Democrats would need to win by a nearly unprecedented nationwide margin in 2018 to gain control of the House of Representatives,” the report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School said. “To attain a bare majority, Democrats would likely have to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have won by such an overwhelming margin in decades. Even a strong blue wave would crash against a wall of gerrymandered maps.”

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political districts by segregating each major party’s reliable voters so the typical voter turnout favors one side. In 2011, the Republicans, in a plan overseen by a handful of top GOP operatives (including Karl Rove), targeted the mapmaking process in 16 states with more than 190 House seats.

The result is what the country has experienced this decade. In states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the presidential vote is statewide and not gerrymandered, we’ve see very close results — victory margins in the tens of thousands in states where millions vote. But in elections where gerrymandering has parsed the electorate, the U.S. House delegation and legislative results have typically led to GOP supermajorities.

Texas experienced a slightly different version of this partisan segregation. Its population growth has mostly been among non-whites, but its political districts are drawn so elected officials do not represent that Latino surge.

The Democrats, in contrast, have no comparable nationwide gerrymander strategy. The Supreme Court this week will hear about a Democratic gerrymander from Maryland affecting one House seat. Last fall, in contrast, it heard a case over Wisconsin’s Republican 2011 gerrymander affecting eight House seats.

The Brennan Center analysis adds new information on the size of the blue voter turnout wave necessary to win in gerrymandered states. What’s most revealing about the new data is how much larger the turnout wave has to be among Democrats, percentage-wise in the overall popular vote, to pick up additional seats.

The Democrats need to win 23 more seats to retake the House. The analysis summarized what’s needed in four states:

• In Michigan, even if Democrats win five seats with 38.38 percent of the statewide vote, they are not projected to compete for a sixth seat until their statewide vote share reaches 54.89 percent, an increase of 16.51 percentage points.

• In North Carolina, even if Democrats win three seats with 29.66 percent of the statewide vote, they are not projected to compete for a fourth seat until their statewide vote share reaches 52.78 percent, an increase of 23.12 percentage points.

• In Ohio, even if Democrats win four seats with around 26.07 percent of the statewide vote, they are not projected to compete for a fifth seat until their statewide vote share reaches 54.71 percent, an increase of 28.64 percentage points.

• In Texas, even if Democrats win 11 seats with around 31.92 percent of the statewide vote, and because of court-made modifications to the map, compete for a 12th seat at around 41.07 percent of the vote, they will not compete for a 13th seat until their statewide vote share reaches 51.15 percent, an increase of 10.08 percentage points.

The Brennan Center noted that while these four states are not the most heavily gerrymandered, they typify the turnout challenges for Democrats this fall. The report notes that this decade’s maps gave the GOP a bigger advantage compared to maps drawn under George W. Bush’s presidency in this century’s first decade.

In 2006’s midterm election, Democrats gained 31 seats when they won the national popular vote in House races by 5.4 percent, the report said. This fall, a similar national popular vote margin would give Democrats only about a dozen new seats. Increasing that vote margin to 10 points would gain 21 seats for the Democrats, which is below the 23 seats needed for a new majority. An 11-point margin would yield 28 seats, but the Democrats have not had such a big midterm victory since 1974, after the resignation of President Richard Nixon. That year’s almost 14-point popular vote margin yielded 49 new Democratic seats.

“To be sure, Democrats might carry some districts they are not projected to win. The March 13, 2018 special election in PA-18 is a recent example,” the Brennan report said. That race was an open House seat where Democratic turnout was 15 percent higher than typical election years and a conservative Democrat won by 627 votes — a wave turnout resulting in almost a statistical tie. (In that race, some Republicans also voted for the Democrat or didn’t vote.)

“But surprise results under remarkable political circumstances should not obscure the more fundamental lesson of this decade’s maps — gerrymandering matters and it matters a lot,” the report warned. “Even if 2018 proves to be an unusual year in a greater than normal number of districts, and produces a surprise surplus of Democratic wins, the effects of gerrymandering will return with a vengeance if 2020 looks more like 2012, 2014 or 2016.”

That takeaway points to one under-appreciated facet of this year’s elections. If Democrats want to prevent the 2020s decade from being Republican-dominated via extreme gerrymandering, they need to elect Democratic governors in states where they can veto bad maps — because gerrymandered red legislatures are not likely to change. Some of the most extreme GOP gerrymanders are in states like Michigan, Ohio, Georgia and Florida that have open governors’ seats this year due to term limits.

The Brennan report adds new detail to the height of the blue voter turnout wave needed for Democrats to retake power this fall. But extreme gerrymandering is not the end of the story.

Not Just Gerrymanders

As AlterNet readers have heard before (and as detailed in my new book, Democracy Betrayed: How Superdelegates, Redistricting, Party Insiders and the Electoral College Rigged the 2016 Election), extreme gerrymanders convey a starting line advantage of about six to eight points. (The Brennan Center figures are bigger.) But the red states with the most extreme gerrymanders also passed the most restrictive Election Day voter suppression laws. Academics and congressional researchers have said those measures deter an additional two to three percent of voters at the finish line — the vast majority of whom are assumed to tilt Democratic.

This partisan tilt comes from stricter state voter ID requirements for first-time voters to get a polling place ballot — such as states that do not accept college IDs — or other rules that curtail voting options. In Georgia, the Republican legislature and GOP secretary of state — now running for governor against a Democratic legislative header — want to close the polls an hour earlier in Atlanta. That would undoubtedly cut into the blue wave from people seeking to vote after work. (Those individuals will get to vote if they wait in line, but some will see long lines and skip it.)

