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      8 Podcasts to Help Make Sense of Post-Trump America

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      In the wake of a most untraditional presidency, these shows will keep you up-to-date on what’s happening in Washington and our politically polarized country.A couple of years after Serial sped up podcasting’s move into the mainstream, Donald J. Trump’s election as president changed the game in a different way. It spawned a plethora of audio shows that promised to help Americans process an unexpected and unsettling time. And though Trump is now out of office, there’s still no shortage of political news to try and make sense of: the repercussions of the attack on the Capitol, the continued polarization of the electorate, and the new and ongoing challenges facing his successor, President Biden.These eight shows will keep you up-to-date on what’s happening in Washington, provide context for current events and (maybe) keep you sane along the way.‘Can He Do That?’This Washington Post show was one of the countless podcasts born in the early days of the Trump presidency, when civilians and political experts were regularly stunned by the audacity of the administration’s conduct. As its title suggests, the show’s original remit was digging into the legality of the 45th president’s actions while in office. But in the four years since its debut, the show has evolved into a broader exploration of the executive branch, and how its powers both shape, and are shaped by, the divided electorate of modern America. Since Trump left office, the host, Allison Michaels, and her guests have tackled specific topics like the latest stimulus bill, while also exploring bigger questions — for instance, whether gun reform is actually within the president’s power, or what responsibilities the president has during a national crisis.Starter episode: “The Duty of a President During Crisis”‘U.T.R.’ (Not Its Real Name)If you like your political commentary cynical but not embittered, this relatively new podcast may hit the spot. Beginning in the run-up to the 2020 election, “Unf*cking the Republic” delivers audio essays that are consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that we’re taught in school. The host, a “quasi-anonymous political writer,” according to the podcast’s synopsis, approaches the show with a playful and often coarse tone that never undermines the rigorous, serious content of its episodes. A recent episode, titled “The American Holocaust,” offered an unflinching discussion of America’s sins against Indigenous nations, or “the most horrific acts the U.S. has ever perpetrated on a people — which is saying a lot.” If the show is sometimes uncomfortable listening, that’s the point.Starter episode: “Culture Cancel: The American Holocaust”‘Political Gabfest’A beloved mainstay for many podcast fans, Slate’s weekly conversational show is roughly the same age as the format itself, having been going strong since 2005. The hosts, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson and David Plotz, break down the latest announcements, leaks and scandals from Washington in an approachable style that feels less like a news report and more like eavesdropping on a smart conversation between friends (all of whom happen to be veteran D.C. reporters). The show’s format has barely changed over its 16-year run, and that comforting consistency has made it an anchor through especially turbulent times.Starter episode: “Midnight Train From Georgia”‘Pantsuit Politics’It’s become common to lament how polarized our political climate has become, and despite President Biden’s professed desire for bipartisanship, the divisions seem as deep as ever in 2021. They’re so deep that any attempt to reach across the aisle is often derided as either naïve or disingenuous, but the hosts of “Pantsuit Politics” are determined to prove that genuine conversations between the left and the right are still possible. Sarah Stewart Holland (on the left) and Beth Silvers (on the right) are Kentucky-based friends who hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum, co-wrote a book entitled “I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening),” and now share down-to-earth conversations on this twice-a-week podcast. Though the hosts’ views are often more similar than this premise suggests, it’s compelling and thoughtful listening.Starter episode: “We’re All Strange Combinations of Things”‘The Weeds’Playfully inverting a well-worn adage (“don’t get lost in the weeds”), this Vox staple thrives on delving into the nitty-gritty of policy and the processes through which it’s created. Hosted by Matthew Yglesias and Dara Lind, alongside a revolving cast of other Vox staffers, “The Weeds” offers a twice-a-week examination of what’s happening in the corridors of power. The main feed sometimes includes limited spinoffs, like “The Next Four Years,” a three-month primer on the new administration’s cabinet appointments and policy plans. More recently, the show has offered detailed but accessible explainers on what the Biden era means for housing, voting rights and immigration policy.Starter episode: “It’s Time for Class Warfare”‘The Skepticrat’Though its scathing tone might sound like a product of the Trump years, this salty-mouthed political comedy has actually been running since 2015. Its hosts — Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright, and Eli Bosnick — are perhaps better known for their long-running podcast “The Scathing Atheist,” an unapologetically savage and derisive discussion about religion. Here they take a similarly irreverent approach to politics, spotlighting hypocrisy, corruption and incompetence in government while also taking joy in purely ludicrous moments like Rudy Giuliani’s melting face.Starter episode: “Jewish Space Laser Edition”‘Pod Save America’Perhaps the podcast that best defines Trump-era resistance podcasting, “Pod Save America” is the flagship show of Crooked Media, a left-wing podcast empire founded in 2017 by four former Obama staffers, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer. In twice-weekly episodes, the hosts riff on the latest political news and offer anecdotes and insights from their own time in Washington. Throughout the Trump years, the show was a mix of righteous anger and gallows humor, while also becoming a powerhouse for grass roots activism and fund-raising. The show also features plenty of big-fish guests, like Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Barack Obama, who memorably recorded an interview on the eve of Trump’s inauguration.Starter episode: “Are We Infrastructure?”‘Left, Right & Center’Finding a truly centrist political podcast is hard, and this polarization makes it easy for listeners to stay in their echo chambers. Though it’s been on the air since 1996, KCRW’s “Left, Right & Center” is a timely antidote to this dilemma. Each episode of the show spotlights a “civilized yet provocative” conversation about current events between liberal and conservative commentators. The host, Josh Barro, affably represents the center, alongside a cast of regular panelists that include senators, policy experts and journalists (recently including The New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie). Depending on the rapport between guests, the show can err on the dry side, but it’s a reliable balm in a polarized age.Starter episode: “Carrots Over Sticks” More

