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The number of hate groups in the United States rose for the fourth year in a row in 2018, pushed to a record high by a toxic combination of political polarization, anti-immigrant sentiment and technologies that help spread propaganda online, the Southern Poverty Law Center said Wednesday.The law center said the number of hate groups rose by 7 percent last year to 1,020, a 30 percent jump from 2014. That broadly echoes other worrying developments, including a 30 percent increase in the number of hate crimes reported to the F.B.I. from 2015 through 2017 and a surge of right-wing violence that the Anti-Defamation League said had killed at least 50 people in 2018.“We’re seeing a lot of bad trends,” Heidi Beirich, the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an interview on Wednesday. “There are more hate groups, more hate crimes and more domestic terrorism in that same vein. It is a troubling set of circumstances.”Ms. Beirich said the increase in extremist activity tracked by her team began in earnest in the early days of the 2016 presidential election, when anxieties over immigration helped propel President Trump to the White House. Before that, she said, the number of hate groups had fallen for three straight years.“Trump has made people in the white supremacist movement move back into politics and the public domain,” Ms. Beirich said. “He is a critical aspect of this dynamic, but he is not the only reason why the ranks of hate groups are growing. The ability to propagate hate in the online space is key.”The center said in a statement that most hate groups in the United States espoused some form of white supremacist ideology, including neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederates and white nationalists. It said the number of white nationalist groups jumped by almost 50 percent, to 148 in 2018 from 100.For the purposes of its study, the center said it considered any organization whose leaders, activities or statement of principles attacks an entire class of people to be a hate group. Violence is not a prerequisite.The center’s findings run parallel to a report on extremist-related killings in the United States that was issued last month by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.That report said that right-wing extremism was linked to every extremist-related killing the group tracked in 2018, at least 50, and that jihadist groups were linked to none. It said that made 2018 the deadliest year for right-wing extremism since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.The law center and the Anti-Defamation League both pointed to the killing of 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October as a symptom of the increasingly combustible mix of anti-immigrant sentiment, violence and online conspiracy-mongering.“The white supremacist attack in Pittsburgh should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the president of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement accompanying its report. “It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognize the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism.”But the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment had also created “an equal yet opposite reaction,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said. As the number of white supremacist groups rose, so did the number of radical black nationalist groups that espoused anti-white, anti-Semitic or anti-gay and anti-transgender views.The center said the number of those groups had risen to 264 in 2018 from 233 in 2017, but it noted that the influence of black nationalism in mainstream politics was highly limited.It did, however, point specifically to comments by the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who the center said echoed white supremacist myths of a looming white genocide in his rhetoric about President Trump, whom he has accused of “planning genocide” against African-Americans.Mr. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have been connected to a continuing controversy surrounding the anti-Trump Women’s March organization, two of whose national leaders have been accused of sympathizing with Mr. Farrakhan and privately expressing anti-Semitic opinions.The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., has tracked domestic extremism since 1971, but in recent years conservatives have accused it of politicizing its findings and falsely labeling right-leaning organizations as hate groups.The group paid $3.4 million to Maajid Nawaz, a British campaigner against Islamic extremism who sometimes works with conservative anti-Muslim politicians, after it included him on a list of anti-Muslim extremists in 2016. Richard Cohen, the center’s president, said in a public apology that the inclusion of Mr. Nawaz on the list had been “wrong.”
