One surprise with Covid-19 is not what happened but what didn’t happen. Although the pandemic might yet benefit President Trump — through heightened xenophobia, increased acceptance of authoritarian leadership, racial and ethnic schism — the political winds have not, to date, shifted in Trump’s direction. In fact, the opposite is […] Read more »
Trump’s Latest Attempt To Limit Immigration Isn’t Really About The Coronavirus
Not many public health experts have been calling for new limits on immigration as a major part of the U.S. strategy to fight the spread of the coronavirus. In fact, some health experts have explicitly said the U.S. should not take such steps. So why is President Trump opting for […] Read more »
Trump Reaches Back Into His Old Bag of Populist Tricks
President Trump has chosen his pandemic re-election strategy. He is set on unifying and reinvigorating the groups that were crucial to his 2016 victory: racially resentful whites, evangelical Christians, gun activists, anti-vaxxers and wealthy conservatives. Tying his re-election to the growing anti-lockdown movement, Trump is encouraging a resurgence of what […] Read more »
Why Trump wants to be seen as a ‘wartime’ President
… Donald Trump is trying to redefine coronavirus as a foreign threat (“the Chinese virus”) and himself as a wartime president defending the nation against what amounts to an invasion. … Trump “is now leaning into the notion of being a wartime president in part because somebody told him that […] Read more »
How Racist Is Trump’s Republican Party?
Is the modern Republican Party built on race prejudice, otherwise known as racism? Has it become, as Stuart Stevens — a media consultant with an exceptionally high win-loss record who was a lead strategist for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 — puts it, the “white grievance party”? … […] Read more »
Increasing Polarization on Immigration, but Common Ground Remains for Path to Citizenship, Opposing Family Separation
As the Trump administration continues to drastically reshape immigration policy in the United States, new analysis from a PRRI survey of 2,527 Americans finds deepening divides on immigration policies and perceptions of immigrants along lines of party, religion, and age. Notably, there remains bipartisan, cross-religious support for a path to […] Read more »