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Few people spend more time thinking about the Democratic Partys fading appeal with rural voters than Theron G. Noble. A local lawyer, Terry knows everyone around DuBois and established the state partys rural caucus in 2015. We met at the American Legion, a log cabin building off a main drive. In the quiet bar that smelled of heavy cigarette smoke, two retirees in Veteran caps nursed bottles of Miller Lite.

Two years ago, Biden did slightly better in Clearfield County than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. Both, however, still trailed Obamas vote count here in 2012, underscoring Democrats deepening troubles. In 2008, Obama came within 4,107 votes of McCain in Clearfield County. The last Democrat to win the county was Bill Clinton in 1992.

But Noble is especially exuberant for someone whose duties amount to ensuring Democrats keep Republicans from running up huge margins in rural counties. Biden had just stopped off in Pittsburghabout a two hours drive southwestand pledged to get out more to sell not only his top-line initiatives but the hundreds of millions of dollars approved for rural family housing costs, protecting manufacturing jobs and upgrading school facilities so they could open.

At a recent meeting hosted by the rural caucus, Noble says the organization hit its all-time high in participants on a call, 107. Candidates like Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for Pennsylvania governor, addressed the party activists. Nobles caucus also heard from Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Rep. Conor Lamb, Democratic U.S. Senate candidates who both have made crossover appeal central to their campaigns and political identities.

Noble grudgingly acknowledges that his conversations with Democrats often revolve around preventing blowouts. Pulling on an Amstel Light, he lists off the names and districts of six Democratic state lawmakers who held area seats just over the past 10 to 15 years. Now, there are two. We had a lot of good union jobs, coal-mining jobs, down in the southern end of the county, he says. They all went away, and the jobs went away. We were demonized over that.

Noble says its painful for him to watch candidates for local office who grew up in strong Democratic families switch their party affiliation just to be competitive. Winning federal elections is harder still, and the areas House members are doing what they need to demonstrate their relevance to constituents. The next morning, a newspaper in the state ran a commentary about Republican congressmen, Glenn GT Thompson and Mike Kelly, touting benefits from Bidens legislative agenda back home after opposing the rescue act. Noble wants Democrats to apply pressure and make Republicans work harder for the margins they enjoy.

As in any war, we need to move our resources to make them defend their own territory, Noble says. Im tired of playing defense. We got to get on the offense a little bit.

One thing Noble is adamant about is that Democrats cant make the midterm elections about Trump, whose grip hes convinced is slipping. Noble plays on a traveling senior baseball team and spends a lot of time with people who drove out of the hills to back Trump in both elections. He doesnt have hard data, but from his conversations hes picked up on weakening fervor for the former president, a sense that Trumps election conspiracies are wearing thin. Rural communities like his, Noble says, have suffered from the GOPs deliberate campaign to sow distrust between voters and their government and between each other.

For the better part of two decades now, the Republican Party has been formulating fear and really fear of others, he says. We, on the other hand, keep responding with policies and we get into the weeds on arguments. We do not hit back at the visceral level that theyve been targeting for a long time. It has just really made people into tribes.

Lately, Noble has settled on an approach he thinks would help drive a wedge through the Trump coalition of Republicans, independents and even the small contingent who remain Democrats. It calls for targeting a sizable chunk of votersby his estimate there are 15 percent to 17 percent nationally and as many as 22 percent in Pennsylvania who voted for Trump in 2020and convincing enough of them to lock arms with Democrats to protect American democracy. Hes started to refer to those voters he wants Democrats to focus onpeople who feel like the Republican Party has abandoned their values around upholding the Constitutionas the Bush-Cheney coalition. Its a reference to the former vice president who served under both Bushes, as well as Dick Cheneys daughter, Liz, the Wyoming Republican congresswoman who is calling out the former presidents lies about a stolen election and is serving on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Weve got to pose the question to them: Are you for democracy or are you not? he says.

