An overwhelming majority of Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) supporters said in a new poll that they believe President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, while the opposite is true for those who support her challenger in the upcoming GOP primary, Harriet Hageman, who is backed by former President Trump
The University of Wyoming (UW) poll found that 94 percent of Cheney supporters view Biden’s victory as legitimate, compared to only 16 percent of Hageman supporters.
The new poll also found that Cheney is facing an uphill battle in the Tuesday primary.
Cheney received 27.8 percent support among likely GOP primary voters, compared to 57.4 support for Hageman and roughly 10 percent who were undecided.
“The race for the Republican nomination appears to be a referendum on Cheney, as it usually is when an incumbent seeks reelection,” Jim King, a professor of political science at UW, said in a statement.
But this year’s Republican in Wyoming primary may attract voters of all partisan affiliations. Cheney is attempting to convince Democrats to switch parties for the primary to boost her chances, and two House Democrats cut ads in support of Cheney’s strategy.
The UW poll found that roughly half of likely voters in Wyoming who identify as Democrats say they will vote in the Republican primary. But that group of Democrats would only reflect 8 percent of likely voters in the primary.
“There has been much talk in the media about Democrats crossing over and voting in the Republican primary; this group is not especially large,” said King.
Among that group, Cheney received 98 percent support, compared to 15 percent support among Republicans likely to vote in the primary. Independents likely to vote in the GOP primary were split, with 41 percent indicating support for Cheney and 43 percent for Hageman.
“Back-of-the-napkin math says that number could represent as many as 20,000 votes in the GOP primary from currently registered Democrats, compared to as many as 200,000-plus votes from registered Republicans,” said Brian Harnisch, director of UW’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center.
“It does not appear at the time of this survey the numbers are there for party switching to have a significant effect on the outcome of this race,” he added.
The poll was conducted from July 25th through Aug. 6, yielding 836 total responses, including 562 identified as likely GOP primary voters. The margin of error for the primary questions is 4.1 percentage points.
Senate Democrats are out with a digital ad targeting GOP senators Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) over their votes against putting a $35 per month cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs for patients without Medicare coverage.
The vote took place on an amendment to the Democratic climate, tax and health care package approved by the Senate last week. The amendment itself was blocked by Republicans.
The ad, which was shared with The Hill, features a photo of Rubio, Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) with a caption reading “Senate Republicans voted AGAINST insulin cap.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) said that it’s a five-figure digital campaign, and the ad will be displayed on news, politics and law websites for voters interested in prescription drugs.
Democrats brought up the amendment after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a provision in the reconciliation bill establishing the $35 cap violated a rule it needed to meet to be included in the package, which was moving through the Senate under special rules to get around a GOP filibuster.
The approved package did establish a $35 cap on insulin for people covered by Medicare.
Democrats needed 60 votes — a number that would have required at least 10 GOP votes — to overrule the parliamentarian.
Johnson and Rubio are both up for reelection this fall in contested races.
“Senate Republicans like Johnson and Rubio cast an ugly vote against a popular policy that will lower the cost of insulin for Americans. Johnson and Rubio showed they care more about their Big Pharma political donors than lowering costs for working families – and voters will hold them accountable in November,” DSCC spokesperson Nora Keefe said in a statement.
Laws barring businesses and schools from teaching anti-racist ideas, such as Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, mimic the same intolerance displayed by woke progressives. The better path is to encourage open debate, not censorship.
The Stop WOKE Act prevents businesses, schools and other institutions from subjecting students and employees to training or teachings that promote various anti-racist ideas. These include the idea that a “person, by virtue of his race, color, national origin or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” and the idea that “virtues such as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular [group] to oppress members of another [group].”
Under the law, teachers cannot teach these ideas to students, businesses cannot impose training that promotes these ideas, and licensing institutions or membership associations cannot require such training as a condition of a license or membership.
The ideas that Florida seeks to suppress are bad. The peddlers of wokism sow discrimination and division, blacklist dissenters, and scorn individual freedom. But we should not fight this illiberalism with more illiberalism. The Stop WOKE Act would trample free speech in its enthusiasm to oppose bad ideas.
The First Amendment protects ideas that we truly hate. Private businesses have a First Amendment right to tell their employees that all whites are privileged oppressors or that colorblindness is racist, though there may be some limits if training creates a hostile workplace. And while grade-school teachers may face curriculum constraints, college professors have a First Amendment right to argue that slavery was an essential rationale behind the American Revolution, or that minorities deserve reparations from white taxpayers who played no role in their oppression. Yet under the Stop WOKE Act, such speech is unlawful “discrimination.”
Conservative lawmakers should appreciate the problem with this approach, given their opposition to anti-discrimination laws that compel businesses to violate their beliefs, such as forcing a wedding photographer to work a same-sex marriage ceremony or city ordinances that seek to ban Chick-fil-A restaurants because of owner’s donations to support traditional marriage. The underlying principle is the same: Government cannot impose dogma on its citizens.
