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- America’s Most Divided State Loves Its Extremes
Wisconsin has been the nation’s most closely divided state for a quarter century. Since 2000, only one presidential candidate—Barack Obama, twice—has carried the state by more than a single percentage point. But despite its status as a battleground, America’s Dairyland has never been a bastion of milquetoast moderation. Wisconsin has produced both a father of progressivism, Robert La Follette, and the red-baiting conservative Joseph McCarthy. More recently, its voters have backed the liberal stalwarts Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin as well as the right-wing Republicans Scott Walker and Ron Johnson.Francesca Hong is keenly aware of this history. Indeed, she’s relying on it as she tries to persuade Democratic voters to trust her with the party’s nomination for governor later this month. “We’ve been a laboratory for democracy and a petri dish for conservatism,” Hong told me during an interview last weekend at a brewery in Appleton, a small city near Green Bay where she had drawn more than 200 people for a rally.A state legislator and former restaurateur, the 37-year-old Hong wants to make Wisconsin the country’s biggest lab for democratic socialism. She’s running on an expansive platform that includes creating a public bank and public grocery stores; providing universal child care and free school lunches; paid leave and a $20 minimum wage; and many more favored policies of the progressive left. Hong has filmed campaign videos in restaurant kitchens and on soccer fields, and she’s often wearing a red bandana that evokes Rosie the Riveter and labor solidarity. Her rallies are punctuated by profanity—a fellow state legislator who introduced her on Sunday wore a T-shirt that said Fight the Fuckery—earthy musical acts, and hearty endorsements by like-minded local progressives.With innovative ads and a grassroots network of more than 7,000 volunteers knocking on doors across the state, Hong’s campaign has shot out far ahead of more experienced and well-known Democratic rivals. (Wisconsin’s current lieutenant governor, Sara Rodriguez, dropped her bid for the top job amid a campaign-finance scandal; its previous lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, suspended his candidacy on Thursday and effectively conceded to Hong.) The most recent survey from Marquette Law School—the state’s most reputable pollster—found Hong with 38 percent of the vote in a five-way race, with more than twice the support of her nearest competitor.Naturally, Democratic grandees are nervous. Republicans, eager to run against a far-left candidate in the fall, have pumped more than $2.5 million into ads… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago - ‘It Wasn’t Part of Trump’s Plans’: Venezuela’s Feeble Earthquake Respo...
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Cristian knows that his mother lies lifeless beneath the rubble. The only question is where. The boyish 22-year-old uses his hands to show how the 12-story building where he used to live collapsed when a double earthquake struck Venezuela in late June. First, it tipped sideways. Then, it folded in on itself, “like a flower closing,” he says, curling his fingers inward. He was less than an hour’s drive away in Caracas when it happened. By the time he arrived on the scene, both the building and his mother were gone. With no rescuers in sight, he started to dig. He’s still digging. “My mom's trapped in there. And nobody has helped me get her out, you understand?” Cristian said. “There’s been no help.” Like some other survivors, he did not want to give his last name for fear of reprisals for criticizing the government. For many Venezuelans, the disaster has been a crystallizing moment, reminding them that despite the U.S. capture of former dictator Nicolás Maduro more than six months ago, they are still living under the same inept regime that they blame for decades of decline.The disaster marks a “before and after,” said Trino Márquez, a sociology professor at the Central University of Venezuela. “From here on out, it'll be much harder to contain public discontent.” According to the government’s latest figures, more than 5,500 people were killed and 16,700 more were injured in the June 24 quakes; many people believe that is likely an undercount. NASA satellite data suggests some 58,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed. A World Bank report released last week estimates the damage to physical assets at nearly $20 billion. Together, those tallies make the earthquakes the deadliest and most economically damaging disaster in Venezuela since the Caracas earthquake of 1812. Hardest-hit has been the state of La Guaira, which is dense in government-built housing as a result of another deadly disaster: catastrophic mudslides in 1999 that killed an estimated tens of thousands of residents. Survivors were eventually moved into apartment blocks built under a flagship housing project touted by the government as a symbol of the socialist revolution. But many see the extensive damage those buildings suffered in the quake as evidence of something else altogether: corruption, poor oversight and a disregard for individuals’ lives. Five weeks after the twin quakes, the coastal area still resembles, in the… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago - GOP Staffers Say the Party Has a Groyper Problem