ALGONA, Iowa — It was the kind of question that a politician should have been able to handle with ease, but Representative Steve King is not any politician.“Do you think a white society is superior to a nonwhite society?” Mary Lavelle, 63, asked, testing his reputation for white supremacist sympathies.“I don’t have an answer for that. That’s so hypothetical,” Mr. King, Republican of Iowa, told her. “I’ll say this, America is not a white society — it has never been a completely white society. We came here and joined the Native Americans.”He continued: “I’ve long said that a baby can be lifted out of a cradle anywhere in the world and brought into any home in America, whatever the color of the folks in that household, and they can be raised to be American as any other. And I believe that every one of us, every one of us, is created in God’s image.”Ms. Lavelle said she asked the question in this northern Iowa town of 5,000 because she worried that anti-immigrant language used in a manifesto written by the suspect in the mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, resembled Mr. King’s own talking points. His fumbling answer to a relatively simple query may have done little to allay those concerns, two months after Mr. King, a nine-term Republican with a long history of racist comments, was publicly rebuked by members of his own party.House Republican leaders removed Mr. King from his committee assignments in January, after comments he made to The New York Times questioned why the phrase “white supremacy” was considered offensive. A number of powerful party leaders, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, suggested he should resign, and the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution disapproving of Mr. King’s statements.Mr. King remained defiant after losing his committee seats, and released a statement insisting that his comments had been misunderstood. He said he had been referring only to “Western civilization” when he asked “how did that language become offensive,” not “white nationalist” or “white supremacist.”Mr. King again faced scrutiny on Monday after a post on his Facebook page speculated who would win a second civil war between red states and blue states.“Folks keep talking about another civil war; one side has about 8 trillion bullets while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use,” read the post, which has since been deleted.On Tuesday, pressed by a reporter from CNN, Mr. King told constituents that he “wasn’t aware” that the image had been published on his Facebook page the night before, and said he does not personally manage that page.“I wish it had never gone up,” he said.But he also sought to deflect the question, telling the reporter, “it’s interesting that nobody here asked that question,” while gesturing to his constituents.“The only people who care about that is national news media. Nobody has raised the issue around here,” he said, prompting a handful of attendees to protest. The exchange was quickly picked up by American Bridge, a liberal political action committee.But Ms. Lavelle clearly did care about Mr. King’s incendiary language. After being asked about the manifesto, Mr. King responded at length. He said the author of the manifesto had expressed as much sympathy for Communist China as white supremacy. “The further it went, the more inconsistent it became, and he seems to have mixed and matched ideologies,” he said.Pressed about the overlap between the manifesto’s language and his own, Mr. King responded, “He also likely used the same words that Mao used.”
The thinking tends to be that racists raise racists. Therefore, if you see yourself as a good person, raising your kids with inclusive morals, you would have no reason to worry that they’d grow up to the be the sort of person who would march with white nationalists in Charlottesville. But it happens.And in the wake of yet another mass shooting, this time at two New Zealand mosques, parents across the country—and the world—are asking themselves: “What more can we do?” Because not being racist yourself is not enough to stop the spread of white supremacy.With social media and the internet readily available to most kids by the time they’re teenagers (and often much earlier), you can’t simply model good values. White supremacists spread their messages via YouTube and social media and recruit kids slowly and subtly through online multi-player video games.It’s not realistic to think we can stay one step ahead of our kids with their access to technology. They can get around our parental controls, our trackers and monitors. They are subjected to online algorithms we can’t control. It’s almost a guarantee that they will be exposed to hate speech, hate symbols and extremist views, both online and in real life, by the time they’re in high school.To combat it, Jinnie Spiegler, director of curriculum and training with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), says we need to teach them about it.Start early with messages of diversity and inclusionWe’re not going to sit our kids down as teenagers and say, “So, listen; there’s this awful thing called ‘white supremacy’...” without ever having had a conversation with them about race, ethnicity or diversity. Those discussions need to start much earlier.As early as 3 or 4 years old, you can use children’s books, TV shows and everyday experiences to talk about identity, race and the importance of including people of all colors and backgrounds into our lives.Then, by the time your kids are 8 or 9 years old, you can dive deeper into the history of racism, religious bigotry and intimidation. Talk about examples of these not just from the distance past but from current events, as well, so they can become aware of its existence and able to identify it on their own.Confront and interrupt bias and hatePerhaps the worst thing we can do, Spiegler says, is to ignore bigotry when it happens. School or community leaders might be inclined to believe that one racist incident—such as a group of students making what appears to be a Nazi salute—is not representative of who they are as a whole.