Government bureaucrats are not qualified to decide which ideas deserve protection and which deserve censorship and scorn. In the Supreme Court’s words, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
Not only do these laws violate the freedoms they purport to protect, but history warns that censorship often backfires. Consider what happened when the Nazi race-baiter Julius Streicher was imprisoned for accusing Jews of ritual murders in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer. Not only did this fail to stop antisemitic speech, but Nazi propagandists won public support by spinning Streicher as a martyr. This recoil effect is visible today as progressive politicians whip up the leftover conservative fearmongering about race.
Efforts to censor woke ideas are also based on the flawed premise that Americans are fragile and gullible. But the First Amendment assumes that citizens in a free society are tough enough to hear and reject offensive ideas. As Justice Louis Brandeis explained, “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. … They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”
There are better ways to grapple with bad ideas than censorship. Foremost, we should let ideas do battle on equal ground. As John Milton put it, rather than doubt the strength of truth, we should “let her and falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” Sometimes we are too quick to muzzle opponents because we don’t trust our message. To foster debate, legislators should promote transparency by requiring schools to make training and teaching materials available to public scrutiny. And while lawmakers cannot tell businesses what to say to their employees, they can prohibit the government from rigging the debate by compelling students or employees to adopt or promote ideas they disagree with.
Free speech is a net gain for society, even when it protects odious ideas. In 1977, Jewish attorney David Goldberger defended the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., home to many Holocaust survivors. Goldberger’s courage stands in stark contrast to the ill-fated imprisonment of Julius Streicher. He understood two things we must remember: that the First Amendment does not play favorites and that truth need not fear its enemies.
Ethan Blevins (@ethanwb) and Daniel Ortner (@dortner1) are attorneys at Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit legal organization that defends Americans’ individual liberty and constitutional rights.
Political analysts on both sides of the aisle said on Sunday TV programs that former President Trump’s supporters are more firmly in his corner after the FBI search at his Mar-a-Lago residence last week.
Fans backed Trump before and after the FBI retrieved some super-secret material that he removed from the White House in 2021. They accept his objections, accusations and political assertions and embrace many of the GOP candidates he’s endorsed this year. The former president is unlikely to lose the backing of far-right conservatives based on a controversy over national security documents, pundits suggested, but he could alienate independent voters while also helping President Biden and fellow Democrats motivate a less enthusiastic progressive base.
How? By reviving the contrasts Biden and his party played up in 2020 against Trump and the GOP. Democrats can shift the conversation from talking about inflation to the anti-Trump contrasts that worked to motivate voters in the last presidential race. Biden early this summer tried to message to Democrats about “ultra MAGA” Republicans, only to find that Trump and his supporters hailed the denunciations.
▪ The New York Times: Why did Trump keep documents, some classified, when the government for a year sought to retrieve them?
▪ CNN: Biden got the vibe shift he needed. Now he’s looking to make it count.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants the midterms to center on Biden, hopeful that a referendum on the party in power in the White House will give his party a majority in the House or Senate, or both, next year. Trump’s return to front-page news coverage this summer and perhaps into the fall clashes with that plan.
NBC News reported that Trump’s hasty and grudging departure from the White House after denying his 2020 loss helps explain how boxes of national security and other materials ended up in a Mar-a-Lago storeroom and became part of a dispute between the former president, the National Archives and then the Justice Department.
“It was a chaotic exit,”one NBC News source told the network. “Everyone piled everything — staff, the White House movers — into the moving trucks. When they got to Mar-a-Lago, they piled everything there in this storage room, except for things like the first lady’s clothes. Everything in a box went there.”
“He didn’t care. He didn’t care about the boxes. He was in a dark place at the time, if you remember. He didn’t even unpack things,” the source continued. “Over time, the staff moved them back in. If you had brought him into that storeroom, and asked, ‘Which are your presidential papers?’ he couldn’t tell you.”
One caveat from Sunday’s television political pundits: As Trump’s latest norm-busting controversy swallows other news coverage, Biden and Democratic candidates last week found themselves drowned out while trying to tell the public about what they see as the positives they delivered for health care, prescription drug pricing and climate change in legislation that will soon be signed into law.
Also trimming Biden’s sway are his low job approval poll numbers and the various Democrats who say or hint that the 79-year-old should limit his presidency to one term.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News’s “This Week” that Biden intends to run again in 2024 and understands Americans’ angst about high prices for gasoline, food and shelter (The Hill). Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told CNN on Sunday she expects gas prices, which have fallen nationwide below $4 a gallon, to continue to drop (The Hill).
Trump on Sunday kept his latest controversy alive by using his social media platform to call on the FBI to return documents reportedly seized at Mar-a-Lago, which he asserts are protected by attorney-client and executive privileges (The Hill). The former president has used the defense before in efforts to block records from being turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in a separate probe. A federal appeals court in December denied Trump’s claims of executive privilege to block the National Archives from turning over those records.
