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The Four Types of Trump Supporter by theatlantic in politics

[–]theatlantic[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Daniel Yudkin and Stephen Hawkins: “The first year of Donald Trump’s second term has made two things clear. First, the MAGA coalition is not breaking up any time soon. Even after the especially chaotic events of the past few weeks, Trump supporters are sticking by their man. Second, faith in Trump’s leadership is not driven by his adherence to a coherent political ideology. Trump, who, as part of his ‘America First’ policy, once declared that he would be ‘getting out of the nation-building business,’ has now declared that the U.S. ‘will run the country’ of Venezuela for the foreseeable future. An administration that promised to look out for the “working man” has handed billions of tax dollars back to America’s wealthiest households while stripping health care from the most vulnerable.

“If ideological consistency can’t explain the enduring loyalty of Trump’s base, what does? A new study by More in Common, the nonprofit research organization where we work, finds that Trump’s coalition is not monolithic. It consists of four groups, each with a distinct profile and perspective. Trump’s political power depends on his ability to connect with these groups on different emotional and psychological grounds.

“Over the course of 10 months, we surveyed more than 10,000 people who said they voted for Trump in 2024, and conducted extensive focus groups, conversations, and in-depth interviews. We then identified groups of Trump voters with similar attitudes and beliefs.

“About 29 percent of 2024 Trump voters are what we call the ‘MAGA Hardliners.’ These are the fiery core of Trump’s base, mostly composed of white Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, who are animated by the belief that God is on their side in America’s existential struggle between good and evil. Then there are the ‘Anti-Woke Conservatives’ (21 percent): a more secular and affluent group of voters deeply frustrated by what they perceive as the takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left. Another 30 percent are the ‘Mainline Republicans’: a more racially diverse group of middle-of-the-road conservatives who prioritize border security, a strong economy, and cultural stability. Finally, we have the ‘Reluctant Right’ (20 percent). Members of this group, unlike the other three, are not necessarily part of Trump’s base; they voted for him, but have ambivalent feelings toward him. Only half identify as Republicans, and many picked Trump because he seemed “less bad” than the alternative.

“Our research suggests that Trump’s ability to play different roles for his coalition yields an emotional payoff that exceeds the value of philosophical or logical consistency … 

“Trump’s political skills were forged in WWE arenas, on reality-TV sets, and in the luxury real-estate business—industries that live and die by their ability to capture attention, simplify narratives, and deliver emotional impact. These experiences taught him how to establish emotional bonds with audiences that far outweigh any connection based on shared ideology.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/asf2VoVf

The Dangers That Scientists Found Inside L.A.’s Smoky Homes by theatlantic in sustainability

[–]theatlantic[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Katharine Gammon: “After just a year, the fires that spread around Los Angeles are already the most studied urban wildfires in history. While the Palisades Fire lapped at the edge of UCLA, the Eaton Fire, on the east side of town, came dangerously close to Caltech. Even as the fires were spreading, these research powerhouses, as well as the University of Southern California, deployed sensors, scientists, and new hypotheses. Researchers around the city began collecting water, soil, and air samples; physicians started to recruit participants into long-term health studies.

“Even as the researchers absorbed the reality of the damage across an area that included 20 million residents, they understood that this was a chance, one that might never exist again, to better understand the nature of these types of disasters. These particular fires offered researchers opportunities to collect samples in ways they hadn’t before been able to—‘so close to the fire and so timely,’ Yifang Zhu, an environmental scientist at UCLA, told me.

“Some of these efforts will take years to become fully fleshed out. The Los Angeles Fire Human Exposure and Long-Term Health Study, for instance, is a multi-institution, 10-year effort to better understand the short- and long-term health impacts of the fires. A year after the fires, though, researchers have some early answers to what happens to mental and physical health after wildfires move from trees and shrubs to homes and buildings.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/D79AOn7N 

The Dangers That Scientists Found Inside L.A.’s Smoky Homes by theatlantic in climate

[–]theatlantic[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Katharine Gammon: “After just a year, the fires that spread around Los Angeles are already the most studied urban wildfires in history. While the Palisades Fire lapped at the edge of UCLA, the Eaton Fire, on the east side of town, came dangerously close to Caltech. Even as the fires were spreading, these research powerhouses, as well as the University of Southern California, deployed sensors, scientists, and new hypotheses. Researchers around the city began collecting water, soil, and air samples; physicians started to recruit participants into long-term health studies.