“How schools deal with that and address it really sends a message,” Spiegler says. “Sometimes schools want to say it’s an isolated incident. They don’t really take it on and say, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’”Those incidents are opportunities for parents to talk with their kids about bias and hate. But the trick is to make it less of a lecture and more of a conversation to understand how your kids are interpreting these kinds of actions.“It’s also important to hear how they’re thinking about it, otherwise it will shut down communication,” Spiegler says. “Hear what young people are thinking before we go into a rant. It’s important to convey your values, but also keep communication open.”If you find they have views that contradict your own, you can question their line of thinking without immediately putting them on the defensive. Ask why do they feel that way, where did they learn that and why do they trust the source of their information? Then you can begin to learn more together.Teach them about propagandaIn a world full of ‘fake news’, lying politicians and propaganda, kids need to learn how to spot when they’re being manipulated. With young kids, that can start by talking about advertising and the motivations behind an ad or commercial: They’re trying to sell you something.Some social studies teacher give lessons on propaganda, but it’s a topic parents should be tackling at home, too, so kids can learn how to differentiate between unbiased fact and propaganda. The ADL created a guide called “Propaganda, Extremists and Online Recruitment Tactics” to help parents initiate a conversation with their teenagers. The guide offers some basic background on how extremists recruit, as well as questions and topics that parents can use as a starting point with their kids. Those questions include:Have you seen any type of propaganda online? What did you notice about it?How do you think propaganda is like advertising and how is it different?What do you know about terrorism and extremism and what more do you want to know?Why do you think members of extremist groups reach out to people online to recruit new members?How do you feel about extremist groups trying to recruit young people online?“Ultimately, part of how you want them to think about it is that they’re being lured into it,” Spiegler says.Teach them about hate speech and hate symbolsIf you think your child is not hearing hate speech and seeing hate symbols online, while they’re gaming and out in the community, you’re wrong. Spiegler says her own daughter often tells her about the swastikas written across students’ notebooks or on bathroom walls. If we don’t talk about it and explain the history behind such symbols, we are part of the problem.“We’re seeing a huge increase of hate symbols in schools, and if we normalize it and don’t see it as an ongoing issue in the community, then it just becomes part of our culture,” Spiegler says. “I’m afraid that’s starting to happen.”The ADL has a Hate Symbol Database that provides the pictures, descriptions and meanings of hundreds of hate symbols.Most kids understand what bullying is, but you will probably have to help them differentiate bullying from hate speech. Caroline Knorr of Common Sense Media provides a clear explanation for kids in this HuffPost article:If someone is trying to hurt someone, or knows that they’re hurting someone, and does it repeatedly, that’s cyberbullying. When someone expresses vicious views about a group or toward an attribute of a group, that’s hate speech.Knorr offers parents and kids practical tips for handling hate speech online, such as by reporting it, blocking certain users and calling it out when they feel comfortable doing so.Don’t let them become isolatedKids crave feelings of acceptance. They need a sense belonging, to feel that they’re part of a group. Ask yourself: Is my child an outcast? Does he feel marginalized at school? Does she have friends?If the answer is no, they are vulnerable to extremist groups who can fill that void. Help them identify places where they can build stronger connections, whether it’s through a club, activity, sport or church group.“Young people feeling marginalized and having no sense of belonging with peers is a huge important thing that we all need to think about,” Spiegler says. “We always say we need to create inclusive, welcoming, diverse schools and communities so people don’t feel marginalized and isolated. Because then they are more susceptible because they’re looking for a sense of belonging, and these (extremist) groups offer that.”Talk about current eventsIf you’re not talking to your kids about current events, chances are, they’re getting their information elsewhere. It’s important to use current events in an age-appropriate way to open up a dialogue with your kids about hate and bias.Common Sense Media has a guide for Best News Sources for Kids that parents can use as a starting point for talking about the news, how it’s reported and how to become a critical consumer of media.
