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The right-wing rebellion against American democracy is often subtle, expressing itself through tricky changes to election law without a full-throated acknowledgment of what lawmakers are actually doing. But sometimes, the mask slips and someone in the conservative movement openly tells you whats really going on.

One such slippage took place last week when the American Mind a publication of the Claremont Institute, an influential conservative think tank based in California published an incendiary essay arguing that the country has already been destroyed by internal enemies.

Most people living in the United States today certainly more than half are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term, Glenn Ellmers, the essays author, writes. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

These seditious citizens are opposed, according to Ellmers, by the 75 million people who voted in the last election against the senile figurehead of a party that stands for mob violence, ruthless censorship, and racial grievances, not to mention bureaucratic despotism.

If Trump voters and conservatives do not band together and fight a sort of counter-revolution, then the victory of progressive tyranny will be assured. See you in the gulag.

What exactly this counter-revolution entails is unclear, but Ellmers has some tips. Learn some useful skills, stay healthy, and get strong, he writes. One of my favorite weightlifting coaches likes to say, Strong people are harder to kill, and more useful generally.

Ellmerss essay has been widely discussed in American media and intellectual circles, due to its bracing honesty about the modern rights worldview and the prominence of the outlet that published it. Claremont is an influential institution of the right; one of its publications, the Claremont Review of Books, published the notorious Flight 93 essay arguing that the 2016 election was a choice between Trump and national extinction. (2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die, that essay declared in its opening line.)

In the post-Trump era, the type of hard-right politics preached in Claremont publications is simply conservatism writ large, as Jane Coaston writes in a Vox essay on the California right. Theyve become the intellectual organ of Trumpist conservatism an organization whose mission looks more and more like manufacturing an intellectual justification for the GOPs right-wing populist.

The rhetoric of national emergency and decline that you hear in Claremont publications permeates mainstream GOP rhetoric. Minutes before the January 6 assault on Capitol Hill, former President Donald Trump told his assembled supporters that if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. In a 2019 speech, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) warned that we have come again to one of the great turning points in our national history, when the fate of our republican government is at issue. In a 2020 Facebook post, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declared that Democrats want to defund, destroy, and dismantle our country.

As absurd as it may seem, Ellmerss essay should be taken seriously because it makes the anti-democratic subtext of this kind of conservative discourse into clearly legible text. And it is a clear articulation of what the movement has been telling us through its actions, like Georgias new voting law: It sees democracy not as a principle to respect, but as a barrier to be overcome in pursuit of permanent power.

Inasmuch as there is a central argument in Ellmerss piece, it is this: The label conservative no longer accurately captures what the American right should be about. This is because conservatism implies preserving or protecting something already in place, when in fact America is so hopelessly corrupted that theres little worth saving.

The US Constitution no longer works, Ellmers writes. What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.

Many traditional conservatives, in his mind, are blind to this fact. Trumps victory represented the true people rising up against an establishment that was unwilling to openly state how precarious the countrys situation is:

The great majority of establishment conservatives who were alarmed and repelled by Trumps rough manner and disregard for norms are almost totally clueless about a basic fact: Our norms are now hopelessly corrupt and need to be destroyed. It has been like this for a whileand the MAGA voters knew it, while most of the policy wonks and magazine scribblers did not and still dont. In almost every case, the political practices, institutions, and even rhetoric governing the United States have become hostile to both liberty and virtue. On top of that, the mainline churches, universities, popular culture, and the corporate world are rotten to the core. What exactly are we trying to conserve?

Trumps main failing, on Ellmerss telling, is not that he was destructive but that he was too ignorant and poorly advised to attack the right targets.

As if coming upon a man convulsing from an obvious poison, Trump at least attempted in his own inelegant way to expel the toxin, Ellmers writes. By contrast, the conservative establishment, or much of it, has been unwilling to recognize that our body politic is dying from these noxious norms.

Ellmers is not all that interested in the mechanisms of how and why the country has become so broken. He doesnt really explain in any detail the nature of the nefarious forces that have polluted most American minds; he rails against the progressive, or woke, or antiracist agenda that now corrupts our republic and takes it as a given that his audience will agree that this threat is apocalyptic.

