Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Vote Out The Facilitators!

Here in Indiana–and in a number of other states–early voting has started. Given the likelihood of Trumpian efforts to suppress, rig and lie about the upcoming election, it’s important that everyone who can cast an early ballot (preferably in person) do so.

Granted, Donald Trump is not on the ballot. But as a recent essay in the Contrarian reminded readers, people who are on our ballots are equally culpable for the multiple woes we face. Republican incumbents running for re-election to the House and Senate have abdicated their constitutional powers, and shirked their constitutional duties.

As the Contrarian put it:

As Democrats make their final pitches to voters, they will no doubt emphasize that House and Senate Republicans are wholly responsible for Trump’s inane tariffs, Iran war, huge deficits, chaos-generation (e.g. ICE wreaking havoc with local economies, incompetent financial advisers spooking the markets), and self-indulgent graft (building monuments to himself while ordinary voters cannot pay the bills). They could have taken back tariff authority. They could have cut off authorization and funding for the war. They could have reined in ICE to, among other things, protect hard-hit industries rocked by loss of workers (e.g. construction, agriculture, hospitality, tourism). They could have refused to confirm unfit Cabinet secretaries and a weak Federal Reserve chairman. And, most of all, they could have rejected the Big, Ugly bill which took away SNAP benefits and healthcare coverage, doled out trillions to the ultra-rich, and sent the deficit soaring.

Republicans did none of those things, and now they will have to face the voters with an economy that cannot be blamed on anyone but them and their addled president. And if they now dread Trump coming to their district/state or appearing in ads paid for by the taxpayers (another egregious affront), that’s simply political karma.

A (slight) majority of We the Voters made a huge mistake in 2024 by placing the House and Senate in the hands of Republicans who were cowardly (or worse, MAGA zealots). We elected officials who have proved unwilling to do the work required by their job descriptions and oaths of office. We need to begin rectifying that mistake this November.

As important as it is to ensure that Democrats gain control of the currently non-functioning House and Senate, we need to recognize that America’s current woes aren’t solely attributable to the pathetic crew that was elevated to federal office.

Voters make an enormous mistake if they discount the importance of state and local elections. Indiana is a poster child for the harms that result from non-competitive elections. Our very Red state has been gerrymandered to insulate most candidates of the GOP from actual challenge, and the state’s embarrassingly low turnout is a consequence of the perception that, in most cases, there’s no real contest.

The result–as most Hoosiers know–is a retrograde state legislature consumed with culture-war issues that are either irrelevant or harmful to citizens’ daily lives, and state officeholders who are an incompetent and embarrassing mix of MAGA zealots and Christian nationalists. (I have often complained that rural Indiana folks would elect a rutabaga if it had an R next to its name, but really, in some cases, we’d be better off with the rutabaga…)

Until and unless Hoosiers find a way to escape the GOP’s stranglehold on the state’s redistricting, we will continue to be a backwater, lacking competent governance and lagging in multiple quality of life measures.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the emergence of the new Lincoln Party will, over time, inject needed competition into Indiana’s moribund elections, but that won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, every Hoosier who cares about the world we will leave our children and grandchildren needs to impress upon family, friends and neighbors the extreme importance of this year’s elections at all levels–federal, state and local.

We need to replace the Congress-critters who have meekly succumbed to Trumpism–who have facilitated the massive incompetence and corruption by confirming the incompetent grifters and loons who occupy the cabinet, and by ignoring their constitutional oversight duties. We need to replace the state-level clones who are currently running for re-election, and defeat the newcomers who are likely to emulate them. And we need to continue those efforts in 2028 and beyond.

We the People need to get off our dierriers and vote–massively, and preferably early–if we are going to save the American Idea.

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An Uncivil Conclusion

Well, this is sort of disquieting. A commitment to civility requires citizens to conduct public debates in a manner that avoids name-calling–that we respond to what we perceive to be wrongheaded or inaccurate positions with evidence and facts. Nice people don’t call the intellect of their opponents into question. (Such name-calling is a tactic our mentally-ill President routinely employs, and no sentient American wants to emulate that embarrassing buffoon.)

