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Donald Trump Jr stood on the flatbed of an 18-wheel truck at rodeo grounds in Williams, Arizona, and made his fathers re-election pitch to a seemingly unlikely audience: Native Americans.

The US presidents campaign claims he has been the fiercest ally of the Native American community. Don Jr was here on 15 October to launch the Native Americans for Trump coalition drawn from the Navajo, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Lumbee, Zuni and White Mountain Apache tribes.

But Don Jr, 42, had also come to bash Democrats. They pander, he said, according to the Arizona Daily Sun newspaper. They tell you everything you want to hear and do exactly the opposite. They lie to you for years you guys understand that better than everyone.

It was one of numerous campaign stops for Trumps eldest son, seen by many as the heir apparent to the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. Like his father, Don Jr delivers fiery populist speeches, tweets conspiracy theories and, above all, relishes goading, shocking and outraging liberals on air and online. Like his father, he has come to personify modern Republicanism.

And as Trump continues to trail his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in the polls, attention has turned to who may take up his mantle after November.

Trumpism replaced conservatism as the ideological underpinning of the Republican party and, because of that, they dont really fight about issues any more, said Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist co-founder of the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project.

They fight about affect and whether or not theyre winning these ephemeral social media battles and, in that world, the highest order goal is the owning of the libs. It is a throwaway phrase substituting the validity or strength of an argument with a sort of self-satisfaction that you have been transgressive in some way towards liberals or progressives.

Wilson added: Donald Trump Jr is a master of that. He is a post-Republican Republican. He is there only to engage in that performative dickery that is lib owning in the Trump world. It is a political performance art to show your contempt for norms, institutions and education.

It has become the ideological underpinning of the GOP [Grand Old Party, or Republican party]. Theres no party of ideas any longer. Theres no there there except for sort of the screeching fury of Trumpism.

After spending some years finding his path, including a stint as a ski bum, Don Jr has followed in his fathers footsteps. He is a graduate of his fathers alma mater, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and went into the family business. He is now an executive vice-president at the Trump Organization and a leading campaign surrogate for the president.

Now, Don Jr, whose father worried about naming his son after himself in case he turned out to be a loser, is adept at throwing red meat to the base, sometimes with greater discipline and precision than his father. He has written books entitled Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us, and the self-published Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden and the Democrats Defense of the Indefensible.

His girlfriend, the former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, often joins him at rallies and virtual fundraisers. She delivered a memorably raucous speech to an empty room at this years Republican national convention, culminating in the stentorian battle cry: The best is yet to come!

When a SurveyMonkey poll for Axios in January asked who Republicans would consider voting for in 2024, Don Jr was second only to Vice-President Mike Pence (Ivanka Trump, who had been considered for the role of her fathers running mate in 2016, came fourth).

Asked if he is considering running for political office during an interview last month on CSpans Books TV, Don Jr replied: People have been doing that after the RNC [Republican national convention], Its Don Jr versus Nikki Haley for 2024! I go, Oh, thats interesting, I didnt even know I was running.

He added: Whether Im going to run or not, I have no plans on it right now. My goal is 2020. Well worry about everything after that but I will stay involved, one way or another, thats for sure.

Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against the Devil, argues that Don Jr speaks fluent Maga and is in fact the frontrunner.

What I tell all these Republicans who think theyre going to run in 24 for president Ben Sasse and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz is theyre not going anywhere, he said. They should stop right now, theyre wasting their time and everyone elses, because the nominee in 2024 is going to be Donald Trump Jr. He will come in, he will have his fathers endorsement and he will promise great feats of lib ownership.

Leading exponents of owning the libs including Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, a non-profit that wages culture wars at schools and universities, and Candace Owens, founder of the Blexit organisation which urges Black people to desert the Democratic party and a sense of permanent victimhood.

Their social media point-scoring is symptomatic of an age of negative partisanship in which many voters support is motivated more by loathing for the other side than belief in their own. Some Democrats have also acknowledged that their enthusiasm for this years election is about voting against Trump than voting for Joe Biden, a 77-year-old white moderate making his third run for the White House.

Conversely, when Don Jr and his father bash Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Biden at campaign rallies, they generate louder reactions from the crowd than when they set out agenda items or achievements. Don Jrs Twitter feed offers his 5.8 million followers little by way of policy but a torrent of Democrat-baiting and conspiracy theories.

In May he posted on Instagram a meme that falsely insinuated Biden is a paedophile, later insisting that he had merely been joking around, though the disinformation has made its way into the minds of voters.

