US Politics

The US supreme court is an extraordinarily exclusive club. The nine members are unelected and employed for life, or until they step down voluntarily. And, as in many exclusive clubs, the membership likes to keep things just as they have always been.Tradition has its merits, of course, but recent events clearly show that change is urgently needed.The court, shockingly, is not bound by a code of ethics as lower courts are. Federal laws about financial disclosures, for example, do apply to them, but there is no clear method of enforcement.The remedy, a bad one, apparently is that these justices are so wise that they will police themselves. Clearly, that doesn’t happen, or not effectively enough.More proof came this week when the excellent investigative news outlet ProPublica revealed that, in 2008, Justice Samuel Alito took a trip to Alaska on the private jet of hedge fund manager and Republican donor Paul Singer – a trip that likely would have cost more than $100,000 if arranged independently.But Alito never disclosed the trip. What’s worse – and perhaps entirely predictable – Singer’s businesses were involved in several supreme court cases over the next few years, and Alito didn’t recuse himself.He’s being blasted for it in some corners, and so is the court. Rightly so.“The billionaire who paid for private jet rides and luxury fishing trips for Samuel Alito also bankrolled the groups funding the plaintiffs in the student loan relief case,” complained Sawyer Hackett, a senior adviser to Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and Obama cabinet member. (Two lawsuits have challenged the legality of President Biden’s $400bn student loan forgiveness plan; the supreme court is expected to rule on it within weeks.)And Hackett asked the obvious question, given that reality: “How can this court be considered legitimate?”The answer is that it can’t be, until the court gets its house in order. The Alito revelations come on top of recent ProPublica reporting about Justice Clarence Thomas’s ethical lapses – specifically his acceptance of financial favors from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, another Republican donor. Crow made tuition payments for a member of Thomas’s family, paid for lavish trips and participated in a dubious real estate deal involving the home that the justice’s mother lived in.Sadly, these justices aren’t the only ones behaving badly: the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page agreed to publish Alito’s defensive statement, in an op-ed, about the ProPublica revelations before the investigative article had even run. (Alito wouldn’t comment on ProPublica’s reporting when he was given the opportunity before publication.) Call it a “pre-buttal”, and one that lacked even a basic level of journalistic solidarity on the part of the Journal’s opinion side. Thought experiment: what if, say, the Washington Post’s editorial board had allowed Elizabeth Holmes to pre-empt John Carreyrou’s investigation for the Wall Street Journal that exposed the fraudulent practices of her blood-testing company, Theranos (her crimes sent her to federal prison last month).What’s to be done about these persistent judicial ethics lapses?“When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself,” ProPublica noted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat’s not nearly good enough.For years, good-government groups and thinktanks have been advocating for change.In 2019, the well-respected Brennan Center for Justice, in an extensive report, urged the court to voluntarily adopt a formal ethics code, rather than wait for Congress to impose one. It also called for the court to explain justices’ reasons for recusal, in order to provide more transparency, and to strengthen its informal – and all-too-weak – practices governing gifts and financial disclosures.All good and necessary ideas. And it would be ideal for the court to get to work on all of that.But since there seems little appetite to do so, it’s left up to Congress to do it for them. Checks, balances and all of that.Today’s supreme court is extremely powerful, increasingly political and decreasingly trusted. It’s never been more obvious that ethics reform needs to happen now.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

The US supreme court could be poised to ban the use of affirmative action policies in college admissions as soon as Thursday. The court, which is expected to deliver its ruling either this week or next, will determine whether race-conscious admissions violate the equal-protection clause under the US constitution.Envisioned as a tool to help remedy historical discrimination and create more diverse student bodies, affirmative action policies have permitted hundreds of colleges and universities to factor in students’ racial backgrounds during the admissions process. That consideration is supplementary, and taken in tandem with other factors such as applicants’ test scores, grades and extracurricular activities.Even with race-conscious admissions, however, many selective public and private colleges and universities struggle to enroll diverse student populations that accurately reflect society. At the University of North Carolina, for example, in a state where 21% of people are Black, just 