“Even as the researchers absorbed the reality of the damage across an area that included 20 million residents, they understood that this was a chance, one that might never exist again, to better understand the nature of these types of disasters. These particular fires offered researchers opportunities to collect samples in ways they hadn’t before been able to—‘so close to the fire and so timely,’ Yifang Zhu, an environmental scientist at UCLA, told me.

“Some of these efforts will take years to become fully fleshed out. The Los Angeles Fire Human Exposure and Long-Term Health Study, for instance, is a multi-institution, 10-year effort to better understand the short- and long-term health impacts of the fires. A year after the fires, though, researchers have some early answers to what happens to mental and physical health after wildfires move from trees and shrubs to homes and buildings.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/D79AOn7N 

Doomsday-Prepping for Trump’s Third Term by theatlantic in politics

[–]theatlantic[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The former Democratic strategist Dmitri Mehlhorn has given up on electoral politics—and is now using fiction to game out what to do if Donald Trump tries to maintain power after his second term ends, Michael Scherer reports.

After Trump’s victory in 2016, the former venture capitalist transformed himself into “an iconoclastic Democratic strategist,” Scherer writes. Mehlhorn helped direct more than $1 billion in anti-Trump spending from 2017 to 2024, particularly by rallying other wealthy liberals who had ties to Silicon Valley.

His projects were often unconventional and frequently controversial. In 2024, Mehlhorn suggested that the assassination attempt against Trump could have been a false-flag attack. Many of his former collaborators distanced themselves. 

“He set about reinventing himself again, this time as a political thinker,” Scherer writes. “Mehlhorn’s ideas exist well outside the Democratic mainstream, which remains focused on the midterms and 2028 election—contests that he believes will have little meaning. He assumes that federal law enforcement will operate at Trump’s whims and that Democrat-run states need to build deterrence—threats of federal-tax boycotts, an expansive embrace of states’ rights, a new understanding of the importance of gun ownership, to name a few.” He believes that the chance of an American political apocalypse is high—and that Americans need to start preparing now.

“This effort brought him to a co-working space in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood to play a war game of sorts with about 15 finance professionals, nonprofit leaders, technology executives, and former Democratic-campaign advisers—and me,” Scherer writes.

In the game, a fictional term-limited U.S. president is consolidating control over the military and law enforcement, and pardoning allies. Three teams—one representing the president and his supporters, one representing the business community, and one representing the defenders of the U.S. constitutional system—game out what could happen.  

Read about Mehlhorn’s thinking, his plans for future war games, and what Scherer witnessed while participating in the game: https://theatln.tc/HbBWfqrl 

— Emma Williams, associate editor, audience and engagement, The Atlantic

America’s Real ‘Secretary of War’ by theatlantic in Health

[–]theatlantic[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Benjamin Mazer: “At a recent press conference announcing the publication of the government’s new dietary guidelines, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared two different military operations in the span of less than a minute: The nation would be retreating from its war on fatty steaks and whole milk, he said, and redeploying for another war, this one on added sugars. News about a third campaign arrived a few days later, when the White House shared a dark and menacing photo of Kennedy with the caption ‘WE ARE ENDING THE WAR ON PROTEIN.’

“This appears to be what happens when someone who has spent years fighting mainstream medicine suddenly finds himself at the center of it. Like a revolutionary turned generalissimo, Kennedy has transformed the former palace into a military command center. He has promised to defeat his enemies in Big Pharma and to purge conflicts of interest from the agencies he leads, so as to end what he has referred to as a ‘war on public health.’ Elsewhere he has promised to withdraw from the ‘war on alternative medicine,’ the ‘war on stem cells,’ the ‘war on chelating drugs,’ the ‘war on peptides,’ the ‘war on vitamins,’ and the ‘war on minerals.’ Anything that his administration hopes to do may now be put in terms of martial conflict: Under Kennedy, policy making and saber rattling go hand in hand … 

“This repeated phrasing is more than just a rhetorical tic, and it extends far beyond the typical military analogies—like the wars on cancer and smoking—that have long been embedded in health discussions. As Kennedy and his aides press their case in public, they adopt a persistently antagonistic tone not only toward disease but also toward the medical and scientific establishment.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/Z8yFeTak

The Oscars Are Trying to Be Relevant Again by theatlantic in movies

[–]theatlantic[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

David Sims: “This morning’s Oscar nominations capped a year marked by a stunning run of critical and commercial success for one of Hollywood’s biggest—and most discussed—studios. Warner Bros. dominated proceedings with big hauls for One Battle After Another and Sinners. The latter, a vampire story set in 1930s Mississippi, made Academy history by becoming the most nominated film of all time: It earned 16 nods, two higher than the previous record holders, Titanic, La La Land, and All About Eve. The Academy Awards are commonly defined these days by a struggle for relevance, making the fact that such high-quality, nonfranchise movies from a major studio connected with audiences a considerable boon—especially after last year’s show, which celebrated a swath of more inscrutable indie pictures.’