His current pinned tweet is a video that asserts, without evidence, that: The Biden family has spent decades in Washington DC enriching themselves by selling access to Joe Bidens taxpayer funded office. Hunter Biden is corrupt. Jim Biden is corrupt. Joe Biden is corrupt.

Critics say this invective is filling a vacuum where ideology used to be. David Litt, a former speechwriter for Obama, asked: What does the Republican party under Trump stand for? They dont stand for small deficits. They dont stand for the rule of law. They dont stand for exporting democracy around the world. So they really stand for making Democrats upset.

The one way you can be sure that youre a member of the Trump- era conservative movement is that respectable liberals are either scared or appalled or both by some of the things you said. So it becomes this kind of identity politics where the identity is based not on who you are but on who you arent and who you make upset.

Litt, author of Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years and Democracy In One Book or Less, added: I think Donald Trump Jr is a perfect example of this because he is a white, straight male who is set to inherit hundreds of millions or billions as long as the tax situation works out and, despite all of that, he seems quite certain that hes persecuted.

I think that idea of saying the real civil rights movement is the fight for Republican billionaires to be able to do whatever they want has become this strange core tenet of the Trump-era Republican party.

But Don Jrs fate could be decided on 3 November. If, as polls suggest, his father suffers a humiliating defeat, he could be thrust into a battle for the future of the Republican party with senators, governors and other political veterans.

Joshua Kendall, author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama, said: It really all depends on the election. There are basically two scenarios. If his father loses, Don Jr and his father might use all those Twitter followers to form some sort of rightwing media empire. If his father wins then Don Jr is going to be front and centre.

Go here to see the original:
'Owning the libs': how Donald Trump Jr became the unlikely political heir apparent - The Guardian

The discussion of best practices for containing COVID-19 has become another front in Americas culture wars. Do lockdowns suppress the virus? Should masks be mandatory? What about bolstered unemployment benefits and freezes on evictions to help with the economic fallout?

Julia Raifman cant broker peace, but she does oversee the go-to information warehouse on these questions. Starting in March, Raifman, a School of Public Health assistant professor of health law, policy, and management, has been leading a team of about 30 grad students in creating the COVID-19 U.S. State Policy Database (CUSP), cataloging 100 policies enacted by various states and the District of Columbia to combat the medical and financial woes of the pandemic.

Their handiwork has proven the adage, Build it and they will come.

At least 25 academic papers have cited the database, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has given Raifman a grant to build a website for the information.

Meanwhile, the website Journalists Resource, run by Harvard Kennedy Schools Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, calls the database a useful tool for journalists who want to keep their communities up-to-date on the latest mandates.

Journalists Resource notes that others have compiled online sites for COVID-19 information, but what makes Raifmans COVID-19 U.S. State Policy DatabaseCUSPparticularly useful for journalists on deadline is that its a quick way to find out when a state policy started, ended, and possibly restarted. Including that particular datum, Raifman says, grew out of her own experience as a policy analyst, which made her realize the importance of knowing the dates when states changed their policies, to evaluate how outcomes changed before and after policy changes.

News illustrators found another purpose for CUSP, she adds: The Wall Street Journal used the database to visualize when states implemented mask orders.

As a scholar, Raifman has reseached how policies targeted towards people having trouble paying rent during the pandemic, and whove been made lonely by it, might help prevent sucide. People are having trouble paying rent, she says, which has led some states to pause evictions. (The Massachusetts freeze currently is scheduled through mid-October.) She also led a study in which she, Jacob Bor, an SPH assistant professor of global health, and a UPenn colleague suggested that the temporary federal unemployment insurance premium this summer cut food insecurity by almost one third.

Given these food and rent realities, Raifman says, theres an urgent need for more research on which policies have been most effective for supporting people to inform federal and state actions.

Rapid-response research on the pandemic was her goal in creating the database. I specifically wanted to facilitate research on both COVID prevention, so we could learn from early policy decisions, and wanted to encourage researchers to consider how policies such as eviction freezes and unemployment insurance may be just as important as COVID prevention policies in shaping health and well-being,she says.

With scores of state policies in the database, Raifman and her team update it weekly or monthly, depending on the topic, prioritizing policies that are most relevant to peoples health and well-being in the present moment, she says. Those are state mask policies and reopening and reclosing of indoor gathering spaces. We can also see that really serious economic precarity is causing increases in food and housing insecurity, so we are spending a lot of time considering unemployment insurance policies, eviction policies, utility shut-off policies, and food security policies.