He is more interested, instead, in rallying the forces of Real America against enemies he describes in strikingly dehumanizing terms.

If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman, Ellmers writes. Real men and women who love honor and beauty, keep reading.

Ellmers is hardly the only person on the right to see the opposition in a starkly negative light. A February poll found that a solid majority of Republicans, 57 percent, preferred to describe Democrats as enemies rather than as the political opposition. One of the central attitudes underpinning democracy that sometimes the other side wins, and thats okay is buckling on the right.

The implications of Ellmerss worldview are chilling. In a January 2020 essay, he predicted more in sorrow than in anger, of course that a civil war is coming.

Not for the first time in our nations history, if this state of affairs continues force may be embraced as the only alternative when reason fails, Ellmers writes. We must fervently hope that things will change before they become violent. But if the clueless attitudes of our sclerotic elite remain unaltered, it is not hard to see whats on the horizon.

If the extremism of Ellmerss essay strikes you as similar to what youve heard from authoritarian political movements of the past, youre not alone.

John Ganz, a perceptive critic of American conservatism, recently wrote that Ellmerss essay should properly be termed fascist. Excommunicating a large percentage of the population from the body politic, describing once-idyllic society hopelessly corrupted by the forces of change, describing ones enemies as animals or diseases, invoking the threat of physical force in a political context these are all historically hallmarks of fascist rhetoric.

This analysis holds despite the fact that Ellmers speaks in a democratic idiom, portraying himself as a defender of the American democratic tradition against its enemies. Ganz notes that calls to restore freedom, liberty, and even democracy were used by fascist intellectuals and movements in interwar Germany, France, and Italy because they were culturally powerful a way of recruiting the people to ones way of thinking by speaking their language.

In the US context it also makes sense that the reactionary mind would inevitably mythologize a truer version of our republican and democratic traditions as the author does in this piece, because those are the basic symbols of our political tradition, he writes. In the French context, many fascist and para-fascist groups declared fealty to the republican tradition, which is as nearly predominant in that country as it is in our own.

One does not need to go to Europe to see political oppression defended in democratic terms. In 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace delivered an inaugural address in Montgomery, casting the Souths long tradition of oppression of African Americans as integral to southern freedom:

Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom- loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.

Ellmerss essay is in line with this tradition, identifying freedom as a right that only a certain section of the population deserves. Those outside of it, either because they come from the wrong background or think the wrong way, have no just claim on our political system. When they wield power, it is by definition oppression.

In some ways, this is the central animating idea of the broader conservative movement in America. Ellmers is a radical who sees himself as opposed to establishment conservatism, but in reality, many on the broader right share a more attenuated version of his worldview and pursue the disempowerment of their political opponents.

Barack Obamas 2008 victory, and the attendant talk of a coalition of minorities and young voters creating a permanent Democratic majority, helped spread anxieties about declining electoral power on the political right. After the 2010 midterm elections, which swept Republicans into power in statehouses across the country, they acted drawing gerrymandered maps and passing laws, like voter ID, seemingly designed to suppress Democratic-leaning constituencies.

The state-level Republican lawmakers were often quite honest about their aim of locking Democrats out of office.

I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats, former North Carolina Rep. David Lewis, who chaired the states recent redistricting committee, once said. So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country.

The January 6 attack on the Capitol was a pure expression of Ellmers-ism, a violent lashing out against a system that conservatives believe to be fraudulent and corrupt. The new round of voter suppression bills represents the more subtle 2010 variant of Republican anti-democratic attitudes: that the system can be rigged such that the Democratic threat is locked out of power for good.

There are at least eight proposals from Republican lawmakers in state legislatures around the country to seize partisan control over electoral administration. One of the most egregious examples, in Georgia, was passed into law last week. More broadly, there are over 250 state bills under consideration that would curtail voting rights in one way or another.

That these proposals are justified in the language of restoring confidence in elections and preventing fraud does not make them actually defensible in democratic terms anymore than Ellmerss thinly-veiled pining for a civil war is democratic because he wants to wage it in defense of a warped conception of liberty.

In a sense, Ellmers is right that Americas political system no longer works. Hes just wrong about who broke it and why.

