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Sarah McBride, Delaware state senator and candidate for United States Representative, speaks to a voter outside of a coffee shop in Wilmington, Delaware, on Oct. 26, 2024.
Delaware Dem becomes first openly transgender federal lawmaker
The United States has elected its first openly transgender member of Congress. On Tuesday, Democrat Sarah McBride, a state senator from Delaware, won the state’s at-large seat in the House of Representatives. The seat has been a reliable win for the Democrats, but McBride won a competitive primary.
Her win comes against the backdrop of a Trump campaign and broader Republican anti-transgender push, including tens of millions of dollars in advertising. In recent years, Congress and state legislatures have advanced bills to restrict transgender health care, limit the discussion of transgender issues in schools, and block transgender athletes from participating in organized sports.
The Republicans secured the White House and Senate on Tuesday and may end up winning the House. The Trump administration and Congress could then further push for anti-transgender legislation, a fight into which McBride may be drawn front and center.
Trump has promised to ask Congress to ban the registration of any gender at birth except male or female and to repeal the transgender Title IX protections enacted by the Biden administration.Illustration shows several congressmen engaged in a brawl on the floor of the House of Representatives.
The end of polarization in America?
How does this all end? Does it? It’s a question a lot of Americans have been asking themselves in the week since an assassin’s bullet missed Donald Trump’s skull by less than a quarter of an inch.
It was, of course, the first time a gunman had put a US president (or former president) in his sights since the 1981 attempt on Ronald Reagan. Most Americans alive today have no memory of that moment.
In some ways, such a long reprieve between assassinations was unusual for the United States.
Despite what President Joe Biden said this week about this kind of violence having “no place” in American society, high-level political killings are deeply woven into US history. At least a quarter of all US presidents have been targeted for death, most of them in the 20th century alone. Four died.
But the atmosphere in America is vastly more polarized and divided than it was even when Reagan was shot, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
To be clear, some degree of polarization by itself isn’t a bad thing. Disagreement is important. You don’t want a society where everyone believes the same thing privately, much less one in which people only feel comfortable saying the same thing publicly. That’s not a functional democracy – that’s North Korea.
The trouble, though, is what experts call “pernicious polarization.” That’s when political divisions harden into increasingly dissociated tribes, each of which views the other not as fellow citizens with different experiences and ideas, but as mortal enemies.
That’s the America we live in today. It’s an America where liberals and conservatives not only don’t trust each other, marry each other, or vote for each other – they barely even see or interact with each other. “Liberal” and “conservative” have gone from being political labels to tribal affiliations, and the tribes live on different islands.
How bad is it? A sweeping historical study of polarization by the Carnegie Endowment found that since 1950, no advanced democracy has suffered levels of polarization as high, or for as long, as what the US has experienced over the past 10 years.
And, soberingly, it also found that no liberal democracy around the world has been able to retreat from extreme polarization with its democracy intact.
It wasn’t always this way. Even during the 1960s and 1970s, when America was convulsed with political violence over civil rights, the Vietnam War, and counterculture, the two parties had a lot more ideological overlap. You could find Democrats who were pro-life and Republicans who were concerned about access to guns. (One of them was Reagan’s spokesman Jim Brady, who after being severely wounded in the 1981 shooting, dedicated his life to passing sensible gun control laws – the 1993 “Brady Bill” is named after him.)
This sort of thing is what political scientists call “crosscutting polarization” – i.e., divisions that slash through party divisions, preventing partisan groups from becoming warring teams. In short: We need more crosscutting again.
The trouble is that a lot of things work against that: geographical segregation along political lines; social media algorithms that reward extreme viewpoints; a decline of local media reporting on issues close to people’s lives; a two-party political system where districts are often heavily gerrymandered, forcing politicians to pander to the extremes rather than to build bridges.
Conflict is a more rational strategy than compromise in almost all areas of our politics even if it’s leading us all off a cliff into a very dark ravine.
