What each side wants in the Homeland Security shutdown standoff
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for more than two weeks, jeopardizing airport security, disaster relief, coastline safety and even pay for members of the Secret Service as they guarded the president during the State of the Union. The Trump administration sent its latest proposal to Senate Democrats to reopen the agency on Feb. 27, but negotiations between the White House and Capitol Hill have been happening largely behind closed doors. There's still no end in sight to the funding impasse. Members of both parties have continued talking past each other, at least publicly, in recent days. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Feb. 25 that the Trump administration had yet to start negotiating earnestly about demands to overhaul federal immigration enforcement.
(USA Today 3.1.26) READMORE>>>>>
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for more than two weeks, jeopardizing airport security, disaster relief, coastline safety and even pay for members of the Secret Service as they guarded the president during the State of the Union. The Trump administration sent its latest proposal to Senate Democrats to reopen the agency on Feb. 27, but negotiations between the White House and Capitol Hill have been happening largely behind closed doors. There's still no end in sight to the funding impasse. Members of both parties have continued talking past each other, at least publicly, in recent days. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Feb. 25 that the Trump administration had yet to start negotiating earnestly about demands to overhaul federal immigration enforcement.
(USA Today 3.1.26) READMORE>>>>>
A Multiracial Right?
Reflecting on the multiethnic Evangelical world I grew up in, I cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility of a lasting multiracial rightwing coalition. I knew many nonwhite conservative Evangelicals as a child, and there are more voters who answer to that description now than there were then. A progressive could argue that, all other things being equal, a multiracial rightwing party is at least better than a white-nationalist party. But the more important point is that it might now be time to question the assumption that the Democratic Party will always be the more racially and ethnically diverse of the two major parties, and that its increasing diversity alone will allow it to save liberal democracy from the forces that threaten it. Here, I’m reminded of the long-held secular liberal assumption that expanding science, education, and modernization would necessarily lead to a decline of religious belief—an assumption mainly confirmed in Europe but not elsewhere. Similarly, Democrats can no longer just assume that Blacks and Hispanics will always vote for them simply because of their race—and that this will be enough to guarantee a majority. Democratic candidates will have to win their support through a politics that is responsive to the needs and concerns of this country’s multiracial working-class majority. As the last election proved, their votes are now up for grabs.
(Commonweal; 2.5.26) READMORE>>>>>
Reflecting on the multiethnic Evangelical world I grew up in, I cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility of a lasting multiracial rightwing coalition. I knew many nonwhite conservative Evangelicals as a child, and there are more voters who answer to that description now than there were then. A progressive could argue that, all other things being equal, a multiracial rightwing party is at least better than a white-nationalist party. But the more important point is that it might now be time to question the assumption that the Democratic Party will always be the more racially and ethnically diverse of the two major parties, and that its increasing diversity alone will allow it to save liberal democracy from the forces that threaten it. Here, I’m reminded of the long-held secular liberal assumption that expanding science, education, and modernization would necessarily lead to a decline of religious belief—an assumption mainly confirmed in Europe but not elsewhere. Similarly, Democrats can no longer just assume that Blacks and Hispanics will always vote for them simply because of their race—and that this will be enough to guarantee a majority. Democratic candidates will have to win their support through a politics that is responsive to the needs and concerns of this country’s multiracial working-class majority. As the last election proved, their votes are now up for grabs.
(Commonweal; 2.5.26) READMORE>>>>>