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Tag: culture wars

  • Can the Democrats Take Free Speech Back from the Right?

    This is my first column since going on book leave in May. (Thank you to Jon Allsop for filling in admirably and expanding the mission of Fault Lines while he was at it.) Every restart comes with a bit of looking back, and, this week, I want to revisit a series of columns from the past few years which concern the First Amendment. I am a free-speech absolutist—an admittedly mostly useless and conditional term that tends to fall apart at the gentlest touch. What it means, in my case, is that I believe that all forms of nonviolent speech should be protected; that the government should not have any power to regulate media outlets, individual speakers, or online platforms; and that, on a broader, nonlegal, and even spiritual level, people should regard any type of censorship, even when done by private actors operating within their rights, with skepticism and worry. I’m convinced that most Americans agree with this view, at least in theory, and one of the arguments that I’ve made during the past few years is that the Democratic Party and people on the left should return to their historical position as the defenders of the First Amendment, not only because it’s the right thing to do—and utterly essential in a moment when the Trump Administration seems to be gearing up for a crackdown on dissent in the government, the media, and the academy—but also because it’s one of those things, like football and underdog stories, that fill Americans with warm, familiar feelings.

    Needless to say, this writing campaign has been almost entirely in vain. The liberal side of American politics has, in the past few decades, essentially ceded the cause of free speech to the right. Pick any losing battle you want: the debate about trigger warnings and safe spaces, which became popular on college campuses and elsewhere in the early twenty-tens; or the fights over deplatforming allegedly harmful speakers about ten years ago; or the shutting down of “disinformation” on social media during the early Biden Administration. These little acts of censorship had the net effect of helping people on the right make the case that they were and are having their speech suppressed. The rise of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, for example, depended on his correct assessment that there were conservative students on every campus who felt like they couldn’t speak their minds in class without facing social consequences. He also understood that the emotional unrest among these kids could be harnessed with just a little prodding and organizing.

    Can liberals do something similar now? Free speech, for obvious reasons, has always been an opposition-party issue—it’s a lot harder to claim that the government is suppressing you when your preferred party is in power. Two weeks ago, Democratic Representative Jason Crow, of Colorado, talked about the No Political Enemies Act, which, in its own words, reaffirms “the constitutionally protected right to free speech and establishes clear and enforceable protections to deter abuse, empower individuals and organizations to defend themselves, and create meaningful accountability.” The bill is known by the rather unfortunate acronym NOPE. In practice, NOPE would “prohibit the use of federal funds for any investigations or regulatory action that would suppress protected speech” and provide “tools” for people who find themselves on the wrong side of censors. A companion measure was introduced in the Senate, by Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, with support from the Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer. The chances that the Republican-controlled House or the Republican-controlled Senate bring the bill to the floor are basically zero. Still, NOPE allowed Democrats, in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension from the air, to do a little First Amendment sabre-rattling and to show that they, too, care about free speech.

    Will it work? If you believe that politics obeys a kind of thermodynamics, it would stand to reason that the Democrats, now expressing growing concerns over censorship—especially with this past week’s unveiling of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which would effectively classify many speech acts as domestic terrorism—would be able to seize the mantle of free speech and build up a degree of activist energy, particularly at colleges and universities, where cuts to federal funding and threats from the Trump Administration have led to the dissolution of entire fields of study.

    But I don’t think this will happen. For one thing, the cultural shift that led to safe spaces and trigger warnings was more powerful than some of us may want to admit. It’s true that we are in the waning days of the concept that speech is violence—due in part to a marked algorithmic shift in social media, from peak woke to peak reactionary, as well as the plummeting faith the public has in the academy, the crucible for this idea. But people who had adopted that position and supported what was broadly labelled “cancel culture” still occupy roles in the infrastructure of the Democratic Party, of major nonprofits, and of academia. It’s hard to imagine that the individuals who mostly rolled their eyes at free-speech claims just a few years ago will suddenly transform into Mario Savio-style culture warriors, urging their audiences to throw themselves onto the gears of government. These same people, for better or worse, are the gears. Crow, Van Hollen, and Murphy should be applauded for introducing NOPE and at least trying to reclaim free speech, but I suspect even they know that their party currently has little standing on the issue.