He took me into a darkened room inside the American Legion where military medals hang on a wall. Noble didnt serve in the armed forces, but he says he was raised to appreciate the sacrifices of past generations. They buried his uncle John in September. He was 100 years old, with German shrapnel still in his body. Noble turns on his phones flashlight and points to Big Johns Purple Heart from Normandy. Next to it is his late dads medal, also from World War II, this one for good conduct. I ask him what drives him politically after so much losing.

Its my generations obligation to protect and preserve democracy, he says. But in this situation, the enemy is not foreign, you know. It is domestic.

He dimmed the flashlight shining on the medals. So, thats what drives me.

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'It's Almost Like a Secret Society': The Perils of Being Democrat in a Trump Town - POLITICO

Mr. Romerio Mafnas and Lourin Hubbard, Congressional Candidate District 22. Courtesy photo

Tulare County Democrats announced that they have registered the 10,000th Democrat voter in the City of Tulare. On Sunday, February 27th, Tulare County Democrats participated in a voter registration program in the City of Tulare and walked door to door on the westside of the city to talk to neighbors about the importance of registering to vote.

In preparation for the upcoming June 7th primary and to help elect Democrats in key races, we have been walking door to door in certain communities to encourage people to register to vote and to participate in the upcoming election, stated Susanne Gundy, voter registration coordinator.

On Sunday volunteers knocked on the door of Mr. Romerio Mafnas, a new resident on the westside in the City of Tulare. Mr. Manfas is a retired veteran and strong Democrat who recently moved to Tulare from Ventura California. After a few minutes of conversation, he registered to vote and symbolically became the 10,000th Democrat to register to vote in Tulare.

When asked why he registered to vote, he responded, I was in the Army and I believe voting is the foundation of our country and I believe Democrats do a better job of running our country than Republicans, stated Mr. Manfas.

The recent once in a decade Census has provided data to us that shows us in what neighborhoods across the county are thousands of potential Latino voters who are 18 years of age and older and who are citizens that can potentially register to vote. Over the next few months, we will continue to engage with them to work to register Democrats to vote across Tulare county, concluded Gundy.

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Tulare County Democrats register 10,000th Democrat in the City of Tulare - Valley Voice

While most of the experts on Asian American politics I contacted voiced confidence in the continued commitment of Asian Americans to the Democratic Party and its candidates, there were some danger signals for example, in the 2021 New York City mayoral election. Eric Adams, the Democrat, decisively beat Curtis Sliwa, the Republican, 65.5 percent to 27.1 percent, but support for Sliwa an anti-crime stalwart who pledged to take on the spineless politicians who vote to defund police shot up to 44 percent in precincts where more than half of residents are Asian, according to The City.

The story was headlined Chinese voters came out in force for the GOP in NYC, shaking up politics, and the subhead read From Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, frustrations over Democratic stances on schools and crime helped mobilize votes for Republican Curtis Sliwa for mayor and conservative Council candidates.

A crucial catalyst in the surge of support for Sliwa, according to The City, was his proposed reforms to specialized high school admissions and gifted and talented programs ignoring the fact that Adams had also pledged to do this. More generally, the City reported,

A wave of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic has heightened a sense of urgency about public safety and law enforcement. Asian anger and frustration have, for the first time, left a visible dent in a city election.

Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from Queens, tweeted on Nov. 4, 2021:

Pending paper ballot counts, the assembly districts of @nily, @edbraunstein, @Barnwell30, @Rontkim and @Stacey23AD all went Republican. Our party better start giving more of a sh*t about #aapi (Asian American-Pacific Island) voters and communities. No other community turned out at a faster pace than AAPIs in 2020.

Similarly, Asian Americans led the drive to oust three San Francisco School Board members all progressive Democrats last month. As my Times colleague Amelia Nierenberg wrote on Feb. 16:

The recall also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power. In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board changed the admission system for the districts most prestigious institution, Lowell High School. It abolished requirements based primarily on grades and test scores, instead implementing a lottery system.