Another current example of GOP voter suppression that’s outside the gerrymandering box comes from Wisconsin, where the GOP trifecta — they control the governor’s seat and the entire legislature — has been refusing to hold a special election to fill an open House seat. That’s been the subject of ongoing litigation, where delays due to legal posturing help the GOP by keeping the seat open.

I have previously written that Democrats need at least a 10-point popular vote advantage in the most gerrymandered districts — and the most voter suppression-burdened states — to emerge as winners once the votes are counted this November. That estimate might be too conservative, given the Brennan Center’s study and examining other results in recent elections.

In the Pennsylvania-18 House race, the Democratic turnout was 15 percent higher — and many Republicans either didn’t vote or voted for Democrat Conor Lamb, who won by 627 votes out of 228,378 cast, a margin of one-tenth of 1 percent. In last November’s Virginia House of Delegates races, its lower state legislative chamber, the Democrats had a 9.5 percent statewide popular vote advantage. However, due to gerrymandering, the legislative majority came down to one seat, which was tied. The Republican incumbent prevailed, keeping the body red-run, after his name was drawn from a bowl (as opposed to using digitized images of scanned ballots for the recount — but that’s another story).

“Although gerrymandering has long been a feature of American political life, this decade’s maps durably lock in advantages for both parties with unprecedented precision,” the Brennan Center report said. “This state of affairs turns on its head the Framers’ notion that frequent elections would ensure Congress was a ‘miniature, an exact portrait’ of the people as a whole.”

Gerrymandering is not the elephant in the living room — it is the living room. But once swing-state Republicans adopted their hyper-partisan maps in 2011, they didn’t stop there. In states across the Midwest and South, Republicans added additional voter barriers — hurdles that account for the difference between statewide popular vote majorities and narrower vote counts where a minority party emerges victorious.

Conservatives are furious over Facebook’s algorithm change

(Credit: Shutterstock)

Given that Facebook is a for-profit corporation, one would think that conservatives would be arguing for the company’s right as a free-market actor to do whatever they want with their product. Hypocritically, many conservatives are complaining about Facebook’s algorithmic changes to its News Feed, and conspiratorially believe that they have been unfairly targeted by the social media giant.

Indeed, last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that Facebook has a “political agenda.”

“Facebook is not a neutral host; it has a political agenda,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight. “It’s an act of ideological warfare, and it’s far more worrying than anything that Cambridge Analytica has done, or is accused of doing.”

In January, the company announced in a Facebook post that they were making changes to the platform’s News Feed, the scrolling list of posts that users see immediately when they log in. The goal, according to Facebook, was to prioritize content that would foster “more meaningful social interactions,” and seemed to be partially in response to criticism from researchers who had documented Facebook addiction and noted a linear correlation between social media consumption and depression.

“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people,” Zuckerberg wrote.

As I previously wrote, this algorithm change was expected to shake up the media industry, as many publications have built strategies that relied on Facebook’s News Feed as a distribution tool — strategies specific to the algorithm as it existed previously. At the time, this raised many questions about the power Facebook holds, and how news outlets can reach large audiences online without relying on social media companies that are quick to change their algorithms.

Nearly three months later, there’s no doubt many outlets of all political stripes have felt the impact. Yet right-wing outlets have enjoyed feeling particularly victimized.

Ben Shapiro, the editor-in-chief of the conservative publication Daily Wire, told Politico they’ve felt the impact, and that he thinks Facebook needs to be held accountable.

“I think that Facebook needs to be held to public account for its constant manipulation of what its users are seeing,” he said.

Shapiro then wrote an op-ed for the conservative publication National Review about it, explaining that Facebook’s alleged attack is “not necessarily out of malice,” but “due to the fact that our major social-media sites are staffed thoroughly with non-conservatives who have no objective frame of reference when it comes to the news business.”

The Outline also published an article about Facebook’s alleged attack on conservative sites, addressing claims from analytics company BuzzSumo that stated that conservative sites were “hit the hardest” following Facebook’s announcement in January.

As Paris Martineau wrote: “According to The Outline’s analysis of Facebook engagement data obtained from research tool BuzzSumo, conservative and right-wing publishers (such as Breitbart, Fox News, and Gateway Pundit) were hit the hardest in the weeks following the announcement, with Facebook engagement totals for February dropping as much as 55 percent for some, while the engagement numbers of most predominantly liberal publishers remained unaffected.”

The analysis by The Outline also noted that “Liberal-leaning sites that either publish a significant amount of clickbait-type content or tend to use polarizing partisan language also experienced a noticeable drop in Facebook engagement.” Yet overall, analysis showed that the correlation and causation were not linked definitively.

Patrick Brown, CEO of Liftable Media — parent company to the conservative publication The Western Journal — told Politico that Facebook’s change was “troubling” for “free speech” — a counterintuitive claim for a conservative to make, particularly given that a company like Facebook is, as any company is, legally allowed to censor or promote whatever they want on their platform.

“It’s very troubling for free speech in this country,” Brown said. “It’s pretty clear that this is a huge departure from Facebook’s normal practices and they’re making a decision to support one political side of the conversation against another.”

When asked if Facebook were targeting conservatives, a Facebook spokesperson echoed to Politico their messaging from the initial announcement in January.

