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Kahan and his collaborators went on: Increasing hierarchical and individualistic worldviews induce greater risk-skepticism in white males than in either white women or male or female nonwhites.

In other words, those who rank high in communitarian and egalitarian values, including liberal white men, are high in risk aversion. Among those at the opposite end of the scale low in communitarianism and egalitarianism but high in individualism and in support for hierarchy conservative white men are markedly more willing to tolerate risk than other constituencies.

In the case of guns and gun control, the authors write:

Persons of hierarchical and individualistic orientations should be expected to worry more about being rendered defenseless because of the association of guns with hierarchical social roles (hunter, protector, father) and with hierarchical and individualistic virtues (courage, honor, chivalry, self-reliance, prowess). Relatively egalitarian and communitarian respondents should worry more about gun violence because of the association of guns with patriarchy and racism and with distrust of and indifference to the well-being of strangers.

A paper published in 2000, Gender, race, and perceived risk: the white male effect, by Melissa Finucane, a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation, Slovic, Mertz, James Flynn of Decision Research and Theresa A. Satterfield of the University of British Columbia, tested responses to 25 hazards and found that white males risk perception ratings were consistently much lower than those of white women, minority-group women and minority-group men.

The white male effect, they continued seemed to be caused by about 30 percent of the white male sample who were better educated, had higher household incomes, and were politically more conservative. They also held very different attitudes, characterized by trust in institutions and authorities and by anti-egalitarianism in other words, they tended to be Republicans.

While opinions on egalitarianism and communitarianism help explain why a minority of white men are Democrats, the motivation of white women who support Republicans is less clear. Cassese and Tiffany D. Barnes, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, address this question in their 2018 paper Reconciling Sexism and Womens Support for Republican Candidates: A Look at Gender, Class, and Whiteness in the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Races.

Cassese and Barnes found that in the 2016 election, social class and education played a stronger role in the voting decisions of women than of men:

Among Trump voters, women were much more likely to be in the lower income category compared to men, a difference of 13 points in the full sample and 14 points for white respondents only. By contrast, the proportion of male, upper-income Trump supporters is greater than the proportion of female, upper-income Trump supporters by about 9 percentage points in the full sample and among white voters only. These findings challenge a dominant narrative surrounding the election rather than attracting downwardly-mobile white men, Trumps campaign disproportionately attracted and mobilized economically marginal white women.

Cassese and Barnes pose the question Why were a majority of white women willing to tolerate Trumps sexism? To answer, the authors examined polling responses to three questions: Do women demanding equality seek special favors? Do women complaining about discrimination cause more problems than they solve? and How much discrimination do women face in the United States? Cassese and Barnes describe the first two questions as measures of hostile sexism, which they define as negative views toward individuals who violate traditional gender roles.

They found that hostile sexism and denial of discrimination against women are strong predictors of white womens vote choice in 2016, but these factors were not predictive of voting for Romney in 2012. Put another way, white women who display hostile sexist attitudes and who perceive low levels of gender discrimination in society are more likely to support Trump.

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Opinion | What We Know About the Women Who Vote for Republicans and the Men Who Do Not - The New York Times

Fellow Republicans are not rushing to embrace Mr. Scotts plan.

I think its good that elected officials put out what theyre for, and so I support his effort to do it, said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, among the most endangered Republicans up for re-election in November. Thats what hes for.

But for Republican candidates, the issue is getting awkward. In Arizona, Jim Lamon, a Republican seeking to challenge the Democratic incumbent, Senator Mark Kelly, first called the plan pretty good stuff only to have his campaign retreat from that embrace.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the plan, Its good that people offer ideas. His Democratic challenger, Representative Val B. Demings, nevertheless ran an ad on social media accusing him of embracing it.

At a Republican Senate debate in Ohio on Monday, the current front-runner, Mike Gibbons, called the plan a great first draft in trying to set some things we all believe in, adding, The people that dont believe them probably shouldnt be Republicans.

J.D. Vance, a candidate aligned with Mr. Trumps working-class appeal, fired back: Why would we increase taxes on the middle class, especially when Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook pay a lower tax rate than any middle-class American in this room or in this country? Its ridiculous.