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      Were Brendan Hunt's Social Media Rants Free Speech or Illegal Threats?

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      The trial of Brendan Hunt, an avid Trump backer and New York City resident, will be one of the justice system’s first attempts to grapple with the events of Jan. 6.Two days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, a 37-year-old man living in New York City posted a video online entitled “KILL YOUR SENATORS.”The man, Brendan Hunt, was not in Washington on Jan. 6. But in the 88-second video, he said that “we need to go back to the U.S. Capitol” ahead of President Biden’s inauguration and “slaughter” members of Congress, according to the criminal complaint.“If anybody has a gun, give me it,” he said. “I’ll go there myself and shoot them and kill them.”Now, the question of whether the video and three other social media posts by Mr. Hunt crossed the line from free speech into illegal threats is at the heart of a federal trial starting this week in Brooklyn.Brendan Hunt in a picture from his BitChute account.This is the first federal trial in the country that will force jurors to grapple deeply with the events of Jan. 6, diving headfirst into the national debate about how much the government should police violent rhetoric in the wake of the Capitol attack.Mr. Hunt became part of the Capitol breach’s sprawling aftermath as law enforcement officials not only arrested hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol but also charged people with making online threats around the attack. As officials in Washington consider new ways to combat violent extremism, including a possible domestic terrorism statute, Mr. Hunt’s trial could be a bellwether of how the authorities balance the pursuit of serious threats with constitutional protections for political speech.“These types of threats are particularly dangerous when made in a charged political environment that has already led to the overrunning of the United States Capitol and the interruption, for the first time in United States history, of the certification of a presidential election,” federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said in a court filing last month.Mr. Hunt faces one count of threatening to murder members of Congress, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. In December, Mr. Hunt posted on Facebook urging a “public execution” of prominent Democratic politicians, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Chuck Schumer, according to prosecutors.Mr. Hunt’s lawyers have described the case as a groundbreaking prosecution, arguing that the government was trying to criminalize Mr. Hunt’s political opinions. Mr. Hunt had no weapons, no plans to carry out violence and no affiliations with organized groups, his lawyers said. He was ranting into the vast internet void, they argue, with no expectation that anyone would act on his words.“Seen in context, the posts are more consistent with intoxication than insurrection,” his lawyers wrote.Jan Rostal, a federal defender for Mr. Hunt, said in a statement that the First Amendment encouraged political debate “in the town square, not in secret, so bad ideas can get tested.”“This case could have serious implications for freedom of speech on social media,” Ms. Rostal said.Although Mr. Hunt had been posting menacing statements on social media since early December, he was not arrested until Jan. 19, the day before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. Mr. Hunt has been in jail since his arrest.The trial will wade into an unsettled area of law that has become especially urgent with the explosion of incendiary political speech in recent years. One of the central disputes at Mr. Hunt’s trial will be whether a “reasonable person” would have viewed his social media posts as a serious threat to kill members of Congress.