Michelle Goldberg/NY Times:
The Christian Right Is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It
“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”
The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.
Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.
Whatever happened to secular humanism, anyway?
Gleb Tsipursky/Scientific American:
We’re Fumbling the Return to Physical Offices
Many executives are falling victim to a number of well-known psychological biases in their push to end remote working
Business leaders frequently proclaim that “people are our most important resource.” Yet those who are resistant to permitting telework are not living by that principle. Instead, they’re doing what they feel comfortable with, even if it devastates employee morale, engagement and productivity, and seriously undercuts retention and recruitment, as well as harming diversity and inclusion. In the end, their behavior is a major threat to the bottom line.
The problem has to do with their gut reactions and comfort with office work, rather than a look at the bottom line. They aren't even gathering good data by doing effective surveys; they're simply going based on what the leaders feel is the right thing to do.
Karen Tumulty/WaPo:
The double standard of Kamala Harris being in charge
The catchphrase “You’re fired!” helped propel Donald Trump, star of “The Apprentice," into the ranks of mega-celebrities. Repeatedly invoked in his 2016 campaign for the presidency, those two words came to represent decisiveness, toughness and a low tolerance for those who do not perform.
When Rahm Emanuel ran for Chicago mayor in 2011, his well-known propensities for infighting, rage and swearing were seen as evidence he was fit to follow in the footsteps of the legendarily volatile Richard J. Daley.
As senator and then president, Lyndon B. Johnson was known to throw things — including drinks that had not been mixed to his specifications — at his terrified assistants.
But when a woman is in charge, or wants to be, a different and contradictory set of standards comes into play, something political scientists describe as “role incongruity.” Women are expected to conform to gender norms as warm nurturers, even as they break the mold.
Critical gender theory?
Rebecca Traister/New York:
Biden’s Big Left Gamble
The president is overseeing a sea change in the world of economic policy, and so much hangs in the balance.
Unlike the young progressive politicians who have infiltrated the Democratic Party via primaries, these economists are working to make change at the behest of the party’s establishment. The president’s hiring at many levels of his administration has been unexpected and diverse, and not just in a Gina Haspel, Girl Torturer way. He has injected new ideological blood, much of it from the lineage of his primary opponent Warren, who has long believed that personnel is policy; Biden brought in these wonks to implement his economic agenda.
Robert A. George/Bloomberg:
What Eric Adams Shares With Joe Biden
Both men saw their campaigns rescued by their party’s conservative base: Black voters.
A Black ex-cop who takes a strident tone against rising gun violence is likely to be the next mayor of New York City. As unlikely as this may seem to outsiders, especially after a year of protests over police killings of Black men, the success of Eric Adams should not come as a surprise.
That’s because Black voters in the Democratic Party, like White evangelicals in the Republican Party, are the party’s most reliable conservative base. To be clear, the precise definition of “conservative” is elastic, as Black voters are decidedly more liberal on almost all issues than White evangelicals.
EJ Montini/AZ Central:
We must remember to thank the Republicans who saved us from Trump zealots
We have examples right here in Arizona, individuals who believe in traditional GOP values and acted on them.
We forget sometimes that actual Republicans still exist.
Even worse, we forget to thank them for saving the democracy.
We have examples right here in Arizona, however, individuals who believe in traditional Republican values, things like limited government, low taxes, limited social programs, free-markets and strong foreign alliances.
Not conspiracy theories.
Not demonizing every member of the political opposition, including those in your own party.
We forget that such people still exist after having dealt with four years of Donald Trump and his zealots on the national level, along with local capos like Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward. They continue to lead the MAGA lemmings over the political cliff.
What used to be the Republican fringe is now the GOP mainstream. There is no doubt.
But there are still party members who hold traditional beliefs.
And some of them saved us.
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
Trump didn’t have to deliver for his party’s base. Biden does.
Which reveals how different the dynamics within the two parties are, and how difficult a challenge Biden faces. While Trump successfully broke the link between politics and policy within his party, Democrats will judge Biden by how much progress he makes on their agenda. And he has a steep mountain to climb.
Natalie Jackson/FiveThirtyEight:
Whether Republicans Get Vaccinated Has A Lot To Do With If They Watch Fox News … Or OANN
It’s no secret that Republicans really distrust the media. In fact, that distrust is increasingly an important part of their political identity.
For a long time, understanding where Republicans primarily got their news was pretty straightforward, too. Unlike Democrats, Republicans, by and large, turn to just one source for all their news: Fox News. But with the advent of news networks even further to the right than Fox News — One America News Network and Newsmax — that’s changing.
OANN and Newsmax still make up just a small sliver of Americans’ overall media diet, and there’s, of course, a lot of overlap in viewership between those two networks and Fox News. But there are some signs that OANN and Newsmax are replacing Fox News as the primary news sources for at least some Republicans. I’m the research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, and in a March survey we conducted with Interfaith Youth Core on COVID-19 and conspiracy beliefs, we found that Fox News had fallen in popularity among Republicans, with just 27 percent saying it was their go-to news source versus 40 percent last September. What’s more, 7 percent of Republicans listed a far-right news network they preferred instead. That means they took the time to type in an “other” response in our text-box field, as it was not provided as a choice.1 Only a handful did this in September 2020.