The New York Times reported Sunday that a Trump lawyer in June signed a statement to the Justice Department, prior to the government’s seizure last week of 27 boxes of documents and materials with national security sensitivity at the president’s residence and club, that all documents marked as classified were returned to the government.
The lawyer’s written statement could indicate that Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators, the Times reported. It could explain why the Justice Department in its search warrant executed last week cited a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction. While executing the court-approved search, FBI agents seized 11 sets of documents that had some type of confidential or secret markings, including some marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — an abbreviation for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information.” That designation means information should be viewed only in a secure government facility because of its sensitivity.
▪ The Hill and Politico: Republicans demand more transparency and information from Attorney General Merrick Garland after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search.
▪ The New York Times: After early fury at Trump search, Republican lawmakers are split, particularly as threats emerged against law enforcement.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s chaotic exit from the White House in 2021 is at the center of a federal probe and recent search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
▪ The New York Times: Here’s how presidential power to declassify government documents and materials works.
▪ The Hill: Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who was reelected in 2020, refused on Sunday to tell NBC News if he would vote for Trump in 2024.
▪ Politico: Biden keeps South Carolina (the state that revived his 2020 campaign), guessing about 2024 as Democratic aspirants circle overhead.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ MORE POLITICS
Trump and his allies have defeated most of those who voted to impeach him for his role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021. But the hurdles to topple the lone GOP senator standing for reelection this fall who voted to convict him.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) will take part in the state’s primary on Tuesday but is trailing Kelly Tshibaka, Trump’s pick in the race, according to recent polls. However, observers tell The Hill’s Julia Manchester that the incumbent senator shouldn’t be overly worried yet.
Alaska’s new electoral system could be the perfect recipe for Murkowski to win a fourth full term in office. Tuesday’s contest features an all-party primary, followed by a ranked-choice vote in the general election — meaning the moderate senator is all but guaranteed to advance this week even if she isn’t the top vote-getter.
“She can’t lose anything and we think the electorate is going to skew more Trumpy than the general and we think the electorate is going to be more partisan across the board,” John-Henry Heckendorn, an Alaska-based political consultant, said, referring to the primary, adding that will likely change in November.
“The bar is low for Murkowski in the primary because she’s likely to be favored, one would imagine, by a larger and less partisan electorate in the general,” he said.
Also on the ballot this week is Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who is the underdog against Harriet Hageman, Trump’s hand-picked candidate, heading into Tuesday.
Recent polls have shown Hageman leading by a wide margin. Cheney has unabashedly campaigned on her support for the U.S. Constitution, her concern for the Republican Party under Trump and her unwillingness to pander to voters on what she sees as key principles in an attempt to retain her seat (The Hill).
▪ The New York Times: In Wyoming, likely end of Cheney dynasty will close a political era.
▪ Reuters: Idaho top court allows near-total abortion ban to take effect.
▪ The New York Times: Why abortion has become a centerpiece of Democratic TV ads in 2022.
▪ The Hill: These Black candidates could make history in November.
Meanwhile, potential political violence reared its head once again on Sunday as a man fatally shot himself after crashing his vehicle into a barricade at the U.S. Capitol.
According to the U.S. Capitol Police, the man drove his car into the barricade one block east of the Capitol. He exited the vehicle, which became engulfed in flames, and then fired several shots in the air, alerting officers to the scene, according to the Capitol Police. The man fatally shot himself when officers approached him. No Capitol Police officers appear to have fired their weapons.
According to Capitol Police, the man apparently was not targeting any members of Congress. Lawmakers are on recess until early next month (The Hill).
Additionally, acclaimed author Salman Rushdie, 75, is recovering after a gruesome attack by a knife-wielding assailant during a New York lecture on Friday. Rushdie remained in critical condition Sunday with a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and in one eye but was said to be on the mend, according to his agent. The motive of Rushdie’s attacker is under investigation (The Associated Press).
Iran on Monday denied involvement in the attempted murder, but offered a justification for it due to the decades-old fatwa issued against the longtime author (The Associated Press).
▪ NBC News: FBI and Department of Homeland Security warn threats to federal law enforcement have spiked since Mar-a-Lago search.
▪ The Hill: GOP lawmakers adopt “defund” rallying cry for FBI, not police.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ CONGRESS
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and a group of lawmakers arrived on a congressional delegation in Taiwan on Sunday, a move that is certain to heighten tensions in the area shortly after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit earlier this month.
Markey, along with Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.), and Del. Aumua Amata Radewagen (R-American Samoa), will meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other local officials, including individuals in the private sector. On the agenda for discussion: the recent boost in domestic production of semiconductors and lowering tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
The move is notable, as it comes less than two weeks after Pelosi’s visit, which elicited a significant response from China in the form of days of threatening military drills off the surrounding waters of the country, including missiles, warplanes and warships (The Associated Press). Sure enough, the Chinese announced that more military exercises would take place off the Taiwanese coast in response to the visit. According to China’s Defense Ministry, the drills are a “resolute response and solemn deterrent against collusion and provocation between the U.S. and Taiwan” (The Associated Press).