Even as he denied his plan would do that, Mr. Scott on Thursday was bold in the criticism of his fellow Republicans, who are relying on him to help them win elections this fall. Timidity is the kind of old thinking that got us exactly where we are today, where we dont control the House, the White House or the Senate, he said, adding: Its time to have a plan. Its time to execute on a plan.

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Income Taxes for All? Rick Scott Has a Plan, and Thats a Problem. - The New York Times

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

QAnons infiltration of the Republican Party has proceeded with frightening steadiness over the last couple years, its growing foothold marked by the arrival of conspiratorial politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to Business Insider, Ron Watkins, widely believed to be one of the authors of the Q posts that started the movement, is one of nearly 60 Q sympathizers running for Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. QAnons adherents tend to espouse some selection of bizarre beliefs from the conspiracists buffet that includes accusations of pedophile politicians eating children, secret political tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, a great bloodletting, and Donald Trump swooping in to free us from evil. One day. Or maybe the day after. The prophecy is flexible, which is why it has evolved and endured.

This week brought us evidence that QAnon thought has spread further than we knew: into the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the very highest levels of the Republican Party. It is increasingly difficult to separate the movements demented beliefs from the ideology of the already democracy-averse GOP, its traces evident in legislation, media appearances, and leaked private communications.

The latest exemplar of the GOPs descent into anything-goes nuttery is Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and a well-connected conservative activist who recently admitted to attending the January 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C. Ginnis right-wing beliefs have long been known, but leaked texts between her and thenWhite House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed Thomass commitment to overturning the election, based on an apparently sincere belief that Joe Biden had stolen the presidency. She encouraged Meadows to help put a stop to Democratic perfidy. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History, went one message to Meadows, encouraging him to stand strong.

The texts also revealed that she has traveled far down the QAnon rabbit hole. She made reference to watermarked ballots that signaled a secret Trump-led military sting operation. She described a plot hatched by the Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators who were already being arrested and shipped to floating barges off the coast of Guantanamo Bay. She wrote messages supporting Sidney Powell, a lawyer whose deranged media appearances made her such a liability that she was forced out of Trumps circle. But Thomas strongly supported Powell, a QAnon favorite. Dont let her and your assets be marginalized instead help her be the lead and the face, she wrote to Meadows on November 13.

Thomass willingness to embrace even the most wild-eyed, Big Liefueled theories only affirms what we already know about some of her political peers, including those who served in the Trump White House. Some went along out of self-preservation or an instinct for power, but other Trumpists, including perhaps Trump himself, actually accepted the proliferating lies about hacked voting machines, a communist influence project, corrupt state officials, and whatever else could be added to the witchs brew of baseless speculation. Whether they believed these lies or not, the effect was functionally the same. In the months before and after Joe Bidens election as president, the government was run byerratic coup plotters, some of whom thought that corrupt Democratic officials were being tried for treason secretly in Gitmo. The sheer absurdity of all this would be hilarious if it didnt involve people in positions of real influence.

These include lawmakers and aspiring presidential candidates in the Senate. Earlier this month, Missouri senator Josh Hawley presented a long Twitter thread charging that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook a blaring Klaxon for QAnon adherents obsessed with child endangerment. He later repeated his criticisms on the first day of Jacksons confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court, prompting a White House spokesman to assert that Hawley was engaging in a QAnon-signaling smear. Hawleys remarks were later echoed by South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who, in addition to chiding Jackson for representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, told Jackson, Every judge who does what you are doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited. To cap it off, one of the Republican witnesses for the hearing was Alessandra Serano, an executive at Operation Underground Railroad, a well-funded anti-sex-trafficking organization whose vigilantism and weak relationship with reality resemble that of QAnon adherents.

The signs of the Republican slide toward full epistemic crack-up are all around us. One can see it everywhere lately, not only in the why do you want to hurt children?type questions hurled by Republican senators at Jackson, but also in the revanchist anti-LGBTQ laws being introduced in Texas and Florida and in fearful talk of teachers grooming children on Fox News. The ginned-up moral panic, centered around the child-exploitation themes that helped give life to QAnon, is now a regular part of Republican political rhetoric.