In their March 2021 paper, Why the trope of Black-Asian conflict in the face of anti-Asian violence dismisses solidarity, Jennifer Lee and Tiffany Huang, sociologists at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out that since March 2020 there had been over 3,000 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian violence from 47 states and the District of Columbia, ranging from stabbings and beatings, to verbal harassment and bullying, to being spit on and shunned.

While these senseless acts of anti-Asian violence have finally garnered the national attention they deserve, Lee and Huang continued, they have also invoked anti-Black sentiment and reignited the trope of Black-Asian conflict. Because some of the videotaped perpetrators appear to have been Black, some observers immediately reduced anti-Asian violence to Black-Asian conflict.

Working against such Black-Asian conflict, the two authors argue, is a besieged but real-world solidarity demonstrated in

studies showing that Black Americans are more likely than white or Hispanic Americans to recognize racism toward Asian Americans, and that Asian Americans who experience discrimination are more likely to recognize political commonality with Black Americans. Covid-related anti-Asian bias is not inevitable. While China virus rhetoric has been linked to violence and hostility, new research shows that priming Americans about the coronavirus did not increase anger among the majority of Americans toward Asian Americans.

Lee and Huang warn, however, that anger among a minority has invoked fear among the majority of Asian Americans.

In Asian Americans, Affirmative Action & the Rise in Anti-Asian Hate, published in the Spring 2021 issue of Daedalus, a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Lee makes the case that Asian Americans are at a political tipping point:

The changing selectivity of contemporary U.S. Asian immigration has recast Asian Americans from unassimilable to exceptional, resulting in their rapid racial mobility. This mobility combined with their minoritized status places them in a unique group position in the U.S. racial hierarchy, conveniently wedged between underrepresented minorities who stand to gain most from the policy (affirmative action) and the advantaged majority who stands to lose most because of it. It also marks Asians as compelling victims of affirmative action who are penalized because of their race.

In recent years, a new brand of Asian immigrants has entered the political sphere whose attitudes depart from the Asian American college student activists of the 1960s, Lee writes. This faction of politically conservative Asian immigrants has no intention of following their liberal-leaning predecessors, nor do they intend to stay silent.

The issue of whether more Asian Americans will choose to side with conservatives, Lee writes, or whether they will choose to forge a collective Asian American alliance will depend on whether U.S. Asians recognize and embrace their ethnic and class diversity. Will they forge a sense of linked fate akin to that which has guided the political attitudes and voting behavior of Black Americans?

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Opinion | Will Asian Americans Bolt From the Democratic Party? - The New York Times

Russias invasion of Ukraine will boost the Pentagons funding for next year, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee predicted on Thursday.

Without question, its going to have to be bigger than we thought, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said at an American Enterprise Institute event. The Russian invasion of Ukraine fundamentally altered what our national security posture and what our defense posture needs to be. It made it more complicated and it made it more expensive. I dont see much way to argue it.

During annual budget negotiations, Republicans typically push for more defense spending while Democrats overwhelmingly argue for cuts to the military and increased spending on domestic programs. But the bipartisan support for Ukraine could unite both parties around a higher defense budget.

The political reality is that the Russian incursion in Ukraine has created much more support for an increase in the defense budget, said Todd Harrison, director for budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At a minimum, I think [Democrats] wont oppose it because its hard to, politically, at this point given what were seeing.

In December, Congress authorized nearly $778 billion for defense spending in fiscal 2022, which began Oct. 1, though lawmakers have yet to pass a budget to disperse that money. The Biden administration is expected to submit a 2023 budget request this month. Two weeks ago, sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters the request would include more than $800 billion for overall defense spending, including $773 billion for the Defense Department.

Harrison said its unlikely the White House will edit its budget request, already two months later than usual, to reflect the conflict in Ukraine. Instead, the White House could amend its proposal later in the year or ask Congress for supplemental funding.

But he predicted that lawmakers will add $10 to $20 billion to a $773 billion request without further prompting.

On Thursday, the White House asked Congress to approve $10 billion in humanitarian, security, and economic assistance for Ukraine. Thats $3.6 billion more than Bloomberg reported last week; it is part of a $32.5 billion package that also includes coronavirus-response money.