Markey, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy, said that the trip is “meant to reaffirm U.S. support for Taiwan and encourage stability and peace.” They are set to leave the island at some point today on a U.S. government plane.
▪ Reuters: Taiwan says 11 Chinese military aircraft crossed Taiwan’s median line.
Congress might be out of town for much of the next month, but reverberations are still being felt after Democrats last week passed their $740 billion budget reconciliation package last week, which is set to be signed into law by Biden.
For much of the past week, House Republicans railed against $80 billion included in the proposal to boost the IRS, claiming that it was going to be used to hire an “army of IRS agents” to target small-business owners and middle-class Americans. However, the IRS, Democrats and outside experts all say the new enforcement money will mostly allow the IRS to focus on audits of the wealthy.
“Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in a letter late last week (The Hill).
▪ The Hill: “Shocked and disheartened”: How coal country is reacting to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) climate deal.
▪ The Associated Press: Some Capitol rioters try to profit from their Jan. 6 crimes.
■ Democrats are on a dangerous path with drug pricing, by Douglas E. Schoen, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3C5aKXp
■ Spin doesn’t change that Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, both Iowa Republicans, refused to help with insulin shots, byThe Des Moines Register editorial board.https://bit.ly/3w4My3Q
■ China’s demographics spell decline not domination, by Niall Ferguson, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3bS6rnV
WHERE AND WHEN
The House will meet at 1 p.m. for a pro forma session on Tuesday. It will reconvene on Sept. 13.
The Senate convenes Tuesday at 8 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.
The president has no public events on his schedule. He is vacationing with his family on Kiawah Island, S.C.
Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will depart Los Angeles this morning for Kauai, Hawaii.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets in Washington at 2:30 p.m. with African Diaspora Youth and Exchange alumni.
🌏 In Russia today, former WNBA star Brittney Griner and her legal team appealed her Aug. 4 conviction on drug possession charges. She is serving a nine-year prison sentence (Reuters and The Associated Press).
The Supreme Court’s three liberals, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, are outnumbered by six conservative justices and look increasingly likely to find themselves on the dissenting side of major rulings.
As a result, their written opinions could eventually carry heightened symbolic importance for liberal judicial ideas in public life and as a collective historical marker at a time of conservative-led legal upheaval, reports The Hill’s John Kruzel.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a warning to Russian soldiers on Sunday, saying that those who shoot at or from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant will become “special targets” for Ukrainian forces. The plant was captured by Russia earlier in the war, but it is still being operated by Ukrainians as nuclear blackmail, according to Reuters. … The U.S.’s impact in the region has also increased in recent days as anti-radiation missiles that have been contributed to Kyiv have helped take out some of Russia’s most dangerous weapons systems. The missiles are part of the Ukrainian push to expel Russian forces from the country (The Hill).
The Wall Street Journal: Russia’s goal in attack on nuclear plant: take the electricity, Ukraine says.
➤ POX, PANDEMIC & HEALTH
The World Health Organization announced over the weeked it has renamed variants of the virus monkeypox in order to avoid offending “any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups.” The Congo Basin and West African variants were reclassified as Clade I and Clade II, the latter of which has two subclades. The new names go into effect immediately (The Hill).
And finally … He’s at least 12 years old. He’s crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with stealth in the dark of night. He moves silently, carries no documents or water, and wears a distinctive coat.
“El Jefe,” The Boss, is a handsome jaguar and a celebrity among scientists who have seen him over the years in Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora in motion sensor images, recognizable by the spots that are like fingerprints (The Associated Press).
The rare northern jaguar’s ability to cross the border suggests that despite increased efforts to block human migration and drug trafficking, wildlife knows the territory well. If corridors are kept open. “it is feasible (to conserve) the jaguar population in the long term,” said Juan Carlos Bravo of the Wildlands Network, one of the groups in the Borderlands Linkages Initiative, a binational collaboration of eight conservation groups.
The first photograph of “El Jefe” was taken by a hunter southeast of Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. Conservationists were stunned when the jaguar, photographed again in Arizona in 2012 and in 2015, appeared in Mexico in November. He’s not just a survivor but an explorer.
Jaguars were thought to have disappeared from this country by the end of the 20th century because they were hunted in the southwestern United States for rewards offered by the government to promote cattle ranching. Remaining jaguar populations are concentrated in Mexico, Central America and central South America.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has relied on a steady stream of visiting Hollywood stars to keep the world’s focus on his country’s war with Russia, now nearly six months in. But some critics are questioning whether celebrities should have a starring role in a deadly conflict.
Jessica Chastain became the latest entertainment industry figure to aim the spotlight on Ukraine. In photos posted this week on Zelensky’s official Telegram account, Chastain is seen sitting at a table in a meeting with Ukraine’s president, and giving a slight grin as she stands arm-in-arm with him for a snapshot.
