1). “Do Not Downplay How Bad Trump 2.0 Will Be”, Jan 6, 2025, Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut, at < https://www.thecut.com/
2). “It's the Christian Nationalism”, Nov 17, 2024, Chris Tackett, See It. Name It. Fight It, at < https://substack.com/home/
3). “Religion and the 2024 Election: What we know right now and what we'll be waiting to find out”, Nov 14, 2024, Andrew Whitehead, American Idolatry, at < https://andrewwhitehead.
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: The U.S. is moving forward into a bleak period with the Orange Haired Monster at the helm. Of course, in actuality, Trump is a tired and sick old man who wants to spend most of his time golfing. He has nominated by far the worst set of executive appointees in the history of the country. Their main agenda is to loot the U.S. Federal Government and force a radical far-right agenda on the populace while looting and bankrupting the institutions that many, including working-class MAGA types, depend on to live.
Item 1)., “Do Not Downplay ….”, critiques those who think they can just keep their heads down and will survive the 2nd Trump Regime unscathed. As the author points out a lot of people, well over half a million did not survive the 1st Trump Regime and died one way or another due to its vicious policies. Item 2)., “It's the Christian Nationalism”, and Item 3)., “Religion and the 2024 Election:”, both look at the correlation of Right-wing Christians (Christian Nationalists) and the success of Trump in winning the vote in 2024. Item 2)., has some good maps that help clarify the situation. Both Items 2 & 3 were published in mid November of 2024 and there might be some more up to date analyses of this that I don't know about. Please suggest any if you know about them. But clearly Christian Nationalists want to impose a horrific reactionary / fascist agenda on the U.S. that most of the population does not want.
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Do Not Downplay How Bad Trump 2.0 Will Be
When Donald Trump announced he was appointing Dr. Mehmet Oz to his Cabinet, my phone lit up with texts from friends reacting to the latest in a string of surreal hiring decisions. “The worst!!!” one of them said. Another just sent a laughing emoji and the word please. But when I pointed out that Oz, who has said that terminating a pregnancy is “murder” at all stages, could now shape abortion policy if confirmed to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, one friend asked, “Can you please stop catastrophizing?”
I felt patronized, and not for the first time. “How bad will it actually get?” is a question that family, friends, and even strangers who know that my job is to be plugged in to the news cycle have asked me since the morning after Trump’s reelection. I simply repeat what Trump & Co. have already said they want to do: carry out mass deportations, ban abortion nationwide, target transgender people, give tax breaks to the rich, and throw political adversaries in jail. It’s not the comforting answer or the secret plan to slow Trump down that they’re expecting to hear. I can see my conversation partner’s self-preservation instinct kick in as the panic in their face quickly morphs into disbelief.
It’s tempting to think the next four years won’t be worse for them than what came before. “We survived the first Trump administration” is a sentiment I heard a lot before Election Day and since, but who, exactly, is “we”? Not the at least six migrant children who died in U.S. custody in late 2018 and early 2019 — something that had not occurred for almost a decade before. Not my family friend who was among the nearly 5,000 people who perished in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017 owing to the incompetent federal and local responses to the disaster. Not the 22,000 whom experts believe Trump’s rollback of environmental policies has killed. Not the 400,000 who died of COVID-19 by the time Trump left office, 40 percent of whom experts say could still be alive had Trump not accelerated the degradation of the country’s public-health infrastructure. The impact of his administration’s choices is still felt today: Just look at all the women who have been harmed or died as a result of the abortion bans made possible by Trump’s Supreme Court picks.
If the past foretells the future, Trump 2.0 will be as chaotic and violent as his first administration, which ended with thousands of his supporters storming the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election result. But there will be some important differences come January 20, 2025. The so-called adults in the room, the staffers who threw up some semblance of a guardrail to keep Trump’s worst impulses in check, have been exiled from his orbit and replaced with sycophants who follow every one of his marching orders. “Moderating” forces like Ivanka Trump are not returning to D.C. The president-elect’s daughter is now taking up surfing instead of leaking to tabloids that she’s talking to her dad about climate change or LGBTQ+ rights. Over the past decade, the Republican Party has been remade in Trump’s image; the few lawmakers who challenged him have either decided to leave Washington or were voted out of office. His party now controls both chambers of Congress. Then there’s the conservative Supreme Court supermajority, which has repeatedly ruled in alignment with the agenda Trump and his loyalists have for the country.
Many people have already memory-holed the damaging policies Trump passed in his first term, including his attempts to end Obamacare, scaling back food benefits for low-income Americans, squashing efforts to fight climate change, separating migrant children from their families, and supporting the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. His second administration will build on that history. During this election cycle, Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the far-right transition wish list, Project 2025. Now, he’s stacking his administration with the document’s authors and collaborators. From White House staff and Cabinet appointments to rank-and-file personnel across agencies, Trump is prioritizing loyalty above all other qualifications — even among independent agencies such as the FBI and the IRS, at which the leadership hasn’t historically turned over with each new president. And his people are ready to remake the country in their Christian, white-nationalist image.
