After I graduated from college, I moved to a trailer park to save money. Beyond having some crazy adventures, I learned something really important while living in the trailer park.
This week we talked to Chris, a 35-year-old white man from rural Pennsylvania. Chris wrote in that he thought, “the U.S. should have a velvet divorce,” a reference to the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia — now the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic — in 1993. Chris went on: “I live in heavy Trump country but know he’s an idiot, but even Trump haters wouldn’t agree to break up the U.S. And certain areas (the South, the Midwest) would be horrible for minorities and destroy the environment. But it’s obvious the U.S. has run its course.”
In a New York Times article called “The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship,” Amanda Taub writes that sharing fake news stories on social media that denigrate the candidate you oppose “is a way to show public support for one’s partisan team—roughly the equivalent of painting your face with team colors on game day.” This sort of information tribalism isn’t a consequence of people lacking intelligence or of an inability to comprehend evidence. Kahan has previously written that whether people “believe” in evolution or not has nothing to do with whether they understand the theory of it—saying you don’t believe in evolution is just another way of saying you’re religious. Similarly, a recent Pew study found that a high level of science knowledge didn’t make Republicans any more likely to say they believed in climate change, though it did for Democrats.
Roughly $2.5 million allocated for the National Park Service will be diverted to fund President Donald Trump's "Salute to America" Fourth of July celebration, two unnamed sources familiar with the matter said, according to a Washington Post report published Tuesday. The funds were reportedly diverted from entrance and recreation fees generated by the National Park Service. Denis Galvin, a former Park Service deputy director, told The Post that the Fourth of July celebrations at the National Mall in Washington, DC, normally cost the Park Service around $2 million.
President Trump has a history of treating nonpolitical events like they're campaign rallies, especially if there is a large crowd on hand. His Fourth of July speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial will be just such a setting.
A White House official who declined to be named said the speech will be about celebrating America, the flag and members of the military — not political. But all assurances about what Trump will say or do need to be taken with a grain of salt. Tanks, Flyovers And Heightened Security: Trump's 4th Of July Ups Taxpayer Cost Politics Tanks, Flyovers And Heightened Security: Trump's Fourth Of July Ups Taxpayer Cost
Asked Monday whether he thought he "can give a speech that can reach all Americans," Trump said yes, he thought he could. But 17 seconds into answering the question, the president launched into an attack on Democrats, whose ideas for health care would "destroy the country."
Even before he utters a single word, Trump's decision to deliver a speech on the National Mall on the Fourth of July injects a political figure (and a deeply polarizing one at that) into what has traditionally been a day where presidents have stayed away.
A political speech could also cause legal problems for the Trump administration. Walter Shaub, a former head of the Office of Government Ethics and now with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote that Trump's event could quickly fall afoul of ethics laws and laws preventing the spending of government resources for political purposes if Trump or others on the stage start attacking Democrats or talking about his reelection campaign.
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision allowing state legislatures to gerrymander political districts along blatantly partisan lines was made by the court’s conservative justices, on a narrow 5-to-4 ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”
Translation? If you have enough political power, your party can draw the lines designed to favor your candidates as aggressively as you want. It’s a standard that Republicans have fought to defend. But as is often the case in politics, this victory for conservatives represents a double-edged sword. The precedent could be devastating for New York’s already beleaguered Republican Party.