“American actress Jessica Chastain is in Ukraine today,” Zelensky’s account said in a post accompanying the photos.
“For us, such visits of famous people are extremely valuable,” it added. “Thanks to this, the world will hear, know and understand the truth about what is happening in our country even more.”
Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn and Liev Schreiber have all made trips to the war-torn country following Russia’s unprovoked offensive.
Penn made the biggest headlines in Ukraine when he was on the ground filming a documentary in February as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces moved in. The “Milk” star met with Zelensky on the eve of Russia’s invasion.
“Meeting with President Zelensky the day before the invasion, and then meeting with him again on the day of the invasion, I don’t know if he knew that he was born for this,” Penn said in a March interview on CNN.
“I do know that we have to invest everything that we have to support the Ukrainian people and to support President Zelensky, or I do not think we will have a legitimate memory of what America hopes to be,” Penn, a co-founder of CORE Response, told Anderson Cooper.
But the visits to a war zone from rich and famous celebrities don’t come without criticism.
“I think it’s highly problematic, what they’re doing,” Ilan Kapoor, the author of “Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity,” told ITK of Hollywood photo-ops in Ukraine.
“Who do [Hollywood stars] represent? If you think about it, they only represent themselves, and this is because they need and crave a public recognition to build up their brand,” added Kapoor, a professor of critical development studies at York University in Canada.
“It’s all about branding.”
Kapoor said he doesn’t fault Zelensky — himself a TV actor and famous face in Ukraine before he entered politics — for the star-studded meet-and-greets.
“He’s a clever and media-savvy leader, so he knows Ukraine is much weaker than the giant that is [President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia. And also he knows that the only way small and relatively weaker parts of Ukraine can resist the Russian invasion is by keeping up the pressure on the West to continue its support,” said Kapoor.
For Zelensky, utilizing social media, the press, and the “whole Western celebrity machine,” is an “effective way” to continue to apply that pressure amid potentially waning public interest, according to Kapoor.
Stiller, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has opened up about his reasons for touching down in Ukraine in June. The “Severance” director and “Meet the Fockers” star called Zelensky his “hero” when he met with him on World Refugee Day.
In a statement following his one-on-one with the Ukrainian president, Stiller said the purpose of his trip was to “stand in solidarity with people forced to flee in Ukraine and worldwide” and to “bring more attention to the humanitarian situation.”
Reflecting on the trip in an interview with Deadline this week, the 56-year-old entertainer said being on the ground there gave him a perspective he wouldn’t otherwise have because it “makes you think what you’d do in that situation.”
Darrell West, a vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, says Zelensky’s high-profile get-togethers are a “great way to drive media coverage because reporters love celebrities, and so it’s a wonderful photo-op for Zelensky to be with a leading celebrity.”
But West, who penned the book “Celebrity Politics,” says that doesn’t mean these encounters necessarily move the needle.
“People understand celebrities are not substantive experts, so they don’t take their public comments that seriously on specialized topics such as foreign policy,” he said.
“But celebrities raise money, and they can drive media coverage, so they can help leaders set the agenda on the things they care about.”
Not everybody who’s somebody in Hollywood is ready to jet off to Ukraine to appear by Zelensky’s side. Pink Floyd star Roger Waters made headlines this week when he called President Biden a “war criminal” after the commander in chief authorized more than $8 billion in security assistance for Ukraine over the course of 17 packages.
Also this week, “Under Siege” actor Steven Seagal appeared in a video that aired on a Russian state-owned TV network in which he repeated the Kremlin’s claims that Kyiv was responsible for a deadly strike at an eastern Ukrainian prison.
But with recent polls showing the majority of Americans support the U.S. government response to Russia’s invasion — with 63 percent of those surveyed in an Economist-YouGov poll last month saying it’s been “about right or “should be tougher” — celebrities are likely to find a “safe issue” in backing Ukraine and Zelensky.
“As you edge into more divisive topics, celebrities often choose to stay away from them because they don’t want to suffer a backlash from taking a public stance on a contentious issue,” said West.
Yet as the war drags on and the focus of Americans and the media may drift elsewhere, Kapoor said Zelensky could very well play host to countless more Hollywood visitors.
“It’s such a desperate situation, [Zelensky] needs to do whatever he needs to do. But celebrities are not desperate.”
Kapoor suggested Hollywood players can better serve causes they care about by “taking a background role,” or donating anonymously to reputable organizations.
“These are highly privileged people who need to know their place and don’t,” said Kapoor, “and the system only encourages them to continue to, I think in the end, do much more harm than they do good.”
But Zelensky and his government have indicated that there’s a real benefit to highlighting visits from well-known names and keeping Ukraine in the limelight.
A June tweet from Ukraine’s department of defense thanked Hollywood stars such as Penn, Schreiber, Jolie and Stiller, who “despite the danger, have visited us.”
“You are more than just an inspiration to all of us,” the message said. “Millions around the world have heard the truth from you about the struggle of the [Ukrainian] people.”