These resources will mean additional defense equipment for Ukraine, lifesaving humanitarian assistancesuch as emergency food assistancefor the Ukrainian people, stronger sanctions enforcement, a dedicated task force led by the Department of Justice to go after the ill-gotten gains and other illicit activities of the Russian oligarchs, and additional support for U.S troop deployments to neighboring countries, acting OMB Director Shalanda Young said in a statement posted to the White House website.

Mackenzie Eaglen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, predicted that 2023 defense spending will eventually top $800 billion, but also urged Smith to give Congress more flexibility in spending because repeated continuing resolutions shorten the fiscal year and all money expires on Oct. 1.

That could be just as effective as a higher budget, she said.

Thousands of American troops have deployed to eastern Europe this year to reassure NATO allies and deter Russia from pushing its troops farther west. If Congress did appropriate more money for the Pentagon, some of it would go to supporting these additional deployments, Harrison said.

But the money would also likely go to buy weapons, aircraft, ships, and submarines to make sure the military can deter both Russia and China, Harrison predicted.

Now, Congress and DOD, instead of looking at the overall force structure in terms of being able to meet one major theater war at a timetheyre now forced to look at two almost simultaneous wars and that is going to drive a lot more of a increase in demand for force structure, he said.

Other NATO allies are also poised to increase their defense spending. On Wednesday, France said it would increase defense spending by an unspecified amount. Earlier this week, Germany pledged to boost its defense spending to 2 percent of its GDP, up half a percent. That would make it the 11th NATO member to meet the alliances guideline.

If the remaining 19 NATO members met the 2 percent goal, defense spending across the alliance could grow by $80 billion, Cowen & Company analyst Roman Schweizer wrote in a Thursday morning note to investors. If that increase happens, Schweizer estimates $18 billion of that increase could be spending on weapons and equipment.

But spending increases across all alliance members is still unlikely, according to Capital Alpha Partners Byron Callan.

We have believed that European defense spending could increase, but that has to be assessed on a country-by-country basis, Callan wrote in a Monday note to investors. Our assessment has been that front-line states such as Poland, Romania, and Finland are more likely to see increases than Spain or Italy, which may feel less of a direct military threat from a more assertive Russia.

Not everyone, however, agrees that the military needs more money to counter Russia.

Resources to address the Ukraine crisis should be generated by repurposing existing military funding, not spending more, William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said in a statement that accompanied the release of an article about the need to cut defense spending.

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Russia's Invasion Will Boost 2023 Defense Budget, Top Democrat Says - Defense One

At the 1992 Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton, Democratic Party leadership made the fateful decision to deny Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey Sr. a speaking slot. Casey was a highly successful, two-term governor of one of the nations largest states, but Democrats refused to let him address the crowd for one highly specific reason: He was pro-life.

From the moment that the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to abortion in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, the Democratic Party began a steady march toward embracing legal abortion on demand. Along the way, it rejected pro-life Democrats such as Casey, with devastating consequences for our nation and our politics.

With Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey on the chopping block in this terms Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization case at the Supreme Court, Democratic extremism promises to turn the abortion debate into a winning issue for the pro-life movement. Some observers argue that a decision overturning Roe and Casey will redound to the benefit of Democrats, but the opposite scenario seems more likely. When states are permitted to craft their own abortion laws, and when Democrats respond by intensifying their push to entrench legal abortion at the federal level, the public is far more likely to notice and reject the Democratic Partys radical commitment to unlimited abortion, a stance that has been a long time in the making.

Running for president in 1992, Clinton coined the nonsensical phrase safe, legal, and rare, a slogan that came to embody the partys stance on abortion for nearly three decades. It was meant somehow to evoke both strong support for abortion access but not necessarily the abortions themselves though it is hardly coherent to suggest that a supposedly unobjectionable procedure ought also to be rare. In a room where support for unlimited abortion was swiftly becoming mainstream, there was little space left for a principled pro-lifer such as Casey.