    Jay Caspian Kang

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  • The Topic Biden Keeps Dodging

    The Topic Biden Keeps Dodging

    President Joe Biden is following a strategy of asymmetrical warfare as the 2024 presidential race takes shape.

    Through the early maneuvering, the leading Republican candidates, particularly former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are trying to ignite a procession of culture-war firefights against what DeSantis calls “the woke mind virus.”

    With the exception of abortion rights, Biden, by contrast, is working to downplay or defuse almost all cultural issues. Instead Biden is targeting his communication with the public almost exclusively on delivering tangible economic benefits to working-class families, such as lower costs for insulin, the protection of Social Security and Medicare, and the creation of more manufacturing jobs.

    Read: Biden’s blue-collar bet

    While the leading Republican presidential contenders are effectively asking voters “Who shares your values?” or, in the harshest versions, “Who shares your resentments?,” Biden wants voters to ask “Who is on your side?”

    The distinction is not absolute. Trump, DeSantis, and the other Republicans circling the 2024 race argue that Biden’s spending programs have triggered inflation, and insist that lower taxes, budget cuts, and more domestic energy production would spur more growth. And in addition to their unwavering defense of abortion rights, Biden and his aides have also occasionally criticized some of the other Republican cultural initiatives, such as DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill banning discussion of sexual orientation in early grades.

    But the difference in emphasis is real, and the contrast illuminates the core of Biden’s vision about how to sustain a national majority for Democrats. He’s betting that the non-college-educated workers, especially those who are white, who constitute the principal audience for the Republican cultural offensive will prove less receptive to those divisive messages if they feel more economically secure.

    “We need to reforge that identity as the party that gives a damn about people who feel forgotten, who have really tough lives right now,” says the Democratic strategist Mike Lux, who recently released a study of political attitudes in mostly blue-collar, midsize “factory towns” across the Midwest. “That’s the central mission. And that’s why I think Biden is right to be focusing on those economic issues first.”

    But other Democrats worry that Biden’s economy-first approach risks allowing Republicans such as DeSantis to define themselves as championing parents while advancing an agenda that civil-rights advocates believe promotes exclusion and bigotry. They also fear that Biden’s reluctance to engage more directly with Republicans over the rollback of rights raging through red states risks dispiriting the core Democratic constituencies, including Black Americans and the LGBTQ community, that face the most direct consequences from restrictions on how teachers and professors can talk about race or bans on gender-affirming care for minors. These Democrats have grown even more uneasy as Biden lately has moved toward Republican positions on immigration (with new restrictions on asylum seekers) and crime (by indicating that he would not block congressional efforts to reverse a reform-oriented overhaul of Washington, D.C.’s criminal code.)

    “Not engaging in culture wars does not mean that Democrats win: It means that we forfeit,” says Terrance Woodbury, chief executive officer and founding partner of HIT Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm that focuses on young and minority voters. The group’s polling, Woodbury told me, shows that “not only do Democratic voters expect Democratic leaders to do more to advance social and racial justice” but that “they will punish Democrats that do not.”

    My conversations with Democrats familiar with White House thinking, however, suggest that Biden and those around him don’t share that perspective. In that inner circle, I’m told, the dominant view is that the best way to respond to the culture-war onslaught from Republicans is to engage with it as little as possible. Those around Biden do not believe that the positions Republicans are adopting on questions such as classroom censorship, book bans, LGBTQ rights, and allowing people to carry firearms without a permit, much less restricting or banning abortion, will prove popular with voters beyond the core conservative states.