Making the database public was crucial. I knew that the harms that COVID and its economic ramifications would cause were so much larger than any one research team, Raifman says. I wanted everyone who could work on these topics to have access to this database if it would help them.

There was a personal angle to that teamwork approach as well, she admits.

I also had limited ability to take time for deep thought and careful data analyses while working from home with an infant and no childcare from March through August. The database was something I could contribute in my limited capacity to work in two-hour periods as my husband and I took turns caring for our baby.

Read more here:
What Are States Doing about COVID-19? This BU Database Has Answers - BU Today

This column is part of our ongoing opinion commentary on faith, called Living Our Faith. Find this weeks reader question and get weekly roundups of the project in your email inbox by signing up for the Living Our Faith newsletter.

On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther accidentally kicked off the historical era known as the Reformation.

This obscure German professor began a rather technical argument about sin, forgiveness and purgatory that turned into a violent crisis that reshaped Christianity ever since. As a Lutheran pastor, I am duly obligated to mark the anniversary of this event (usually on the preceding Sunday), which, as complicated as its causes were and as mixed as its outcomes have been, is certainly a point from which most Protestant churches can trace their origins.

But the Reformation was never supposed to be remembered as a single moment in history. It was supposed to be an ongoing process of reform and renewal within the whole Christian tradition.

So I startled myself when a friend asked me recently: Could another Reformation happen in American Christianity? With churches heavily polarized along political and sometimes racial lines, with leaders growing increasingly out of touch with both dissenters in their own flocks and people just outside of them, and with increasing numbers of Americans departing the church traditions in which they were raised (if they were raised in church at all), it was a good question. But I didnt hesitate to answer: No, theres no second Reformation coming. Even if thats what we need.

The danger signs for American Christianity are obvious and growing. The conservative evangelical establishment, having largely embraced Donald Trump since his 2016 campaign for the presidency, increasingly appears to take its doctrinal cues from whatever culture wars are being pushed in national media and politics. The summer wave of protests against racial injustice have been answered with calls to defend the policing status quo. The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas said on Fox News that to resist law enforcement officers is to resist God himself, paraphrasing the words of Paul the Apostle.

But among other evangelical groups, that deference to civil authorities is nowhere to be found when public health authorities restrict public gatherings (whether those restrictions apply to worship or not) to restrain the spread of the coronavirus. In October, evangelical entertainer Sean Feucht did not have a permit when he held a huge worship protest in Nashville, where churches are largely open and not prohibited from gathering, and he falsely claimed Christians are being persecuted there. From the outside, white American evangelicalism appears less concerned with doctrine or theology than with a continuous adaptation to Republican electoral fortunes.

My own mainline Protestantism, meanwhile, has had different but related struggles. If the public profile of conservative evangelicalism can seem like a pious extension of Fox News talking points, our public profile (to the extent it even exists) hews closely to the rhetoric and priorities of progressive activist groups and liberal institutions. And while our denominational leadership leans vocally but rather indistinctly left on issues of racial justice, gender and immigration, our congregations are often politically mixed.

The local pastors job is very often a balancing act that leads some of us to compulsively lower the stakes of political conflict and to stigmatize the very fact of conflict itself. Everyone is a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and in the end the important thing is not what decisions get made but how well we come together to keep the Sunday school and the church budget functioning. (I know this happens because Ive been guilty of saying this many times.)

The Catholic church has at times avoided this secular co-opting by mixing liberal positions on immigration and poverty with conservative positions on abortion and sexuality. But in recent years even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been a barely audible voice in our national life, mildly lamenting things like racism and mistreatment of migrants while some members freelance by promoting claims that climate change is a hoax and Democrats cant be Catholic.

How so many American Christian leaders ended up sounding like talk radio hosts or school administrators is a long story. But here we are now, as likely to be found barricading our rhetorical doors to keep our constituents inside as trying to throw them open to people outside. Rather than trying to serve as the conscience of a party or nation, plenty of us are content to tag along with the people who have real influence.

Seems like as good a time as any to nail some theses to a door and start something, right?

But part of the reason the Reformation happened in the first place is that the stakes were so high for pretty much everyone. You couldnt just opt out of the church, and the decisions of your prince or of a council of bishops or a theological faculty could determine the faith you lived by (not to mention the often dreadful consequences for heresy). Churches lived on rents and subsidies more than voluntary offerings. While the relationship between the church and the state was a big topic in the Reformation (though not nearly the biggest), the place of the church as a state-protected monopoly really wasnt. If the prince decided against your faction, it was possible to migrate to an area with a friendlier prince, but not to go across the street and start up Second Lutheran Church.