“We’ve made changes to News Feed to help people meaningfully connect with friends and family first,” the spokesperson said.

The power Facebook holds in the media universe is frustrating for all publications, but to claim that the social media company is targeting one political party over the other without solid evidence seems particularly partisan. Ironically, these conservatives’ hard evidence–free claims only help sow the media landscape with misinformation — which is precisely what Facebook is trying to keep at bay.

Hyperlocal news outlets in Alaska experience a renaissance

Anchorage, Alaska (Credit: Getty/Chilkoot)

While local news is about knowing your city, hyperlocal news is about knowing your neighbor. And in Alaska, two journalists on opposite sides of Anchorage have started zines about their respective neighborhoods.

Kirsten Swann is a journalist and resident of Mountain View, a neighborhood in northeast Anchorage and one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. It also happens to be a working class area with a bad reputation around town.

“I was working at [a TV station] at the time and my husband and I had just moved to Mountain View,” she said. “Working at a mainstream news outlet, I saw very clearly right away that only one side of the neighborhood was making it into the news: high crime, poverty stricken, sad story type of things, or occasionally ‘Oh yes, it also a very diverse place!’”

The result was a flat view of the neighborhood, Swann said. Wanting to show that there was more to her community, she started the Mountain View Post in March of 2014. Swann wrote stories about the status of construction projects, new businesses opening in the area, and changes to neighborhood events. The community responded.

“They definitely care about the positive stories, and the ones about what kids are doing,” she said. “They want to hear about the people who are trying.”

Meanwhile, in the west Anchorage neighborhood of Spenard, journalist and Spenard resident Victoria Petersen had always dreamed of starting a paper about her neighborhood. “When the Mountain View Post came out and I befriended Kirsten, it was more solidified for me and I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

Petersen launched The Spenardian in February of 2017. For the first few months, she ran the blog on her own; managing editor Samantha Davenport signed on in July. Petersen and Davenport have reported on updates to the neighborhood’s bus routes, done features on important members of the community, and highlighted a variety of new businesses.

“I’m happy that Sam came on because I didn’t just want it to be my Spenard,” Peterson said. “Sam, who’s not even originally from Spenard or Anchorage, has a different perspective than someone like myself who was born and raised here and whose parents were born and raised here.”

Both Petersen and Swann said the most difficult part of running a hyperlocal news outlet is time.

“No one’s paying me to do this,” Peterson said. “It’s just me and Sam. I want to dedicate all my time to it because I love it so much, but I have to pay the bills.”

Swann has a full-time job and maintains Mountain View Post on her own after work and on the weekends. For her, it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. “All of the evidence I have seen of the importance of hyperlocal journalism never comes from hundreds of shares. It’s all very small, person to person,” she said.

“It’s just instances of people who live and work in the same area suddenly knowing a little bit more about each other.”

Tucker Carlson admits the patriarchy is being dismantled, cries for help

Tucker Carlson (Credit: Getty/Roy Rochlin)

On Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson announced that the patriarchy had finally died.

“The patriarchy is gone, women are winning, men are failing,” the Fox News host said.

Carlson’s proclamation came within a weekly segment titled “Men in America,” which he chose to run in March — during Women’s History Month — to highlight the challenges American men face and stress that women are fighting against oppression that doesn’t exist.

“‘The patriarchy is thriving,’ [our leaders] tell us. ‘Men are in charge and they succeed precisely to the extent they thwart the progress of women,'” he chanted. “‘Society is a zero-sum equation in which a man’s gain is a woman’s loss. This is wrong and we must rectify it.’ That’s the message. It also happens to be the core assumption of second wave feminism which became popular 40 years ago just as many of our Baby Boom leaders were coming of age.”

“And yet none of those assumptions are true today,” Carlson continued. “None of those assumptions are true today. America has changed completely. The patriarchy is gone. Women are winning. Men are failing.”

Over the past month, Carlson has designated feminism as the new “f-word,” and stated his belief that feminism today is a “zero-sum game” and that feminists want men to suffer — a patently untrue distortion that appears designed to whip up Carlson’s base.

Though it has been 100 years since women were granted the right to vote and significant progress has been made since, gender inequality persists in the modern world.

Working women still earn less than men for the same job. In 2017, the World Economic Forum said “equality is in retreat” for the first time since the group started following the issue in 2006. The organization described 2017 as a “a bad year in a good decade,” noting that the global gender gap will take exactly 100 years to rectify, compared to 83 last year, at the current rate of progress.

But modern-day feminism is not just about equal pay. It is about inclusion and fighting to equal rights for all American citizens. It is about dismantling society’s gendered ideas about parenthood and mental health. It is about ending rape culture and adopting a sex-positive attitude. Ultimately, feminism is not about gender at all, as the movement seeks to demolish harmful gender stereotypes completely — an egalitarian goal that benefits everyone.

 

 

 

National Geographic looks at its history of racism — but not too closely

The December, 1969 Cover Of National Geographic (Credit: Getty Images)

This article first appeared on the FAIR website. Republished by permission.

National Geographic has long had a negative reputation for exoticizing people of color, and failing to challenge colonialism and its legacies. The magazine (now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, but scheduled to be sold to Disney) addresses this history in its new issue and most are crediting it with trying, anyway. Though, as sociologist Victor Ray assesses in a Washington Post op-ed, the magazine rather steps on its message with a cover story on mixed-race twins that traffics in the same sort of “curiosity and surprise” racial clichés the magazine says it’s interrogating, along with lazy social science that presents racism as a matter of individual attitudes, and overstates progress toward equality.