This phenomenons origins go back decades, with important mile markers appearing under the George W. Bush administration, which gave us truthiness and the reality-based community. How else to explain General Mike Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and, briefly, national security adviser to the president, who now supports QAnon? Flynns full tilt toward Strangelovian madness may be partly because its popular on the speaking circuit, but he has also draped himself in some of the most unhinged and bloodthirsty language of the QAnon prophecy and seemingly delighted in doing so. (He thought Myanmars military coup was a good model for the U.S., for example.) It may be just another right-wingers embrace of the trolls ethos riling the enemy being the great credo of the modern Republican Party but again, the effect is the same: The free-associative, crazed accusations of conspiratorial thinking stand at the core of modern Republican politics.

If you had any lingering pretensions that our political elites know better than the average QAnon-pilled zombie, its past time to let them go. The people in charge of the Republican Party are mostly old and poorly informed operators who believe some of the most asinine theories to emerge from social-media bilge. Granting them some measure of savviness saying that this is red meat for the Republican base, or that it keeps the checks from right-wing billionaires coming in is to offer too much credit. More than that, it risks absolving them through some nod toward political practicalities when, mostly, this is all pretty evil and disturbing.

The added trouble with Ginni Thomas, of course, is not just that shes a well-connected right-wing activist who communicates abject lies to sympathetic presidential officials. Its that her husband, whose own beliefs are more closely held but likely fairly bonkers, has the power to help implement her agenda and protect her from repercussions. Clarence Thomass defenders on the right have been keen to point out that he and his wife are not the same person, and that much is true but can anyone say with any certainty whether this sitting member of the Supreme Court believes Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election?

At the very least, critics have rightly objected to the fact that Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 committee. Hes in a position to not only provide legal cover for his wife but also her potential co-conspirators. If Thomas hadnt been quietly tucked away in a hospital with an undisclosed illness, perhaps this glaring conflict of interest could have been dealt with publicly, but for now, Republican officials continue to make excuses to protect one of their own. And the depressing reality is that the rot is deep. Even if Ginni and Clarence Thomas are excised from American political life, their shameless confederates remain.

This post has been updated.

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QAnon's Takeover of the Republican Party Is Virtually Complete - New York Magazine

As recently as five days ago, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry was a member of Congress in good standing. Now, as NBC News reported, the Nebraska Republican is resigning.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., on Saturday announced that he would resign from Congress, saying in a statement to constituents, Due to the difficulties of my current circumstances, I can no longer serve you effectively. ... In a letter to his colleagues in the House of Representatives, Fortenberry said he will resign from Congress effective March 31.

It was last Thursday when a Los Angeles jury convicted Fortenberry of lying to the FBI about receiving an illegal campaign contribution from a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire. The nine-term lawmaker was convicted of three counts and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each count.

As last week came to an end, it was an open question as to what Fortenberry would do next. The Nebraskan vowed to appeal his conviction, and it seemed at least possible that he would move forward with his re-election plans.

GOP leaders had other ideas. The morning after Fortenberrys convictions, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called on the congressman to quit. When someone is convicted, its time to resign, McCarthy said. He had his day in court. I think if he wants to appeal, he can do that as a private citizen.

Short on allies, Fortenberry announced his resignation plans a day later. A special election will be held in Nebraskas 1st district, which is a Republican stronghold.

For those keeping score, this will be the sixth resignation from the current Congress, which is a relatively large number. Three House Democrats gave up their seats to serve in the Biden administration Louisianas Cedric Richmond, Ohios Marcia Fudge, and New Mexicos Deb Haaland and two Republicans quit for very different reasons.

Ohios Steve Stivers stepped down in April 2021 to oversee his home states chamber of commerce, and in December 2021, Californias Devin Nunes left Congress to run Donald Trumps controversial media company.