Now the president-elect will be unshackled to pursue an agenda that will unleash untold harm on the most marginalized among us: the poor, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and women. At worst, Trump will have free rein to do as he pleases and his team will stay disciplined in advancing his goals. At best, the incompetency and infighting that defined Trump’s first term will delay and derail some parts of his agenda. Either way, we’ll be picking up the pieces for years to come.
But we know that generations before us have survived worse. And there’s one more key difference from 2016: We now know exactly what Trump is planning and what he’s capable of. Confronting those facts is not catastrophizing, nor should this information paralyze you. Sticking our heads in the sand is not an option. Knowledge is power, and knowing exactly what Trump and his lackeys intend to do to our communities is the first step toward protecting ourselves from whichever attacks are coming.
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It's the Christian Nationalism
I saw a piece yesterday from the always on point Professor Andrew Whitehead showing the correlation between Christian Nationalism and voting for Trump. You can read it here.
I wanted to flesh it out just a little bit with maps, and woo boy, once you see it, just like with so many other things, you can’t unsee it.
Here is the US map, color coded and labeled with the percentage of the vote in each state for Donald Trump.
Blue is an strong outcome for Democrats, where it was a no-brainer for Kamala
Blue is an strong outcome for Democrats, where it was a no-brainer for Kamala Harris
Purplish are close calls either way, some went for Democrats (Harris), some for Republicans (Trump), but close nonetheless
Maroon went for Republicans and Donald Trump by at least 5 points
Red are all 60 or more percent for Trump
A sobering map, especially for those of us who live in the Maroon or Red spaces, but we know the whole map is now run by Republicans in all three branches of government.
Now, let’s see what those Maroon and Red spaces believe.
PRRI ran a study in 2023, their American Values Atlas. Among the questions were multiple to gauge levels of support for Christian Nationalism in every state in the union.
PRRI divided up respondents into 4 categories:
Rejectors of Christian Nationalism (30% across the country)
Skeptics of Christian Nationalism (37% across the country)
Sympathizers for Christian Nationalism (20% across the country)
Adherents for Christian nationalism (10% across the country)
You may read that and think, well heck, that means there are only 30% of Americans are down with Christian Nationalism. And yes, that is a good thing. BUT, damn near every one of that 30% show up and vote in every election. The other 70% of us (3% skipped / didn’t answer the questions in the survey so that’s why the math isn’t quite 100% in the 4 groups) across the country don’t as regularly. So that means the 30% (which is much higher in some states) dominate elections as turnout dips. Depressing turnout has been part of their plan for literally decades. Paul Weyrich told us in 1980.
Just in case you wanted to know the questions that derive the scale / classifications, they are:
The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
These questions are how the experts have zeroed in on Christian Nationalism, so agreeing / strongly agreeing with the statement puts you into the Sympathizer / Adherent categories.
Now, let’s see what the PRRI data showed us about each state.
Ok, so US states range from a low of 17% of their population in the Sympathizer / Adherent group to a high of 50%. And remember, these people in these two groups vote, so even in places where you see the lower percentages, they can and do dominate elections, seizing levers of power and imposing their ideology / belief on everyone else. Let’s take another peek at the election outcomes.
Go ahead, scroll back and forth and compare the two maps. It is OMG obvious on the overlap. Where there are more Christian Nationalism believers, the results went for Republicans. Where there is a lot less, the results went for Democrats.
So, this pundit class saying “it’s the economy” driving election outcomes are refusing to look below the surface, simply believing the public polling and exit polls, where we totally expect someone to say I’m voting for Republicans because I believe in the racism, xenophobia, and homophobia that animates the party. Yeah, right. “The Economy” is code for their fear of the other, or just their desire to stick it to those who are different than they are. It’s an old story in the United States. It’s a message pushed through churches across the country and the CN media eco-system. Too many are comfortable with the standard narrative and don’t want to open their eyes to a new reality. Christian nationalism and supremacists (white, Christian, male, etc.) have a Venn diagram that overlaps in big ways. You can’t talk about one without knowing you are talking about the others. It ain’t the economy driving, it’s the ideology and fear of other. The economy is the excuse.
Christian nationalism is the root of the rot behind a whole host of the things so many of us are fighting against. Until people understand that, we will be always chasing the weed up top. We have to get below the surface.
We are still fighting for people to See It. They are willing to make excuse after excuse to continue in their bubble. Once you open your eyes, being able to Name It is key, so it’s clear to yourself and others what we are up against. THEN and only then are we ready to Fight It. Once we are on the same page and know the stakes, we can get to the root and pull it out. Otherwise the weeds will keep coming back.