But only Richard Prince of the online column Journal-isms seems to have thought to reach out to Charles Cobb, former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and the Geographic’s first black staff writer.

Cobb noted that no one from the magazine contacted him about the “race issue” — despite his being not just the first, but until the hiring of a new culture editor last summer, the Geographic’s only black staff writer. He confirmed that “white supremacist images and words infected the magazine for decades,” but said he found omission an even bigger problem. “The most difficult stories to persuade the magazine to take on were stories about Africa that were not natural science stories,” Cobb said. And “stories about Black America were the toughest sell of all.”

Cobb called for a deeper discussion “about how white supremacy has functioned in this country, especially in media, and the depth of the white supremacist sensibility.” For  and other media, he says, “It is a bit too easy to say, ‘We’re not like that now.’”

Rosie the Riveter isn’t a universal icon: “That was a white woman’s story”

Betty Reid Soskin

Betty Reid Soskin helped to plan the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical park, but it wasn’t until she became a Park Ranger at 85 years old that she saw fit to visit it.

“That was a white woman’s story,” Soskin told me in our recent talk at INFORUM at the Commonwealth Club. “The women in my family had been working outside their homes since slavery.”

When Rosie the Riveter was adopted as a cultural icon for women in the workforce in 1942, it took $47.25 per week to support a family of five — if you were white.

“But our fathers and our uncles were all members of the service workers generation, earning $25 to $35 a week. Pullman porters earned $18 a week, plus tips. So it had always taken two wages to support black families,” Betty said. “So it wasn’t that I was boycotting the Rosie story. It simply had nothing to say to me.”

Now at age 96, Betty is one of the few people living today who has borne witness to the history memorialized at the park. She gives talks there three times a week. But as an African American woman, she knows that what many consider to be the American narrative is only a fraction of the story.

“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.”

Being “in the room” has always been Betty’s way. She carries the untold stories of a century worth of enormous social shifts. And with such shifts, Betty told us, come periods of pain.

“We have to recognize in truths where we have been, because other than that we have no way to know how we got to where we are. Because we have been many nations over the years and some of them I’ve lived through some of them were not very comfortable.”

During the Civil Rights era, Betty’s family was one of the first African American families to move into a white neighborhood.

“The year that we moved into our house I had a third grader who was the only young African-American child in his school. And that year the PTA fundraiser was a minstrel show. And all of his teachers and the administrators were in blackface.”

Although the thought of watching her child’s teachers lampoon people who looked like her family may have made Betty want to hide away, she refused. She marched into the principal’s office to have a little chat about why minstrel shows are not okay.

“I said ‘I know that your show is tomorrow evening, and I can’t possibly ask you to cancel it because it’s too late now, but when you have your dress rehearsal tonight, explain my visit to you to your staff.’ And I said ‘tomorrow evening I will be here sitting in the front row.’ And I did go with my neighbor Bessie Gilbert. And we sat in the front row and cried all the way through it. But we made them do their minstrel show in our presence.”

Talk about being “in the room.”

Betty went on to become a field representative for a member of the California State Assembly, which led her to help plan and develop the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Homefront National Historical Park. She was often the only one who carried the memories of segregation, internment and fatal industrial accidents in room full of people who chose to remember the popular American narrative of patriots coming together for the war effort.

It was then, at age 85, that Betty decided to become a ranger for the National Park Service. Now she can always be in the room to help museum visitors remember. She’s been going strong for the past 11 years.

There’s a sense of activism in acknowledging untold stories, even when the story isn’t pleasant, and even when the story makes us feel ashamed. Betty Reid Soskin sees National Parks as an integral part of reconciling the hidden stories with the rest of the American narrative so we can move ever closer to equality.

“It’s now possible for us to visit almost any era in our history: the heroic places, the contemplative places, the scenic wonders, the shameful places and the painful places. In order to own that history — own it that we may process it — in order to begin to forgive ourselves in order to move toward a more compassionate future.”

Listen to the rest of Betty’s story — and the untold stories of a century worth of historical missteps and progress — in the latest episode of “Inflection Point.”

Hear more stories of how women rise up on “Inflection Point” on Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Stitcher and NPROne.

Trump’s EPA chief lived in condo co-owned by top energy lobbyist’s wife

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt (Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency head is in hot water for spending much of his first year in Washington, D.C. living in a Capitol Hill townhouse co-owned by the wife of a major energy lobbyist.

The building’s co-owner, Vicki Hart, is married to energy lobbyist J. Steven Hart, according to ABC News. Although the network wasn’t able to determine how much money EPA administrator Scott Pruitt was paying to live in the townhouse, it was believed to be roughly comparable to the market rate. If Pruitt was given any kind of advantage in terms of pricing for the townhouse, that could be construed as an improper gift.

The property is owned by a limited liability company that is associated with an address owned by the Harts. J. Steven Hart told ABC News that although his wife is a co-owner, she is not the majority owner. He refused to identify her business partners.

In addition to the ethics concerns, the townhouse situation raises serious questions about whether Hart has actually been able to influence Pruitt’s policies.