Speaking of the former president, its a safe bet that Fortenberry wishes Trump were still around. After all, Trump had a limitless tolerance for corruption, especially crimes committed by members of Congress: It was just a couple of election cycles ago when two incumbent House Republicans New Yorks Chris Collins and Californias Duncan Hunter faced multi-count felony indictments, ran for re-election anyway, and won.

They were later convicted, sentenced to prison, and pardoned by Trump, who was eager to reward his partisan loyalists.

Were he still in office, the Republican would also likely lend Fortenberry a hand. Indeed, after the Nebraskans indictment, Trump issued a statement of support, saying, Isnt it terrible that a Republican Congressman from Nebraska just got indicted for possibly telling some lies to investigators about campaign contributions, when half of the United States Congress lied about made up scams.

Oddly enough, this was not a defense Fortenberrys lawyers pushed during last weeks trial.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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Following felony convictions, Republican congressman to resign - MSNBC

America's culture warriorshave massed on their latest battlefield: the classrooms of grade-school children.

Discussions aboutsexual identity and race are being forced out of schools in states where conservatives argue cultural change has gone overboard.

It's pitting them against liberals who decry these measures as bigotry cloaked in concern about children.

A focal point in this fight is a just-passed bill in Florida, HB 1557, which has so polarized the state and the country, people can't even agree on what to call it.

Parental Rights in Education: that's the official name. Don't Say Gay: that's critics' famous nickname for it. The Anti-Grooming bill that's the counter-nickname given by supporters.

It symbolizes struggles taking place in Texas,Tennesseeand a number of other states where similar measures are unfolding.

Legislative hearings on billHB 1557earlier this year offered a window into the politics at play, which follow deep cultural fault lines.

Bill opponents wept at times as they shared personal stories and said it would stigmatize gay, lesbian and transgender youth, who already suffer frighteningly high rates of depression and suicide.

"I never cry on a bill," said one lawmaker, Fentrice Driskell, stifling tears as she recounted the story of a childhood friend whose death was believed to be self-inflicted.

Parents in non-traditional families testified the bill would intimidate kids from doing basic things like drawing their family in art class.

One parent, Kerry Gaudio, urged lawmakers to put themselves in the shoes of a kid being made to feel their family is illegitimate: "It's going to cost lives," said Gaudio.

Other speakers, meanwhile, asked what all thefuss was about.

Here's what's in the bill, which would take effect July 1 if, as expected, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signsit into law.

Its main provisions:

"We don't want the school district to take on the role of being the parent. Because they're not," said Joe Harding, the Republican who introduced the bill.

The bill's critics contend LGBTQ kids arethe target; Harding originally proposed an amendment, since withdrawn, that could have forced school officials to out students to their parents.

Republican Mike Beltran lamented all the attention paid to a few controversial lines in the bill, which he called altogether reasonable.

"All [the bill] says is, 'We don't talk about [sexuality and gender] until the kids are out of third grade.' That's all it says. You can speak about it in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade. You can speak about it at home," Beltran said."Third grade is a very modest proposal."

One mother who supportsthe bill testified that school officials cut her out of conversations about her non-binary 13-year-old child.

January Littlejohn sued a school district when she learned officials allegedly agreed to start calling the child a new name, offered a switch of washroomsand asked whether the child would prefer to room with boys or girls on field trips.

The mother suggested her child might have been swayed by a trend; she said three of her child's friends had declared they were transgender.

During her testimony in the legislative hearing, Littlejohnfumed that she and her husband weren't told. "This created a huge wedge between our daughter and us,because it sent the message that she needed to be protected from us. Not by us."

Of note: Parts of this bill wouldn't apply to Littlejohn's child, at least not the provisions about what can't be discussed before Grade 4.

And that speaks to a major criticism of the bill.

Florida Democrats say there is no sex ed at that age anyway. And that even for older kids, parents have the right to opt out of it.

That's why they say the don't-say-gay label is fair: as far as they're concerned, that's what this bill is really about.

"It is a direct attack on LGBTQ+ identity," state lawmaker Anna Eskamani told CBC News, speaking about her Republican opponents' bill."They're not even being subtle about it. It's just so gross."

