When historians try to explain how opponents of immigration captured the Republican Party, they may turn to the spring of 2007, when President George W. Bush threw his waning powers behind a legalization plan and conservative populists buried it in scorn. Mr. Bush was so taken aback, he said he […] Read more »
The Limits of Trump’s White Identity Politics
President Donald Trump and his defenders in conservative media have identified the real group endangered by rising racial tensions during his presidency. It’s not undocumented immigrants or people of color targeted by his harsh and sometimes openly racist rhetoric. It’s the president and his supporters themselves who are being unfairly […] Read more »
Why a Banking Heiress Spent Her Fortune on Keeping Immigrants Out
She was an heiress without a cause — an indifferent student, an unhappy young bride, a miscast socialite. Her most enduring passion was for birds. But Cordelia Scaife May eventually found her life’s purpose: curbing what she perceived as the lethal threat of overpopulation by trying to shut America’s doors […] Read more »
It’s the mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric, not the extreme, that’s shaping American politics
… In an interview on NPR, the administration’s immigration chief, Ken Cuccinelli, offered a reworking of the poem that sits at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public […] Read more »
New polls identify fault lines inside the GOP over Trump’s immigration agenda and treatment of asylum seekers
President Trump is building his reelection campaign around the same brand of nativism that energized tens of millions of aggrieved whites and got him elected in 2016. Because of the verities of the electoral college, there is a body of evidence that suggests doubling down on an agenda of exclusion […] Read more »
How the El Paso Killer Echoed the Incendiary Words of Conservative Media Stars
… There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that […] Read more »