“The courts have said we’ve got to leave a lot of room for dissent, including dissent that’s raised in violent terms,” said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But how much room is a very important question.”To convict Mr. Hunt, prosecutors must prove that he was not just joking or exaggerating. They must show that he made the statements with the intention of either interfering with the official duties of members of Congress or retaliating against them for certifying the 2020 election results.Prosecutors have said that they may call Capitol Police officers as witnesses to testify about what happened on Jan. 6 and how they reacted to Mr. Hunt’s social media posts.The trial will require jurors to parse through Mr. Hunt’s web of political beliefs to understand his motivations. During jury selection, jurors were asked whether they have strong opinions about the 2020 election or about supporters of President Donald J. Trump that would prevent them from being fair and impartial.Prosecutors will show that Mr. Hunt, a fervent supporter of Mr. Trump, was furious about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and believed members of Congress were “traitors” for supporting an election result that he viewed as illegitimate.Using Mr. Hunt’s social media comments and private text messages, prosecutors will argue that his statements were deliberate threats motivated by white supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs.In the video that Mr. Hunt shared two days after the Capitol riot, he used references that are known to white supremacists, prosecutors said. The video was posted on BitChute, a platform with less restrictive moderation policies than YouTube, which has cracked down on the spread of hate speech and conspiracy theories.In a court filing, Mr. Hunt’s lawyers said he removed the video within two days of posting it. It was a “fellow conservative” who saw the video on BitChute and alerted the F.B.I., they wrote.The defense said Mr. Hunt held more nuanced political views than the government’s portrayal. He has posted on social media that he voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and was later involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to a court filing from his lawyers.“While we do not agree with many of Mr. Hunt’s views, we will fight to the death his right to express them,” his lawyers wrote.In December, Mr. Hunt wrote on Facebook describing Mr. Schumer, Ms. Pelosi and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as the sort of “high value targets” that Mr. Trump’s supporters should shoot, prosecutors said.“They really need to be put down,” he wrote, according to the complaint. “These commies will see death before they see us surrender!”On the social media site Parler, prosecutors said, after another user suggested acting peacefully following the Capitol riot, Mr. Hunt wrote: “lets go, jan 20, bring your guns #millionmilitiamarch.”Law enforcement officials have historically been careful about bringing criminal charges hinged solely on speech, often waiting to see if the person making troubling statements online takes concrete steps toward violence. But in the weeks after Jan. 6, prosecutors around the country signaled that they were less willing to wait after witnessing how online rhetoric turned into the real-world violence that unfolded at the Capitol.During the pandemic, Mr. Hunt had been working from home in Ridgewood, Queens, making about $57,800 a year in his clerical job with the New York State courts system. He was terminated from the job after his arrest.Mr. Hunt had a long history of promoting conspiracy theories online, including falsely implicating the federal government in a cover-up of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 20 first graders and six educators.Mr. Hunt’s father is a retired family court judge in Queens.At a hearing last month, Mr. Hunt’s father, John M. Hunt, told the court that after his son graduated from college, he pursued a career in acting and clashed frequently with his mother over his marijuana use. Family disputes sometimes escalated into physical altercations, prosecutors said, to the point where Mr. Hunt’s father called on the police to intervene.The father blamed his son’s social media rants on marijuana and alcohol.“My son is not a walking time bomb,” he said in court. “He’s a bright guy. He can be engaging.” More

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      Florida Voting Restrictions Bill Heads to Legislature

