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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Culture wars [1]

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Date: 2024-06-20  

“The climate is certainly better,” said Charles C. Haynes, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum and a scholar with an expertise in religious liberty and civil discourse, referring to the viewpoint of those who support the legislation.

The legislation is part of a broader campaign by conservative Christian groups to amplify public expressions of faith, and provoke lawsuits that could reach the Supreme Court, where they expect a friendlier reception than in years past. That presumption is rooted in recent rulings, particularly one in 2022 in which the court sided with a high school football coach who argued that he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.

“If you want to respect the rule of law,” he said, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.” [...]

Gov. Jeff Landry signed legislation on Wednesday requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in Louisiana, making the state the only one with such a mandate and reigniting the debate over how porous the boundary between church and state should be.

We begin with Rick Rojas of The New York Times reporting about Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s decision to sign a bill mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms in the state.

While Project 2025 has rightly received extensive reporting from the press, Philip Bump of The Washington Post points us to a set of Trump-approved policies on Trump’s own campaign website.

Trump himself has presented a scattershot set of policy proposals. Dubbed “Agenda 47,” Trump’s plans should he return to the White House are documented by his campaign website, each proposal accompanied by a video in which Trump delineates its components. Very few people discuss the elements of Agenda 47, Trump himself very much included. That’s largely because they were created for and targeted at the Republican presidential primaries, not his actual bid to unseat President Biden. [...] The Trump campaign made his proposals more formal over time, fleshing out the pages with bullet-pointed explanations of the specifics. But by mid-April 2023, Trump had pulled away from the rest of the Republican primary field and the pace of new “Agenda 47” proposals slowed. The campaign hasn’t published a new one since December. What’s there, though, includes a number of stark promises should he return to office and a number of dubious claims.

Lydia O’Connor of HuffPost reports that Trump repeated his promise to cut all funds to schools that have a vaccine mandate.

Donald Trump vowed at a rally Tuesday that if reelected, he’ll cut funding to every school with a vaccine mandate ― even though all 50 states have such laws on the books. “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” he declared at his rally in Racine, Wisconsin. The crowd went wild. It’s a promise he’s made several times in recent months, repeating the same line verbatim at rallies in March and May. If he followed through on that, no school in the United States would receive federal funding. All 50 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring specific vaccines for students, including measles, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus, pertussis and polio. Exemptions to the rule vary by state, with California, New York and a handful of other states maintaining the strictest mandates.

David A. Graham of The Atlantic wonders why more and more former professional athletes eventually enter politics.

This cycle alone, Steve Garvey (Republican of California, MLB) and Colin Allred (Democrat of Texas, NFL) are running for U.S. Senate; Herschel Walker (Republican of Georgia, NFL) came up short two years ago. The NFL-to-House pipeline has been strong in recent years, yielding current Representative Burgess Owens and former members Anthony Gonzalez and Heath Shuler. And the current New York Jets quarterback was apparently a serious (at least in one sense of the word) contender to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate. Precious little scholarly attention has been devoted to when, why, and how ex-athletes run, and how well they govern. But the political scientist David Canon found more than 30 years ago that nontraditional candidates (whom he called “amateurs” ) tend to flourish at times of political tumult like this one. “Amateurs are disproportionately elected in periods of electoral upheaval, and current officeholders rapidly revise their calculations on how to advance their careers,” Canon wrote. “When experienced candidates choose to run, amateurs generally are pushed from the electoral process,” he noted—but frustration and dysfunction have driven many political veterans to exit politics altogether lately, producing a historic exodus from Congress.

Melissa Gira Grant of The New Republic reports that physical threats to LGBTQ+ population are on the rise thanks, primarily, to The Proud Boys.