My belief in the importance of civil debate was the reason I was originally reluctant to share a recent scholarly paper by Samuel L. Perry, in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, even though its findings explain a lot (and confirm some of my least nice suspicions). But the study was clearly well designed, consistent with other research I’ve seen, and explanatory, so I decided to overcome my hesitation in describing it.

Perry’s study explored the relationship between cognitive ability (in other words, intelligence) and Christian nationalist beliefs.  Here’s the abstract:

Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalist beliefs tend to be characterized by lower education and substantial knowledge deficits across multiple domains. Building on research connecting lower cognitive ability to religious fundamentalism and reactionary political views, I theorize cognitive ability as an important factor influencing Americans’ adherence to Christian nationalism. Analyses of multiple waves of the General Social Survey reveal that cognitive ability (measured with the wordsum vocabulary exercise) is significantly, negatively associated with believing that being a Christian is important to being “truly American” and favoring mandatory Christian prayers and Bible-reading in public schools. These associations persist after controlling for education and various religious, political, and demographic characteristics. Interactions reveal these associations hold across survey waves and subgroups, disappearing only among the least educated Americans. Findings affirm that Christian nationalism appeals to Americans with lower verbal intelligence, suggesting an underlying role of differential cognitive resources not reducible to educational disparities.

The study has provoked considerable interest among scholars of various disciplines.

An article in PsyPost –a subscription service that covers psychology and neuroscience–begins by reminding readers of the definition of Christian nationalism:– the belief that the United States was founded by conservative Christians and that the government should therefore institutionalize Christian dominance in American society. Christian nationalists merge Christian religious identity with civic belonging. (In other words, people like Micah Beckwith and Todd Rokita believe that only White Christians are really Americans.)

The PsyPost article noted that prior research is consistent with the recent study. Former research has repeatedly found that, as a group, Americans who adhere to Christian nationalist beliefs are less educated, and that people who subscribe to Christian nationalist views (even after accounting for the level of education) “exhibit significant knowledge gaps across a variety of different domains.”

For example, people who strongly endorse the ideology tend to score poorly on tests about “American history or scientific knowledge,” Perry noted. “They are also more likely to hold factually incorrect beliefs about vaccines,” he said, referencing a 2021 study he co-authored, which was covered by PsyPost. “And related to that last point, they are also more likely to affirm ridiculous conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, January 6th, or QAnon.”

Scholars have previously attributed these knowledge deficits to a combination of motivated reasoning and siloed information sources. As the author of the new study noted, both of those theories undoubtedly contribute. But his research uncovers evidence of a “gap in cognitive resources, one that can’t be explained solely by educational background or other relevant factors.”

This particular research study focused on the question whether and to what extent general cognitive ability should be seen to play a role in explaining Christian nationalist beliefs.

Cognitive ability refers to a person’s capacity to learn, apply new information, and engage in the complex reasoning required for critical thinking. A study covered by PsyPost in 2017 provides evidence that an intuitive thinking style tends to predict higher religious belief, while lower cognitive ability predicts higher social conservatism.

The new study built on prior research documenting an association between lower cognitive ability and religious fundamentalism, political authoritarianism, and a variety of right-wing views.

If we assume the accuracy of the study’s conclusions, we’re faced with a significant problem. How do we argue with people who simply lack the mental bandwidth to recognize their errors, no matter how cogently (and gently) the evidence of those errors is presented?

Commenters to this site frequently share their belief that hard-core MAGA/Christian nationalist folks are a lost cause, that they are simply unpersuadable. Perry’s study would seem to confirm that impression.

At the very least, sensible voters must remove them from positions of authority.

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What If…??

A few years ago, my husband and I were on a very small chartered boat cruising the coast of Croatia (which is an absolutely beautiful country, by the way). There were only 13 people on board. Two of the other couples were Australian, and one of the Australian women was a retired professor of public policy and management.

We obviously had a lot to talk about and compare, and I was particularly struck by a fact I hadn’t previously known–that in Australia, voting is mandatory. Initially, I was shocked–my instincts tend toward the libertarian, and my first impulse was to respond with something like “If I don’t want to participate, that’s my right!” But I’ve subsequently thought about the pros and cons of such a mandate, and done some research on Australia’s experience.