See It. Name It. Fight It.
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Religion and the 2024 Election
On November 5, 2024, over 150 million Americans voted for a new president. While votes are still being counted (California has 87% reporting, the lowest of all 50 states), Donald Trump was able to exceed the 270 electoral vote threshold—securing 312—to become the 47th President of the United States.
In the end, he swept all 7 “swing” states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. The “blue wall” the Harris campaign aimed for did not materialize.
While there is still much to learn about what happened, we will have to wait for in-depth analyses and reports on how the electorate actually broke. However, there are some things we are already seeing that place this outcome into preliminary context.
First, it appears the United States is part of a larger, global trend where every incumbent party facing an election this year has lost vote share. In the past 70 years, this is the first time that has happened. There were some serious headwinds against Democrats, and not just in the US.
That red dot is the US in 2024. I’m sure the Democratic Party and Harris’ campaign draw little consolation from the fact that they didn’t lose as much vote share as other global incumbents. But it does appear they outperformed most—just not enough to actually win.
Second, exit polls show that Harris underperformed across a number of demographic groups compared to Biden and Clinton. Trump, obviously, improved in a number of areas. 2024 turned out to be his most diverse coalition yet. It is important to note that exit polls can be rather unreliable and so these are only early signals. We will need to wait for more substantive surveys and data to be released in order to see what really took place.
Surprisingly, Harris lost some ground with women (compared to Clinton and Biden) while Trump maintained his edge with men. Given the fall of Roe v. Wade, Harris possibly being the first woman president in the US, and Trump’s historic and ongoing denigration of women, many predicted Harris would win big among women. It just didn’t happen.
These same exit polls show Trump actually flipped the recent Democrat advantage among Latino men, and significantly closed the gap among Latina women. He also closed the gap among Black men.
Another important point that I will look forward to learning more about in the coming months is how Harris lost considerable ground among 18-29 year old voters.
And the wave of Americans expected to vote in support of Harris due to the fall of Roe v. Wade never materialized. In fact, it seems Trump improved across almost all views of abortion compared to 2020. He close the gap for the “legal in most cases” group, and expanded his upper hand in the “illegal in most cases” and “illegal in all cases” groups.
Here’s how CNN reported on this shift around abortion attitudes and how while more Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, that doesn’t mean they voted for Harris:
In 2020, about half of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In 2024, it’s about two-thirds of Americans who say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But they didn’t necessarily tie that support to their vote for president. About half of people who say abortion should be legal in most cases supported Trump.
Third, lurking in the background of all of this, is religion. Trump again and again spoke directly to how he would defend Christians and Christianity from the forces arrayed against it. There was little doubt, after what we saw in 2016 and 2020, that white, conservative Christians and similarly aligned groups would maintain their support for Trump.
No surprise here: according to two different exit polls, Trump won 79-81% of white Evangelical Protestants, numbers right in line with 2016 and 2020.1 But there’s more. According to the Edison/National Election Poll Exit Poll in 2024 Trump gained 20 points among Hispanic Catholics and 11 points among Hispanic Protestants compared to 2020.
Again, these numbers are preliminary, but incredibly interesting and instructive. They also align with scholars Brandon Martinez and Gerardo Marti who present evidence of a rightward shift among Hispanic Americans, and particularly due to their religion. Trump’s gain among the Hispanic American population appears to be substantial and certainly related to their religious affiliations.
Finally, I wanted to see preliminary evidence of how Christian nationalism related to the 2024 election.2 Below is a scatterplot of the percent of each state that is either an Adherent or Sympathizer of Christian nationalism and the percent of the vote for Trump in each state.3 This is using data from PRRI’s recent report on Christian nationalism across all 50 states and Trump’s vote share for each state from CNN Politics’ interactive map.
There is a clear, linear relationship between the percent of a state’s population who strongly embrace or accommodate Christian nationalism, and the vote share for Trump in 2024. The correlation between Christian nationalism and voting for Trump at the state level is .86, which is incredibly strong.
I’ll continue to dig into this relationship in the coming weeks and months and will report back with more nuanced findings. But preliminary analyses show that even when I control for a lot of different factors at the state-level—even the percent of the population who identify as Republican—the overall support for Christian nationalism still matters in relation to Trump’s vote share across the state.
There is still much to learn about the 2024 election and Trump’s win. His return to the US Presidency promises to continue a tumultuous time in politics and portends a real threat to various democratic norms. He did not encourage a peaceful transfer of power in 2020, and we can rest assured he will not do so in 2028.
Whether another Trump presidency actually “pays off” for some of the groups who ushered him into a second time in office remains to be seen. At this point, we are left to wait for what comes next.
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