    More fundamentally, Biden’s circle believes that voters don’t want to be subjected to fights about such polarizing cultural issues and would prefer that elected officials focus more on daily economic concerns such as inflation, jobs, and health care. Those around Biden largely share the view expressed by the Democratic pollster Guy Molyneux, who studied public attitudes about key GOP educational proposals in two national surveys last year. “People don’t really want either side of these culture wars to win; they want to just stop having these culture wars,” Molyneux told me. “They really see a lot of this as a diversion.” A national survey released this week by Navigator, a Democratic polling consortium, supports Molyneux’s point: When asked to identify their top priorities in education, far more voters cited reducing gun violence and ensuring that kids learn skills that will help them succeed than picked “preventing them from being exposed to woke ideas about race and gender.”

    Shadi Hamid: The forever culture wars

    Biden hasn’t completely sidestepped the culture wars. After mostly avoiding the issue earlier in his presidency, he’s been relentless in his defense of abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. (Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris commemorated what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe with a speech in Tallahassee, Florida, where she targeted DeSantis’s signing of legislation banning abortion there after 15 weeks.) When DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill last year, the White House also criticized him. And most recently in Selma, Alabama, Biden has also issued tough criticisms of the red-state laws erecting new hurdles to voting.

    Yet the Biden administration, and especially the president himself, has mostly kept its distance from the surging tide of bills advancing in Florida and other red states rolling back a broad range of civil rights and liberties. Tellingly, when Biden traveled to Florida last month, it was not to condemn DeSantis’s agenda of restrictions on classroom teachers or transgender minors, but to defend Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act; the only time he mentioned DeSantis by name was to criticize him for refusing to expand eligibility for Medicaid health coverage under the ACA.

    Since the midterm elections, Biden has centered his public appearances on cutting ribbons for infrastructure projects and new clean-energy or semiconductor plants funded by the troika of massive public-investment bills he signed during his first two years; defending Social Security and Medicare; highlighting lower drug prices from the legislation he passed allowing Medicare to bargain for better deals with pharmaceutical companies; and combatting “junk fees” from airlines, hotels, and other companies. In his State of the Union address last month, Biden spoke at length about those economic plans and what he calls his “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America” before he mentioned any social issues, such as police reform, gun control, and abortion. The budget Biden will release today advances these themes by proposing to extend the solvency of Medicare by raising taxes on the affluent.

    The emphasis was very different in marquee appearances last weekend from Trump and DeSantis. Trump, in his long monologue on Saturday at CPAC, accused Biden of exacerbating inflation and promised to pursue an all-out trade war with China. But those comments came deep into a nearly two-hour speech in which Trump blurred the boundary between calling on his supporters to engage in a culture war and an actual civil war, when he promised to be their “retribution” against elites and “woke tyranny.”

    When DeSantis spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, northwest of Los Angeles, last Sunday, he delivered more of an economic message, attributing Florida’s robust population growth in part to its low taxes and low spending. But he drew a much more passionate reaction from his audience later when he denounced the “woke mind virus,” recounted his stand during the coronavirus pandemic against “the biomedical security state,” and pledged to “empower parents” against the educational establishment. DeSantis received his only standing ovation when he declared that schools “should not be teaching a second grader that they can choose their gender.”

    To some extent, the heavy reliance by Trump and DeSantis on these cultural confrontations reflects their belief that GOP primary voters are much more energized now by social rather than economic issues. Yet it also represents the widespread GOP belief that distaste for liberal positions on cultural issues remains an insuperable barrier for Democrats with most working-class voters, including a growing number of Latino men. “Blue-collar voters don’t separate cultural concerns from economic fears,” the GOP strategist Brad Todd, a co-author of The Great Revolt, told me in an email. “They think big global companies are in cahoots with the left on culture, and they don’t put pocketbook concerns ahead of way-of-life concerns.”

    Todd thinks Biden’s attempt to define himself mostly around economic rather than cultural commitments represents his desire “to jump in a time machine and go back to the Democratic Party of the ’80s.” Indeed, Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972, came of age politically in an era when Republicans repeatedly used racially infused “wedge issues” to pry away working-class white voters who had mostly supported Democrats on economic grounds over the previous generation. Some Democrats see Biden’s recent moves to adopt more right-leaning policies on immigration and crime as a resurgence of that era’s widespread Democratic belief that the party needed to neutralize cultural issues, typically by conceding ground to conservative positions.