8% of the school’s undergraduates are Black.Opponents of affirmative action, such as the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, argue that considering race as a factor in the admissions process amounts to racial discrimination – particularly against Asian Americans. SFA has brought cases against Harvard University, the nation’s oldest private university, and UNC, the nation’s first public university, to challenge their affirmative action policies, which the group contends favors Black and Latino students. Ultimately, it hopes that race considerations will be nixed from the admissions process entirely, and replaced by race-neutral or “color-blind” policies.What is affirmative action designed to do?The concept of affirmative action originated in 1961 when President John F Kennedy issued an executive order directing government agencies to ensure that all Americans get an equal opportunity in employment. President Lyndon Johnson took it one step further in 1965, barring public and private organizations that had a federal contract from discriminating based on race, color, religion and national origin. The prohibition was added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.In 1969, President Richard Nixon’s assistant labor secretary, Arthur Fletcher, who would eventually be known as the “father of affirmative action”, pushed for requiring employers to set “goals and timetables” to hire more Black workers. That effort, known as the Revised Philadelphia Plan, would later influence how many schools approached their own race-conscious admissions programs.The practice was challenged when Allan Bakke, a white man who was twice denied entry to the medical school at the University of California at Davis, sued the university, arguing that its policies, which included allocating seats for “qualified” students of color, discriminated against him. In 1978, the supreme court narrowly rejected the use of “racial quotas”, but noted that colleges and universities could use race as a factor in the admissions process. Justice Lewis Powell noted that achieving diversity represented a “compelling government interest”.What has affirmative action in college admissions actually achieved?After generations of near total exclusion of Black students and other students of color, colleges and universities began admitting more diverse groups in the 1960s and 70s, and soon thereafter incorporated race-consciousness into their admissions policies.Data shows that the rise of affirmative action policies in higher education has bolstered diversity on college campuses. In 1965, Black students accounted for roughly 5% of all undergraduates. And between 1965 and 2001, the percentage of Black undergraduates doubled. The number of Latino undergraduates also rose during that time. Still, the practice of factoring race into the admissions process faced repeated attacks. In 1998, during an era of conservatism, California voters approved Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action in any state or government agency, including its university system. Since then, eight more states have eliminated such race-conscious policies.What could happen next?The end of affirmative action at those state levels shows just how impactful the consideration of race in admissions has been: a UC Berkeley study found that after the ban in California, the number of applicants of color in the UC system “sharply shifted away from UC’s most selective Berkeley and UCLA campuses, causing a cascade of students to enroll at lower-quality public institutions and some private universities”. Specifically, the number of Black freshmen admitted to UC Berkeley dropped to 3.6% between 2006 and 2010 – almost half of its population before the ban.In an amicus brief in the Harvard case, attorneys for the University of Michigan, which had to stop considering race in admissions in 2006, argued that despite “persistent, vigorous and varied efforts” to achieve diversity, it has struggled to do so without race-consciousness. The number of Black and Native American students has “dramatically” dropped since the end of affirmative action in the state.Though students of color remain underrepresented at selective colleges and universities today, institutions argue that their presence helps shape students’ on-campus experiences. The possible removal of race consideration from college admissions would set a precedent for a less diverse school system, which stands in stark contrast to an increasingly diverse world. More