More:
New Claremont essay reveals how Republicans are rejecting America - Vox

Catholics are divided along party lines on whether Biden should be allowed to receive Communion

Shadowed by security detail, Joe Biden leaves St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church,his home church inWilmington, Delaware,on Jan. 9, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this survey to measure what Americans know and think about the religious faith of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The study also explores Catholics attitudes about whether Catholic politicians including Joe Biden should be barred from receiving Communion if they disagree with the Catholic Churchs teachings about a variety of political issues. For this report, we surveyed 12,055 U.S. adults (including 2,492 Catholics) from March 1 to 7, 2021. All respondents to the survey are part of the Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories. For more, see the ATPs methodology and the methodology for this report.

The questions used in this report can be found here.

Joe Biden is just the second Catholic president in U.S. history, after John F. Kennedy. Most U.S. adults know that Biden is Catholic, including majorities within both major political parties, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

But partisan similarities in views about Bidens religion end there. Republicans and Democrats have vastly different views about how religious Biden is and whether he talks about his religious faith too much, too little or the right amount. This political divide extends even to Bidens fellow Catholics, who are deeply split along party lines over whether Bidens views about abortion should disqualify him from receiving Communion.

Overall, roughly six-in-ten U.S. adults including 63% of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, along with a slightly smaller majority of Republicans and Republican leaners (55%) say Joe Biden is Catholic. Most of the remainder say they are not sure what Bidens religion is, while about one-in-ten say that Biden practices a religion other than Catholicism or that he is not religious. A small handful of Republicans volunteer that Biden is a fake Catholic or a Catholic in name only, or offer other insulting comments.

While majorities in both parties know that Biden is Catholic, they disagree profoundly about the role of religion in his private and public life. Nearly nine-in-ten Democrats say that Biden is at least somewhat religious, including 45% who say they think he is a very religious person. By contrast, almost two-thirds of people who identify with or lean toward the GOP (63%) say that Biden is not too or not at all religious.

On the whole, the share of Americans who say Biden is a very or somewhat religious person has risen from 55% in February 2020 to 64% today. Over that period, there has been a particularly pronounced increase in the share of Americans who say Biden is very religious (from 9% in February 2020 to 27% today). But virtually all of this increase has happened among Democrats; among members of Bidens own party, 13% described him as very religious early last year, compared with 45% today.

It is possible that Democrats heard Biden talking about his faith on the campaign trail and since his election. Religion has been a consistent theme in his remarks in recent months, from the Democratic National Convention to his victory speech in November to his inauguration in January.

While eight-in-ten Democrats (79%) say Joe Biden mentions his religious faith and prayer about the right amount, fewer than half of Republicans (42%) agree.

Even among Bidens fellow Catholics, partisanship permeates views of Bidens religion. Nine-in-ten Democratic and Democratic-leaning Catholics say they think Biden is at least somewhat religious, including half who say he is very religious. Among Republican and Republican-leaning Catholics, by contrast, a 56% majority say Biden is not too or not at all religious. And while eight-in-ten Catholic Democrats say they think Biden discusses his faith about the right amount, barely half as many Catholic Republicans say the same (42%).

The survey finds, furthermore, that a slim majority of Catholic Republicans (55%) think that Bidens views about abortion should disqualify him from receiving Communion in the Catholic Church. But nearly nine-in-ten Catholic Democrats (87%) come down on the other side of this question, saying that Biden should be allowed to receive the Eucharist. Biden has said that he wants to make Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a womans right to an abortion nationwide, the law of the land, among other policy changes. As a result, some Catholic clergy have called for Biden to be denied Communion, and U.S. bishops may produce a document on the issue.

These are among the key findings of a new Pew Research Center survey conducted March 1-7, 2021, among 12,055 U.S. adults (including 2,492 Catholics) on the Centers online, nationally representative American Trends Panel. More information on how the survey was conducted is available in the methodology.

In addition to asking about whether Biden should be allowed to receive Communion, the survey also asked Catholics whether, in general, Catholic politicians who disagree with the churchs teachings about a variety of issues should be allowed to go to Communion.

