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The Religious Landscape is Undergoing Massive Change. It Could Decide the 2024 Election
The Religious Landscape is Undergoing Massive Change. It Could Decide the 2024 Election, Ryan Burge, Politico Magazine:
The new decennial Religion Census offers cause for hope — and alarm — for both parties.

The 2020 U.S. Religion Census, which was released late last year, reveals that religion is taking a beating across the middle part of the country. When comparing the rate of religious adherents in 2020 versus 2010, a fascinating pattern emerges, illuminating the political relevance of the shifting religious landscape: Democrats are making gains in areas where religion is fading (the census defines non-religious as the percentage of a county’s population that does not show up on the rolls of any religious organization in that county) and Republicans are increasing their vote share in places where houses of worship are gaining new members.

When people think about where religion is declining, it’s likely they point to regions like the Pacific Northwest or New England. But the drops in adherents in those parts of the country are fairly modest compared to other regions of the United States.

Across the industrial Midwest, in former Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that are absolutely essential to the Democrats’ firewall in 2024, there is good news for the party — each of those states is much less religious today than it was just 10 years ago.
After Biden Predicted Chaos at the Border, a Quieter Than Expected Weekend
After Biden Predicted Chaos at the Border, a Quieter Than Expected Weekend, Michael D. Shear, The New York Times
The days after pandemic-era immigration restrictions were lifted showed the ability of federal authorities, local governments and private nonprofits to temporarily triage the situation at the border.

The administration sent 1,500 troops to the border to help free up more Border Patrol agents. Cities declared emergencies and opened extra shelters for migrants needing a place to sleep. Churches and other nonprofit groups received grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to bolster their relief efforts. Border officials built temporary holding facilities.

The administration also imposed tough new restrictions on who qualifies for asylum, a policy that has drawn fierce attacks and legal challenges from human rights groups. And officials increased the opportunities for migrants to enter the country legally, using a mobile phone app to schedule interviews with an asylum officer.

What followed was a quieter than expected weekend in Texas, Arizona, California and nearby Mexican cities.
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Biden Must Go to the G7 Meeting in Japan as the Threat of U.S. Debt Default Looms
Biden Must Go to the G7 Meeting in Japan as the Threat of U.S. Debt Default Looms, David Rothkopf, Daily Beast
Other presidents have skipped the trip when during similar crises. But this time is different.

The last-minute talks to stave off U.S. debt default are a reason that President Joe Biden should stick with his plans to attend the G7 in Japan rather than to cancel them.

Naturally, the president’s own optimism and other signs that progress is being made make sticking with his travel plans even more sensible. But, there is precedent for canceling such a trip, as both President Barack Obama and President Bill Clinton did in the past to deal with debt battles at home. This—along with last week’s contentious meeting between the president, Kevin McCarthy, and other congressional leaders on the current stand-off—have raised questions about whether Biden would indeed make the trip.
Vigilante Violence Is Part of the Right’s Plan
Vigilante Violence Is Part of the Right’s Plan, Thomas Zimmer, Democracy Americana on Substack:
The open embrace of violence plays a key role in the broader reactionary mobilization against democracy.

Public reactions – not just from the rightwing extremist fringes on social media, but from “respectable” conservatives as well as quite a few self-proclaimed centrists and moderates – have been incredibly discouraging and infuriating. In his “Unpopular Front” newsletter, John Ganz really captured what I find so disturbing:

“What people are essentially saying is ‘this man’s life was worthless’ and, as a result of his criminal record, ‘he had it coming.’ … Neely’s death has been described as a lynching. This is an extremely grave thing to charge. But what seems completely unquestionable to me is that the people who have shown cruel indifference or contempt or glee about the killing of Jordan Neely are the spiritual equivalent of a lynch mob even if his death was accidental or a crime of passion rather than premeditation. They are part of a lynch mob after the fact. They have decided—on reflection, out of personal danger, and with malice aforethought, as they say of murder—that Neely’s life was worthless. Any many apparently feel total comfort howling like a lynch mob in public.”
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The Republican Embrace of Vigilantism Is No Accident
The Republican Embrace of Vigilantism Is No Accident, James Bouie, The New York Times
It’s been nearly three years since the riots and subsequent shooting in Kenosha, Wis., where a gunman — Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from nearby Antioch, Ill. — killed two protesters in what a court eventually determined was self-defense.

Among the most troubling aspects of the shooting was the almost jubilant reaction of conservative media to the news that someone had taken the law into his own hands and meted out lethal force. Tucker Carlson praised Rittenhouse as someone who decided “to maintain order when no one else would.” Ann Coulter said she wanted Rittenhouse “as my president.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, then a candidate, called him an “innocent child,” and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky praised Rittenhouse for his “incredible restraint.”

Rittenhouse would go on, after his acquittal, to become a minor conservative celebrity. He met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, got a standing ovation at a Turning Point USA conference and earned the praise of the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who said, “Kyle Rittenhouse did what we should want citizens to do in such a situation: step forward to defend the community against mob violence.”

At the time — noting, as well, the celebration of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, two would-be vigilantes, at the 2020 Republican National Convention — I wrote that this was an ominous development for what it revealed about the conservative mood. There seemed to be a bloodlust, defined by an almost reflexive embrace of anyone who used lethal violence against a perceived antagonist.

That bloodlust appears to be getting worse.
DeSantis’s celebration of vigilantism is a new low in MAGA extremism
DeSantis’s celebration of vigilantism is a new low in MAGA extremism, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, Washington Post
“Law and order” and “tough on crime” rhetoric from Republicans goes back more than half a century and has a long history of shading into support for vigilantism in popular culture. (Think of Charles Bronson in “Death Wish.”) But in the Trump era, it seems that wide swaths of one of our major parties have taken to blatantly celebrating extralegal violence.

“The idea that individual citizens should do this — that’s a different place to go,” said Sam Tanenhaus, who recently completed a biography of William F. Buckley, the conservative commentator who played a key role in tough-on-crime politics with his ill-fated 1965 campaign for New York mayor.

DeSantis didn’t merely valorize Penny as a good Samaritan. DeSantis is also raising money for Penny’s defense, arguing that his prosecutors are pro-criminal.

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