During an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” this past Sunday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) lambasted President Trump for emboldening white nationalism after a young man killed at least 50 people at two New Zealand mosques. Kaine was referring to Trump’s answer after a reporter asked whether he sees "today that white nationalism is a rising threat around the world?” Trump responded, “I don’t really.”This is not the first time Trump has been accused of catering to white nationalists after a terrorist attack. At an August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, a young white man rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. Afterward, Trump insisted that “there’s blame on both sides” for the violence.Then in October 2018, a gunman killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. When Trump announced plans to visit the synagogue, many people in Squirrel Hill, the city’s predominantly Jewish neighborhood, took to the streets demanding first that Trump renounce white nationalism before paying his respects to the victims.Trump has strongly rejected any charges that he’s to blame, tweeting Monday:"The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!"Our research finds that Kaine could be correct, however: Trump’s rhetoric may encourage hate crimes, as we explain below.Does Trump’s political rhetoric have a measurable link to reported hate crime and extremist activity?We examined this question, given that so many politicians and pundits accuse Trump of emboldening white nationalists. White nationalist leaders seem to agree, as leaders including Richard Spencer and David Duke have publicly supported Trump’s candidacy and presidency, even if they still criticize him for not going far enough. The New Zealand shooter even referred to Trump as a “renewed symbol of white identity.”So, do attitudes like these have real world consequences? Recent research on far-right groups suggests that they do, especially when these attitudes are embraced and encourage by peers. Specifically, the quantity of neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups active in a state leads to increased reports of hate crimes within that state.How we did our researchUsing the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terrorism map data (HEAT map), we examined whether there was a correlation between the counties that hosted one of Trump’s 275 presidential campaign rallies in 2016 and increased incidents of hate crimes in subsequent months.To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We included controls for factors such as the county’s crime rates, its number of active hate groups, its minority populations, its percentage with college educations, its location in the country and the month when the rallies occurred.We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally.Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county. However, suggestions that this effect can be explained through a plethora of faux hate crimes are at best unrealistic. In fact, this charge is frequently used as a political tool to dismiss concerns about hate crimes. Research shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting.Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the ADL’s 2016 data, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.
Public school campuses in Charlottesville will be shuttered Friday for a second straight day — and more than 4,300 students will be kept out of classrooms — after a threat of racial violence surfaced online.In a message to families, Rosa Atkins, superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools, said an investigation involving state and federal authorities remains active, necessitating the unusual step of keeping schools closed.“We would like to acknowledge and condemn the fact that this threat was racially charged. We do not tolerate hate or racism,” Atkins said.“The entire staff and School Board stand in solidarity with our students of color — and with people who have been singled out for reasons such as religion or ethnicity or sexual identity in other vile threats made across the country or around the world. We are in this together, and a threat against one is a threat against all.”Police said in a statement that the online threat was directed at Charlottesville High School .Authorities declined to further describe the threat, but images circulating on Reddit and other social media sites referred to a post on 4chan, an anonymous online messaging board. The post included a racist meme, used slurs for blacks and Latinos, and threatened to attack students of color at Charlottesville High.[‘We lost our naivete’: A year later, Charlottesville remains a wounded city]Charlottesville police spokesman Tyler Hawn said the decision to close an entire school system was done as a precaution.Police told school board members about the threat Wednesday afternoon, said Jennifer McKeever, the board’s chairwoman. She said the school system decided to close the city’s nine schools out of an “abundance of caution” to allow law enforcement to investigate.“We just didn’t have any additional information, and it was clear that we were not going to get any additional information,” she said. “As laypeople, we could not determine the credibility of the threat.”The threat was another jolt to a community still strained by the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017 that turned Charlottesville into the site of America’s largest white-supremacy gathering in decades.This week’s online episode did not surprise members of Charlottesville High’s Black Student Union, who say it is symptomatic of persistent issues in Charlottesville City Schools, including excessive police presence in schools and a lack of black students in advanced classes.“We’re still allowing this kind of racism in our school,” said Althea Laughon-Worrell, an 18 year-old who attends Charlottesville High School. “It’s making it seem like it’s okay for whoever posted that to say that, to feel that way. . . . It is because of racism, and because we haven’t dealt with this, that this person decided to post this.”Zyahna Bryant, president of the Black Student Union, has called on the community to reckon with white supremacy in the aftermath of the 2017 rally and confront gentrification and the paucity of affordable housing in the city.Bryant, 18, wants the latest episode to encourage community members to grapple with racial inequities in the school system.“There needs to be a real conversation about how students of color are being supported,” Bryant said. “It is dangerous to continue to categorize racism as just person-to-person experiences without calling attention to the systems that work to uphold and enforce racist policies.”The Charlottesville episode stoked further scrutiny of the way social media is used to perpetuate hateful rhetoric and violence, drawing parallels to the use of social media to broadcast a massacre at mosques in New Zealand last week.Doron F. Ezickson, a regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement that the Charlottesville incident offered further evidence that social media is partly responsible for elevating extremist ideas.It was, Ezickson said, another “frightening development for a city that is still healing from the traumatic and lingering experience” of the rally that brought hundreds of white supremacists into the town of 50,000 residents.Margaret Matthews, a Charlottesville resident who has grandchildren in city schools, said the rally emboldened white supremacists and its fallout continues to disrupt the city.After the school system announced it would close Thursday, Matthews said parents began asking themselves: “What do we tell our kids?”
Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican who has made a series of statements embracing white nationalism, on Thursday noted a contrast between the response of people in his state to spring flooding and the response of the residents of New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Speaking at a town hall in Charter Oak, Iowa, a city that is 99.4 percent white, according to census estimates, the nine-term congressman didn’t say what attributes explained the differing reactions. But racist tropes about African American dependence on the government echoed in the observations about New Orleans. The Crescent City maintains a black majority, though the community has shrunk since the disaster struck nearly 14 years ago."We go to a place like New Orleans, and everybody’s looking around saying, ‘Who’s going to help me? Who’s going to help me?’” King said, recounting what he said officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, had told him about the relief effort, in which he said he had participated. Yet, he was also one of 11 members of Congress to oppose a bill providing federal aid to Katrina victims in 2005.In his home state, he said, residents looked after one another without government handouts. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has declared a disaster in more than half of Iowa’s 99 counties because of severe flooding and is seeking a federal declaration that would free up funds from Washington.“We go to a place like Iowa, and we go see, knock on the door at, say, I make up a name, John’s place, and say, ‘John, you got water in your basement, we can write you a check, we can help you,'" King said. “And John will say, ‘Well, wait a minute, let me get my boots. It’s Joe that needs help. Let’s go down to his place and help him.’”King, who was stripped of his committee assignments in January over comments questioning whether the term “white supremacist” was offensive, said FEMA officials are “always gratified when they come and see how Iowans take care of each other.”“We’re Iowans, and I’m always proud of our reaction to this,” he added, suggesting that his constituents displayed up-from-their-bootstraps grit in the face of environmental calamity, while the victims of Katrina — the deadliest storm to buffet the United States since the Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 — helplessly went in search of government assistance.Katrina was responsible for an estimated 1,833 deaths, more than half of which were suffered by African Americans, according to data analysis by public health experts.King then turned to discussing trade negotiations, which have major implications for his constituents. His district received more than $9 billion in federal farming subsidies between 1995 and 2017 — more than any other district in Iowa, which has received more subsidies than any other state in the nation.An angry reaction met King’s remarks on Thursday.Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, called the comments “disgusting and disheartening.”Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), whose district includes most of New Orleans, said the comparison was further proof that King was a “white supremacist."“When people show you who they are, believe them,” Richmond added.The two men have clashed before over King’s use of New Orleans to draw unflattering comparisons. In 2017, while touting a measure that would have tracked offenses committed by immigrant children from “the most violent places in the world,” King said he was struck that the homicide rate in New Orleans was equivalent to that in certain Central American countries.“It’s insensitive, and it’s nothing more than traditional white privilege of, ‘Let me criticize a minority city,’” Richmond said.A spokesman for King, 69, didn’t return a request for comment.Examples abound of King disparaging immigrants, minorities and women who undergo abortions, as well as taking up the cause of ethnic nationalism. Most recently, he shared a meme on Facebook suggesting that red states would win a civil war because they have “about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.” He has palled around with figures on Europe’s far-right fringes and retweeted a message from a self-described “Nazi sympathizer.”King’s record of incendiary statements became so glaring in the weeks before the midterm elections last fall that a party often reluctant to police its own members virtually abandoned him.The chairman of the House Republican campaign arm assailed his colleague for “white supremacy and hate,” saying the group would stay away from King’s reelection effort. He ended up narrowly beating back a challenge from a first-time Democratic candidate in his deep-red district.In February, when he announced his intention to seek a 10th term next year, King appeared unbowed. “I have nothing to apologize for,” he said. Competition from Republican state Sen. Randy Feenstra is likely to present a more formidable challenge.One prominent Republican who has not censured King is President Trump, who has also invoked Hurricane Katrina for his own political ends. Last year, the president pointed to the death toll in New Orleans to cast the relief effort in Puerto Rico in a more positive light. But vastly more people died as a result of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in