Overall, three-in-ten Catholics say that Catholic political figures who disagree with church teaching about abortion should be barred from Communion. But fewer say this should be the case for those who disagree with the church over homosexuality (19%) or the death penalty (18%), and just one-in-ten say Catholic politicians who disagree with the churchs teachings on immigration should be disqualified from receiving the Eucharist.

There are big partisan differences over whether politicians views about abortion and homosexuality should make them ineligible for Communion. (Both of these are issues on which Catholic teaching might be described as conservative in the context of American politics.) Roughly half of Catholic Republicans (49%) say politicians who support legal abortion should not be able to receive the sacrament; just 15% of Catholic Democrats agree. And there is a partisan gap of 18 percentage points on the question about homosexuality: 30% of Catholic Republicans say politicians should be barred from Communion if they disagree with the church about homosexuality, compared with just 12% of Catholic Democrats who say the same.

On the other two issues raised in the survey the death penalty and immigration, where Catholic teaching might best be described as liberal within the U.S. political context there are no such partisan differences. Large majorities of Catholics in both parties say that Catholic politicians who disagree with the church about these issues should be able to present themselves for Communion.

Combining these questions shows that seven-in-ten Catholic Democrats dont think disagreeing with the church about any of the four issues raised by the survey should disqualify Catholic politicians from receiving Communion.

By contrast, most Republicans say they think it should be disqualifying if a Catholic politician disagrees with the church on at least one of these issues. This includes 18% of Catholic Republicans who think abortion is the sole issue of those presented by the survey that should be a litmus test for receiving Communion, along with 17% of Republicans who name both abortion and one other issue (usually homosexuality). An additional 14% of Catholic Republicans say that three or four of these issues should be grounds for disqualifying Catholic politicians from receiving Communion in the event of a disagreement with the church.

The public is less familiar with Vice President Kamala Harris religious identity than with Bidens, and fewer people say they think Harris is a religious person than say the same about Biden. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they are not sure what Harris religious identity is, while just 12% say that she is a Protestant (Harris identifies as Baptist).

About half of U.S. adults say they think Harris is a very religious (8%) or somewhat religious person (38%), while the other half say that she is not too religious (28%) or not at all religious (23%). Again, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to see Harris as at least somewhat religious (69% vs. 19%), although equal shares in both parties say they do not know what Harris religion is (64% each).

The remainder of this report explores these and other findings in more detail.

Two-thirds of U.S. Catholics, including three-quarters of White Catholics, know that Joe Biden shares their religious identity. Three-quarters of U.S. Jews also know that Biden is Catholic, as do two-thirds of self-described atheists and agnostics. Among Black Protestants and those who describe their religion as nothing in particular, roughly half or fewer are able to identify Bidens religion.

Americans are far less familiar with Kamala Harris religion than with Bidens. Overall, about two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) say they are not sure what the vice presidents religion is. One-in-eight (12%) correctly describe Harris as Protestant, while 3% say she is Hindu. Harris mother was from India and her father was from Jamaica, and she was raised on Hinduism and Christianity, according to Religion News Service.

Majorities across a wide variety of religious groups say they are not sure what Harris religion is. Jews, Black Protestants and self-described atheists and agnostics are able to correctly identify Harris religion at slightly higher rates than those in some other religious groups. Still, even among these most knowledgeable groups, only about one-in-five know that Harris is Protestant.

While Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to say they dont know what Harris religion is, there are differences among those who do give a response. Democrats are more likely to say that Harris is Protestant (18% vs. 7%), while Republicans are more inclined to say that she does not have a religion (15% vs. 3%).

Across a variety of religious groups, sizable majorities say they think Biden is at least somewhat religious, ranging from 60% of White Protestants who are not evangelical to 87% among Black Protestants. There is just one exception to this pattern: Only one-third of White evangelical Protestants (35%) say they think Biden is a religious person, while almost two-thirds (63%) say he is not too or not at all religious.

Fewer people in most religious groups say they think Harris is a very or somewhat religious person. Here again, the view that Harris is a religious person is most common among Black Protestants (78%) and least common among White evangelical Protestants (20%).