Rising political violence is one result. Last year, for example, there were more than 8,000 threats of violence against federal lawmakers, a tenfold increase since 2016.
And as we slouch toward the most contentious and high-stakes election in America’s modern history, most people seem resigned to things getting worse. A poll taken just after the attempt on Trump’s life showed that two-thirds of Americans think the current environment makes political violence more likely.
Is there any hope? Yes, says Murat Somer, a political science professor at Ozyegin University in Istanbul, who co-authored the Carnegie report.
“You have to redefine politics in a way that cuts across those cultural divisions,” he says. One way to do that, he says, is to put the focus back on one of the underlying causes of polarization and lack of trust in institutions in the first place: the decline of social mobility.
“What people have in common across party lines,” he says, “is unhappiness about inequality.”
That’s a start. Other theorists see structural changes that could help. Lee Drutman, a scholar at the New America Foundation, and author of the book “The Two Party Doom Loop”,says tweaking the two-party system by introducing multi-member congressional districts with proportional representation would help to smudge the partisan lines in constructive ways again.
But most of all, it may require a change of mindset – to stop believing that every election is possibly the last one for the America we love (whichever one that may be.)
“It’s important not to think ‘well, if we lose this election it’s over,’” says Somer. “No, it’s not over. A new phase or a new period will start, but it’s not over. It’s very important not to give up after elections, because no president, from either party, can very rapidly or fundamentally transform the country.”
Drutman agrees. “Things may be a little ugly for a while,” he says, “but I do think that there are enough people who are engaged in the work of democratic renewal that we will get to the other side of this. I don't know what the cost of getting to the other side of this will be, but I do think eventually we’ll get to a better political environment.”
What do you think? Can we reduce polarization? Should we? What would you like to see happen? Write us here. If you include your name and location, we may run your response in an upcoming edition of the GZERO Daily Newsletter.
Are identity politics making students less tolerant?
On GZERO World, political scientist Yascha Mounk sits down with Ian Bremmer to discuss his latest book, “The Identity Trap” and what he sees as a counter-productive focus on group identity that's taken hold of mainstream US institutions, particularly in the area of education. Bremmer acknowledges that while he doesn’t always understand the nuances of how young people want to be identified, it feels legitimate that they don’t want society to define what box they’re in.
“We need to have a society in which we respect everybody equally,” Mounk argues, “But that is different from saying that we should create a society where how we treat each other is deeply shaped by the group of which we're from.”
Mounk believes that a novel ideology about race and gender and sexual orientation is holding back young people from embracing diversity of thought and truly engaging with ideas that run contrary to their own. As a university professor, he worries today's college students have been taught to define themselves by the intersection of their identity, that they've become skeptical of free speech principles and reject all forms of cultural appropriation, even if it denies mutual understanding.
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: The identity politics trap
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Has identity politics distracted us from true inclusion?
Political scientist and author Yascha Mounk joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to discuss his latest book, “The Identity Trap" and his concerns about the contemporary “woke” ideology coming from the progressive left. A counter-production obsession with group identity in all forms, he argues, has taken hold of mainstream institutions in areas like education and healthcare.
“Rather than asking for true inclusion in shared institutions,” Mounk says, “[Progressive activists] reject that universalist heritage and want to make how we treat each other explicitly depend on the kind of identity groups of which we're a part.”
Mounk dives into the complicated and contentious issue of identity politics and challenges the conventional wisdom that they lead to a more equitable society. By emphasizing the differences between individuals rather than shared values, Mounk explains, identity politics exacerbate societal divisions and hold our society back from making real progress toward equality.
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: The identity politics trap
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
The identity politics trap
From race to gender to profession to nationality, we define who we are in a million different ways. Many people feel strongly about those identities; they are a fundamental part of how we see the world, find community, and relate to each other. But despite good intentions on the progressive left, at what point does focusing on what makes us different from each other hurt our society more than it helps? When does a healthy appreciation for culture and heritage stifle discourse and deny mutual understanding?