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      The bill, which was recently softened, still includes measures like a ban on giving water to voters near polling places, and it would also empower partisan observers during the ballot-counting process.A bill that would impose a host of new restrictions on voting in Florida passed a key committee in the State Senate on Tuesday after a fiery debate among senators and hours of citizen testimony opposing the measure. The vote set the stage for a possible full floor vote in the Republican-controlled chamber in the coming weeks.The bill, known as S.B. 90, had significantly been revised last week by Dennis K. Baxley, the Republican state senator who introduced it, to roll back some of the more strident restrictions in the original bill, like banning drop boxes. It passed the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday along a mostly party-line vote, with one Republican member of the committee, Jeff Brandes, voting against it.The measure also bans giving water to voters within 150 feet of a voting location; adds more identification requirements for absentee ballots; requires voters to request an absentee ballot every election rather than be on an absentee voting list; limits who can collect and drop off ballots; and empowers partisan observers during the ballot tabulating process.Florida, a major political battleground, is one of a number of Republican-controlled states, including Georgia, Texas and Arizona, that have marched forward with new bills seeking to limit access to voting. Republicans did well in Florida in 2020, with former President Donald J. Trump winning by more than 370,000 votes.State Senator Dennis K. Baxley during a legislative session in Tallahassee. Steve Cannon/Associated PressMr. Baxley, in introducing the bill, said that Florida’s election last year was the “gold standard” for the country, but that the new voting law was necessary to avoid potential problems.But the successful election in Florida was the reason that Democrats, as well as at least one Republican, pushed back on a lot of the provisions in the law. The newly amended bill that was passed limits the availability of drop boxes to early voting hours, rather than the 24-hour option that existed last year.Democratic senators, including Randolph Bracy, noted that there had been no evidence of any tampering with drop boxes, which was later confirmed in testimony by local election officials.Mr. Baxley replied simply that “things could happen.”The Republican sponsor did relent on one provision: requiring a “wet signature” (one handwritten using a pen or pencil) on file for voters who cast their ballots by mail for signature matching, rather than digital signatures, many of which are collected at Department of Motor Vehicle offices around the state.After intense debate and pressure, including from Republican senators, Mr. Baxley said on Tuesday morning that “by listening to others, and understanding your heart, I’m willing, and this Senate is willing, to take it out.”The bill was originally set for a vote last Wednesday, but the debate ran past the allotted meeting time and was abruptly gaveled to a close. The Senate Rules Committee picked up the final debate early Tuesday.During the public testimony last week, dozens of Florida voters spoke against the bill, as well as some local election officials, who took particular issue with the provision granting more authority to partisan poll watchers.Mr. Brandes, in his closing remarks on Tuesday morning, noted that election officials across the state had voiced opposition to the bill.“I need to put on the record that to my knowledge, not one Republican supervisor of elections in the state of Florida supports this bill in its current form,” he said.The lengthy debate last Wednesday grew heated at times, as Democrats grew frustrated with what they viewed as evasive answers from Mr. Baxley.“These are the most nonsensical, off-point answers I think I’ve ever heard to questions in my life,” said Gary Farmer, the Democratic minority leader in the State Senate.The bill that passed through committee on Tuesday brings the Senate effort more in line with a similar bill that has been introduced in the House by Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican representative from the Gulf Coast. The House bill, which passed a key House committee in March, also awaits a full vote later this month.The Florida Legislature is in session this year only through the end of April, so any bills will need to be passed by both chambers before May 1. More

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      The ‘New Redlining’ Is Deciding Who Lives in Your Neighborhood

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      If you care about social justice, you have to care about zoning.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.”Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from each other than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero Robert Kennedy brought together working-class Black, Latino and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.” More

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      Facebook, Preparing for Chauvin Verdict, Will Limit Posts That Might Incite Violence

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      Facebook on Monday said it planned to limit posts that contain misinformation and hate speech related to the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd, to keep them from spilling over into real-world harm.As closing arguments began in the trial and Minneapolis braced for a verdict, Facebook said it would identify and remove posts on the social network that urged people to bring arms to the city. It also said it would protect members of Mr. Floyd’s family from harassment and take down content that praised, celebrated or mocked his death.“We know this trial has been painful for many people,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of content policy, wrote in a blog post. “We want to strike the right balance between allowing people to speak about the trial and what the verdict means, while still doing our part to protect everyone’s safety.”Facebook, which has long positioned itself as a site for free speech, has become increasingly proactive in policing content that might lead to real-world violence. The Silicon Valley company has been under fire for years over the way it has handled sensitive news events. That includes last year’s presidential election, when online misinformation about voter fraud galvanized supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Believing the election to have been stolen from Mr. Trump, some supporters stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6.Leading up to the election, Facebook took steps to fight misinformation, foreign interference and voter suppression. The company displayed warnings on more than 150 million posts with election misinformation, removed more than 120,000 posts for violating its voter interference policies and took down 30 networks that posted false messages about the election.But critics said Facebook and other social media platforms did not do enough. After the storming of the Capitol, the social network stopped Mr. Trump from being able to post on the site. The company’s independent oversight board is now debating whether the former president will be allowed back on Facebook and has said it plans to issue its decision “in the coming weeks,” without giving a definite date.The death of Mr. Floyd, who was Black, led to a wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the nation last year. Mr. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who is white, faces charges of manslaughter, second-degree murder and third-degree murder for Mr. Floyd’s death. The trial began in late March. Mr. Chauvin did not testify.Facebook said on Monday that it had determined that Minneapolis was, at least temporarily, “a high-risk location.” It said it would remove pages, groups, events and Instagram accounts that violated its violence and incitement policy; take down attacks against Mr. Chauvin and Mr. Floyd; and label misinformation and graphic content as sensitive.The company did not have any further comment.“As the trial comes to a close, we will continue doing our part to help people safely connect and share what they are experiencing,” Ms. Bickert said in the blog post. More