Journalist Bill McGurn noted how central abortion was to the 1992 decision to sideline Casey: Clinton officials refused a place at the podium for the Democratic governor of Americas fifth-largest state while also providing speaking slots for six pro-choice Republicanwomen. To make sure the point was delivered, one of these was a pro-choice woman who had campaigned for Caseys Republican opponent.

His exclusion was a death knell for pro-life Democratic politicians across the country, who all but dwindled out of existence over the next few decades. By embracing abortion, Casey warned at the time, the Democratic Party is abandoning the principle that made it great: its basic commitment to protecting the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human family. What a different nation we might live in today if Caseys vision of human dignity and solidarity had won out within his party.

Mere weeks after this symbolic ouster, the Supreme Court issued its convoluted ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the heart of Roe: its declaration of a supposed right to abortion. Gov. Casey had gone all the way to the highest court to defend several Pennsylvania abortion regulations, and though the court upheld most of the pro-life policies at stake, it also affirmed Roe and constructed a new set of equally flawed rationales to bolster the abortion regime it had created in 1973.

July 1992, in other words, was a significant turning point in the U.S. abortion debate. The Democratic Party decided to commit itself wholesale to abortion on demand, and a plurality on the court decided that abortion was so central to the lives of American women, and that Roe was so central to the courts institutional standing, that it couldnt possibly be undone.

Those decisions hastened a process that had been in motion for two decades. In the 1980s, Catholic Democratic politicians who had once opposed abortion began to change their tune, invoking the rhetoric of a womans right to choose and calling themselves personally pro-life, even as they embraced legal abortion. Over the subsequent two decades, the Democratic platform gradually became more permissive toward abortion. First, it hinted at the need for federally funded abortion. By 2012, it was explicitly attacking the Hyde amendment, a previously bipartisan compromise added to spending measures to ensure that Medicaid funds dont reimburse providers for abortion procedures.

Today, the Democratic Party is such a tireless abortion advocate that even Clintons safe, legal, and rare formulation has fallen out of fashion, excised from the party platform altogether. When congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard uttered this slogan during a 2019 Democratic debate, abortion-rights activists attacked her as out of touch: It is now anathema to say that abortion should be rare, because it suggests that abortion is a bad thing. Abortion, according to todays activists, is a social good worthy of celebrating, not a necessary evil that we might lament even as we allow it.

It is under this extremist framework that todays Democratic Party operates. For three years running, Senate Democrats have blocked the eminently reasonable Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which requires doctors to care for newborns who survive an attempted abortion procedure. Last fall, House Democrats (with one exception) voted in lockstep for the Womens Health Protection Act, which would nullify nearly every pro-life state law. The Senate voted on the same bill in late February, and, of the senators who voted, only one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, bucked his party and voted against the bill. Democrats in Congress now regularly push bills lacking Hyde amendment protections.

These policy shifts should come as little surprise to anyone who followed the 2020 presidential primary. With the exception of Gabbard and Amy Klobuchar, both of whom support some limits on abortion in the last three months of pregnancy, Democrats were hard-pressed to name a single abortion regulation theyd support. Quite the opposite: Most pledged to codify Roe v. Wade and nuke the Hyde amendment. Our current vice president, Kamala Harris, was especially creative, declaring that her Department of Justice would institute a preclearance regime, requiring states to receive approval from the executive branch before enforcing new pro-life laws. Even Joe Biden, who had supported Hyde for decades in Congress, rejected the amendment in his quest to win the nomination, under pressure from abortion-rights activists. Though he had attempted to portray himself as a centrist on nearly every policy question throughout the campaign, Biden evidently realized the centrality of taxpayer-funded abortion to a powerful wing of his party, and he capitulated on that last vestige of his commitment to being personally pro-life.

What does all of this mean for our politics? At the most fundamental level, it is deeply damaging to our country that one of our major parties is so in thrall to the grave evil of abortion, which ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn human beings each year. Far better for all of us if our whole society, politicians included, understood and respected the humanity and dignity of all human beings, including the unborn, and realized that even the most limited of governments exist to protect the right to life.