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, political scientist and author Yascha Mounk weighs in on identity, politics, and how those two combine to create the complicated, contentious idea of “identity politics.” Mounk’s latest book, “The Identity Trap,” explores the origins and consequences of so-called “wokeness” and argues that a counter-productive obsession with group identity has gained outsize influence over mainstream institutions.
"I think the important thing is not to build a culture in which we are forced to double down on narrow identities," Mounk tells Bremmer, "in which we cease to build the broader identities, like ones as Americans, but allow us to sustain solidarity with people who are very different from us."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Ian Explains: Will voters care about "anti-woke" politics in 2024?
What happened to the war on wokeness?
For the past few years, the battle against the “woke mind virus” has dominated Fox News’ nightly coverage, but lately, Fox has led with issues like immigration and inflation. Self-styled “anti-woke” 2024 GOP primary candidates Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy are already out of the race, and anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis’ poll numbers fell by 20 points in the last year.
Does this mean conservatives no longer care about fighting the “woke mob”? Not exactly. Landmark SCOTUS rulings striking down things like abortion and affirmative action and upholding religious and gun rights have signaled to voters that progressive policies have successfully been dismantled, so there’s less urgency from the right.
But an anti-woke worldview is still very much a part of conservative identity. Just look at the backlash, especially on the right, to last month’s Congressional hearing about anti-semitism on university campuses, which quickly forced the presidents of Harvard and UPenn to resign. Republicans may no longer identify as anti-woke, but anti-woke by any other name is still the heart of conservative values.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
NewSouth Bookstore in Montgomery, Ala., displays books that have been banned by some schools, including "Charlotte's Web" and "Captain Underpants."
Hard Numbers: Books attacked, Trump trial looms, migrant children drown off Greece, Evergrande crisis deepens, redheads celebrate
2: Donald Trump’s election-interference trial will begin in March 2024, two years earlier than he and his lawyers had requested. The date selected by a federal judge on Monday means the proceedings will begin right smack in the middle of the Republican primaries — and just a day before Super Tuesday. Trump still holds a commanding lead in the race to be the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee, but others are gaining a little ground.
4: Four migrant children drowned off the Greek coast on Monday while trying to cross the Aegean Sea from neighboring Turkey in a boat. The dead ranged in age from 11 months to 8 years. Some 12,000 migrants have arrived in Greece by sea this year — in July, hundreds died when a boat capsized.
2 billion: Chinese real estate firm Evergrande, AKA the world’s “most indebted property firm,” lost more than $2 billion in market cap on Monday amid ongoing concern about its ability to pay back its loans. The firm’s fate is intricately tied to broader concerns about China’s economy, which has relied heavily on property investment to boost growth in recent years. See our explainer here.
5,000: Ginger banger alert! Some 5,000 redheads gathered in the Netherlands for the annual Redhead Days Festival, which celebrates pheomelanin pride. Only about 2% of the world’s population has natural red hair.
Chris Christie interview: The truth about the 2024 GOP primary race
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is playing coy on whether he'll throw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024, indicating he might simply influence the conversation from afar. In a wide-ranging interview with Ian Bremmer, Christie outlines the stark reality he sees about the GOP primary as things begin to heat up on the campaign trail. "I think there's one lane for the nomination, and right now, Donald Trump's in the front of that lane," Christie tells Bremmer. "And if you want to get in the front of that lane, you better intervene and go right through him because otherwise trying to go around him, I don't think it's a strategy."
Note: This interview was first featured in the GZERO World episode "Republican identity crisis: Chris Christie vs. Donald Trump," published on May 15, 2023.
On the debt celing, he's confident that Republicans and Democrats will avert disaster; on Ron DeSantis, he thinks the Florida Governor has made his Disney-doomed bed and has to sleep in it. He also shares his views on culture war issues, foreign policy, and Russia/Ukraine, where the former Governor's insistence on continued support for Ukraine is decidedly clearer than Trump's.