Williams and Jensen, the lobbying firm of which Hart is CEO and chairman, represents among other clients Cheniere Energy Inc., which paid Hart’s firm $80,000 a year to lobby about “issues related to the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG), approval of LNG exports and export facilities,” as well as about policies like the Clear Air Act.

During a trip to Morocco in December 2017, Pruitt advocated “the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy.” Ironically, this was the same trip to Morocco that was lambasted by ethics watchdogs for being too expensive, lumping Pruitt in the same category as other Trump administration officials with scandals related to alleged inappropriate use of taxpayer money, including former Director of Health and Human Services Tom Price, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.

Yet while Pruitt’s travel-related expenses scandal is nothing new, and stretches well beyond his trip to Morocco, that journey was noteworthy because it may have fallen outside the EPA’s traditional mission. Environmental groups and members of Congress have both criticized Pruitt’s trip on the grounds that the Department of Energy is the agency usually entrusted with dealing with issues like the exportation of natural gas.

Pruitt has had other ethics-related controversies since becoming the head of the EPA. In September it came out that Pruitt was seeking nearly $25,000 on a soundproof communication booth for his office, one that an acoustic sales consultant with the company manufacturing the booth described as “essentially a secure phone booth that couldn’t be breached from a data point of view or from someone standing outside eavesdropping.” Pruitt was also found to have regularly met with energy executives since beginning his job, a decision that his office defended on the grounds that “as E.P.A. has been the poster child for regulatory overreach, the agency is now meeting with those ignored by the Obama administration.”

Pruitt has also come under fire for purging information about man-made climate change from the EPA’s website and has even been rumored to be planning to create unrealistic standards on the scientific studies which can be used to support regulations that fight climate change. The EPA administrator has also presided over a period in the agency’s history in which it has become opaque about releasing information, attacked journalists and media outlets it dislikes and even blocked reporters from attending agency events.

In other words: Pruitt has been a controversial EPA head since the moment he was picked by Trump. He has a number of ties to the industries he’s supposed to regulate and has made scientists and EPA officials who won’t tow the line of the corporate interests he has chosen to represent feel so unwelcome that many have left. The fact that he has spent at least part of his tenure living in a house co-owned by the spouse of an energy lobbyist is merely a symptom of this larger problem… but it is, nonetheless, a symptom that tells us a great deal about just how the Trump administration is mismanaging key environmental issues.

Advertisers drop Laura Ingraham after she mocks Parkland survivor

Laura Ingraham; David Hogg (Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik/Getty/Alex Wong)

Fox News host Laura Ingraham apologized on Twitter after several brands announced they would be removing their ads from her show after the Fox News host posted a critical tweet mocking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg’s reported rejection from several colleges.

“Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA — incl. [David Hogg],” Ingraham tweeted. “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.”

Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA —incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David…(1/2)

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

“For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David immediately after that horrific shooting,” Ingraham said, adding she “even noted how ‘poised’ [Hogg] was given the tragedy,” and that “he’s welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion.” Ingraham shared a link to her first interview with Hogg on the day of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High along with the apology tweet.

… immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how "poised" he was given the tragedy. As always, he’s welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion. WATCH: https://t.co/5wcd00wWpd (2/2)

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

The “Ingraham Angle” host’s apology comes after companies TripAdvisor, WayFair, and Nutrish announced they would remove its ads from Ingraham’s show in response.

“We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program,” Nutrish, a dog- and cat-food company, tweeted. The brand was the first to announce it would remove its ads from Ingraham’s programs, which include the “Ingraham Angle” on Fox News and a syndicated radio show, “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program.

— Nutrish (@Nutrish) March 29, 2018

In a statement Thursday, TripAdvisor said it does not “condone the inappropriate comments made by the broadcaster in this view.”

“In our view, these statements focused on a high school student cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program,” TripAdvisor said.

Hogg tweeted his support for TripAdvisors response, thanking them for pulling their advertisements.

https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/stat...

On Wednesday, Ingraham shared a Daily Wire story that reported Hogg was rejected from four colleges.

“David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Had Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA… totally unpredictable given acceptance rates,” Ingraham wrote on Twitter.

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

Hogg, who has become a vocal advocate for gun control and a target of conservatives, replied a few hours later, asking who the Fox News host’s biggest advertisers were in a tweet. He later shared a list of Ingraham’s top advertisers on Twitter and directed users to contact those companies and express their frustration with the news anchor.

Pick a number 1-12 contact the company next to that #

Top Laura Ingraham Advertisers
1. @sleepnumber
2. @ATT
3. Nutrish
4. @Allstate & @esurance
5. @Bayer
6. @RocketMortgage Mortgage
7. @LibertyMutual
8. @Arbys
9. @TripAdvisor
10. @Nestle
11. @hulu
12. @Wayfair

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 29, 2018

Laura Ingraham is the latest conservative pundit to bash the Parkland student activists. Earlier this week, Infowars’ Alex Jones attacked the teens by depicting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students David Hogg and Emma González as Nazis on his broadcast.

A speech delivered by Hogg at Saturday’s March For Our Lives protest in Washington, D.C., dubbed over with an Adolf Hitler speech, was shown on Jones’ program. Another of Jones’ videos illustrated González as a member of the Hitler Youth. The footage contained Nazi imagery and clips of the Hitler Youth organization interposed with Saturday’s rally.

“We are up against an exact formula, an exact program of control,” Jones said on Tuesday on his show Infowars. “And they’re not just going after the Second [Amendment], they’re trying to ban everybody that’s defending the Second [Amendment] on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.”