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      How Democracy Faces a Rising Threat Splitting Republicans and Democrats

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      The country is increasingly split into camps that don’t just disagree on policy and politics — they see the other as alien, immoral, a threat. Such political sectarianism is now on the march.American democracy faces many challenges: New limits on voting rights. The corrosive effect of misinformation. The rise of domestic terrorism. Foreign interference in elections. Efforts to subvert the peaceful transition of power. And making matters worse on all of these issues is a fundamental truth: The two political parties see the other as an enemy.It’s an outlook that makes compromise impossible and encourages elected officials to violate norms in pursuit of an agenda or an electoral victory. It turns debates over changing voting laws into existential showdowns. And it undermines the willingness of the loser to accept defeat — an essential requirement of a democracy.This threat to democracy has a name: sectarianism. It’s not a term usually used in discussions about American politics. It’s better known in the context of religious sectarianism — like the hostility between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq. Yet a growing number of eminent political scientists contend that political sectarianism is on the rise in America.That contention helps make sense of a lot of what’s been going on in American politics in recent years, including Donald J. Trump’s successful presidential bid, President Biden’s tortured effort to reconcile his inaugural call for “unity” with his partisan legislative agenda, and the plan by far-right House members to create a congressional group that would push some views associated with white supremacy. Most of all, it re-centers the threat to American democracy on the dangers of a hostile and divided citizenry.In recent years, many analysts and commentators have told a now-familiar story of how democracies die at the hands of authoritarianism: A demagogic populist exploits dissatisfaction with the prevailing liberal order, wins power through legitimate means, and usurps constitutional power to cement his or her own rule. It’s the story of Putin’s Russia, Chavez’s Venezuela and even Hitler’s Germany.Sectarianism, in turn, instantly evokes an additional set of very different cautionary tales: Ireland, the Middle East and South Asia, regions where religious sectarianism led to dysfunctional government, violence, insurgency, civil war and even disunion or partition.These aren’t always stories of authoritarian takeover, though sectarianism can yield that outcome as well. As often, it’s the story of a minority that can’t accept being ruled by its enemy.One-third of Americans believe violence could be justified to achieve political objectives. Rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, a sign that the risks of sustained political violence can’t be discounted.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn many ways, that’s the story playing out in America today.Whether religious or political, sectarianism is about two hostile identity groups who not only clash over policy and ideology, but see the other side as alien and immoral. It’s the antagonistic feelings between the groups, more than differences over ideas, that drive sectarian conflict.Any casual observer of American politics would agree that there’s plenty of hostility between Democrats and Republicans. Many don’t just disagree, they dislike each other. They hold discriminatory attitudes in job hiring as they do on the Implicit Association Test. They tell pollsters they wouldn’t want their child to marry an opposing partisan. In a paper published in Science in October by 16 prominent political scientists, the authors argue that by some measures the hatred between the two parties “exceeds longstanding antipathies around race and religion.”More than half of Republicans and more than 40 percent of Democrats tend to think of the other party as “enemies,” rather than “political opponents,” according to a CBS News poll conducted in January. A majority of Americans said that other Americans were the greatest threat to America.On one level, partisan animosity just reflects the persistent differences between the two parties over policy issues. Over the past two decades, they have fought bruising battles over the Iraq war, gun rights, health care, taxes and more. Perhaps hard feelings wouldn’t necessarily be sectarian in nature.But the two parties have not only become more ideologically polarized — they have simultaneously sorted along racial, religious, educational, generational and geographic lines. Partisanship has become a “mega-identity,” in the words of the political scientist Lilliana Mason, representing both a division over policy and a broader clash between white, Christian conservatives and a liberal, multiracial, secular elite.And as mass sectarianism has grown in America, some of the loudest partisan voices in Congress or on Fox News, Twitter, MSNBC and other platforms have determined that it’s in their interest to lean into cultural warfare and inflammatory rhetoric to energize their side against the other. As political sectarianism has grown in America, some of the loudest partisan voices in Congress or on Fox News, Twitter, MSNBC and other platforms have determined that it’s in their interest to lean into cultural warfare.