The 2024 GOP presidential primary will run through Fox News, and Republicans are already eyeing strategies on how to get on the network and reach its audience.
It’s a Fox primary of sorts, with Republicans hoping to get favorable airtime and attention on a network that has boosted GOP hopefuls in the past.
The efforts to get attention on Fox are especially important ahead of an open primary where a host of potential candidates will be vying for space — and where former President Trump will be a heavyweight.
“There isn’t a path to the GOP nomination for president that doesn’t run through Fox,” said Michael Mirer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee who studies media strategy and politics.
“For 2024, fundamentally after the first four states you can’t actually do the retail politics. You’re going to need to reach the loudest megaphone,” he added.
GOP operatives are already watching Fox, and Trump and other possible 2024 candidates, with interest to figure out how they are trying to move forward.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as well as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem are among the GOP bold-faced names who have received substantial airtime on Fox in recent weeks.
On Monday, Scott served as a guest host on the network’s daytime talk show “The Five,” while Cruz is a regular on Sean Hannity’s evening program.
DeSantis has emerged as the non-Trump GOP favorite in early 2024 prognostications.
He leapt to national attention through appearances on Fox News during the Trump administration that were widely credited for helping him win the state’s governorship in 2018. It’s easy to forget that DeSantis was not the early favorite in the race, but the upstart challenger to a more establishment candidate.
Prominent pollster Frank Lutz has praised DeSantis’s strategy.
“DeSantis has pursued the best media strategy of any politician over the last five years,” he told The Hill. “He focuses on friendly media, ignores hostile media, and almost always generates good press. And unlike Trump, he doesn’t pick fights with his media friends.”
Fox News declined to comment on its strategy for booking guests as it relates to campaign cycles and upcoming elections.
DeSantis’s office recently shared with Fox an exclusive on the governor’s first TV ad buy of his 2022 reelection campaign. The same week, the governor appeared on Tucker Carlson’s top-rated prime-time program to speak on his decision to suspend a Tampa-area prosecutor who received the backing of liberal billionaire George Soros, a frequent foil of Fox’s prime-time opinion hosts.
When contacted for comment about the governor’s media strategy and political aspirations, a spokesperson for DeSantis said the governor is “focused on doing what’s right for the people of Florida.”
“He is not running for anything other than re-election to continue serving as the governor of our great state,” the spokesperson said.
Last summer, as DeSantis’s national profile was rising, the Tampa Bay Times reported on what it portrayed as a sometimes-rosy relationship between the governor’s office and producers at Fox.
“I honestly think he could host the show with the chops we saw from him at the vaccine site,” a Fox producer wrote to a member of DeSantis’s team in an email obtained by the Times via a public records request.
Booking decisions are watched closely on Fox by political players trying to guess who is up and down.
“Candidates do themselves a disservice by focusing on what they think Fox News wants vs. actually campaigning to their constituents,” one media industry expert said. “Fox is a news channel that goes where America is going. You only have to look back to 2016 to see that played out. It was no secret that Fox was not ‘pushing’ for Trump, and yet Trump earned his way to more and more coverage and eventually victory.”
While Trump remains largely popular with Republicans, observers have noticed a shift when it comes to airtime on Fox since he left the White House.
Fox did not provide live continuous coverage of a recent Trump speech in Washington, D.C., while it did air several minutes of an earlier address the same day by former Vice President Mike Pence, another potential candidate for the GOP nomination for president in 2024.
“Fox News seems to be pulling back from total support for Trump,” said Joe Peyronnin, a former cable news executive who served as president of the network in the 1990s. “All Trump all the time was great for ratings in 2016 and during his presidency. But some Republicans are tiring of Trump, in part because of the recent revelations regarding his role in the Jan. 6 riots. Fox News is a business, ratings are the lifeblood of their business, so they may be hedging their bets a bit.”
An FBI search at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence on Monday evening shifted some of the political calculus again by enraging Republicans.
“When we get power back, it’s time to hold everyone accountable. The military leadership, the civilian leadership, the civil service, those in Congress who have abused their power, all of them have to be held accountable,” Fox host Laura Ingraham said on her show, defending the former president.
While Fox’s sheer audience size also earns it the attention of some Democrats and independents, observers say there are parallels to be drawn between the tone of coverage on Fox and the ideas being put forth by the Republican Party.
“What matters about Fox is a combination of the audience size and the fact that everything they cover is from an angle of urgency and crisis,” said David Niven, a political scientist who researches political campaigns, gerrymandering and political communication. “Any political figure in the center of their coverage is at the center of not just doing their job but avenging wrong. … Whether it’s DeSantis or somebody else, when they get the Fox News treatment they’re riding the white horse and slaying dragons.”
“We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”
That is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) calling for today’s GOP to insist its members be evangelical Christians or get out.
Here’s a second quote hammering the same religious intolerance.
“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk – that’s not in the Constitution.”
That is Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) insisting Congress and the government follow only Christian evangelical church teaching.