Jones added, “They’re calling for us to be banned and saying that grown adults cannot respond to other grown adults — high school seniors — up there on the stage telling us it’s our fault. And that old people are bad, and that guns are bad, and that they’re the future, and they’re going to take all of our rights, and our children’s rights and that we can’t even criticize these little PR stuntmen and women.”

“Roseanne” and her people: Populist voters who don’t fit in either party

Roseanne Barr in "Roseanne" (Credit: ABC/Adam Rose)

Twenty-one years after it went off the air, ABC’s sitcom “Roseanne” has returned to television screens. The moment for the reboot could not have been better.

“Everybody seemed to be into it and, you know, the conditions that I wanted were right,” Roseanne Barr, the series’ star, told the New York Times recently.

The television audience seems to emphatically agree. According to preliminary ratings data released by ABC which doesn’t include web and recorded viewing, the revival’s premiere Tuesday evening was watched by 18.2 million people. Nor was it just older viewers who tuned in. Among viewers ages 18 to 49, the “Roseanne” reboot was the most-watched comedy show since 2014. The series’ return was watched by 10 percent more people than its original finale in 1997, which is especially remarkable considering how much broadcast television audiences have declined in recent years.

Beyond the fact that TV viewers can’t seem to get enough of familiar characters and recycled premises (“Will and Grace” and “Fuller House” are already in distribution while reboots of “Murphy Brown,” “Charmed” and “Magnum P.I.” are in the works), the return of Roseanne Conner as a diehard supporter of President Donald Trump is a perfect fit for our deeply conflicted politics.

While television shows routinely now portray families in more realistic fashion, “Roseanne” was highly controversial during its original run for featuring characters who dealt with financial problems, discussed LGBT rights and parent-child friction, and even confronted abortion (for many years a no-go zone on mainstream TV).

The second time around, the show is just as interested in dealing with contemporary issues, particularly the strong divisions between Trump’s critics and his fans.

That Rosanne Conner, a blue-collar grandmother in a Midwestern suburb, would end up as a Trump supporter makes perfect dramatic sense. As everyone knows by now, the former star of “The Apprentice” won the presidency by doing better among older, less-educated white voters who don’t live in big cities. The fact that Barr herself is also a Trump backer only adds to the authenticity.

Despite their demographic similarities, however, neither Roseanne comports to the stereotypes about Trump supporters. The fictional one has a biracial granddaughter and a grandson who enjoys wearing clothing typically worn by girls. The real one differs from the mold even more. She ran for president in 2012 as a Green Party candidate, was a vociferous critic of President George W. Bush, is friendly with left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore and still emphatically favors LGBT rights and legal access to abortion. Barr even anticipated the #MeToo” movement by a full year by publicly promoting accusations that comedian Louis C.K. had sexually harassed women.

In the premiere, when asked by her sister Jackie (played once again by Laurie Metcalf) why she supported Trump, Roseanne Conner cites Trump’s numerous campaign-trail promises that he would force companies to stop shipping jobs to other countries.

“He talked about jobs, Jackie. He said he’d shake things up. This might come as a complete shock to you, but we almost lost our house the way things are going.”

As in her program, Barr’s Trump advocacy has been a frequent topic during her publicity interviews. Her Times reboot conversation took an uncomfortable turn when she was asked about backing the president.

“Well, I think working-class people were pissed off about Clinton and NAFTA, so let’s start there. That’s what broke all the unions and we lost all our jobs, so I think that’s a large part of why they voted for Trump because they didn’t want to see it continue,” she told interviewer Patrick Healy, after a publicist tried to steer the conversation away from the topic.

Last week, Barr’s ABC colleague Jimmy Kimmel asked her about the apparent disconnect between her socially liberal views and her support for Trump, who had favored marriage equality and other LGBT-friendly issues before running for office, but in the White House has offered the religious right unparalleled access to political power.

“I’m shocked because you were a very liberal, socially liberal person in general,” Kimmel said in an interview last Wednesday.

“I’m still the same — you all moved. You all went so f**king far out you lost everybody,” Barr replied. She then implied that criticism of Trump could ensure his removal from office, making Vice President Mike Pence, a hardcore Christian nationalist, the chief executive.

“Because we don’t want Pence,” she said. “You want Pence? You want Pence for the fricking president? Then zip that f**king lip.”

In Barr’s case, her loyalty to Trump seems to be an outgrowth of her strong support for Israel and its proto-Trumpian prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Once a vociferous critic of Israel’s policies, she has since become a defender of Netanyahu’s many controversial dealings with Palestinians.

That Barr would therefore make the leap to supporting Trump is not a huge surprise, considering Trump’s close relationship with Netanyahu, a contrast to the strained relationship the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu had with former president Barack Obama and his original secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. (Israel is one of only four countries where support for the United States has increased during Trump’s term, according to a survey taken last November. While Trump has never had an approval rating over 50 percent in this country, Gallup found that 67 percent of Israelis supported the U.S. president.)

In 2015, before Trump had declared his candidacy, Barr made clear that she opposed Clinton’s presidential bid. She reiterated that stance in June a year later, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “I think we would be so lucky if Trump won. Because then it wouldn’t be Hillary.” In tweets sent later that month (and subsequently deleted), Barr blasted Clinton as “anti-Semitic” and claimed that Clinton’s top adviser, Huma Abedin, was a “filthy nazi whore.”