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesThe conservative outrage over the purported canceling of Dr. Seuss is a telling marker of how intergroup conflict has supplanted old-fashioned policy debate. Culture war politics used to be synonymous with a fight over “social issues,” like abortion or gun policy, where government played a central role. The Dr. Seuss controversy had no policy implications. What was at stake was the security of one sect, which saw itself as under attack by the other. It’s the kind of issue that would arouse passions in an era of sectarianism.A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted in March found that Republicans had heard more about the Dr. Seuss issue than they had heard about the $1.9 trillion stimulus package. A decade earlier, a far smaller stimulus package helped launch the Tea Party movement.The Dr. Seuss episode is hardly the only example of Republicans de-emphasizing policy goals in favor of stoking sectarianism. Last month, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, penned an op-ed in support of unionization at Amazon as retribution for the Seattle company’s cultural liberalism. At its 2020 national convention, the Republican Party didn’t even update its policy platform.And perhaps most significant, Republicans made the choice in 2016 to abandon laissez-faire economics and neoconservative foreign policy and embrace sectarianism all at once and in one package: Donald J. Trump. The G.O.P. primaries that year were a referendum on whether it was easier to appeal to conservatives with conservative policy or by stoking sectarian animosity. Sectarianism won.Sectarianism has been so powerful among Republicans in part because they believe they’re at risk of being consigned to minority status. The party has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and conservatives fear that demographic changes promise to further erode their support. And while defeat is part of the game in democracy, it is a lot harder to accept in a sectarian society.It is not easy to accept being ruled by a hostile, alien rival. It can make “political losses feel like existential threats,” as the authors of the study published in Science put it.As a result, the minority often poses a challenge to democracy in a sectarian society. It’s the minority who bears the costs, whether material or psychological, of accepting majority rule in a democracy. In the extreme, rule by a hostile, alien group might not feel much different than being subjugated by another nation.Trump supporters in Walterboro, S.C., held signs that read “the silent majority” at a rally in 2016.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesDemocracies in sectarian societies often create institutional arrangements to protect the minority, like minority or group rights, power-sharing agreements, devolution or home rule. Otherwise, the most alienated segments of the minority might resort to violence and insurgency in hopes of achieving independence.Republicans are not consigned to permanent minority status like the typical sectarian minority, of course. The Irish had no chance to become the majority in the United Kingdom. Neither did the Muslims of the British Raj or the Sunnis in Iraq today. Democrats just went from the minority to the majority in all three branches of elected government in four years; Republicans could do the same.But changes in the racial and cultural makeup of the country leave conservatives feeling far more vulnerable than Republican electoral competitiveness alone would suggest. Demographic projections suggest that non-Hispanic whites will become a minority sometime in the middle of the century. People with a four-year college degree could become a majority of voters even sooner. Religiosity is declining.The sense that the country is changing heightens Republican concerns. In recent days, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson embraced the conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party was “trying to replace the current electorate” with new voters from “the third world.” Far-right extremists in the House are looking to create an “America First Caucus” that calls for “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and an infrastructure that “befits the progeny of European architecture.”It is not easy to pin down where political sectarianism in America fits on a scale from zero to “The Troubles.” But nearly every protection that sectarian minorities pursue is either supported or under consideration by some element of the American right.That includes the more ominous steps. In December, Rush Limbaugh said he thought conservatives were “trending toward secession,” as there cannot be a “peaceful coexistence” between liberals and conservatives. One-third of Republicans say they would support secession in a recent poll, along with one-fifth of Democrats.One-third of Americans believe that violence could be justified to achieve political objectives. In a survey conducted in January, a majority of Republican voters agreed with the statement that the “traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” The violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 suggests that the risks of sustained political violence or even insurgency can’t be discounted.Whatever risk of imminent and widespread violence might have existed in January appears to have passed for now.Mr. Biden speaks the day after Election Day in the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesInstead, Joe Biden was sworn in as president — a person who did not attempt to arouse the passions of one sect against the other during his campaign. His nomination and election demonstrates that sectarianism, while on the rise, may still have limits in America: The median voter prefers bipartisanship and a de-escalation of political conflict, creating an incentive to run nonsectarian campaigns.Yet whether Mr. Biden’s presidency will de-escalate sectarian tensions is an open question.Mr. Biden is pursuing an ambitious policy agenda, which may eventually refocus partisan debate on the issues or just further alienate one side on matters like immigration or the filibuster. Still, the authors of the Science paper write that “emphasis on political ideas rather than political adversaries” would quite likely be “a major step in the right direction.”And Mr. Biden himself does not seem to elicit much outrage from the conservative news media or rank-and-file — perhaps because of his welcoming message or his identity as a 78-year-old white man from Scranton, Pa.But sectarianism is not just about the conduct of the leader of a party — it’s about the conflict between two groups. Nearly anyone’s conduct can worsen hostility between the two sides, even if it is not endorsed by the leadership of a national political party. Mr. Carlson and the congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are only the latest examples.It leaves America at an uncertain juncture. Mr. Biden may dampen sectarian tensions compared with Mr. Trump, but it is not clear whether festering grievances and resentments will fade into the background with so many others acting to stoke division.Sectarianism, after all, can last for decades or even centuries after the initial cause for hostility has passed. More