Today we can argue to our hearts' content and define our faith as precisely or broadly as we wish without fear of being banished or executed. Thats a considerable improvement since the era of the Reformation. But now the solution to deep conflict within a Christian tradition is usually not to try to win a consensus or even a concession within it. Today the solution is more typically to just leave for the church across the street, for another denomination, or for the eloquent arguments for sleeping in on Sunday.

Lutherans, Episcopalians and now Methodists have all gone through this at a national level, and in countless individual cases in churches all over the country. Catholicism and evangelicalism have recently joined the Protestant mainline in numerical decline. Reform becomes more and more urgent even as it becomes harder and harder to accomplish.

So on this years Reformation Sunday, I will try to remember that Martin Luther had no idea he was starting anything so consequential back in 1517. I wouldnt wish for history to repeat even if it could. If theres a possibility of renewal in all our futures, if theres another path for Christianity in America, it will have to be something unlooked for and unexpected. And the sooner the better.

Benjamin J. Dueholm is pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in University Park.

Original post:
Christians wont see another Reformation, but maybe we need one - The Dallas Morning News

In his recent article, Oliver Kamm made a link between supporters of Brexit and the increasing number of lockdown sceptics, who are cropping up in the comment pages and broadcast studios to attack the governments infringements of their liberty. The extraordinarily close crossover between Brexiters and opponents of public-health shows up, Kamm says, in an inherent suspicion of expertise.

Many obvious figures fall into this category: Nigel Farage, Daniel Hannan and crackpot conspiracists such as Piers Corbyn and David Icke. The latter two are in this argument irrelevant; both base their esoteric ideas on the notion that the state created coronavirus. Farage and his coterie on the other hand, while prone to spouting conspiracies, see the lockdown as a chance to stoke the culture wars that have engulfed America and threaten to divide Britain.

The establishment, as they see it, is the voice of the government and its scientific advisors. Therefore the establishment must be challenged, and that means all lockdown measures are attacked. Their opinion is not derived from questions of liberty, or from a horror at the lives ruined by the economic consequences of lockdown. It is merely another way of extending the anti-establishment contest, which was set off in the Brexit debate.

Unfortunately, Kamm and those who find themselves backing the lockdown groupthink as well, form the flip side of this unhappy contest. The odious Faragists are so prevalent that all lockdown sceptics are smeared with the same invective. To oppose the lockdown is to express an anti-public health sentiment. To hold such a view it to ignore the experts and to leave the old to fend for themselves.But the idea that in opposing the Prime ministers edicts I was hastening their end cannot be substantiated.

This idea, that the matter of opinion in this lockdown is merely one of lives versus the economy or vice versa is profoundly damaging, and derails any chance of serious debate. Consider the tens of thousands whose lives will be shortened by delayed cancer treatments, missed GPs appointments, and the families of those people who died, having been discouraged from attending A&E departments. Should we chastise those who oppose the measures which brought these tragedies about as being ideologues who fail to recognise the truth, and who are guilty of intellectual obscurantism? Fallaciously told that there was a binary choice between saving lives and keeping jobs, it is no surprise that the majority of the country have stuck firmly to the first offering.

As winter approaches and Hancock and Co. show little sign of letting up on their new programme of provincial immiseration by stages, the two sides of the culture war are reemerging in the form of this new division. Pitted on the one side are the fanatics who supported Brexit, and on the other are the Remoaners, who support the lockdown consensus of Johnson and No10. This factionalism can only damage the argument, and take it away from the real point which is that lives are at risk.

Mr Kamm will no doubt be aware of Christopher Hitchenss saying that, The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks. I may be unsettled to be holding the same opinion as Toby Young and Peter Hitchens on anything, but I would also hope that such a coincidence should never bar me from holding an opinion. Fervent Remainer I may be, but Brexit has little to do with our present woes. I do not have an innate suspicion of experts in any field, but I know that to tackle this virus and save lives it takes far more than the advice of epidemiologists alone. I happen to agree with Dr. Sunetra Gupta and thousands of others who have challenged the accepted narrative. I happen to think that continuing with much of the measures we are under will cut down many more years of life than coronavirus ever did, and that much of the damage is yet to be done.

