Jeremy Peters/NY Times:
Beyond foreign policy, some conservatives saw Mr. Putin as a committed warrior in the culture wars they were losing at home. In Russia Mr. Putin led a crackdown on gay rights by taking such steps as criminalizing behavior that could be seen as promoting anything other than heterosexual relationships. This has earned him praise from leaders of the Christian right like Franklin Graham, who said in 2014 that Russia was doing more than the United States to protect its children.
Writing in 2013, Pat Buchanan, the commentator whose anti-establishment, conservative presidential campaigns in the 1990s emphasized such social issues, described Mr. Putin as a natural ally.
“In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?” Mr. Buchanan wrote, quickly answering his own question. “He is seeking to redefine the ‘Us vs. Them’ world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West.”
Read carefully. The Trump loyalists are a combo of Fox News devotees and evangelicals hearing from the pulpit about how Trump and Putin are messengers from God. Don’t expect them to turn any time soon.
Josh Marshall/TPM:
The Big Trumpers Still Don’t Get The Trouble They’re In
A big federal investigation like this is like a broad lava flow. It moves slowly but it is unstoppable. It burns and crushes things in its wake. And things too big or unburnable it just covers over. The little antics and PR gambits mainly do not matter. Key players in this mix don’t seem to appreciate that.
Edward Price/Politico:
If Kushner indeed still retains his clearance, there’s an unmistakable double standard at play. Career officials, many of whom spend decades in service of their country, are subject to a different set of rules than those under the protection of the powerful. That’s never how the system has worked, nor is it how it should work. The classified information Kushner has access to is no less sensitive, and, in fact, his position in the West Wing—where I spent the past few years—exposes him to a much broader array of the most classified information and programs in the U.S. government than he would in most other executive branch roles.
These are the facts: Jared Kushner held suspicious meetings with Russians officials and operatives that he failed to disclose when he applied for a security clearance. If he weren’t the president’s son in law, he’d have been frogmarched out of the White House long ago. Why does he still have access to America’s biggest secrets?
Matthew Dickinson:
Again, it bears repeating that it may be the case that the negative coverage of Trump to date simply reflects the fact that Trump’s presidency has been unusually controversial and even ineffective, at least compared to his predecessors, and so the overwhelmingly negative tone is perfectly appropriate. My sense from talking to Trump supporters, however, is that they think this coverage is motivated instead by the media’s ideological agenda, rather than any dispassionate coverage of events. Thus, absence clear evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians, they remain skeptical that there’s as much to the story as the pervasive media coverage would have one believe. Moreover, most of them would prefer that the media focus on more important issues that concern them, such as jobs, health care, tax reform, and the economy. Instead they get a steady diet of stories based on unnamed sources alleging potential conspiracies between Trump and the Russians. It’s not surprising, then, that these stories, so far at least, haven’t seemed to gain much traction among Trump supporters. I suspect the latest twist in this ongoing saga will be no different – Trump supporters will view the allegations with their customary skepticism. But time will tell…
That’s where Bobby Three Sticks comes in… and/but he’s in no hurry.
Politico:
GOP leaders plead with senators to hold their fire on Obamacare repeal
Republicans are simply focused on finding the votes to begin debate, let alone pass their bill.
With their Obamacare repeal plan inches from failure, Senate Republicans are white knuckling their way into the weekend. And rather than panicking over passing a bill, GOP leaders are simply trying to find the votes to begin debate on it next week.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no margin for error. Two Republicans are already on record opposed to the key procedural motion, and a third would defeat it. McConnell and his allies are now urging GOP senators to at least let the bill get to the floor rather than preemptively killing the party’s seven-year campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare.
Read it as: they don’t yet have the votes.
Dylan Scott/Vox:
Nevada’s governor is the most important person in the Senate health care debate
Brian Sandoval could kill the Senate bill.
Remember that David Brooks article on cultural signals and taking a working Joe to a fancy restaurant?
Daniel Drezner/WaPo:
The other problem with cultural codes in a meritocracy
I agree with my Post colleague Tim Carman that outside The Anecdote That Shall Not Be Named, the column was “an otherwise temperate take on the restrictions and social codes that keep the middle class in its place.” As a fully paid-up member of this class, there clearly are expected modes of behavior, and not knowing the unspoken rules of the game acts as a barrier to those trying to enter the meritocratic class. It can still be done, but it’s like learning an additional language.
There is a flip side to this argument, however. It is not just that social codes and mores can act as a barrier to upward mobility by some. It is also possible that some people successfully enter the meritocracy through the mastery of these codes rather than mastery of any substantive set of skills. …
Mike Allen’s morning report in Axios demonstrates the degree to which Kushner seems spectacularly out of his depth:
Several top officials describe Jared Kushner in very similar ways: a good guy with good intentions, now under rising scrutiny because of a combination of naivete and hubris….
“Everything is being treated as bigger than it is, but he’s in the big leagues now,” said a Republican friendly to Kushner. “He’s trying to bravado his way through his lack of experience.”…
The view in Kushner’s orbit is that the brutal new revelations are more P.R. problems than legal problems. And if he makes progress with his Middle East peace efforts, perceptions would be very different.
How to put this gently: this is not just a P.R. problem, and if Kushner is placing all of his bets on forging peace in the Middle East, then he’s even more naive than Allen’s report suggests.
Want to read a much better piece than Brooks on social cues and class issues?
Tressie Mcmillan Cottom/TPM:
Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money On Luxury Goods?
I do not know how much my mother spent on her camel colored cape or knee-high boots but I know that whatever she paid it returned in hard-to-measure dividends. How do you put a price on the double-take of a clerk at the welfare office who decides you might not be like those other trifling women in the waiting room and provides an extra bit of information about completing a form that you would not have known to ask about? What is the retail value of a school principal who defers a bit more to your child because your mother’s presentation of self signals that she might unleash the bureaucratic savvy of middle class parents to advocate for her child? I don’t know the price of these critical engagements with organizations and gatekeepers relative to our poverty when I was growing up. But, I am living proof of its investment yield.
Slate:
The Wasted Mind of Ben Sasse
The Nebraska senator has urgent, persuasive ideas for saving American politics. Why won’t he act on them?
Many politicians are hypocrites, of course. But most of them are also phonies and bullshitters. Ben Sasse isn’t. He stands out by educating himself earnestly and speaking honestly about complicated matters of history and policy. (He’s got to be the only serving Senate Republican to have written a book that approvingly cites 1960s leftist cultural critic Paul Goodman.) Unfortunately, he is also beginning to stand out by doing nothing of substance as the things he says he believes in are thrown in a garbage can by his own party. Evidence that Donald Trump was at best indifferent to and at worst complicit in Russia’s sabotage of the last presidential election is growing. Mitch McConnell is turning into the home stretch of an attempt to force through a wildly unpopular health care bill that still hasn’t had a public hearing. Democratic traditions are under attack, and Sasse is not returning fire. Does any of his thoughtfulness and honesty really matter if, come voting time, he’s just another partisan hack?
You could ask this question of them all.
Creationism support is at a new low. The reason should give us hope.
People aren't dumping faith. They're reconciling creationism and evolution in a way that suggests how we can bridge other polarizing divides, including the current health care impasse.
According to a Gallup poll conducted in May, the portion of the American public taking this position now stands at 38%, a new low in Gallup’s periodic surveys. Fifty-seven percent accept the validity of the scientific consensus that human beings evolved from less advanced forms of life over millions of years.
Has atheism taken over so thoroughly? No, and that’s why this apparent break in the creationism-vs.-evolution stalemate is significant and even instructive to those in search of creative solutions to our other intractable public arguments.