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      If You Care About Social Justice, You Have to Care About Zoning

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      The Biden administration is off to a good start on housing, but there is much more it could be doing.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.” Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from one another than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero, Robert Kennedy, brought together working-class Black, Latino, and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.”Taking on exclusionary zoning also begins to address two other challenges the Biden administration has identified: the housing affordability crisis and climate change. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that zoning laws that ban anything but single-family homes artificially drive up prices by limiting the supply of housing that can be built in a region. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has left many Americans jobless and people are struggling to make rent or pay their mortgages, it is incomprehensible that ubiquitous government zoning policies would be permitted to make the housing affordability crisis worse by driving prices unnaturally higher. More

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      One America News Network Stays True to Trump

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      A recent OAN segment said there were “serious doubts about who’s actually president,” and another blamed “anti-Trump extremists” for the Capitol attack.Months after the inauguration of President Biden, One America News Network, a right-wing cable news channel available in some 35 million households, has continued to broadcast segments questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election.“There’s still serious doubts about who’s actually president,” the OAN correspondent Pearson Sharp said in a March 28 report.That segment was one in a spate of similar reports from a channel that has become a kind of Trump TV for the post-Trump age, an outlet whose reporting has aligned with the former president’s grievances at a time when he is barred from major social media platforms.Some of OAN’s coverage has not had the full support of the staff. In interviews with 18 current and former OAN newsroom employees, 16 said the channel had broadcast reports that they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.To go by much of OAN’s reporting, it is almost as if a transfer of power had never taken place. The channel did not broadcast live coverage of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in ceremony and Inaugural Address. Into April, news articles on the OAN website consistently referred to Donald J. Trump as “President Trump” and to President Biden as just “Joe Biden” or “Biden.” That practice is not followed by other news organizations, including the OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.OAN has also promoted the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were left-wing agitators. Toward the end of a March 4 news segment that described the attack as the work of “antifa” and “anti-Trump extremists” — and referred to the president as “Beijing Biden” — Mr. Sharp said, “History will show it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence.” Investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, were involved in the Capitol riot.Charles Herring, the president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports casting doubt on the election. “Based on our investigations, voter irregularities clearly took place in the November 2020 election,” he said. “The real question is to what extent.”Herring Networks was founded by Mr. Herring’s father, the tech entrepreneur Robert Herring, who at age 79 runs OAN with Charles and another son, Robert Jr. About 150 employees work for the channel at its headquarters in San Diego.Robert Herring, left, runs OAN with his sons, Charles, right, and Robert Jr. Nick Wass/Invision for BFI-Good News Source One AmericaNielsen does not report viewership statistics for OAN, which is not a Nielsen client. (Charles Herring cited Nielsen’s “heavy fees.”) In a survey last month, Pew Research reported that 7 percent of Americans, including 14 percent of Republicans, had gotten political news from OAN. By contrast, 43 percent of Americans and 62 percent of Republicans had gotten political news from Fox News, the survey found.While OAN appeals to a relatively small audience, its coverage reflects views commonly held by Republicans. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, about half of Republicans said they believed that the Jan. 6 attack, which left five dead, was largely a nonviolent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists. Six in 10 of Republicans surveyed said they also believed Mr. Trump’s claim that the election was “stolen.”OAN, which started in 2013, gained attention when it broadcast Mr. Trump’s campaign speeches in full before the 2016 election. In recent months, it has courted viewers who may have felt abandoned by Fox News, which on election night was the first news outlet to project Mr. Biden as the winner of Arizona, a key swing state. In a mid-November promotional ad, OAN accused Fox News of joining “the mainstream media in censoring factual reporting.”OAN’s stories “appeal to people who want to believe that the election was not legitimate,” said Stephanie L. Edgerly, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. “These are two mutually reinforcing narratives of people who want to believe it and continue to get that fire stoked by OAN.”An