Although Barr’s motivations for changing her political allegiance are unusual, a viewpoint that combines social liberalism with support for Trump’s (supposed) economic policies is not uncommon at all. It is, at least arguably, why he won the presidency. In a survey conducted last May, 30 percent of people who had voted for Obama in 2012 and then switched to Trump four years later said that they were primarily motivated by opposing Clinton. More than three-fourths of Obama-to-Trump voters, 77 percent, said they believed that as president Trump would create economic policies that were favorable to the middle class, or to all economic groups equally.

Those numbers square with research released in June of last year by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group and a separate draft paper from Vanderbilt political science professor Larry M. Bartels. These findings suggest that Republican voters in general are not nearly as far to the right on economic issues as the national Republican Party, but they are generally unified on “culture war” or identity questions, such as standing for the national anthem or support for law enforcement. Both analyses show that Democratic voters are split in the opposite direction: They mostly agree on the need for more activist government but are split on cultural and social issues.

Here’s the Voter Study Group graph of where Americans stand politically on an x-y graph:

It’s remarkably similar to the distribution that Bartels’ study found:

Populists, meaning people who are moderate or conservative on social issues but economically progressive, are a substantial part of the electorate. But their opinions do not align with the opposing elites who set the agenda in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Rhetoric aside, leading Republicans are much more committed to cutting taxes and slashing government programs than to imposing Christian nationalism or blocking same-sex marriage. By contrast, Democratic donors and activists have tended to favor centrist economic policies while favoring liberal positions on cultural and social issues.

While there has been some focus on populist voters among political analysts, especially in the wake of Trump’s shocking election victory, it has usually been limited to the portion who are white. This is a mistake. Other research has made clear that many people of all races hold a combination of moderate or conservative social views and liberal economic opinions.

The Pew Research Center’s periodic “political typology” reports are the best source for this data, since they are based on much larger sample sizes than typical polls. As such, they can better parse the attitudes of demographic minority groups. According to Pew’s 2017 typology report, just 8 percent of people who were classified as “solid liberals” on every issue are black. Just 9 percent were Hispanic. About 73 percent were white. Since “non-Hispanic whites” are only slightly above 60 percent of the population, this suggests they are significantly overrepresented among self-described liberals.

Black and Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly concentrated among two other demographic groups, one that Pew calls “Devout and Diverse” and another that researchers called “Disaffected Democrats.”

Among the 9 percent of Americans that Pew classifies as “Devout and Diverse,” 44 percent were white, 30 percent were black, and 16 percent were Hispanic. This group strongly disapproved of Trump, with just 27 percent saying he was doing a good job as president. They also strongly favor government-provided health care and increasing public services even at the expense of more national debt, and they overwhelmingly believe that women face obstacles to professional advancement. Most want a bigger government rather than a smaller one.

At the same time, however, the group holds moral and cultural opinions that differ from conventional liberal views. A significant majority, 64 percent, agreed with the idea that belief in God was a necessary part of being a good person. Just 53 percent said that homosexuality should be accepted by society. This group is also evenly divided on the issue of same-sex marriage, with 47 percent of Devout and Diverse respondents saying they opposed same-sex marriage, while 46 percent supported it. The group is similarly divided on the question of abortion, with 49 percent saying it should be legal in most or all circumstances and 46 percent saying it should not.

While an overwhelming majority of Devout and Diverse respondents (89 percent) favored more changes to ensure equal rights for black Americans, a plurality of 47 percent agreed with the idea that African-Americans who cannot get ahead are responsible for their problems. Just 41 percent agreed with the opposing statement that racial discrimination was the main reason that many black people “can’t get ahead.” This group is also surprisingly divided on the Black Lives Matter movement, with only 57 percent saying they support it with 31 percent saying they oppose it. On immigration, 44 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “immigrants are a burden,” while 47 percent said that immigrants strengthen the country.

Similar dynamics exist among the 8 percent of Americans whom Pew classifies as “Bystanders,” people who are largely uninterested in political participation. To the extent that they have political opinions, their views are economically progressive. Only 15 percent want lower taxes on businesses, just 29 percent want a smaller government, only 37 percent think the economy is fair, and 68 percent say government has a responsibility to make sure that all Americans have health insurance.

At the same time, a majority of this group, which is just 37 percent white, told pollsters that belief in God is a prerequisite for being a good person. Just 44 percent disagreed with the idea. A modest majority (59 percent) approved of same-sex marriage, while opinions were closely divided on legal abortion (favored by 51 percent). On Black Lives Matter, only 41 percent said they supported the movement, with 30 percent opposing it. More of this group (50 percent) blamed poor black people for their economic situations than blamed racial discrimination (41 percent).

While it’s not clear in what group Pew’s researchers would classify Roseanne Barr (or her fictional alter ego), the reality is that both parties could position themselves better to align with the electorate. The question is: Do they want to?

During his campaign, Trump made all kinds of promises suggesting he would pursue progressive economic policies, but as president he has largely ignored those pledges. By the same token, Democratic officials have encountered some resistance from base voters who won’t tolerate candidates who want to curtail abortion rights, who oppose gun control or who support law enforcement over civil rights critics.

In the end, if one party decides to change its orientation toward the left-behind middle-ground populists, the other will likely follow suit. But for now, both Democrats and Republicans are going to follow network television executives and keep sticking to what worked before.