    Like others I spoke with, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the vice president and chief strategy officer at Way to Win, believes that focusing primarily on economic issues makes sense for Biden now, but that he will eventually be forced to address the GOP’s cultural arguments more directly. Sublimating those issues, she argues, isn’t sustainable, because it is “hurting the very people” Democrats now rely on to win and because the Republican cultural arguments, left unaddressed, could prove very persuasive to not only working-class white voters but also Hispanic and even Black men. Ultimately, Fernandez said, Biden and other Democrats must link the two fronts by convincing working-class voters that Republicans are picking cultural fights to distract them from an economic agenda that mostly benefits the rich. “We have to put to bed this idea [that] we can have an economic message that doesn’t address the racial grievance and fear of change that is at the center of all this culture-war stuff,” argued Fernandez, whose group funds candidates and organizations focused on building a multiracial electoral coalition.

    Franklin Foer: What Joe Biden knows about America

    The debate among Democrats ultimately comes down to whether Biden is skillfully controlling the electoral battlefield or trying to resurrect a coalition that no longer exists (centered on working-class families) at the expense of dividing or demoralizing the coalition the party actually relies on today (revolving around young people, college-educated white voters, and racial minority voters). Several Democratic strategists told me that one obvious challenge with Biden’s trying to define the election around the question of which party can deliver the best economic results for working-class families is that polls throughout his presidency have found that more Americans would pick the GOP. “People still think that Trump economics was better for them than Biden or Obama economics,” Celinda Lake, who served as one of Biden’s lead campaign pollsters in 2020, told me.

    To Lake, that’s an argument for Biden’s strategy of stressing kitchen-table concerns, because she believes the party cannot win unless it narrows the GOP advantage on the economy. But other Democrats believe today’s party is less likely to persuade a national majority that it is better than Republicans for their finances than it is to convince them that the Trump-era GOP constitutes a threat to their rights, values, and democracy itself. Biden’s response to the Republican initiatives censoring teachers, rolling back abortion access, and threatening LGBTQ rights “simply cannot be ‘more jobs,’” Woodbury said. “If Democrats insist on fighting exclusively on economic terms, every poll in America shows they will lose.”

    Ronald Brownstein

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  • Are Gas Stoves Doomed?

    Are Gas Stoves Doomed?

    Somehow, in a few short days, gas stoves have gone from a thing that some people cook with to, depending on your politics, either a child-poisoning death machine or a treasured piece of national patrimony. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion. Gas stoves! Who could have predicted it?

    The roots of the present controversy can be traced back to late December, when scientists published a paper arguing that gas stoves are to blame for nearly 13 percent of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. This finding was striking but not really new: The scientific literature establishing the dangers of gas stoves—and the connection to childhood asthma in particular—goes back decades. Then, on Monday, the fracas got well and truly under way, when Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the commission would consider a full prohibition on gas stoves. “This is a hidden hazard,” he said. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

    Just like that, gas stoves became the newest front in America’s ever expanding culture wars. Politicians proceeded to completely lose their minds. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted a cartoon of two autographed—yes autographed—gas stoves. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio declared simply: “God. Guns. Gas stoves.” Naturally, Tucker Carlson got involved. “I would counsel mass disobedience in the face of tyranny in this case,” he told a guest on his Fox News show.

    No matter that Democrats are more likely to have gas stoves than Republicans, and in fact the only states in which a majority of households use gas stoves—California, Nevada, Illinois, New York, New Jersey—are states that went blue in 2020. Why let a few pesky facts spoil a perfectly good opportunity to own the libs? The Biden administration, for its part, clarified yesterday that it has no intention of banning gas stoves. In the long run, though, this may prove to have been more a stay of execution than a pardon.