the U.S. territory — nearly 3,000, according to a George Washington University report — than perished in New Orleans.Critics of how the Trump administration dealt with that natural disaster argue that the response was tinged with racism. Those allegations recall the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, which exposed stark racial inequities.Despite President George W. Bush’s statement in 2005 that “the storm didn’t discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort,” most of the people who languished in unbearable conditions in the city’s low-lying eastern areas were poor and black. An estimated 73 percent of those displaced by flooding or damage were black, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Of those who survived, many fled New Orleans the year after the storm, including more than 175,000 black residents, according to FiveThirtyEight. More than 75,000 never returned.“No one is going to tell me it wasn’t a race issue,” an evacuee said in congressional testimony in December 2005.Another victim said she blamed every level of government. “I blame local. I blame state. I blame federal,” she said.City residents as a whole were more likely to acknowledge the contribution made by charities and religious organizations than by the federal and state governments, though most still said public assistant was at least somewhat helpful, according to a 2015 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.Race remains a fault line in opinions about the storm and its aftermath. In 2015, a Louisiana State University survey found that 80 percent of white residents of New Orleans believed the state had “mostly recovered” from the destruction. Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said the opposite, believing that the state had “mostly not recovered.”Most white residents said the city was better off than it was before the hurricane struck, while most black people said the opposite.The deluge inundating the Midwest has already been blamed for three deaths. While scientists have not yet completed models assessing the contribution of planetary warming to the most recent outbreak of heavy rainfall, they do believe that climate change is intensifying extreme precipitation.King is an outspoken climate skeptic. In 2010, he said at a town hall that climate science was the “modern version of the rain dance.”But Iowa residents won’t need the help of ancient rituals to induce rain. They’re going to have plenty of it this spring.
The Washington Post reports:At an Oval Office meeting on Feb. 22, Trump asked top advisers for ways to limit federal support from going to Puerto Rico, believing it is taking money that should be going to the mainland, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the presidents’ private remarks.The meeting — an afternoon session focused on Department of Housing and Urban Development grants — ended abruptly, and Trump has continued to ask aides how much money the island will get. Then, Trump said he wanted the money to only fortify the electric grid there.Trump has also privately signaled he will not approve any additional help for Puerto Rico beyond the food-stamp money, setting up a congressional showdown with Democrats who have pushed for more expansive help for the island.According to the above-linked report, during staff meetings Trump has repeatedly claimed that large parts of Puerto Rico never had electricity to begin with. He has also complained that officials there have failed to sufficiently thank him for the aid already received.
State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz was on the ninth “Jesus” of her opening prayer in the Pennsylvania statehouse when other lawmakers started to look uncomfortable.Speaker Mike Turzai, a fellow Republican, glanced up — but Borowicz carried on, delivering a 100-second ceremonial invocation that some of her colleagues decried as an offensive, divisive and Islamophobic display shortly before the legislature swore in its first Muslim woman.“God forgive us — Jesus — we’ve lost sight of you, we’ve forgotten you, God, in our country, and we’re asking you to forgive us,” Borowicz said, followed by a quote from the Bible’s second book of Chronicles that implores God’s followers to “turn from their wicked ways.” Then she praised President Trump for his unequivocal support of Israel.“I claim all these things in the powerful, mighty name of Jesus, the one who, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, Jesus, that you are Lord, in Jesus’ name,” Borowicz said.By the time she said “Amen,” Borowicz had invoked Jesus 13 times, deploying the name between prayerful clauses as though it were a comma. She mentioned “Lord” and “God” another six times each and referenced “The Great I Am” and “the one who’s coming back again, the one who came, died and rose again on the third day.”As the prayer reached a crescendo, at least one member shouted objections. Turzai, standing behind her, looked up again and nudged her elbow, prompting her to quickly conclude the address. Afterward, the protests only grew louder.