Not only is the Democratic position on abortion morally abhorrent, but its also deeply unpopular with the public and even with most Democrats. Public opinion, of course, doesnt dictate morality; abortion is wrong no matter what Gallup might find. Nevertheless, its significant that Democratic politicians have settled themselves so far outside the mainstream. They havent yet paid a clear and significant political price for their abortion extremism, but that could swiftly change in a post-Roe country where Democrats immediately begin pushing for federally protected and funded abortion on demand a position supported by few Democrats, let alone most people.

A 2022 Marist poll found that more than three-quarters of people favor laws far more protective of unborn children than are permitted under Roe. About a third of Democrats describe themselves as pro-life, and according to Gallup, only 18% of Democrats support abortion for any reason in the last three months of pregnancy, the official position of the party. Marist has found that a majority even of pro-choice respondents would limit abortion to the first three months of pregnancy, the so-called hard cases of rape and incest, or when a mothers life is at risk.

But left-wing politicians appear unwilling to admit that their extremism might have political consequences. During the 2020 primary, pro-life Democrats repeatedly asked candidates whether they were welcome in the party despite their opposition to abortion. The response they received was, essentially, Take a hike.

I think being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders offered. By this time in history when we talk about what a Democrat is, I think being pro-choice is an essential part of that.

The repudiation of pro-life Democrats by their own candidates was so vigorous that Democrats for Life leaders penned an op-ed identifying themselves as the Democrats Biden doesnt want. They noted that their party no longer supports even helping pregnant women, because such policies, previously central to Democratic values, violate the core tenet that abortion is normal.

If the Supreme Court does as is expected this term and overturns Roe and Casey, the deep divide between Democrats and the rest of the public on abortion will intensify. To be sure, while the average person is likely to disagree with Democratic extremism, he also is likely to oppose the pro-life goal of prohibiting all abortions. But when it comes to political battles over abortion, pro-lifers have a distinct advantage: We are willing to accept incremental victories on the way to our goal.

For decades, pro-lifers have backed a wide assortment of abortion restrictions and regulations, recognizing that saving unborn children and protecting their mothers is valuable even if the laws in question arent yet perfect. When Roe is gone, far more people will be paying attention to those efforts, because states will finally be permitted to create their own abortion laws. In abortion-friendly states, perhaps the best we can achieve at first is a 24-hour waiting period or safety regulations on abortion clinics. In moderate states, it might be possible to achieve a ban on abortion after 20 weeks or 15 weeks or 12 weeks. In the most pro-life states, citizens might well be prepared to embrace heartbeat bills, or even total restrictions on abortion. Nearly all pro-lifers are willing to accept all of these victories, large and small, even as we continue working toward the goal of protecting all unborn children from abortion.

But Democratic politicians dont have a comparable willingness to compromise. Far from it. Take one recent example: A Democratic legislator in Oklahoma sponsored a bill requiring fathers to support their unborn children from the moment of conception, aimed at supporting pregnant mothers if abortion becomes illegal. Abortion supporters, angry that he had affirmed the pro-life argument that human life begins at conception, bullied him into a swift apology. At the national level, Democrats already have promised not only to codify Roe in the event that its overturned, but they aim to prevent states from enacting any pro-life laws. This is evidenced by the near-unanimous support among congressional Democrats for the Womens Health Protection Act, which they pitch as a response to the possible downfall of Roe.

When it comes to abortion, from 1992 until today, the Democratic Party has gone all or nothing. Nothing less than abortion on demand, through all nine months of pregnancy, underwritten by the taxpayer will suffice. That hard-line stance is deeply unpopular, and the eventual end of Roe will do a great deal to expose this extremism to the public. When it does, Democrats should expect to pay a political price.

Alexandra DeSanctis is a staff writer at National Review and a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She is co-author, with Ryan T. Anderson, of the forthcoming book Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, from which parts of this article are adapted.

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Democrats' abortion extremism will have consequences - Washington Examiner