    Beyond the knee-jerk partisanship, the science of gas stoves is not entirely straightforward. Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, suggested in her newsletter that the underlying data establishing the connection between gas-stove use and childhood asthma may not be as clear-cut as the new study makes it out to be. And because those data are merely correlational, we can’t draw any straightforward causal conclusions. This doesn’t mean gas stoves are safe, Oster told me, but it complicates the picture. Switching from gas to electric right this minute probably isn’t necessary, she said, but she would make the change if she happened to be redesigning her kitchen.

    Whatever the shortcomings of the available data, it’s clear that gas stoves are worse for the climate and fill our homes with pollutants we’re better off not inhaling. Brady Seals, a manager at the Rocky Mountain Institute and a lead author of the new paper, told me that even assuming the maximum amount of uncertainty, her work still suggests that more than 6 percent of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. are associated with gas stoves.

    Regardless of the exact science, gas stoves might be in trouble anyway. Statistically, they’re not all that deeply entrenched to begin with: Only about 40 percent of American households have one. Plus, induction stoves—a hyper-efficient option that generates heat using electromagnetism—are on the rise. “We’re not asking people to go back to janky coils,” said Leah Stokes, a political scientist at UC Santa Barbara who has provided testimony on the subject of gas stoves before the U.S. Senate, and who is currently in the process of installing an induction stove in her home.

    Rachelle Boucher, a chef who has worked in restaurants, in appliance showrooms, and as a private cook for such celebrity clients as George Lucas and Metallica, swears by induction. She started using it about 15 years ago and has since become a full-time evangelist. (In the past, Boucher has done promotions for electric-stove companies, though she doesn’t anymore.) Induction, she told me, tops gas in just about every way. For one thing, “the speed is remarkable.” An induction stovetop can boil a pot of water in just two minutes, twice as quickly as a gas burner. For another, it allows for far greater precision. When you adjust the heat, the change is nearly instantaneous. “Once you use that speed,” Boucher said, “it’s weird to go back and have everything be so much harder to control.” Induction stoves also emit virtually no excess heat, reducing air-conditioning costs and making it harder to burn yourself. And they’re also easier to clean.

    Induction stoves do have minor drawbacks. Because they are flat and use electromagnetism, they aren’t compatible with all cookware, meaning that if you make the switch, you may also have to buy yourself a new wok or kettle. Flambéing and charring will also take a little longer, Boucher told me, but few home cooks are deploying those techniques on a regular basis. In recent years, induction has received the endorsement of some of the world’s top chefs, who have tended to be ardent gas-stove users. Eric Ripert, whose restaurant Le Bernardin has three Michelin stars, switched his home kitchens from gas to induction. “After two days, I was in love,” he told The New York Times last year. At his San Francisco restaurant, Claude Le Tohic, a James Beard Award–winning chef, has made the switch to induction. The celebrity chef and food writer Alison Roman is also a convert: “I have an induction stove by choice AMA,” she tweeted yesterday.

    If it’s good enough for them, it’s probably good enough for us. At the moment, induction stoves are more expensive than the alternatives, although their efficiency and the fact that they don’t heat up the kitchen help offset the disparity. So, too, do the rebates included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which should kick in later this year and can amount to as much as $840. The price has been falling in recent years, and as it continues to come down, Stokes told me, she expects induction to overtake gas. A 2022 Consumer Reports survey found that while 3 percent of Americans have induction stoves, nearly 70 might consider going induction the next time they buy new appliances. “I think the same thing’s going to happen for induction stoves” as happened with electric vehicles, Stokes told me. In the end, culture-war considerations will lose out to questions of cost and quality. The better product will win the day, plain and simple.

    Still, gas stoves’ foray into the culture wars likely means that at least some Republicans will probably scorn electric stoves now in the same way they have masks over the past few years. And this whole episode does have a distinctly post-pandemic feel to it: the concern about the air we’re breathing, the discussion of what precautions we ought to take, the panic and outrage in response. The new gas-stove controversy feels as though it has been jammed into a partisan framework established—or at least refined—during the pandemic. “I don’t know if this discourse that we’re seeing now could have happened five years ago,” Brady Seals told me. Whatever happens to gas stoves, the public-health culture wars don’t seem to be going anywhere.