“It blatantly represented the Islamophobia that exists among some leaders — leaders that are supposed to represent the people,” Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, the newly sworn-in Democrat who is Muslim, told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Monday. “I came to the Capitol to help build bipartisanship and collaborations regardless of race or religion to enhance the quality of life for everyone in the Commonwealth.”Johnson-Harrell brought with her 55 guests, all there to see her historic moment at the statehouse. Thirty-two of them were Muslim, she told local news outlets. She later called for the General Assembly to censure Borowicz.Johnson-Harrell’s new colleagues also came to her defense.“Never have we started out with a prayer that divides us,” said the chamber’s top Democrat, Rep. Frank Dermody, speaking from the House floor. “Prayer should never divide us. It should bring us together.”Rep. Jordan Harris, another high-ranking Democrat who called himself a devout Christian, criticized Borowicz for “weaponizing” her religion.“I’m a Christian, and I believe in Christ,” Harris said in a statement. “What I believe is Christ’s teaching more than anything, and his teaching would not be about, and was not about, dividing us as a people, but uniting us as a people.”Other state lawmakers called Borowicz’s prayer racist and said it was “fire and brimstone Evangelical prayer” that “epitomizes religious intolerance.”Borowicz, responding to a local reporter’s question, refused to apologize.“That’s how I pray every day. … I don’t apologize ever for praying,” she said.Turzai later said that when the House invites religious leaders to lead the invocation, they’re instructed to respect all religious beliefs. However, the Patriot-News reported, lawmakers were not given the same instructions.In recent years, the customary opening prayer — which kicks off every Pennsylvania legislative session day and was historically noncontroversial — has become another, minor front in an ongoing battle over religious representation and the separation of church and state. Last year, a federal court overturned statehouse rules that barred non-theists, who do not hold beliefs about any deity, from giving the opening invocation.The judge ruled that the ban violated the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause, which protects the free exercise of religion. Republicans have appealed that verdict.
Them: A Fake Yet Relevant Film About the White Men Pissed at Jordan Peele for Saying He Won't Make a Film Starring a 'White Dude'
President Trump is frustrated by two numbers that emerged after Hurricane Maria laid waste to Puerto Rico in 2017.The first is 2,975, the number of people estimated to have died as a result of the storm, according to analysis conducted by George Washington University. This number, Trump has insisted, is far higher than reality. When he visited the island shortly after the storm struck, the death toll was only 16 — though that number had more than doubled by the time Air Force One began heading back to the mainland. As weeks passed and recovery efforts continued, the toll increased dramatically.The other number is $91 billion, the amount of aid that Trump reportedly told Republican senators Tuesday that the island was receiving. This hefty figure was a source of frustration for Trump, who wondered why Puerto Rico was getting so much more than other affected states.But unlike the estimated death toll, which is rooted in statistical analysis of the island’s mortality patterns, Trump’s $91 billion appears to be a steep inflation of what’s actually been appropriated.It’s an awfully specific figure, $91 billion. It does bear some relation to the storm: Hurricane Maria was estimated to have done $91 billion in damage, most of it in Puerto Rico. The island’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló (PNP of Puerto Rico), asked for $94.4 billion a few months after the storm made landfall, an amount that increased to $139 billion last summer. But those are estimates of what would be needed for a full recovery, not what the island has actually received. By contrast, Texas and Florida asked for $61 billion and $27 billion in late 2017 for the storms that struck those states — doing far less damage than Puerto Rico experienced.What’s been spent there so far? The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has spent $5 billion on debris removal, road repairs and power restoration. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been approved to spend almost $10 billion in disaster relief funds, $1.5 billion last summer and $8.2 billion more approved last month. As The Post’s team notes, it’s murky — but those figures do not add up to anything close to $91 billion. Last October, the director of the federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s spending estimated an eventual investment of $82 billion, which is a bit closer to the mark but which hasn’t yet been received.“It’s unclear where Trump got the figure for Puerto Rico aid,” The Washington Post’s Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey and Paul Kane reported. “One congressional official said it is difficult to quantify exactly how much aid the island has received to recover from Maria because of the way the money is disbursed.”Trump’s antipathy to spending money on Puerto Rico has been evident since shortly after the storm hit.Less than a week after Maria made landfall, Trump was quick to note that the island “was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt” before the storm hit and that it had “billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with.” That debt certainly existed, but Trump has repeatedly suggested relief aid sent to the island would be abused to pay it down.