These differences among religious groups are in line with patterns of partisanship: Black Protestants are among the most strongly and consistently Democratic constituencies in U.S. politics, while White evangelical Protestants are among the most reliably Republican groups.

The survey also asked respondents about how religious they think former President Donald Trump is, with overall results similar to early 2020. Today, 32% of U.S. adults say Trump is very or somewhat religious, while 67% say he is not too or not at all religious. In February 2020, 35% said Trump was at least somewhat religious and 63% said he was not too or not at all religious.

Six-in-ten U.S. adults say they think Biden mentions his religious faith and prayer about the right amount, while the remainder are divided as to whether he discusses his faith too much (14%) or too little (21%).

Majorities of people in nearly every religious group analyzed express the view that Biden discusses his religion the appropriate amount, topping out at 78% among Black Protestants. White evangelicals are the only group in which fewer than half of respondents say Biden discusses his faith about the right amount (41%); a similar share (39%) say Biden doesnt talk about his faith enough.

Respondents who identify as atheist or agnostic are more likely than other Americans to say Biden discusses his faith too much (28%), but still, two-thirds in this group say Biden talks about religion the right amount (68%).

U.S. Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week are considerably more likely than those who attend Mass less often to say that politicians who disagree with the churchs position on abortion should be ineligible for Communion (42% vs. 24%). Weekly churchgoers also are more inclined than other Catholics to say disagreements over homosexuality and the death penalty are cause for barring politicians from the Eucharist. But there are no differences among Catholics based on frequency of church attendance when it comes to whether politicians who disagree with the church about immigration should be able to receive Communion.

Catholics ages 50 and older are a bit more likely than younger Catholics to say politicians who support abortion rights should be ineligible for Communion, while younger Catholics are slightly more likely than their elders to say a politician who disagrees with church teachings about capital punishment or immigration should be disqualified from Communion.

More specifically, four-in-ten Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week say that Bidens views about abortion should disqualify him from receiving the Eucharist 15 points higher than the share who say this among those who attend Mass less often. White Catholics and those 50 and older are somewhat more inclined than Hispanic Catholics and those under 50 to say Biden should not be allowed to go to Communion.

See the original post here:
Most Democrats and Republicans Know Biden Is Catholic, but They Differ Sharply About How Religious He Is - Pew Research Center's Religion and Public...

Public opinion polling shows that vaccine hesitancy remains prevalent and diverse in Texas, even as the number of Texans vaccinated against COVID-19 slowly climbs. Perhaps the most important lesson after a year of extensive polling is that although there are well-documented partisan differences in the stated intention to get vaccinated among Texans, hesitancy is not only a Republican problem.

More Republicans than Democrats did express hesitancy or outright refusal to get a COVID vaccine, but 1 in 4 Texas Democrats (27%) also expressed reluctance in a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. This is representative of a broader underlying problem: Skepticism about vaccines exists among a broad array of Texans.

In order to separate perceptions of vaccines as a medical procedure from partisan impulses that many Texans may harbor, we separated considerations of vaccines in general from the COVID vaccine in particular in our polling. We asked Texans whether vaccines are generally safe and, in a separate item, whether they are generally effective, before we asked their opinions on COVID-19 and the COVID vaccine.

Asked this way, only 56% of Texans expressed that vaccines are generally both safe and effective. So nearly half of Texans, 44%, would not commit to what has been an implicit or explicit feature of vaccine messaging: the assumption that most people trust vaccines, or at least dont experience much internal conflict in reaching the conclusion that the benefits of getting vaccinated outweigh the risk, even if they harbor concerns about coronavirus vaccines.

Texans who view the coronavirus as less than a significant crisis, as indicated in previous polls, are unsurprisingly more likely to express hesitancy about getting vaccinated. Although Texas Republicans make up a large share of this group, it is by no means an exclusively Republican group. More than 1 in 4 voters who dont view the virus as a significant crisis identify as Democrats or political independents.

A relatively high degree of reluctance to obtain the vaccine among Black Americans has already been widely noted and continues to be aggressively addressed by Black opinion leaders and public health officials. Texas is no exception. African Americans, a largely Democratic group, do appear to be less inclined than white Texans to say that they will definitely get a COVID vaccine: 38% of white Texans say they will do so, but only 28% of Black Texans.

