An op-ed I wrote responding to dehumanizing rhetoric used by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was published this morning in Baptist News Global. Here’s a snippet:

When our political leaders demean immigrants, attitudes change and our national ethos suffers. Instead of being an open-hearted, welcoming, caring nation, we become stingy, uncaring and insular.

Rhetoric like this contributes to dehumanizing and racist attitudes toward immigrants in the U.S. today. It also weakens our communities and sows division in our families and associations. And if you care about solutions to our border crisis, this sort of language harms efforts to build a necessary consensus.

Read the whole thing here.

I provide the example of Trump claiming the U.S. is “a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people they don’t want.” Since writing the first draft and sending it to various publications, calling people garbage has become a bigger news story. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” and then President Joe Biden called Trump supporters garbage. The White House later clarified that he was just calling Hinchcliffe garbage and Biden’s words were bumbling enough that it’s plausible. But either way, it’s still bad to call people garbage. Our political leaders set the tone for our nation, so they should be setting a positive example of civil discourse. We all suffer when they don’t.

What Else We’re Reading

NYT: “Inside Trump’s Truth Social Conspiracy Theory Machine”

The New York Times’s examination of Mr. Trump’s activity on Truth Social shows that, often multiple times a day, the former president is concocting or promoting dark, paranoid material and pushing it out to his millions of followers. Mr. Trump is so hungry for this content that he appears to be willing to share outlandish information from anyone, including both well-known conspiracists and anonymous accounts that tag him.

The Times analyzed thousands of Mr. Trump’s posts and reposts over a six-month period in 2024 and found that at least 330 of them met two tightly defined and striking criteria: They each described both a false, secretive plot against Mr. Trump or the American people and a specific entity supposedly responsible for it. The unfounded theories ranged from suggestions that the F.B.I. had ordered his assassination to accusations that government officials had orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Gift link.

Brookings: “The counties that may try not to certify the 2024 election”

In this essay, we examine the 50 counties across the seven swing states that pose the highest risk of attempting non-certification in November, however futile. In Section I we provide a table grouping them in four categories based on the degree of risk of attempted non-certification: high concern (Tier 1), medium concern (Tier 2), concern (Tier 3), and worth watching (Tier 4). In Section II, we offer a more detailed discussion of the 15 high- and medium- concern counties. In Section III, we offer state-by-state maps visualizing the location of these counties.

Link.

CNN: “CNN reporter spent 24 hours consuming MAGA media. See the important trend he found”

Millions of Americans get most, or all, of their news and information (or misinformation) from the hundreds, possibly thousands, of pro-Trump MAGA media outlets. All these outlets are claiming there’s no way Trump can lose if the election is fair. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan spent 24 hours in it.

Watch.