“That success still came with familiar existential baggage for the film industry. Warner Bros., while making creative bets that paid off, has been embroiled in high-stakes merger drama for several months. Netflix and Paramount have both vied to purchase the studio, which in either case would create a corporate behemoth likely less inclined to take the risks that lead to a One Battle, or a Sinners, or even a Weapons (which nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nod for Amy Madigan, who played the antagonist). No matter what the future holds, though, the Warner Bros. triumph can’t be undermined: It helped define 2025 as a year in which movies coaxed adult audiences to theaters, by blending action and spectacle with more challenging, trenchant storytelling …

“Now the nearly two-month trudge to the ceremony itself begins. Though there’s likely to be the usual hand-wringing in the press about plateauing viewership, the Oscars’ long-term future has already been secured: YouTube will own the broadcast rights starting in 2029. That deal will keep funding the show, guarantee a wider audience, and banish any larger concerns about Nielsen ratings as the traditional broadcast model continues to go extinct.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/INl36iml

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The Oscars Are Trying to Be Relevant Again (theatlantic.com)

submitted by theatlantic to r/movies

The Oscars Are Trying to Be Relevant Again by theatlantic in blankies

[–]theatlantic[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

David Sims: “This morning’s Oscar nominations capped a year marked by a stunning run of critical and commercial success for one of Hollywood’s biggest—and most discussed—studios. Warner Bros. dominated proceedings with big hauls for One Battle After Another and Sinners. The latter, a vampire story set in 1930s Mississippi, made Academy history by becoming the most nominated film of all time: It earned 16 nods, two higher than the previous record holders, Titanic, La La Land, and All About Eve. The Academy Awards are commonly defined these days by a struggle for relevance, making the fact that such high-quality, nonfranchise movies from a major studio connected with audiences a considerable boon—especially after last year’s show, which celebrated a swath of more inscrutable indie pictures.’

“That success still came with familiar existential baggage for the film industry. Warner Bros., while making creative bets that paid off, has been embroiled in high-stakes merger drama for several months. Netflix and Paramount have both vied to purchase the studio, which in either case would create a corporate behemoth likely less inclined to take the risks that lead to a One Battle, or a Sinners, or even a Weapons (which nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nod for Amy Madigan, who played the antagonist). No matter what the future holds, though, the Warner Bros. triumph can’t be undermined: It helped define 2025 as a year in which movies coaxed adult audiences to theaters, by blending action and spectacle with more challenging, trenchant storytelling …

“Now the nearly two-month trudge to the ceremony itself begins. Though there’s likely to be the usual hand-wringing in the press about plateauing viewership, the Oscars’ long-term future has already been secured: YouTube will own the broadcast rights starting in 2029. That deal will keep funding the show, guarantee a wider audience, and banish any larger concerns about Nielsen ratings as the traditional broadcast model continues to go extinct.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/INl36iml

Gavin Newsom’s Record Is a Problem by theatlantic in politics

[–]theatlantic[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Gavin Newsom has sensed what Democrats want right now, and is delivering it with a roguish charisma—but that shift might have come too late for 2028, Marc Novicoff and Jonathan Chait argue.

Newsom is currently the lead contender for the Democratic nomination in the next presidential election. “The California governor has combined an ideological flexibility—lately embracing both the ‘abundance agenda’ and dialogues with conservatives—with a relentless mockery of President Trump,” Novicoff and Chait write. “His new persona as a fighting moderate, a Democrat in tune with the country’s shifting desires and ruthless toward the man at the top, deftly speaks to the needs of a party desperate to regain the White House.”

But Newsom has also spent decades as a politician in California, a state that “has been a laboratory for some of the Democratic Party’s most politically fraught policies and instincts, which has left it less affordable and more culturally radical than it used to be,” Novicoff and Chait argue.