Her words stand in defiance of constitutional protections for the United States as a nation based on laws and not religious orthodoxy.
Now, here’s a third explicit call for the GOP to be a party of religious hatred.
“We’re not bending the knee to the two percent anymore,” said Andrew Torba, founder of the right-wing-friendly social platform Gab, referring to Jewish people in the United States.
Gab is characterized by CNN as “a haven for QAnon conspiracies, misinformation and antisemitic commentary.” The platform was paid a “consulting” fee by Doug Mastriano, the Republican running for governor in Pennsylvania.
Mastriano downplays his ties to Toba. He has said, “I reject anti-Semitism in any form”. But he has campaigned by pledging that “we are going to take our state back, my God will make it so.”
His talk about his “God” is particularly chilling because Mastriano’s Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race is Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish.
Taken together, these Republican voices are now pushing Middle Eastern-style religious hate to enlist followers and demonize rivals.
Greene’s comments drew a sharp rebuke on Twitter from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “I oppose the American Taliban,” he wrote.
More voices need to call out the hostility to American values displayed by these “ultra-MAGA” disciples of disgraced former President Trump.
Here’s James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and a father of the Constitution, writing in 1803: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”
A Christian group of social activists called Faithful America described Greene’s call for Republicans to be “Christian nationalists,” as having “essentially declared that America has no place for Jews, Muslims, or the LGBTQ community.”
The group noted that Greene is selling t-shirts with ads calling for Americans to “stand against the Godless Left.” What happened to “loving your neighbor or following the Prince of Peace,” the group asked.
This tide of hatred is rising due to political strategies.
A focus on culture wars, specifically opposition to abortion, contraception, and gay marriage, now defines the Republican Party.
That open antagonism is now covered by preaching obedience to religious doctrine.
One of the Trump-inspired crowd who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was photographed carrying the Christian flag and another banner proclaiming “Jesus is King.”
Long gone are principles that once defined the GOP — low taxes, defense of democracy around the world, and celebration of individual rights.
The far right’s goal now is to oppose the rising secular, liberal politics of educated women, racial minorities, and gay people.
The leading edge of their fight to impose Christian orthodoxy is by taking control over judges, and the politicians who appoint judges.
Their biggest victory was the Supreme Court’s reversal in June of nearly half a century of constitutional protection for a woman’s right to have an abortion.
Justice Clarence Thomas gave a preview of coming attractions on the Christian right’s shopping list in his concurring opinion. He said the Court should reconsider its decisions offering constitutional protection to same-sex marriage as well as gay sex and contraception.
The political alliance between the GOP and evangelicals has long been a reality.
Rev. Billy Graham’s rise as a political player in alliance with former President Nixon remains the root of the movement.
I wrote in my 2016 book “We the People” that the target audience for the famous preacher and his favorite president became “older white church-going voters concentrated in the South and Midwest…many of whom disapproved of the 1964 Civil Rights Act… [and of the] women’s movement that championed sexual liberation and the increasing use of birth control pills.”
Graham and Nixon used opposition to abortion as a wedge issue to win votes. It worked as evangelicals shifted to the GOP. In the 2020 presidential election, 28 percent of voters described themselves as “born-again or evangelical Christians,” according to exit polls — and three-quarters of them voted for Trump.
I was at the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego when the GOP’s nominee for president, Bob Dole, took a stand against religious bigotry within the party.
Dole said the party is “open to citizens of every race and religion,” as the “Party of Lincoln.” He then famously told the crowd in the arena, “the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.”
Where are such Republican statesmen today defending the tradition of Madison and Jefferson in their own party?
They have been drowned out, silenced by the hellish forces of bigotry given license by Trump.
We are standing on a dangerous edge. Good Americans of all religions and no religion need to lift every voice and sing.
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
As kids across the country prepare to go back to school, nearly a third of parents surveyed in a nationwide poll said they are worried about student safety in high-traffic drop-off areas.
Parents reported a plethora of issues plaguing their school drop-off system that threaten their children’s safety, including driver distraction and speeding, according to the survey.
“Many parents dread returning to the daily hassle of getting kids to school and one of the top concerns involves children safely walking through car and bus traffic,” poll co-director Sarah Clark, a research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at Michigan Medicine, said in a statement.
The poll, conducted by an external market research firm, surveyed randomly selected, stratified group of parents who reflected the demographics of the U.S. population and had at least one child aged 3-18 living in their household, according to the authors.
Of the total 2,002 respondents, the authors based their conclusions on the 923 parents with at least one child aged 6-12. They said they chose this subset because getting a ride to school is common among elementary and middle school students.
Elementary school students are also especially vulnerable to traffic-related injuries because they are less skilled at judging when it is safe to cross the street, the authors noted.
More than half of families — 56 percent — said that their children travel to school by car, while only 35 percent of kids take the bus, 7 percent walk to school, 1 percent travel by bike or scooter and 1 percent arrive by public transportation, according to the poll.
