Brief response to the @nytdavidbrooks column people are dunking on. His device (imagining the view from those at the bottom of the social order) is fine. Egalitarian liberals agree meritocracy is corrupted/distorted. But his core argument about the Trump indictments is flawed. 1/
There's a lot in the column, but I want to focus on the claim that “people in less-educated classes" feel under cultural “assault” from elites and see Trump as "their warrior against the educated class.”
This formulation erases the non-white working class from the equation. 2/
In 2020, 53% of Biden voters didn’t have a college degree, vs. 46% who did, per Pew. Yes, that's more lopsided for Trump (31-70). But the Dem anti-Trump coalition has a *lot* of the “less educated class” in it.
The two coalitions don’t look that different in this regard. 3/
Notably, Biden won a huge majority of *nonwhite* voters without a college degree.
Even if you grant there’s been some erosion among the nonwhite working class, the clear pattern is still that the anti-MAGA coalition has *tons* of “less educated” (nonwhite) voters in it. 4/
Also, as @NGrossman81 points out, income breakdowns of the voting also tell a very different story than the one Brooks is telling. 5/
Brooks applies this frame to the Trump indictments: Those prone to “distrustful populism” see them as “another skirmish in the class war between professionals and workers.” He fudges on whether he’s talking about Trump supporters, so let’s assume he really means “workers.” 6/
But there's a problem with Brooks' formulation: In the new NYT/Siena poll, a plurality of no-college voters overall thinks Trump committed serious federal crimes, 43-39. Yes, white no-college voters think he didn’t. But nonwhite no-college voters think he did by 53-25. 7/
And a bare plurality of non-college voters overall — 46-45 — say Trump threatened democracy in the lead up to 1/6. Yes, white no-college voters say he was just exercising his right to contest the outcome. But nonwhite no-college voters say he threatened democracy by 57-29. 8/
As I’ve argued (h/t @yeselson @erikloomis), simplified depictions of elite/no-college cultural schisms are totally divorced from today's realities. *This* merits more elite punditry! 9/9
We keep hearing credulous pundits say MAGA is "antiwar." So how many MAGA Republicans will support the new resolution requiring Trump to get congressional authorization for war with Iran?
This resolution is important. Pay attention to it. 1/
In 2024, Trump slammed Kamala for campaigning with Liz Cheney, claiming she wants “war with every Muslim country known to mankind.” This was always a scam, and now it looks like Trump is rushing into war with Iran. This has deeply split MAGA. 2/
"Antiwar" MAGA Republicans have the option of backing this new resolution from Thomas Massie (R) and Ro Khanna (D) requiring congressional authorization for war with Iran.
“It’s a test of whether the MAGA movement is really antiwar,” Khanna tells me. 3/
House Rs are urging a focus only on criminals AT THE EXACT MOMENT that Stephen Miller is ordering ICE to scour Home Depot parking lots for noncriminals to pad the numbers. Miller is *choosing* to divert resources away from dangerous criminals. 3/
Awful: News orgs are credulously amplifying the idea that sending troops into LA is good politics for Trump. This gives his lawless abuses of power the aura of conventional politics, obscuring how extraordinarily dangerous this moment truly is. 1/
Over the last few days, Trump has goaded servicemembers into booing a sitting Dem governor, called for his arrest, needlessly sent troops into an American city, and spewed wildly absurd lies about that city. This shows political weakness, not strength. 2/
We just learned that two-bit fascist Stephen Miller told ICE officials to raid Home Depot parking lots for more people to deport. To boost removal numbers, Trump and Miller are diverting resources away from serious crimes like child exploitation. 3/
Stephen Miller is in a rage over deportation numbers he deems too low. So he's shifting huge amounts of law enforcement resources away from fighting serious crimes and into his immigration crackdown.
Miller recently erupted at ICE officials, demanding 3,000 deportations a day. He's now redeploying thousands of agents from other agencies like Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, and DEA.
This is already hampering other crime-fighting, per NBC. 2/
“Shifting that number of law enforcement agents from those types of agencies inevitably will mean fewer resources fighting transnational criminal organizations, drug smuggling, counter-terrorism, and child exploitation,” a former ICE official tells me. 3/
Unreal: To sustain his "genocide" of "white farmers" lie while meeting with the South African president, Trump used a photo of war deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I looked into this a bit more. It's worse than it first appeared. 1/
First, note that the printout Trump used to humiliate Ramaphosa came from a conservative blog post, which used an image from a Reuters video about DRC. Perhaps an aide Googled "white farmers" and "South Africa," found this, and gave it to Trump. 2/
But there's something darker here. Even as Trump used this image of the dead from the DRC war to push a fake "genocide," Trump has suspended foreign aid and refugee resettlement in ways that are hurting countless humanitarian victims of that REAL war! 3/
Amazing: Trump grew angry over a Biden-era program with the word "equity" in its name, so he ended it. But a key part of the program was sending money to red states to expand internet access in rural/MAGA country. Now they might not get it.
Trump saw the word "equity" in the name of this Biden-era program, so naturally he decided it must be serving undeserving minorities, giving him an opening to demagogue about it.
A funny thing about this saga: Many red state governments had submitted proposals in hopes of accessing this federal money. I looked at the proposals. They are in no small part about using this money to expand high speed internet into rural areas.