Education and age also matter. Texans without a college education, a group made up of similarly large shares of registered voters in both parties, are more reluctant than Texans with college or postgraduate degrees to say they will get vaccinated, as are younger Texans compared with older again, a group not uniformly Democratic or Republican.

Yes, partisan perceptions are informed and reinforced by messages sent by the parties leaders. Donald Trump spent a lot of his time politicizing the virus as an overblown threat, then did the same when he used a promised vaccine as a hail-Mary campaign prop. Gov. Greg Abbotts promotion of vaccines and their availability habitually includes subtweeting reminders like Vaccines are always voluntary, never forced or simply Always voluntary.

But while 52% of Republicans expressed skepticism about vaccinations in general, so too did nearly 1 in 3 Texas Democrats (30%).

Elected officials of both parties need to send clear signals about vaccination without partisan pandering. Relentless promotion of COVID-19 vaccination strategically targeted at skepticism wherever it resides will both address the public health crisis posed by the pandemic and spur economic recovery. And in doing so, it can overcome the false dichotomy between the two that partisan politics have propagated.

Resting the explanation for vaccine hesitancy on partisanship alone does Texas and the country a disservice. It reinforces an already costly, dangerous and deadly manifestation of partisan polarization. Achieving herd immunity requires addressing Republican skepticism toward the coronavirus and the vaccines, but it will also take turning collective public health attention toward the many other Texans who are less certain about vaccines than is often assumed.

Jim Henson is the director of the Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas at Austin.

Joshua Blank is the research director of the Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas at Austin.

A version of this op-ed appeared in the Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman, San Antonio Express News, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Kaiser Health News, and the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Read the rest here:
Vaccine Hesitancy in Texas is More Than a Republican Issue - UT News - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Doug Deters| Florida Times-Union

First of all, as a school teacher, proud Republican and citizen of Florida I want to sincerely thank our political representatives in Tallahassee for having in-person learning all year! You stepped up and took the lead nationally when many states caved and some states/school districts are still not having in-person learning, which is disgraceful in my opinion.

With that said, please focus on getting us "back to normal" in regards to fighting COVID-19, continuing to get our citizens vaccinated at break-neck speed and keeping our economy open and growing.Please stop with the anti-union legislation and focus on what is most important during this critical time in history.

The Republican sponsored Senate Bill 1014 requires actions such as all teachers union membership applications to add phrases like "Right to Work State" in bold print. Newsflash my fellow Republicans: Teachers are professionals and we are already well aware what the laws are concerning our local unions.

Members would have to "renew" their membership yearly. Doing this entails filling out another application, contacting human resources to renew our payment deduction from our paychecks and essentially adds unnecessary paperwork for us and the school district. But we all know how much teachers love paperwork! This particular part of the bill makes as much sense as my wife and I renewing our marriage license yearly or having to renew our mortgage and car loan applications on a yearly basis. Newsflash to my fellow Republicans: Teachers are professionals and if we want to terminate our membership (which we are free to do any time) we are well aware how to take the appropriate steps.

Currently union membership is anonymous. SB 1014 will make named membership rosters available to the Public Employee Relations Commission. Don't worry readers, I don't know what that is either so let me translate. Currently principals do not have an active roster of who is a member and who is not a member at each school for privacy reasons. This helps ensure that members (or non-members) are not targeted.

I think my fellow Republicans will see many unintended consequences that will hurt the very people they want to "strengthen;" non-members. Let's think about this from a principals perspective. If a school administrator has to reduce his or her workforce (which happens quite often) and they have access to an active roster, they will likely target the non-members. Why? Non-members will not be able to "put up a fight" that an active member will be able to. Active members have the power of representation, which is a best advantage of being in the local union. A union member has someone that will fight for their rights and exhaust every avenue possible for a particular member to keep their job. Newsflash to my fellow Republicans: Your bill will likely hurt your base of voters.

So my fellow Republican leaders please stick to your strengths like battling COVID-19, getting people vaccinated, growing our economy and getting our state back to normal (I am sick of wearing a mask!!). The citizens of Florida need you focused on that more than ever!