Ahead of Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington this week, Pramila Jayapal – a progressive Democratic congresswoman – circulated a letter signed by dozens of congressional lawmakers calling for Joe Biden to acknowledge the erosion of human rights and democracy during the Indian prime minister’s nine years in power.“A series of independent, credible reports reflect troubling signs in India toward the shrinking of political space, the rise of religious intolerance, the targeting of civil society organizations and journalists, and growing restrictions on press freedoms and internet access,” it warned.The letter was also signed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; notable in their absence, however, were several other Indian American politicians and Democrats, including Ro Khanna, Shri Thanedar, Ami Bera and Raja Krishnamoorthi.Modi’s state visit comes at a consequential time for the small but record number of Indian Americans in Congress.Many of these same lawmakers have led some of the country’s most vocal and comprehensive responses to the threats against US democracy, from the bipartisan focus on China to voting rights legislation.But speaking out on India’s crackdown on religious freedoms, press and speech comes with political risk: some lawmakers serve large diaspora constituencies and surveys suggest at least half of Indian Americans remain supportive of Modi. The voting bloc is also only growing in political influence and importance – now 4 million strong and on track to be the largest among Asian Americans.Meanwhile, a growing number of Indian Americans are speaking out against Modi’s brand of Hindu nationalism – Hindutva – and its repercussions in India and abroad.“It’s difficult terrain for Indian American politicians to have to navigate or lead a response to the Modi visit,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College and author and researcher of the Indian American Elections Survey. “It’s one thing to support the relationship of the US and India. It’s another thing to support a leader.”Khanna, a congressman from California, represents the largest Asian American district in the country. The Democratic-majority district is home to some of the most concentrated south Asian communities in the US, and Khanna was recently named co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.But when Khanna has broached the topic of Modi in recent years, he has quickly met backlash from Modi supporters and critics alike. In 2019, he tweeted a call for Hindu American politicians to “stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians”. More than 200 Indian American organizations immediately lodged complaints, and called for him to resign from the Congressional Pakistan Caucus.Last month, when Khanna joined the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in inviting Modi to address Congress, advocacy organisations and activists such as the Indian American Muslim Council expressed their own disappointment.“I support very strongly the US-India strategic relationship and I also believe it has to be grounded in a commitment to the rule of law, to pluralism, to human rights – we have to build and strengthen the relationship,” Khanna told the Guardian, adding that the “vast majority” of his constituents felt the same. His office did not immediately comment on Jayapal’s letter.Krishnamoorthi, a congressman from Illinois also acknowledged the complicated issues of democracy in India, but pointed to the country’s role in the context of the US’s tensions with China.“What’s very important is that right now democracy is under threat [in the US and India] and we have to do what it takes to buck up,” he said. “I’ve lived through January 6 – it represents how fragile our own democracy is. At the same time I’m aware of what’s happening in India and concerned.“We have to make sure we leverage each other’s strengths and promote democracy everywhere. Because remember there is an alternative model out there that is being shopped by the Chinese Communist party.”Such qualified acknowledgments of the threats facing democracy in India don’t go far enough for some.“The White House and Congress are making a terrible mistake by celebrating Modi on this trip,” said Arjun Sethi, a Georgetown Law professor and human rights activist. “Human rights abuses continue to worsen under his administration and they should be asking him very difficult questions instead of honoring him.”Sethi pointed to numerous internet blackouts that the Modi government has used to quell dissent and the extreme tactics to stifle the press, whether by blocking accounts on Twitter or deporting journalists. But he said the onus was not just on lawmakers, but on members of the community itself.“There is a well-known phenomenon among south Asians in America who proclaim to be liberal and supporters of human rights – except when it comes to Modi, violence and hate against marginalized communities in India,” he said.Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow focused on south Asian politics at the American Enterprise Institute, said lawmakers like Khanna have to do a “balancing act” to serve both a progressive base and Modi supporters. But he also said the chasm between Indian Americans supporting Modi and those who were either critical or indifferent of him was only expected to grow with the younger population.“Hindu nationalism as an ideology is innately unappealing, and there’s a large proportion of the Indian American community that is not Hindu,” he said. “The ideas espoused by the BJP [Modi’s party] are simply not compatible with liberal democracy as we understand it.”The White House, in the meantime, has done its own balancing act. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said the administration will “make our views known” on India’s press and religious freedoms, according to Reuters. “We do so in a way where we don’t seek to lecture or assert that we don’t have challenges ourselves.With all of the careful political calculus, Thursday’s events promise to be contentious. Some members of Congress – including Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – will boycott Modi’s address to the chambers because of anti-Muslim sentiment. And thousands of Indian Americans, which will probably include influential political donors, invited to Modi’s address could encounter protesters outside the White House complex.But for some Indian American lawmakers, the ability to simultaneously represent the US and strengthen a relationship with India is worth protecting.“I just want to focus on the people of both countries,” said Thanedar, a congressman from Michigan. “I’d like to see a much stronger relationship with India than we’ve seen in the last several decades.” More

The Senate budget committee held a hearing on Wednesday morning to scrutinize the role of oil- and gas-linked “dark money” in delaying climate action – and tearing through local and federal budgets.The hearing was led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has held 10 climate crisis-focused hearings since he took the helm of the budget committee this past February.It follows an inquiry launched by House Democrats in 2021, which focused on big oil’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about the climate crisis.“I am shining a light on the massive, well-documented economic risks of climate change,” said Whitehouse, who has also given nearly 300 speeches about the climate crisis on the Senate floor. “These are risks that have the potential to cascade across our entire economy and trigger widespread financial hardship and calamity.”In his opening remarks, Whitehouse described the well-documented misinformation campaign that fossil fuel interests have waged on the American public.“Beginning as early as the 1950s, industry scientists became aware of climate change, measuring and predicting it decades before it became a public issue,” he said. “But industry management and CEOs spent decades promoting climate misinformation.”Ranking member Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, said the hearing was a “missed opportunity to work together on a responsible budget”. He also claimed Democrats obtain “much more secret or dark money than Republicans”.Committee Democrats invited three witnesses. First to the stand was the Harvard history of science professor Naomi Oreskes. “Climate change is a market failure, and market failures require government action to address,” she testified.Fossil fuel interests’ efforts to disrupt climate policy had come at great expense to the US, including not only financial costs, but also human suffering and lives lost, said Oreskes, who has written several books on oil industry misinformation.Christine Arena, former public relations executive at the firm Edelman who now works in social impact film-making, and who was also invited by Senate Democrats, drew comparisons between the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long misinformation campaign and how the tobacco industry tried to cover up the harms of smoking.“Just like the tobacco executives before them, [fossil fuel executives] characterize peer-reviewed science and investigative journalism that illustrates the extent of their deceptions as biased or inconclusive,” said Arena, who is now the founder of Generous Films.Richard Painter, professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School who was chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, was third to testify. A political independent, Painter said Americans should get on board with the push to end climate misinformation no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.“This is not a partisan issue,” said Painter, who was also invited by Whitehouse. “This is about caring, and doing something about a grave threat to the human race.”The last two witnesses were invited by Republican senators. First up was Dr Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who said he believed climate change was real, human-caused and dangerous, but that the Democrats’ concerns were overblown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast to testify was Scott Walker, president of the conservative non-profit Capital Research Center who served in the George W Bush administration as special assistant to the president for domestic policy. “To say that a group uses dark money is like saying the group uses telephones. It’s a universal technology,” he said.He insisted that dark money was not a major problem in American politics. Insofar as it was a problem, he said, the political left took more money than the right.In an interview after the hearing, Oreskes said she suspected the evidence that Democrats take more dark money than Republicans may be based on “cherry-picked” data. “Cherry-picking is a tactic we know climate deniers and skeptics have used for decades,” she said.While being questioned by Whitehouse, Oreskes explained that in the mid-2000s, she and others who wrote about the scientific consensus on the human-caused climate crisis received hate mail and were the targets of official complaints and other attacks.“That experience of being attacked led me to try to understand what these attacks were, who was funding them, who was behind them, and why they were doing it,” she said.Later, Grassley asked Pielke to talk more about the influence dark money has on Democrats. “I can’t explain exactly why your colleagues aren’t willing to look at the dark money ties of their own witnesses,” said Pielke.Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat, addressed these allegations, offering a solution for his Republican colleagues who are concerned about dark money’s influence on Democrats. The Disclose Act, introduced by Whitehouse in the Senate this year, would expose the sources of these clandestine funds for Democrats and Republicans alike, he said. “I would invite my colleagues across the aisle to join us in ending dark money on both sides,” said Merkley. More

More than a quarter of registered US voters say they will only vote for candidates who share their beliefs on abortion, according to a poll released on Wednesday, a total (28%) one point higher than last year.The survey, from Gallup, was released before the first anniversary of Dobbs v Jackson, by which conservatives on the supreme court removed the right to abortion that had been safeguarded since Roe v Wade in 1973.A majority of Americans think abortion should be legal at least in some form. Since Dobbs, abortion rights has been seen as a vital motivating factor in a succession of Democratic successes.According to another poll released on Wednesday, by NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist, 57% of Americans say the court was wrong to bring down Roe.According to Gallup, for many voters who do not solely base their vote on abortion, the issue is still important: just 14% of respondents said abortion was not a major issue in deciding how they vote. That was down two points on the same survey last year and nine points from the previous low, 23%, in 2007.In the new Gallup survey, 56% said abortion was just one issue out of many when deciding how to vote. In 2022, 54% gave that answer.Primary elections continue to serve as a testing ground for the issue.In Virginia, a state that often indicates national voting trends and where abortion access is shrinking, politicians espousing anti-abortion views are losing popularity.On Tuesday, incumbents in favor of limiting or banning abortion access lost their elections.Amanda Chase, who has been in the state senate since 2016 and describes herself as “Trump in heels”, lost her Republican primary. Chase is in favor of completely banning abortion.Another incumbent Virginia state senator, Joe Morrissey, a centrist Democrat, has pushed for limits on abortion access, trying to pass a bill with Republicans to ban abortion after 20 weeks. He also lost his primary, beaten by a former state legislator, Lashrecse Aird, by an overwhelming 70%.Gallup said the Dobbs decision had a profound impact on voters on both sides of the issue.“Not only did the supreme court’s Dobbs decision cause more Americans to identify as pro-choice than had for the prior quarter-century,” the pollster said, “it also caused that expanded group of pro-choice identifiers to attach greater importance to a candidate’s abortion stance when they vote.“Meanwhile, the diminished pro-life segment of the electorate is less energized on the issue than they have been previously, indicating that the desire to see laws changed is more motivating to voters than wanting current laws maintained.” More

The two people who guaranteed bail for George Santos will have their names publicly revealed, a federal judge ruled, rejecting the indicted Republican congressman’s claim that the disclosure could threaten the guarantors’ safety.Joanna Seybert, a US district judge in Central Islip, New York, said the names would be made public on Thursday at 12pm ET.Seybert said Santos could in the meantime try to modify the terms of his release if his guarantors, who he has suggested are family members, withdraw their $500,000 guarantee.Santos, 34, has expressed a willingness to go to jail rather than release the names.The first-term congressman has pleaded not guilty to a 13-count indictment accusing him of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Following his election, Santos drew huge criticism, including bipartisan calls that he resign, after reports that he had lied about much of his personal and professional background.Amid numerous stories detailing a picaresque political rise, Santos has denied wrongdoing but admitted to fabricating large parts of his résumé.Republican leaders in the House have not pushed Santos to quit. As he took his seat in Congress in January, he supported Kevin McCarthy of California through 15 votes for the position of speaker. McCarthy must rely on a narrow majority, prey to the far right of the party.Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Santos, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the order to reveal the identities of the guarantors.Santos appealed a 6 June ruling by a federal magistrate judge to identify the guarantors.At least 11 media organizations sought the names, citing public interest. According to a court filing, the House ethics committee also wants the names, to determine whether Santos violated rules on gifts.Murray has said Santos and his staff have been subjected to a “media frenzy and hateful attacks” since the congressman’s indictment became public on 9 May, and it was “reasonable” to believe his bail guarantors might face the same treatment. More

Donald Trump’s indictment earlier this month on 37 counts related to mishandling classified information set off a firestorm on the political right. Conservatives accused Joe Biden of using the justice system to prosecute his main political rival and attempting to “steal” the 2024 election. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, promised to “hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable”. In short, the right wants us to believe that Biden and his administration will stop at nothing to put Trump in jail as quickly as possible.In fact, the exact opposite is true. Worried about just this type of accusation, the justice department under Merrick Garland and the FBI have approached their investigations of Trump much too cautiously. Far from being persecuted because of who he is, Trump’s status as a former president and as the unofficial leader of the Republican party have led to him being handled with vastly more deference than anyone else would be. The result has been a series of delays and missteps which may allow Trump to escape accountability once again.It is now nearly 18 months since the government first recovered classified material from Mar-a-Lago in early 2022. Although the justice department concluded shortly afterwards that Trump likely possessed further sensitive material, it took seven months for Mar-a-Lago to be searched, in part because the FBI feared that the move would open the agency to accusations of partisanship. Trump was then only indicted nearly a year later. After his initial arraignment he remains a free man, released without having to post bail – despite credible concerns he may still have additional classified material in his possession.Compare that timeline to the events surrounding the arrest of intelligence contractor Reality Winner, who in 2017 received a five-year prison sentence for leaking one document to the news website the Intercept. The document Winner leaked was written on 5 May 2017 and she was arrested on 3 June, days before the Intercept even had a chance to publish its article about her leak. She was indicted on 8 June and jailed pending her trial. Winner later pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act – precisely the law that it seemed clear Trump had flouted for over a year before he was indicted.Trump has likewise been slow to face consequences in the federal investigation into his actions leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol. According to a new report by the Washington Post, the justice department and FBI delayed launching a probe into Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election for 15 months, again because of fears that they would be criticized for partisanship. The agencies instead pursued cases against rank-and-file insurrectionists, ignoring the existence of evidence implicating Trump and his inner circle until media and political pressure forced them to begin taking it seriously.These delays matter because they make it possible – even likely – that Trump will never truly face accountability for his actions. Trump’s trial in the documents case is unlikely to be held before the 2024 presidential election and the same is true for any possible charges in the January 6 case. If Trump wins the election and becomes president again – as current polls suggest he will – then he will have multiple tools at his disposal to derail the trials or even pardon himself. Justice delayed will be justice denied.Efforts by the justice department and other agencies to appear non-partisan have been well-intended but outdated. The modern conservative movement will give the Biden administration and the law enforcement agencies little credit for proceeding so slowly and deliberately. Instead, the justice system’s extreme deference to conservative complaints will only encourage the Maga movement to double down. If federal law enforcement can be so easily scared away from enforcing the law without fear or favor, we can expect more hysteria and finger-pointing – even threats of violence – to follow in the future.These events also set a catastrophic precedent. The sitting president’s immunity from prosecution and the political barriers to impeachment leave criminal proceedings after a president leaves office as the last available means of imposing accountability. If law enforcement agencies are too scared to investigate prominent politicians promptly and effectively, even that opportunity will vanish and presidents will be left with virtually no checks on their behavior.But worst of all is the fact that if Trump gets off the hook and re-enters office, the independence and integrity of the justice department and FBI are likely to be destroyed anyway. He has made it clear that he would seek to weaponize law enforcement agencies against his political opponents, including by forcing the justice department to follow his personal and political vendettas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump himself represents a unique threat to the rule of law and the independence of American law enforcement, one which must be confronted with appropriate but aggressive tools. Sadly, thanks to years of misplaced appeasement, it might already be too late.
Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University. He hosts a podcast called America Explained and writes a newsletter of the same name More

Charlie Kirk, radio host and founder of the rightwing youth group Turning Point USA, believes that a conspiracy may be afoot. “Whether they’re doing this intentionally or not, the consequence will be … an all-out attack on AM radio,” he told the listeners of his popular syndicated show.In an appearance on Fox, the television and radio host Sean Hannity gave his viewers a similar warning: “This would be a direct hit politically on conservative talk radio in particular, which is what most people go to AM radio to listen to.” Mark Levin, another longtime radio host, agreed: “They finally figured out how to attack conservative talk radio,” he told his listeners in April.What are they all so worried about? It turns out, a minor manufacturing change announced by car companies including Volkswagen and Mazda: they will be removing AM radios from their forthcoming fleets of electric vehicles, citing technical issues. Tesla, BMW, Audi and Volvo have already dispensed with AM in their electric cars, because AM’s already unpolished reception is subject to even more buzz, crackling and interference when installed near an electric motor. While some manufacturers have found workarounds for the interference, others appear to have decided that it’s not worth the engineering expense.Many on the right have been quick to declare the move political sabotage. The Texas senator Ted Cruz, while promoting a federal bill that would require automakers to install AM radios in new cars, claimed he smelled something fishy: “There’s a reason big car companies were open to taking down AM radio … let’s be clear: big business doesn’t like things that are overwhelmingly conservative.”AM is the oldest commercial radio technology in the US. In the 1920s, when AM was all there was, listeners would gather around neighborhood and living room radio sets to hear everything from music to boxing matches, soap operas and presidential speeches. They would listen through AM’s constant (if now somewhat nostalgic) hum. By mid-century, music was king on the radio as many dramatic programs shifted over to the new medium of television. And in the 1960s, the comparatively crystal clear FM band overtook AM as the band of choice. Many music stations deserted AM, leaving it floundering in lo-fi isolation and struggling to secure advertising dollars, until it found its salvation in talk radio. Initially there was a wide variety of political perspectives on AM but the deregulation of content and consolidation of ownership of radio during the 1980s edged many minority voices and local owners off the air. Following the model of the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, conservative talk became the cost-effective default for the risk-averse corporations that now dominated the radio dial. The humble AM band played a starring role in the rise of social conservatism in the US and was a precursor to outlets like Fox News.These days, AM radio is somewhat synonymous in the public imagination with conservative blowhards, a place where false claims about the 2020 election, racist notions of a “great replacement” and other conspiracy theories fester and escape into the atmosphere without accountability. Far-right programming is not only ubiquitous, it’s monotonous – with a few national radio chains syndicating the same handful of shows to “local” stations, many of which have almost no local content. In cities and towns across the country, listeners hear much of the same one-sided, syndicated programming.But the idea that AM radio is made up of nothing more than conservative talk is a myth that has dangerous implications for the medium.It is true that conservatives and far-right pundits have claimed near dominion on talk radio – a medium that still ranks nearly neck-and-neck with social media for how Americans get their news. Seventeen of the top 20 most-listened-to US talk radio hosts are conservative, while only one is liberal. But that’s not the whole story: while syndicated rightwing voices are the best platformed on AM radio, what is less known is that the band is home to many of the country’s increasingly rare local stations and non-English-language radio shows. And ownership of AM radio stations is more diverse than that of FM stations: according to a 2021 FCC report, 13% of commercial AM stations were majority-owned by a Black, Hispanic or Asian American broadcaster; on the FM band, that figure was only 7%. Often lacking the financial and political resources available to chain-owned conservative talk stations, it is these local and diverse voices – not nationally syndicated conservative talkers like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin – that are likely to be the hardest hit by any changes to the band.