OAN workspace outside the White House last year. The channel routinely referred to Donald J. Trump as “President Trump” into April.Yuri Gripas/Abaca, via Sipa USAMarty Golingan, a producer at the channel since 2016, said OAN had changed in recent years. At the start of his employment, he said, it concentrated more on neutral coverage based on reports from The Associated Press or Reuters. He saw it as a scrappy upstart where he could produce cheeky feature stories, he said.During the Trump presidency, it moved right, Mr. Golingan said. And when he was watching coverage of the pro-Trump mob breaking into the Capitol, he said, he worried that his work might have helped inspire the attack.He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the channel’s coverage. “The majority of people did not believe the voter fraud claims being run on the air,” Mr. Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues.He recalled seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol mob holding a flag emblazoned with the OAN logo. “I was like, OK, that’s not good,” Mr. Golingan said. “That’s what happens when people listen to us.”Charles Herring defended OAN’s coverage. “A review process with multiple checks is in place to ensure that news reporting meets the company’s journalist standards,” he said. “And, yes, we’ve had our fair share of mistakes, but we do our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps.”Mr. Golingan added that, since Inauguration Day, OAN’s news director, Lindsay Oakley, had reprimanded him for referring to Mr. Biden as “President Biden” in news copy. Ms. Oakley did not reply to requests for comment.“OAN’s staff White House reporters use the term President Biden and then may use Mr. Biden,” Charles Herring said. “The term Biden or Biden administration may also be used.” He declined to reply to a question on the channel’s use of “President Trump” for Mr. Trump.Allysia Britton, a news producer, said she was one of more than a dozen employees who had left OAN in the wake of the Capitol riot. She criticized some of what the channel had reported, saying it was not up to journalistic standards.“Many people have raised concerns,” Ms. Britton said in an interview. “And the thing is, when people speak up about anything, you will get in trouble.”Charles Herring confirmed that about a dozen OAN workers had left in recent months, saying many of them were not high-level employees.The OAN correspondent Chanel Rion at a White House briefing last year. Alex Brandon/Associated PressAssignments that the elder Mr. Herring takes a special interest in are known among OAN staff as “H stories,” several current and former employees said. The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Herring instructed OAN employees in an email, which The New York Times reviewed, to “report all the things Antifa did yesterday.”Some “H stories” are reported by Kristian Rouz, an OAN correspondent who had written for Sputnik, a site backed by the Russian government. In a report in May on the pandemic, Mr. Rouz said Covid-19 might have started as a “globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control,” one that had ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, the billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates, and “the deep state.”Ms. Britton, the former OAN producer, recalled checking a website that Mr. Rouz had cited to back some of his reporting. “It literally took me to this chat room where it’s just conservatives commenting toward each other,” she said.In an email to staff last month, Ms. Oakley, the news director, warned producers against ignoring or playing down Mr. Rouz’s work. “His stories should be considered ‘H stories’ and treated as such,” she wrote in the email, which The Times reviewed. “These stories are often slugged and copy-edited by ME as per Mr. H’s instructions.”OAN’s online audience is significant, with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to its YouTube channel. One of its most popular videos, with about 1.5 million views since it went online Nov. 24, criticized Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company whose equipment was used in more than two dozen states last year, including several won by Mr. Trump. Hosted by the OAN White House correspondent, Chanel Rion, the video shows a man who said he had infiltrated Dominion and heard company executives say they would “make sure” Mr. Trump lost.Dominion has sued Fox News and two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, accusing them of making or promoting defamatory claims. A lawyer for Dominion, who did not reply to requests for comment, has said the company is considering further legal action.Mr. Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees had hoped Dominion would sue the channel. “A lot of people said, ‘This is insane, and maybe if they sue us, we’ll stop putting stories like this out,’” he said.Weeks after Dominion filed its first defamation suits, OAN broadcast a two-hour video in which the chief executive of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, made his case that widespread voter fraud had occurred. YouTube removed the video the day it was posted, saying it violated the platform’s election integrity policy. Last month, an OAN report described Dominion’s “voting machines” as “notorious.”Two of the current and former employees interviewed for this article — Dan Ball, a talk-show host, and Neil W. McCabe, a former reporter — described OAN’s coverage as unbiased. Mr. McCabe, who now writes for The Tennessee Star, said the network gave a “voice to people that are just not covered.”Susan Beachy contributed research. More