To be such a lockdown sceptic does not require a hatred of expertise or a right-wing ideology, and or any particular identity at all. When arguments start to forget the real points and descend into the stock phrases to which we have become so accustomed herd immunity, exponential growth, let the virus rip then we know that new, more treacherous ground has been reached. This path leads down into the quagmire of identity, and of culture war where all those who disagree are thrown onto the same ignominious heap.

Read more:
On lockdown and Brexit: a response to Oliver Kamm - TheArticle

The chants come after the FBI foiled a plan from a group of men who plotted to kidnap the governor.

NORTON SHORES, Mich. President Donald Trump visited Muskegon County Saturday in a push to rally Michigan voters with just a few weeks left until the election. The rally was held by FlyBy Air at the Muskegon County Airport in Norton Shores.

Twice at the rally, the president referenced Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the crowd responded by chanting lock her up. While originating during the 2016 campaign cycle, these chants are especially pointed since federal officials recently announced the governor was the target of a kidnapping plot.

You got to get your governor to open up your state, he said to the first round of lock her up chants. And get your schools open. The schools have to be open. Most of Michigans restrictions have been relaxed, and schools can be open for in-person, hybrid or remote learning.

The president then referenced the kidnapping plot: I guess they said she was threatened, and she blamed me.

The FBI foiled a plan to kidnap the governor, storm the Michigan Capitol and instigate a civil war. Fourteen men are charged in these plots. Several members of the group talked about murdering tyrants or taking a sitting governor, a criminal complaint said.

Eight of the men are facing state charges related to terrorism, and six others are facing federal charges.

Whitmer has said Trumps rhetoric is dangerous. In April, he tweeted LIBERATE MICHIGAN, encouraging protesters who were upset with COVID-19 restrictions. While Trump was still speaking, Whitmer retweeted a clip of the crowd chanting lock her up, saying this is exactly the rhetoric that has put me, my family, and other government officials lives in danger while we try to save the lives of our fellow Americans. It needs to stop.

Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, a Republican who attended the rally, denounced the chants Saturday night in a tweet.

"Trump didn't chant 'lock her up' about our governor. But others did and it was wrong. She was literally just targeted. Let's debate differences. Let's win elections. But not that," he said.

The president spoke for about 90 minutes, using the stage to talk about some of his administrations accomplishments from the past four years, culture wars topics and a few mentions of Michigan.

Trump also mentioned the Friday decision by the Michigan appeals court to block a 14-day extension to accept and count absentee ballots. State law says that ballots need to be received by election day to be counted, but Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for an extension because of a record number of people voting by mail this year.

We just won a huge victory for voting rights in Michigan, Trump said.

A couple thousand people attended the rally, which is only the fourth time a sitting president has visited Muskegon County.

Julie Dagen, who is from Ravenna in Muskegon County, said she has never attended a political rally before Saturdays but believes this election is extra important. Living in the area, she said it means a lot for the president to visit Muskegon County.

This is a working-class community and there used to be a lot of industry here, and he has brought back industry, Dagen said.

Kari Hibbard, who attended the rally with her family, thinks that Trump will win Michigan again, after eking out a victory in 2016 with less than 11,000 votes. Hibbird is from Norton Shores, where Muskegon County Airport is located.

Its a small, little city and it just feels very honoring that our president chose to be here to come and talk about police too, she said. Hibbard said her husband works in law enforcement.

At Heritage Landing, a Democratic event was held at 4 p.m. to counter Trumps rally. Muskegon County Democratic Party Chair Jennifer Barnes said earlier this week, they planned the event one hour before the presidents rally because they want to keep momentum going.

"I thought it was important to show the contrast, that Democrats are a force here in Michigan as well," said Julie Bratton.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Muskegon County by a thin margin of 1,177 votesmaking it one of only two counties in West Michigan to vote Democratic. Before that, Muskegon County had a solid track record of voting blue, with President Barack Obama getting 59% of the vote in 2012, and 65% in 2008.

Both Trump and Biden have put Michigan in their sights. Biden stopped in Grand Rapids two weeks ago and held events on the east side of the state on Friday. This is Trumps second rally in Michigan in the past month. And both candidates have also sent surrogates to campaign in the state in recent weeks.

The president ended his speech by encouraging people to vote and submit their ballots on time. Michiganders can register to vote online and via mail through Oct. 19. After that, individuals can register to vote in person at their local clerk's office.

The general election is on Nov. 3.

Watch the full rally here:

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See the original post:
Crowd chants 'lock her up' against Whitmer at Trump rally - 10TV