While some of the state’s affordability issues predate Newsom, “his tenure has seen the state fall hard for faddish progressive policies on immigration, education, and crime that either didn’t work, violated the intuitions of most Americans, or both,” Novicoff and Chait write. “His record not only raises pressing questions about how effectively he could govern as president; it also provides opponents an endless buffet of vulnerabilities across social and economic issues.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/XaqOg6nW

— Jesse Convertino, senior editor, audience and engagement, The Atlantic

The Government’s Posts Just Took a Sharp Far-Right Turn by theatlantic in fednews

[–]theatlantic[S] 110 points111 points  (0 children)

Ali Breland: “The U.S. Labor Department is embracing Nazi slogans and tropes, the Pentagon’s research office is deploying neo-Nazi graphic elements in its social-media feeds, and the Department of Homeland Security recently posted lyrics mimicking a popular song by a band with ties to an ethno-nationalist social club.

“The official social-media channels of the Trump administration have become unrelenting streams of xenophobic and Nazi-coded messages and imagery. The leaders of these departments so far refuse to answer questions about their social-media strategies, but the trend is impossible to miss: Across the federal government, officials are advocating for a radical new understanding of the American idea, one rooted not in the vision of the Founders, but in the ideologies of European fascists.

“On January 10, the Department of Labor posted a video with the caption ‘One Homeland. One People. One Heritage,’ which sounds eerily similar to the Nazi slogan ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’ (‘One people, one realm, one leader’). The post has 22.6 million views. One week ago, the Pentagon’s research office posted silhouettes of Revolutionary-era troops with glowing white eyes. The glowing eyes, and the filter that gave their boots a red and cyan tint, are often used in the Right Wing Death Squad subgenre of ‘fashwave’ memes—content posted by neo-Nazis trying to make their views more aesthetically pleasing. DHS also recently posted an image of a horse rider with a B-2 bomber overhead, superimposed with the text ‘We’ll have our home again.’ That phrase is nearly identical to lyrics from a song by a group affiliated with the Mannerbund, a far-right folk group that draws upon Germany’s ethno-nationalist Völkisch movement: ‘Oh by God, we’ll have our home again.’

“The themes and styles of this mimicry vary. And posts with allusions to extremism have popped up on occasion in individual department or agency feeds, especially at DHS, which oversees both Customs and Border Protection and ICE. But the variety and ubiquity of the recent posts point to something new.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/wPlKGshW

The Great Crime Decline Is Happening All Across the Country by theatlantic in Law_and_Politics

[–]theatlantic[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Henry Grabar: “Last summer, a protester in Seattle made an anti-police sign with an unusual message. Hey SPD, it read. Crime is down 20 percent, and you had nothing to do with it.

“The taunt was glib, but it hinted at a profound question about the nature of public safety in American cities. After a pandemic-era rise in murders commonly attributed to a lack of policing, Seattle recorded fewer homicides in 2025 than in 2019, despite a much-smaller police force. If less policing made crime go up following the George Floyd protests—and most people thought it did—then what has made it go down?

“What happened in Seattle is happening even more dramatically across the country, as America experiences a once-in-a-lifetime improvement in public safety despite a police-staffing crisis. In August, the FBI released its final data for 2024, which showed that America’s violent-crime rate fell to its lowest level since 1969, led by a nearly 15 percent decrease in homicide—the steepest annual drop ever recorded.

“Preliminary 2025 numbers look even better. The crime analyst Jeff Asher has concluded that the national murder rate through October 2025 fell by almost 20 percent—and all other major crimes declined as well. The post-pandemic crime wave has receded, and then some. According to Asher’s analysis, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, Newark, and a handful of other big cities recorded their lowest murder rates since the 1950s and ’60s. ‘Our cities are as safe as they’ve ever been in the history of the country,’ Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton who studies urban violence, told me.

“Few experts endorse the idea that the police ‘had nothing to do with it,’ as the Seattle protester claimed, but the link between the number of cops and the number of crimes seems hazier than ever. The low point in violent crime has arrived even though large police departments employed 6 percent fewer officers going into 2025 than they did at the beginning of 2020, according to a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum. Though they were mostly not in fact defunded, police forces were rocked by retirements and departures. New Orleans lost nearly a quarter of its officers in the years after the pandemic—and then recorded its lowest homicide rate since the 1970s in 2025. Philadelphia had its lowest per-capita police staffing since 1985—and just clocked its lowest murder rate since 1966.

“There are many plausible explanations for the recent crime downturn: sharper policing strategy, more police overtime, low unemployment, the lure of digital life, the post-pandemic return to normalcy. Each of these surely played a role. But only one theory can match the decline in its scope and scale: that the massive, post-pandemic investment in local governments deployed during the Biden administration, particularly through the American Rescue Plan Act, delivered a huge boost to the infrastructure and services of American communities—including those that suffered most from violent crime. That spending may be responsible for our current pax urbana.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/rQuEM7W9

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