At one hearing, Eskamani asked whether kids could still ask teachers about a tragedy in her Orlando-area district: the 2016 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub.

The bill's sponsor, Harding, said that was fine. He said the bill targets procedures, not on-the-spot discussions: "Children ask a lot of questions. Conversations are going to come up."

Public opinion polling is split on aspects of the bill.

A Morning Consult survey for Politico found that Americans favoured bans on teaching sexual orientation and gender identity through third grade: 50 per cent supported it, 34 opposed it.

A smaller number supported letting parents sue over the policy: 41 per cent favoured that, while 43 per cent opposed it.

So what's happening nationally?

There are bills in several states,like one in Tennessee that would restrict books or teaching materials said to "normalize" LGBTQ "lifestyles."

The governor of Texas wants to punish parents of transitioning children. He's instructed child-protection services to open abuse investigations into parents who let children get treatments like puberty-blocking hormones, though the policy is currently blocked by a court.

The Texas move stems from a well-known divorce case there. A mother and father feuded over how to raise an eight-year-old transgender child. The court awarded custody to the transition-supporting mother, but forbade any treatments.

Eskamani's theory about what's driving the trend? Ambitious politicianswanting to build up their celebrity with right-wing voters.

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott,announced his child-protectivemeasure a week before a Republican primary, which he won.Even the Texas father involved in the famous court case later ran, unsuccessfully, for the state legislature.

It's no accident, Eskamani says, that both the Florida and Texas governors are rumoured to have presidential ambitions.

There's more at play than personal ambition, as these politicians are tapping into powerful existing currents within their party.

One factor is the pandemic. Conservative parents fumed at school systems, opposing mask mandates and demanding that schools reopen sooner, and protested at raucous board meetings.

They simultaneously rebelled against schools for teaching about racism, and all these themescombinedturned bashing the education establishment into a central Republican message in state elections last year.

And Republicans won. In fact, they won big. Including in places they didn't expect to win, like Virginia. The parents' rebellion came to be seen as the reason for the Republican win there, although some analysis disputes that education made the difference in Virginia.

Florida and numerous other states have also forbidden teaching about racism in a way that causes discomfort, guilt or anguish on account of a student's race.

At a January hearing in Florida where lawmakers advanced the Don't Say Gay bill, they discussed another education reform: stripping school-board workers of their salariesand using thosesavings to hire government monitors whoscrutinize the books in libraries.

Then there's QAnon.

Defenders of Florida's 1557 bill keep referring to it as an anti-grooming bill, which links it to a termassociated with pedophilesand a longstanding slur against gay people. Donald Trump Jr. used the reference, as did DeSantis's press secretary (though she apologized).

In Eskamani's view, that language is no accident. It's a tacit wink and a nod, she says, encouragingpeople who believe unhinged social-media-driven conspiracy theories about pedophiles secretly running governments.

"One hundred per cent," she said. "It all feeds into that same monster."

She anticipates that after DeSantis signs the bill into law, there will be lawsuits. There will also be pressure on companies to speak out, as Disney did, after facing pressure.

DeSantis told Disney to buzz off.

The governor's combative steak drew valuable praise.The conservative National Review called him the new voice of the Republican Party, a Trump-style fighter who never backs down, and dubbed him a 2024 presidential contender.

Some conservatives offer a gloomier take on why they're doing this: Because they're losing.

At one hearing on the Florida bill, Republican lawmakerScott Plakondescribed his side as being on the defensive, trying to slow cultural change that's moved too far, too quickly.Plakon said bill supporters want to draw a line somewhere.

The Republican said he was elected the same year as Barack Obama, 2008, with the same position on same-sex marriage:they both opposed it.

Four years later, he noted, Obama had switched his position. Immediately after, Plakon said, bakers and florists risked punishment for not serving a same-sex wedding or a celebration of a gender transition.

"Here's a rhetorical question," Plakon asked at a January hearing."Who started the culture wars?"

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Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill part of Republican drive to limit talk of sex and race in U.S. classrooms - CBC News