Doug Deters is aClay County teacher and Duval County resident.

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Guest column: Republican leaders, focus on the economy not taking away teacher rights - The Florida Times-Union

Cars enter and leave a drive-thru voting site in Houston on Election Day in 2020. Texas Republican lawmakers are looking to ban the practice. David J. Phillip/AP hide caption

Cars enter and leave a drive-thru voting site in Houston on Election Day in 2020. Texas Republican lawmakers are looking to ban the practice.

Last year, when Isabel Longoria had to figure out how to safely hold an election during a pandemic, she saw the daunting task as an opportunity to do things differently.

"I just started dreaming," says Longoria, the elections administrator for Harris County in Texas. "And I just said, 'OK, let's start from the beginning not with what's possible first but what do voters want, and what's going to make it safer?' "

Harris County is home to Houston, and is one of the most populous and diverse areas of the country. Longoria says figuring out how to make polling locations less crowded was a main focus in the leadup to the 2020 elections, but she had always wanted to make voting easier as well.

One of her solutions was to increase the hours that voting centers were open. Some polling locations were open 24 hours at one point. Longoria says being open late at night gave shift workers including first responders more opportunities to vote. She says it also "spread out the number of people voting at any time" at a location.

Longoria also looked to local businesses, which were shifting to curbside options for their customers. She came up with drive-thru voting.

"Most folks who are fortunate to have a car use it to do all sorts of things banking, grocery shopping," she says. "What makes voting different? In my opinion, nothing."

Longoria and her team also tried to make mail voting easier by sending out ballot applications to all eligible voters, in case people didn't know they had that option.

But Republican leaders in Texas say all of these efforts were an overreach.

During a recent news conference, Gov. Greg Abbott argued that local election officials including those in Harris County were doing things not explicitly allowed by law. He also accused them of effectively opening the door to voter fraud.

"Whether it's the unauthorized expansion of mail-in ballots or the unauthorized expansion of drive-thru voting," Abbott says, "we must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process."

In response to those local efforts, Republicans who control the state legislature filed a series of restrictive voting bills. Researchers last year said "Texas is the state with the most restrictive voting processes," but it's likely its laws will become stricter.

One measure that's been proposed would make distributing ballot applications to voters who didn't ask for one a felony. Others would outlaw drive thru-voting, and not allow polling locations to be open for more than 12 hours specifically beyond 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Another would require that election administrators put the same amount of voting machines in every one of their polling sites, no matter what.

That last one makes no sense to Chris Davis, the election administrator in Williamson County, a swing county in central Texas.

"If you have a smaller-size room in one part of your county that can only fit eight [voting machines]," he says, "well, by golly, eight is as many as you can have in an arena, or a lecture hall or high school gym."

Davis says the proposed changes to how local officials run elections are "incredibly short-sighted" and could lead to a misuse of public resources. And he also takes issue with proposals that would allow people to record video and sound in polling locations and ballot counting sites. He says that creates election security concerns.

But mostly Davis says he feels like lawmakers are accusing election administrators of doing bad things, which he says just isn't true.

"We contend that this isn't based in reality," he says. "It's a perception brought on by very, very visible candidates. And that perception has taken on a life of its own."

Committees in the Texas House and Senate began hearing two of the most notable Republican voting bills this week including House Bill 6 and Senate Bill 7.

Texas Democrats have raised concerns that certain bills would make running elections harder because of the fear of prosecution looming over many possible mistakes.

Harris County's Longoria says the reaction from state leaders has been disappointing because she was successful in getting more people to vote while also limiting the potential spread of the coronavirus. Turnout in Harris County hit about a 30-year high in 2020.

"We were really proud," she says.

Longoria, as well as voting rights advocates in Texas, are also worried these voting bills could make it harder for marginalized communities to vote. Longoria says it's difficult to disregard the role of race in this effort as lawmakers zero in on things like drive-thru voting.

"One hundred twenty-seven thousand voters did drive-thru voting the majority of which were Black and brown voters," she says. "It's hard to not draw a line and say, 'Why are you going after this innovation?' "

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Texas Republicans Look To Curb Local Efforts To Expand Voting Access - NPR