“The people of Puerto Rico are wonderful,” Trump tweeted last October, “but the inept politicians are trying to use the massive and ridiculously high amounts of hurricane/disaster funding to pay off other obligations.” That tweet came shortly after the $82 billion estimate referenced above.Tuesday’s report about Trump’s focus on Puerto Rico follows several similar reports. The tweet above followed a similar bout of irritation by the president last September, when he reportedly told top aides that he didn’t want the island to receive any additional relief funding. Last November, Axios reported that Trump wanted to rescind some already approved funding for the island out of concern over mismanagement. Late last month, Trump asked advisers how to limit federal spending on the island, according to Post reporting. That coincided with a fight over a lapse in food-stamp coverage when Congress failed to reauthorize funding. Some 1.3 million island residents are affected by the lapse, with a similar funding gap in Medicaid looming.The Post reported Tuesday that HUD’s inspector general was reviewing whether the White House interfered in relief funding for Puerto Rico.Again, it’s not clear how firmly Trump’s objections are rooted in actual spending figures. The island hasn’t received $91 billion, a number that doesn’t appear to overlap with any figure that’s actually under consideration. By citing that seemingly inflated figure, Trump’s hoping to bolster his political case against additional spending — which, ironically, is exactly what he criticizes his opponents of doing when they note the estimated death toll of nearly 3,000 people. That number, he claims, is inflated to make him look bad. Meanwhile, he seems to be inflating the spending number to make Puerto Rico look bad.Trump’s administration of the executive branch often operates in a space adjacent to data and factual findings. Rarely, though, is that methodology as readily apparent.
After a man killed 49 people at two mosques in New Zealand this month, authorities discovered a document believed to have been written by him in which he appears to have articulated his violent, racist philosophy. Part of the document was in a question-and-answer format, including a question that asked whether the author was a supporter of President Trump.“As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure,” the answer read. “As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.”Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office the next day, Trump was asked whether he saw white supremacism like that apparently embraced by the New Zealand shooter as a rising threat globally.“I don’t really,” Trump said. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”This was by no means the first time that Trump has downplayed the threat of white nationalism. After a white-nationalist demonstrator drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville in 2017, Trump gave a speech criticizing racism — but only after saying that blame for the violence rested on both sides, and also saying that the largely white-nationalist and neo-Nazi demonstrators included “some very fine people.”A Washington Post-ABC poll conducted shortly afterward found that most respondents thought Trump was equating the neo-Nazis and their supporters with anti-Nazi demonstrators.After the New Zealand shooting and Trump’s response, Pew Research Center asked a broader question: Did Americans think that Trump had done enough to distance himself from white-nationalist groups?More than half said Trump had done too little — including a quarter of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.Those numbers were remarkably similar to what Quinnipiac University found in November. The pollsters asked Americans whether they believed that Trump’s decisions and behaviors broadly had encouraged white supremacist groups.Again, 56 percent of respondents said that he had encouraged white supremacist groups, while only 3 percent said he had discouraged them. Nearly a fifth of Republicans (here excluding independents) agreed that he encouraged them.Quinnipiac went further, asking those who said they believed Trump had encouraged white supremacists whether they thought he had done so deliberately or accidentally.Thirty-five percent of respondents said that Trump encouraged white supremacists and did so deliberately. Only among Republicans who thought Trump encouraged the groups did more people think it was accidental than intentional.There have been a slew of moments during Trump’s presidency when questions have been raised about his feelings about race. Last month, his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress and offered a number of examples of times that Trump had said racist things in his presence.In February 2018, the Associated Press and NORC released a poll finding that most people thought Trump was himself a racist — including more than 8 in 10 black respondents.There’s a consistency to White House comments after questions about Trump’s responses to violence and threats, including racist ones: How many times do we have to denounce these things?If Pew’s poll is any guide, more than it is.