The grownups are worried. In group chats and at happy hours, some GOP veterans fret about the rising generation of young staffers in their party. The recurring complaint: The pipeline that feeds young conservative talent into government jobs is defective — if not broken. This isn’t just the standard middle-aged lament that the kids aren’t all right. It’s a criticism aimed at institutions like the Heritage Foundation that purport to identify and train the party’s future governing class. To conservative critics in and out of government, many of whom ascribe to more traditional, pre-MAGA Republican beliefs, some such institutions have spent the last decade selecting for rigid conformity to Trumpist ideology over more typical markers of expertise. Maybe that helps for enforcing the party line in the new GOP. But these critics fear a decline of merit and skill, along with a tolerance for darker ideologies that could cripple the party’s ability to govern in the long run. Conversations with four senior Republican congressional staffers, as well as think tank scholars, Heritage expats, academics who study think tanks and up-and-coming young Republicans reflected a widening generational split and mutual distrust over the issue. “Everyone knows what the problem is: The organizations that bring young staffers to Washington, D.C. have spent the last decade prioritizing blind ideological loyalty instead of competence or intelligence,” said a senior GOP congressional staffer, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel issues. “We have a generation of rabid, incompetent idiots.” Of specific concern are those labeled groypers — technically, followers of the self-described “White Identitarian” Gen Z streamer Nick Fuentes, though it’s also used as a catch-all term of abuse for young, anti-establishment right-wingers, akin to the usage of “neocon” in the other direction. Fuentes, who has millions of viewers and a deeply antisemitic and misogynistic worldview, gained celebrity among young conservatives as a pro-Trump internet personality and far-right campus agitator. He has since turned on the president for his handling of the Epstein files and his support of Israel and the war in Iran. (Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment.) Prominent conservative commentators have alleged that groyperism is spreading among younger members of the GOP, including in government — a view seemingly backed by examples like the young Trump administration lawyer who admitted to a “Nazi streak” in text messages revealed by POLITICO. Others point to social-media posts from official government accounts that… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago - How the Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case Fell ApartAs government prosecutors examined the Reflecting Pool to build their case against a three-time Olympic canoeist accused of violently ripping the lining with his bare hands, everything fell apart. They found that damage was consistent all around the pool, even in the middle, “where a vandal would not likely attempt to peel the lining.” This evening, the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro asked to drop the case against David Hearn, whom she had excoriated after his indictment 29 days ago.In a striking 19-page legal document filed late this afternoon, her office undermined everything that President Trump has been saying about the damage to the Reflecting Pool for the past six weeks, including the claim that vandals had used a box cutter to slash the floor of the pool. “The damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” Pirro’s office wrote in a motion to dismiss the case.Taken as a whole, the court filing acknowledged what has been obvious to anyone who has spent time at the Reflecting Pool in recent weeks and watched the president’s $16.4 million project deteriorate in full view. Almost immediately after its reopening in June, the shallow pool filled with the green algae that the expensive renovation was supposed to have prevented. As park workers rushed to combat the algae, the pool’s sealant began to peel away in chunks. It was surprising to see outlined in legal language how Pirro’s office claims it felt duped. Rather than continue with evidence it acknowledged is not there, it is dropping the case.“The Trump administration’s case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought,” his legal team—Norm Eisen, Mary Dohrmann, and Steve Levin—said in a statement. “Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pirro’s office declined to comment beyond what was in the legal filing.[Read: The canoeist accused of destroying the Reflecting Pool ]The filing largely blamed Department of the Interior officials for supplying information that was used to present evidence to a grand jury and obtain an indictment. Only afterward did prosecutors realize that they had been misled, and that Interior officials “provided less than fulsome information.” A large amount of data and… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago
- Schengen’s Greatest FailureIn the summer of 1985, representatives from five Western European countries met aboard a riverboat in Schengen, a wine-making village in Luxembourg, to celebrate the removal of checkpoints at their borders. According to the treaty they approved, which became known as the Schengen Agreement, the signatory countries sought “solidarity between their peoples by removing obstacles to free movement,” forming a borderless zone that gave tangible expression to principles of liberal internationalism that were ascendant as the West glimpsed victory in the Cold War. Schengen has succeeded spectacularly, at least by certain metrics. It has grown to include 29 countries, from Portugal to Poland, and more than 450 million people. Four decades on, it remains one of Europe’s most popular policies among people who benefit from it—those who work, study, shop, date, and live across borders, able to cross multiple European states in a matter of hours, without ever stopping their car. But as a mechanism to build European solidarity, Schengen has been a failure.The latest evidence of that came this week, when as many as 60,000 migrants from Morocco rushed into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, which sits on the North African coast of the Mediterranean. Ceuta has a population of only 83,000 and isn’t even on the European continent. But because it is part of Spain, entering Ceuta, in theory, affords access to 29 countries. The migrants swam or climbed over fences to reach the tiny territory. Several dozen have died.Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, decried the situation as an “attack” and a violation of his country’s territorial integrity, vowing that the migrants would be turned back; according to Spain’s interior ministry, more than half of them already have been. Sánchez blamed trafficking gangs, and others pointed a finger at Moroccan authorities for possibly instigating or enabling the huge number of crossings into the Schengen Area, dwarfing equivalent single-day figures from the European migration crisis in 2015. Morocco’s ambassador to Spain disputed such allegations.[Rogé Karma: The Spanish exception]The political blowback for Sánchez, a leftist whose pro-immigrant position has differentiated him in an era of resurgent nationalism, was predictable. Criticism came from his domestic opposition in Madrid, as well as from the White House, where President Trump saw an opportunity to paint Europe as lax on immigration and identify an edge for his party as the midterms approach. “That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago
- Brendan Carr Speaks Out on Jimmy Kimmel, the Media and Trump
Until recently, the Federal Communications Commission was not an agency that many Americans typically spent much time thinking about. That’s changed in President Donald Trump’s second term under FCC Chair Brendan Carr. A telecom lawyer by trade who has risen up the ranks of the agency over the years, Carr has developed a strong relationship with Trump and gleefully taken on the president’s enemies in the media in a bid to bring them to heel. While touring his office after our interview for The Conversation, Carr showed me a mug on his desk with an image depicting him as Trump’s pit bull taking on the media. Carr’s persistent threats to pull broadcasters’ licenses, his spats with Jimmy Kimmel and The View, and his overall aggressive posture has raised alarm in the press and on both sides of the aisle. Even conservative Republicans have expressed concerns about the precedent that Carr is setting and the potential chilling effects on speech. But Carr doesn’t see it that way. “It’s not our role to be the speech police,” he said. “It’s not our role to fundamentally transform editorial decisions, but there is a baseline level of regulation that Congress wanted. I think that is our job.” Carr also refused to say it would be inappropriate for Trump to direct the FCC to investigate certain broadcasters or that there should be any limits on Trump using the FCC against media companies he doesn’t like. “The president has every right in the world,” he said, “to push back on media.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen here for the full conversation.Republicans, yourself very much included, have historically stood for deregulation and limited government intervention, especially when it comes to speech. But the FCC is now playing a much more active role when it comes to broadcasters, news and editorial decisions. How do you square that? The way I think about it is it’s really a blend of two different strains of approaches to this job. On the one hand, we do have a very aggressive, what you would describe as a traditional, deregulatory agenda. We have an entire proceeding called “Delete, Delete, Delete.” We’ve deleted over 2000 regulations from the FCC’s books at this point. At the same time, we are appropriately adopting regulations, and you see that most notably in the media policy sector. I think that does reflect a… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 weeks ago
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