    Jacob Stern

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  • Florida’s tussle with Disney wouldn’t have happened ‘if Bob Iger had been CEO,’ says top DeSantis ally

    Florida’s tussle with Disney wouldn’t have happened ‘if Bob Iger had been CEO,’ says top DeSantis ally

    Florida lawmakers are reviewing ways to restore some of the privileges that the state stripped from Walt Disney Co., still reducing the company’s benefits dramatically without going as far as ending them all, a key legislator said.

    Earlier this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law that in 2023 would dissolve a special government district that’s granted sweeping benefits to Disney for half a century, called Reedy Creek, unless it’s reinstated by the legislature. The move was triggered by what the Republican governor saw as Disney’s criticism of a law he signed that limits elementary school teachings about gender identity.

    The sponsor of the law axing the entertainment giant’s Florida perks, state Representative Randy Fine, said he’s encouraged by last month’s ouster of Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek, who led opposition to DeSantis’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. Fine said discussions were helped by signs that Disney’s returning CEO Bob Iger will steer clear of Florida politics. 

    “I think Mr. Iger has already said it probably was a misstep on the company’s part and how they handled it,” Fine said in an interview.  “I don’t think we’d be in this situation if Bob Iger had been CEO.” 

    The move pitted DeSantis against one of Florida’s largest and most powerful employers, known for several iconic theme parks in Orlando. DeSantis, who’s widely believed to be plotting a run for president in 2024, has made the blow against Disney a key part of his so-called “anti-woke” agenda. The Florida governor has vowed repeatedly to go after corporations that side against him on culture-war fights over race, gender identity and abortion. Fighting what he called “the woke” was the foundation of a reelection campaign that gave DeSantis one of the largest landslide victories of any Republican in the US midterm elections in November.

    DeSantis won’t make any “U-turns” from the law he signed this year, his chief spokesman said. The governor will not reverse pledges to remove “the extraordinary benefit given to one company,” Press Secretary Bryan Griffin said in an emailed statement.  “A plan is in the works and will be released soon.”

    Iger to ‘quiet things down’ in Florida

    One goal would be to ensure that Disney would be responsible for paying back the nearly $1 billion in municipal bonds issued by the special district, DeSantis has said. “We will have an even playing field for businesses in Florida, and the state certainly owes no special favors to one company,” Griffin said. “Disney’s debts will not fall on the taxpayers of Florida.”

    A Disney spokesperson declined comment. In a recent hall meeting with Disney employees, Iger, said: “Do I like the company being embroiled in controversy? Of course not.” 

    “It can be distracting and have a negative impact on the company. To the extent I can quiet things down, I’m going to do that,” he said, adding that he’s still getting “up to speed” on the situation with Reedy Creek and that he doesn’t have all the details about the ramifications of Florida’s decision.

    Legislation to replace Reedy Creek will seek to strip away benefits that no other company except Disney enjoys, said Fine, who said he’s involved in discussions among lawmakers and the governor. Fine declined to comment on details of the discussions or what privileges might be on the chopping block once a new law is proposed in the legislature. 

    But he cited perks Disney has enjoyed such as government-like powers to seize land via eminent domain and to sell bonds. The Reedy Creek tax district was created by the legislature in 1967 in a deal that led to the construction of Disney World. It gave Disney self-governing power over 25,000 acres, including overseeing its own building code and permits, which helped the company build faster. 

    “I think what you’ll likely see is some of the things that just made no sense,” said Fine. “You know, it isn’t going to be, ‘Oops, let’s go back to the way it was.’ You’re gonna see something substantially different.”

    Iger, in the wide-ranging meeting with employees, said he’s not going to back down on having Disney be a “good citizen of the world,” which is sometimes mistakenly branded as political. 

    “I think there’s a misperception here about what politics is,” he explained. “I think that some of the subjects that have proven to be controversial as it relates to Disney have been branded political, and I don’t necessarily believe they are.” 

    —With assistance from Thomas Buckley

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    Michael Smith, Bloomberg

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