In at least 10 states since June 1, LGBTQ+ magazine Them has identified anti- LGBTQ+ vandalism and threats of violence, including more than a dozen vandalized Pride flags or banners. They have also documented bomb threats in three states. These almost certainly won’t be the last threats targeting Pride. Both in 2023 and 2022, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reported spikes in anti-LGBTQ protests and violence in June. Pride month, ACLED reported, saw “the highest number of anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations in ACLED’s US data, as well as the highest single-month levels of far-right activity in 2023.” They have since forecast that “the increase in anti-LGTBQ+ sentiment is likely to continue throughout the 2024 election cycle as politicians, such as Trump, continue to use anti-LGBTQ+ language to rally conservative Christian supporters.” That link between anti-LGBTQ harassment and Trump’s quest to return to power needs to be emphasized. “The Proud Boys are back,” Reuters recently reported. After they played a leading role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Trump’s behalf in 2021, “all but one of the eight cases” of Proud Boys–related political violence in 2023 “involved clashes between Proud Boys and left-wing activists at demonstrations supporting LGBTQ+ rights.” Now “some Proud Boys say they are preparing to emerge once again as a physical force for Trump,” attending pro- Trump events. Though such events may be distinct from far-right harassment of Pride events, clearly the same groups are present at both, and the political goals overlap. Attacks on or threats to Pride events vary, and the perpetrators are not always identified. In a recent report on LGBTQ+ safe spaces released by the Anti-Violence Project, just over 62 percent of organizations surveyed had experienced some type of harassment or violence in 2022. Nearly 24 percent reported threats involving hate mail or suspicious packages, 18 percent got threats or harassment outside their space, and 17.5 percent faced vandalism or property damage. For those who had protests or threats outside their space, they were much more likely to know who had threatened them.

Anna Isaac and Stephanie Kirchgaessner of The Guardian report on allegations that current publisher of The Washington Post, Will Lewis, advised Boris Johnson and other senior officials to “clean up their phones” during the Partygate scandal.

Will Lewis, the Washington Post publisher, advised Boris Johnson and senior officials at 10 Downing Street to “clean up” their phones in the midst of a Covid-era political scandal, according to claims by three people familiar with the operations inside No 10 at the time. [...] The claims suggest Lewis’s advice contradicted an email sent to staff at No 10 in December 2021 which instructed them not to destroy any material that could be relevant to an investigation into the flagrant breaking of Covid lockdown rules by Johnson and officials who worked for him. Sources said they understood they were being advised to remove photos and messages from their phones that could be damaging in any investigations. Lewis, the sources alleged, made some of the requests personally as he was carrying out work as an informal adviser to Johnson from late 2021 to July 2022. Lewis was a member of a so-called “brain trust” of Johnson’s close political allies who were leading an effort – codenamed Operation Save Big Dog – that tried but ultimately failed to salvage Johnson’s premiership. Lewis was awarded a knighthood in 2023 for his political service to the conservative prime minister.

John Johnston/of POLITICO Europe wonders if Britain’s Labour Party can drain the Tory swamp.

After 14 years of the Conservatives, Britain enjoys its lowest-ever ranking in the global corruption index — an annual study of graft by Transparency International — while public confidence in political institutions has hit international lows. Lurid headlines about Covid contracts doled to out politically-connected firms, rule-breaking lockdown parties in Boris Johnson’s former government, and misbehaving lawmakers of all stripes have contributed to a sense of ethical malaise in the U.K. as it heads for a July 4 election. On course to beat the Conservatives handsomely next month, Labour has decryied Tory “sleaze.” But under the surface, cracks are already appearing. The opposition party, led by Keir Starmer, is pinning its hopes on a new, broad-brush Ethics and Integrity Commission. The idea is to pull together Westminster’s confusing web of standards regulators — often pilloried as toothless — into one powerful body that can hold feet to the fire.

Finally, Marc Fisher of The Washington Post reports that maybe it’s Ryan Seacrest that can save America’s shared national culture.

For a man who once noted of himself that he has “no real talent,” Seacrest has done okay, both as a replacement for aging celebrities and in his gig hosting “American Idol.” At 49, he is not exactly a teen heartthrob, but he has become the go-to heir to boomer-era institutions because he is widely famous and relatively inoffensive to the generations that grew up amid a crumbling national monoculture. In this era of polarized politics, collapsing trust in traditional institutions and lost local affinities, the machinery of American celebrity is struggling to churn out stars whose appeal bridges generational, political and class divides. Result: an increasingly geriatric culture, occasioned not only by the big population bulge of the boomers but also by the technological revolution that diminished gatekeepers’ roles in media, politics and the economy. YouTube, social media and Spotify are more democratic purveyors of pop culture than Dick Clark, Ed Sullivan or Larry King ever were, but they don’t produce what used to be called household names. That leaves us in a place where all 10 of the 10 most popular TV personalities, as measured in surveys by YouGov, are either dead or over 65, from the late game-show hosts Alex Trebek and Bob Barker to retired late-night hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno and veteran TV personalities Vanna White and Steve Harvey. You have to reach down to No. 15 to find Jimmy Fallon, a mere pup at 49.

Have the best possible day, everyone!

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