How Trump can avoid the setbacks that doomed North Korean nuclear talks in the past

(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta/Wong Maye-E)

President Donald Trump is set to become the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader after accepting Kim Jong Un’s invitation for direct nuclear talks.

This will put Trump’s ability as a self-professed deal-maker to the test. Although the North has agreed to refrain from any nuclear explosive and ballistic missile tests leading up to and during the talks, any larger agreement on a nuclear freeze or roll back will require patient diplomacy.

I’ve worked on issues related to nuclear diplomacy and nonproliferation at the State Department and Department of Defense, and in academia. In my view, it is clear that the United States will have to make significant concessions to achieve a comprehensive permanent agreement.

Negotiations at this high a level present an opportunity, but it will be challenging. We can gain important insights from past negotiations.

Negotiating with North Korea

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il — the current leader’s late father — and Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, have frequently been characterized as crazy, irrational and unpredictable. But both negotiated with the United States and other parties. During the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, they did what rational actors do — tried to get the best deal they could that satisfied North Korea’s interests.

Some analysts argue that Pyongyang didn’t honor the agreements that were achieved in those negotiations. This is only partially true. What happened is more complicated than many critics of diplomacy often admit.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton’s administration negotiated what was dubbed the “Agreed Framework.” In return for freezing operation of its nuclear reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyong, North Korea would get two more proliferation-resistant light water nuclear power reactors, the removal of sanctions and a commitment to eventually normalize relations between the two countries. While the reactors were being built, a U.S.-led consortium would provide North Korea with shipments of heavy fuel oil to address its power needs.

But Congress was slow to remove sanctions on Pyongyang, as they had agreed to do. Movement on construction of the light water reactors was hampered by a number of factors, which infuriated North Korea.

The deal fell apart when the Bush administration took over and accused North Korea of clandestinely developing a uranium enrichment program or another route to the material necessary for a nuclear weapon.

While a uranium enrichment program did indeed signal that North Korea might still be pursuing a nuclear weapons option, it was not technically a violation of the Agreed Framework. Had the Bush administration addressed the uranium enrichment issue separately, I believe it might have saved the agreement and frozen the North’s nuclear program.

Instead, the entire deal collapsed in 2002. North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty the following year and continued to develop its weapons, testing its first in 2006. As a former senior George W. Bush official told me in 2007, the “ABC” policy — “anything but Clinton” — was the initial major motivator for abandoning engagement as a policy with North Korea.

Negotiations today

Much like with the Iran nuclear deal, American hard-liners argue that the only acceptable outcome with North Korea is complete nuclear disarmament with little offered in return. In my view, however, the U.S. will have to make concessions to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear program, as it did before.

With Iran, the Bush administration adhered to the hard-liner approach for much of the 2000s, and was unable to reach a deal. By contrast, the North Koreans have even more leverage than Iranians, who did not have nuclear weapons, but only aspirations. North Korea already has at least two dozen nuclear weapons acquired despite being the target of international sanctions since the early 2000s. That is why I believe a hard-line approach would likely not be successful.

The North has apparently agreed to refrain from missile and nuclear tests during talks. But the U.S. must be careful not to let other provocative actions, not directly related to the specific issues under negotiation, derail negotiations.

North Korea has tried the patience of negotiators before. For example, after the conclusion of the Agreed Framework, North Korea flight-tested a Taepodong-1 missile in 1998. Adding to the provocative nature of that move, the missile flew over Japan, angering the U.S. Congress and prompting Japan to cut off food aid. But North Korea’s test was technically not a violation of the Agreed Framework.

Eleven years later, during the Bush administration, the North launched a satellite, which was likely a test of ICBM capability than an actual attempt at putting a satellite into orbit. The launch was condemned by the United Nations, which subsequently promised sanctions as punishment — prompting North Korea to leave the talks for good. While it is true that the launch violated U.N. resolutions, missile tests were not part of the ongoing Six Party Talks on denuclearization.

Trump as lead negotiator

Trump engaging directly with Kim Jong Un may be both an opportunity and a liability. Trump has no experience with delicate negotiations. He is not averse to taking bold positions (as a candidate, he welcomed direct talks with Kim Jong Un, suggesting they eat hamburgers over discussions). He has also backtracked on agreements when they are negatively viewed by Republicans or when media coverage makes it appear as if he’s “giving in.”

Experienced negotiators could help. Veteran diplomat Robert Gallucci, former Defense Secretary William Perry and Ambassador Christopher Hill were instrumental in previous nuclear talks. But the Trump administration has appointed few top-level East Asia experts. Trump’s special representative for North Korea is leaving government and his nominee for ambassador to Seoul recently withdrew.

Whatever the makeup of the negotiating team, the United States will have to adjust its expectations and be creative in dealing with a country with a more advanced nuclear weapons and missile program than the North Korea of 1994. The past indicates that negotiating with North Korea is not an impossible or fruitless endeavor. However, at this point, a complete rollback of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and program is highly unlikely.

Only one state, South Africa, has ever given up its nuclear weapons. But that does not mean the U.S. shouldn’t try or that a summit that does not yield such a sweeping agreement is a failure. After all, the Agreed Framework took one year of talks and the Iran nuclear deal took almost two years to negotiate.

This article is an updated version of an article originally published on August 15, 2017.

Jeffrey Fields, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Relations, University of Southern California — Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences