Conservatism (US Politics)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      A Reckless Judicial Nomination Puts the Senate to the Test

      by

      Republicans in the Senate may be on the verge of their most consequential capitulation to President Trump so far — and I am not talking about the deficit-busting “big, beautiful bill.”On Wednesday, when the eyes of the nation were still fixed on the Middle East, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Trump’s nomination of Emil Bove to serve as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers cases from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands.Bove’s nomination is yet another sign that Trump’s second term is beginning (yes, it’s still only the beginning) very differently from his first. Just as he wants sycophants and yes men staffing his administration, he’s now moving toward staffing the judiciary with the same kind of person: judges who will do whatever it takes to curry favor with a president who values fealty above all.By now, Americans are accustomed to the devolution of Trump’s team. Serious people populated the highest levels of the executive branch at the start of Trump’s first term, but now some of the most important positions in American government are held by cranks like Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth.But as bad as those men are, their influence is ultimately limited — first by Trump himself, who feels completely free to overrule and disregard any decision they make for the sake of his own interests and whims, and second by time itself. Trump’s political appointees won’t be in American government for long, and while they can inflict lasting damage during their short tenures, the next president can replace them and at least start the process of repair.Emil Bove, however, would be a problem for a very long time. At 44 years old, he’s been nominated for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. That means he’d long outlast Trump in the halls of American power, and if past performance is any measure of future results, we should prepare for a judge who would do what he deems necessary to accomplish his political objectives — law and morality be damned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      As Mamdani Rises, Anti-Muslim Attacks Roll In From the Right

      by

      Republican members of Congress and Trump administration officials have targeted Zohran Mamdani, who would be New York City’s first Muslim mayor.Even before Zohran Mamdani claimed victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, he had become a target of racist attacks from the far right. Those attacks have only intensified in the wake of his commanding performance on Tuesday, with Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures accusing him of promoting Islamic law, supporting terrorism and posing a threat to the safety of New Yorkers, especially Jews.There has been nothing subtle about it: Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, called Mr. Mamdani’s apparent win “the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.” Representative Andy Ogles, Republican of Tennessee, accused Mr. Mamdani of supporting terrorists and asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to strip him of his citizenship and deport him.Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, shared a photo of Mr. Mamdani preparing for an Eid service while dressed in a kurta, writing, “we sadly have forgotten” the Sept. 11 attacks, which occurred when Mr. Mamdani was 9 years old and living in Manhattan. And Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, a leading group for conservative youth, sought to connect him to those attacks even more directly.“24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11,” he wrote. “Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”The attacks on Mr. Mamdani, who would be the first Muslim mayor of New York City if elected, deal in well-worn Islamophobic and anti-immigrant tropes. To some, they carry echoes of the “birther” conspiracy theory Donald J. Trump stoked for years before he was elected president, when he falsely claimed that President Barack Obama was Muslim and born in Kenya.Mr. Obama is Christian and was born in Hawaii; Mr. Mamdani is Muslim and was born to Indian parents in Uganda. But like the “birther” attacks, the vitriolic barbs being aimed at Mr. Mamdani seek to paint him as a shadowy, dangerous figure who bears no resemblance to the candidate himself.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Are Getting Richer. It’s Not Helping.

      by

      There have been endless laments for the white working-class voters the Democratic Party lost over the past few decades, particularly during the 10 years of the Trump era. But detailed 2024 election analyses also make it clear that upper-income white voters have become a much more powerful force in the party than they ever were before. These upscale white voters are driving the transformation of the Democratic Party away from its role as the representative of working-class America and closer to its nascent incarnation as the party of the well-to-do.A detailed analysis of data compiled by the Cooperative Election Study shows that in 2024, 46.8 percent of white Kamala Harris voters had annual household incomes over $80,000, while 53.2 percent earned less than that. In fact, according to data analysis by Caroline Soler, a research analyst for the Cooperative Election Study, the single largest bloc of white Democratic voters in 2024 — 27.5 percent — had incomes of $120,000 or more.Along similar lines, Tom Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, provided The Times with figures from the American National Election Studies for 2020, the most recent year for which data is available. The numbers show that white voters in the 68th to 100th income percentiles — the top third — cast 49.05 percent of their ballots for Joe Biden and 50.95 for Donald Trump. White voters in the top 5 percent of the income distribution voted 52.9 percent for Biden and 47.1 percent for Trump.These figures stand in sharp contrast to election results as recent as those of 2008. Among white voters in the top third of the income distribution that year, John McCain, the Republican nominee, beat Barack Obama 67.1 percent to 32.9 percent.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, responded by email to my inquiries about this phenomenon: “An objective look at both party’s coalitions in the mass electorate would have to acknowledge that neither Republicans nor Democrats are the ‘party of the working class.’”Instead, Lee argued:Both parties are vulnerable to charges of elitism. Republicans really do push for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. Democrats, meanwhile, take stances on social issues that appeal to socioeconomic elites.The underlying truth, Lee continued, “is that the major parties in the U.S. today are not primarily organized around a social-class cleavage.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Why Democrats Need Their Own Trump

      by

      We are more than 1,200 days away from the 2028 presidential election, but the Democratic presidential primary is already well underway. The likely candidates are fund-raising, hosting campaign rallies, starting podcasts and staking out ideological lanes.Candidates will try to carve out distinct political identities, but one challenge unites them all: Their party is historically unpopular. The Democratic Party’s favorability rating is 22 percentage points underwater — 60 percent of respondents view it unfavorably, 38 favorably. Apart from the waning days of Joe Biden’s presidency, that is by far the lowest it’s been during the more than 30 years Pew Research has collected data.The presidential hopefuls are likely to divide into two camps, moderates and progressives. But these paths misunderstand Democrats’ predicament and will fail to win over a meaningful majority in the long term. If the next Democratic nominee wants to build a majority coalition — one that doesn’t rely on Republicans running poor-quality candidates to eke out presidential wins and that doesn’t write off the Senate as a lost cause — the candidate should attack the Democratic Party itself and offer positions that outflank it from both the right and the left.It may seem like an audacious gambit, but a successful candidate has provided them a blueprint: Donald Trump.To be clear, the blueprint I refer to is not the one Mr. Trump has used to violate democratic norms and destabilize American institutions, but rather the one for resetting how Americans view a party and its leaders.In January 2013, at the time of Barack Obama’s second inauguration, Republicans were deeply unpopular. Conservative thought leaders like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove advocated comprehensive immigration reform as a pathway back to a majority. By the summer, the base’s backlash to the idea was itself so comprehensive that many of them were forced to retreat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Palm Beach, Never Richer, Is a Draw for Young MAGA. Locals Aren’t Pleased.

      by

      Donald Trump’s presidency has turned this Florida island into the nightlife headquarters of MAGA, but the town’s old guard — much of it Republican — doesn’t love the new vibe.There are no star maps on Palm Beach, and many of its biggest estates are hidden behind elaborate landscaping. To learn what belongs to whom, and how much it cost, a guide is needed, and Dana Koch, who has been selling real estate here for 22 years, knows the area cold. He’s a veteran docent in a zoo where the creatures are billionaires and it’s difficult to see the cages.“Howard and Beth Stern live here,” he said, pointing to a gate flanked by shrubbery. “This whole place, he paid about $50 million for it years ago. Now it’s worth $200 million.”On it goes, an inventory of rich and famous people, a patter that rambles along, like Mr. Koch’s car, at about 10 miles an hour. Jon Bon Jovi lives there. That’s where Roger Ailes slipped in the shower and died. William Lauder built this, after buying Rush Limbaugh’s place for $155 million and tearing it down.Some homes are identified by job (N.F.L. owner, sugar magnate) others by names, (Dr. Oz, Tom Ford, Charles Schwab). That lot once belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, whose place was razed. A new house is under construction, and the owners, Mr. Koch speculates, are going to apply for a new address.After the election last year, in one week alone, $100 million of residential real estate was sold in Palm Beach.Martina Tuaty for The New York TimesThese have been busy months for Mr. Koch, 52, who is not related to the famous Republican donors. (“Same name, different bank account.”) Palm Beach is, of course, home to President Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago. After the election in November, there was a “Trump bump,” with $100 million worth of property on Palm Beach going under contract in the span of a week. Late last year, the Fox News host Sean Hannity purchased a $23.5 million mansion in nearby Manalapan, then spent $14.9 million on an oceanfront townhouse in Palm Beach in January. (He’d previously spent $5.3 million for a townhouse here in 2021.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      As Trump Debates Iran Action, the Meaning of ‘America First’ Is on the Line

      by

      As President Trump ponders involving the United States in Israel’s attacks on Iran, the G.O.P. faces a thorny question: What does “America first” really mean?A decade ago, President Trump electrified conservatives with his promises to get the United States out of foreign entanglements and to always put — say it with me — “America first.”As he weighs involving American planes and weaponry in Israel’s attacks on Iran, a brawl has broken out in the Republican Party over what “America first” really means.I wrote today about how a swath of Trump’s base is in an uproar over the president’s increasing openness to deploying U.S. warplanes — and perhaps even 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs — against Iran in an effort to help Israel finish off its nuclear program.“Everyone is finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake and just said it bc it was popular,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on X over the weekend. She added, “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA.”The anger extends well beyond Greene’s social-media account, to cable television and the podcast feeds of the likes of Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Candace Owens. They are passionately arguing that intervening in Iran would contravene Trump’s long-held promise to steer the nation out of, not into, foreign entanglements, and threaten to fracture his whole coalition.It’s a remarkable fight, and one that raises a bigger question about who is really the keeper of Trump’s political flame. Is it the non-interventionists who have been there from the start, or the Republican hawks — the Senator Lindsey Grahams of the world — who are now sticking by the president?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks

      by

      The president has grown increasingly angry at court rulings blocking parts of his agenda, including by judges he appointed.President Trump appears to be declaring independence from outside constraints on how he nominates judges, signaling that he is looking for loyalists who will uphold his agenda and denouncing the conservative legal network that helped him remake the federal judiciary in his first term.Late Thursday, after a ruling struck down his tariffs on most imported goods, Mr. Trump attacked the Federalist Society, leaders of which heavily influenced his selection of judges during his first presidency.“I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations,” Mr. Trump asserted on social media. “This is something that cannot be forgotten!”Hours earlier Thursday, the Justice Department severely undercut the traditional role of the American Bar Association in vetting judicial nominees. A day before, Mr. Trump picked a loyalist who has no deep ties to the conservative legal movement for a life-tenured appeals court seat, explaining that his pick could be counted on to rule in ways aligned with his agenda.Together, the moves suggest that Mr. Trump may be pivoting toward greater personal involvement and a more idiosyncratic process for selecting future nominees. Such a shift would fit with his second-term pattern of steamrolling the guardrails that sometimes constrained how he exercised power during his first presidency.But it could also give pause to judges who may be weighing taking senior status, giving Mr. Trump an opportunity to fill their seats. Conservatives have been eyeing in particular the seats of the Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, who will turn 77 next month, and Samuel A. Alito, 75.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Republican Vote Against E.V. Mandate Felt Like an Attack on California, Democrats Say

      by

      For decades, California has been able to adopt its own emissions regulations, effectively setting the bar for carmakers nationally. And for just as long, Republicans have resented the state’s outsize influence.There is little question that California leaders already see fossil fuels as a relic of the past.At the Southern California headquarters of the state’s powerful clean-air regulator, the centerpiece art installation depicts in limestone a petrified gas station. Fuel nozzles lie on the ground in decay, evoking an imagined extinction of gas pumps.For more than half a century, the federal government has allowed California to set its own stringent pollution limits, a practice that has resulted in more efficient vehicles and the nation’s most aggressive push toward electric cars. Many Democratic-led states have adopted California’s standards, prompting automakers to move their national fleets in the same direction.With that unusual power, however, has come resentment from Republican states where the fossil fuel industry still undergirds their present and future. When Republicans in Congress last week revoked the state’s authority to set three of its mandates on electric vehicles and trucks, they saw it not just as a policy reversal but also as a statement that liberal California should be put in its place.“We’ve created a superstate system where California has more rights than other states,” Representative Morgan Griffith, who represents rural southwestern Virginia, said in an interview. “My constituents think most folks in California are out of touch with reality. You see this stuff coming out of California and say, ‘What?’”Federal law typically pre-empts state law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. But in 1967, the federal government allowed smoggy California to receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to enact its own clean-air standards that were tougher than federal limits, because the state historically had some of the most polluted air in the nation. Federal law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards as their own under certain circumstances.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said last week that the state would fight in court to preserve its autonomy in setting emissions rules.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More