Almost half of parents — 48 percent — said that their child must walk through the car drop-off area when going to and from school.
Although 81 percent of parents said that the drop-off zone is always supervised by a school official or safety officer, only 69 percent described that supervision as good.
Nearly a third — 31 percent — of parents responded that they worry about their child’s safety going to and from school, while 28 percent said they think it is likely that a child will get hurt near the car or bus drop-off areas, according to the survey.
Among the problems that parents identified as a risk to their children’s safety were drivers not paying attention (37 percent), speeding (34 percent), parking in no-parking zones (26 percent) and dropping off in the wrong location (26 percent).
Almost all parents — 94 percent — said they feel that school officials must take action when parents do not adhere to traffic rules near school, the survey found.
“Most schools have a plan to manage traffic and minimize the need for children to walk in front of or between cars,” Clark said.
“When parents don’t follow these rules, it disrupts the traffic flow and may mean other parents have to drop off or pick up their child in the middle of the road,” she continued. “This situation may be even more dangerous if parents are distracted by phones or in a hurry.”
Two-thirds of parents said they supported putting up cones, gates or other barriers to direct traffic flow, while 61 percent and 58 percent said that law enforcement officers should give warnings and tickets, respectively.
“Parents should first ensure they are consistently following the traffic rules themselves,” Clark said. “They can also take steps to prepare their child to travel safely to and from school by making sure they always look both ways for traffic.”
The authors suggested a variety of ways that school administrators can be proactive, such as clearly marking traffic flow and coming outside at the beginning and end of the day to ensure that movement is occurring safely. On-site law enforcement officers can also supervise this process, they added.
Another helpful approach could involve using the school newsletter or “backpack mail” to remind parents about the importance of adhering to traffic safety procedures and about the possibility of penalties for violations.
As a last resort, the authors said that school officials could decide to suspend or ban parents who don’t follow the rules.
“School officials should also do their part to be aware of any safety concerns and strictly enforce rules,” Clark said. “Ultimately, the responsibility for keeping kids safe lies with the adults in the school community, including parents, bus drivers, school officials, and law enforcement.”
Authorities said the brother of former NFL cornerback Aqib Talib is a person of interest in a shooting at a youth football game in Texas that occurred on Saturday that killed a coach.
A statement released by Lancaster, Texas officials indicated on Sunday that Yaqub Salik Talib is considered a suspect in the incident at the Lancaster Community Park in Dallas County. There is a warrant out for his arrest.
Police said Lancaster police officers arrived at the scene where an argument had ensued between the coaching staff and officiating crew. During a physical alternation, police said someone discharged a firearm that struck Coach Mike Hickmon.
The Dallas County medical examiner’s office confirmed the identity of the lone victim in the incident as the 43-year-old Hickmon, Dallas Morning News reported.
A video of the incident on social media shows a coach arguing with a game official as a brawl erupts in the background.
North Dallas United Bobcats owner Tevar Watson told the newspaper that he was aware of the incident and that his team was among those competing.
“We don’t condone any of that, there is no place for anything like that to happen in youth sports — in any type of sport,” Watson told the Morning News.
Aqib Talib, who recently joined Amazon’s Prime Video as a studio analyst for its “Thursday Night Football” NFL coverage, released a statement through his attorney expressing his condolences, according to TMZ.
The 36-year-old Talib enjoyed a fruitful NFL career, making five Pro Bowls, two All-Pro teams, and winning a Super Bowl championship with the Denver Broncos in 2015 during his twelve years in the league.
Talib also played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Rams, and Miami Dolphins.
Authorities in Michigan said Sunday that more than 130,000 residents north of Detroit were under a boil water advisory after a 120-inch water main break.
In a statement on Sunday, the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) shared that seven communities remain under the boil water advisory, predicting that it might take up an additional two weeks to fix the issue.
Under such an advisory, residents in the affected area are advised to not drink the water without boiling it first. Residents “must bring all water to a boil for at least one minute and then let it cool before using,” the water authority said.
The water main break was found one mile from the Lake Huron water treatment facility in Lake Huron.
GLWA also shared that water flow and pressure has been restored in other communities affected by the outbreak, adding that it accomplished this by making changes in the direction water is pumped into the transmission system.
The respective communities of Chesterfield Township, Lenox Township, Mayfield Township, Macomb Township, and the City of New Haven had their boil water advisories lifted as of Sunday, GLWA said.
“GLWA understands the real-life impact that this water main break is having on the hundreds of thousands of people in the affected communities and we truly appreciate their patience and understanding as we work to implement the necessary repairs,” GLWA Chief Executive Officer Suzanne R. Coffey said in a statement. “I am grateful for the GLWA team who has been working tirelessly to restore water pressure to all communities and working as quickly as possible to restore service.”
The update comes after almost one million residents in 23 neighboring communities were under the boil water advisory on Saturday.
GLWA also said in its advisory that its crews have identified the location of the leak, which occurred a mile from the company’s Lake Huron Water Treatment Facility.