“AM is, generally, the least expensive route to a broadcast station ownership,” says Jim Winston, president and CEO of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (Nabob), a trade organization serving Black- and minority-owned radio stations. And though the 1980s and 1990s saw a decrease in local and minority ownership, Winston says a disproportionate number of the stations he works with today are on the AM dial. “There are many communities where the only Black-owned station is an AM station,” he says. “And Black owners, for the most part, are local owners.”In cities across the country, AM stations remain a crucial resource for those who are rarely served by other media. Detroit’s WNZK, known as the “station of nations”, runs a variety of non-English and English language programming for the area’s immigrant communities. In Chicago, WNVR broadcasts in Polish, and many AM stations in California and New York run talk and music programs in Vietnamese and Chinese.The time-tested technology of AM radio has also given the medium a particularly important role in small towns and rural areas. “Out here, it does serve a very distinct purpose, because AM frequency travels very differently from FM,” says Austin Roof, general manager at KSDP in Sand Point, Alaska, on the Aleutian Islands. AM is better than FM at getting through mountains and other barriers. Plus, Roof says, “once AM hits water, it just carries really well”. For a radio station serving island residents and those who work on the area’s fishing boats, that value can’t be overstated. “One kilowatt of AM can outperform thousands of kilowatts of FM in our environment.”Satellite internet has only recently become available in much of KSDP’s coverage area, and the region’s geography means that even the few local newspapers have limited distribution. So radio stations like KSDP – which serves an area nearly twice the size of Massachusetts – can be a lifeline. In recent years, as the islands have experienced some of their largest earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, the radio has played a crucial role in spreading emergency alerts and instructions. (Between emergency updates after a 2021 earthquake, station staff played songs like AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long and the Surfaris’ Wipe Out.) “Your cellphone can lose its charge,” says Winston of Nabob, “You could be … out someplace where your cellphone signal is not being picked up.” But radio, he says, is ubiquitous, and it’s very important “that people be able to receive radio when they can’t receive anything else”.AM stations are not just of value during emergencies: in small towns and rural areas across the country, AM stations are a rare tool for civic engagement, especially with the decline in local newspapers. Roof says KSDP’s most popular broadcasts are those that listeners can’t find anywhere else: “Local, state news, local meetings, sports,” he says, “it’s the hyper-local content that matters.” The story is similar on the Yakama Reservation in Washington state, where the program director Reggie George says the hyperlocal AM station KYNR broadcasts public service announcements and coverage of local events such as government meetings and powwows, in addition to a steady playlist of both oldies and Native American music. When a technical snag or bad weather temporarily silences the station, residents react. “We get calls right away when we go off the air,” says George, one of two paid staff at KYNR.Many AM stations have tried to prepare for an uncertain future by meeting their listeners on other platforms, such as FM simulcasts, podcasts and web streams. Alaska’s KSDP has managed to get its content simulcast on one full-power and three low-power FM signals that serve nearby towns, and on a well-utilized online audio stream. But finding the money to stay afloat while supporting those other platforms hasn’t been easy. “We’ve begged, borrowed and stolen for hardware,” Roof says. Roof personally climbs the radio tower to replace equipment and touch up paint, has taken pay cuts, and has opted out of company healthcare to keep more money in the station. But other hyperlocal AM stations haven’t had the budget to make the expansion.To some in the radio industry, the removal of AM radios from electric vehicles feels like a death sentence for their already struggling medium. Others are less worried. “I think a lot of these places that are really benefiting from AM … are not where electric cars are really going to serve up the most benefits,” says Roof. In his part of the country, there’s no infrastructure to support EVs yet, and not many people can afford a Tesla or a BMW. “If you think someone in Sand Point, Alaska, is getting an electric car any time in the near future, you’re crazy,” he says. “Is getting rid of [AM radio] in electric vehicles going to do away with it? Absolutely not.”There remains a lurking sense, however, that the removal of AM from EVs is a symptom of a larger shift away from the AM band. And if other changes come to pass, it will probably be the local, diverse stations – the unlauded heroes of AM – that are at greatest risk, not the well-resourced nationally syndicated conservative talk hosts who dominate talk radio. “Those voices are not going to be shut down, no matter what happens with AM radio,” says Winston. If AM radio does become harder to access, he says, “there are serious casualties.”
Katie Thornton is a freelance print and audio journalist. Her Peabody-winning podcast series The Divided Dial, made with WNYC’s On the Media, reveals how the American right came to dominate talk radio More