It turns out that Australia has had compulsory voting for that country’s federal elections since 1924. (Enrollment/registration had been compulsory since 1911.) What the law requires is simply that the voter show up and get a ballot. What that voter does with the ballot is irrelevant– it can be left blank or even deliberately spoiled.

Non-voters–those who don’t show up at the polls–are required to explain. If they lack a valid reason–illness, etc.–they are required to pay a small fine.

So how has this worked?

Turnout for Australia’s elections has consistently hovered between 90-96% of enrolled/registered voters, placing Australia’s turnout among the highest in the democratic world. People who don’t comply get a notice requiring them to either supply a reason or pay the fine.

Rather obviously, when the state demands participation, it has a strong incentive to make voting easy. As a result, unlike in the U.S., voting takes place on Saturdays, and there are multiple and widespread polling places. There is also voting by mail and early voting.

The system has a number of virtues. Thanks to the massive turnout, results have more legitimacy and representativeness than in the U.S. (In the last few municipal elections in my city, something like 17% of registered voters have chosen our mayor…). Research has shown that turnout in voluntary systems skews older, wealthier, and more educated, while compulsory voting flattens that gap. Australian governments are elected by nearly the whole electorate.

There are other virtues: Parties don’t need to pour resources into getting out the vote, so campaigns focus more on persuading swing voters. Mandatory voting also dramatically reduces incentives for the sorts of voter suppression tactics that are a feature of U.S. elections.

When voting is mandatory, it becomes a civic norm, a shared civic duty like jury service. The requirement builds habits of engagement and–by rewarding appeals to the broad middle–helps to reduce polarization.

The arguments against mandatory voting (some of which echo my own initial reaction) include what we might call “liberty concerns”– essentially, that freedom to vote should include freedom not to. There’s also a concern about uninformed voting; citizens who are required to participate may vote randomly, or just for whoever is listed on the ballot first. (Of course, as most of us are aware, uninformed voting also features prominently in the U.S., where participation is not required.)

According to Claude, most research shows that compulsory voting “substantially raises turnout and modestly shifts electoral outcomes and policy toward lower-income and younger voters.” The size of partisan effects is debated. Evidence that it makes citizens more informed or engaged over the long run is weaker and mixed. In Australia, public support for the system has been stable and fairly strong, with periodic surveys showing a majority in favor of retaining the system.

The bottom line is that the law has clearly succeeded at the narrow goal of near-universal turnout, and most Australians–like the professor I met on our cruise– treat it as unremarkable, and certainly not as an infringement on their liberties.

Much of the debate about such laws centers on a simple question: is voting a right or is it a civic obligation. I think the correct answer to that question is “both.”

As regular readers of this blog know, in America’s 2024 election, a greater number of people failed to vote than voted for either candidate. Political scientists and sociologists can make of that statistic what they will, but it is clearly a massive failure of civic obligation.

There is a continuing debate between libertarians and communitarians over the privileging of individualism versus the degree of “embeddedness” in the community. I am firmly with the ancient Greeks, who aimed for the “golden mean” between extremes, and I’ve come to think that the Australians have hit that golden mean when it comes to mandatory voting.

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The Prerogative State

A while back, Lincoln Square published an essay that focused on a book written by an immigrant named Ernst Fraenkel. Born in 1898 in Germany, Fraenkel fought for the Kaiser in World War I. He then became a prominent lawyer, but he was Jewish–and when the Nazi party gained control, he was banned from appearing in court. In 1938, he fled Germany, came to America and became an American citizen.

After studying American law at the University of Chicago, Fraenkel wrote a book analyzing what was happening in Germany, and as the essay says, that book, The Dual State, has a lot to tell us about today’s America.

Fraenkel’s book contrasted the “normative state” to the “prerogative state.”

Even under the Nazis, most Germans continued to live in the normative state, where the rule of law continued as it always had, a state where contracts were enforced, and laws continued to constrain prosecutors and courts. But other Germans—particularly Jews—lived in the prerogative state, where they were subject to “all the power and none of the justice that a state can deliver.”

Inhabitants of the normative state could remain largely unaware of the activities occurring in the prerogative state.

Among the insidious dangers of a dual state is that, for most citizens, it is business as usual. They don’t see the cruelty. They don’t experience the coercion. They think these are normal times. They say things like, “The pendulum swung too far in one direction, but it will swing back, like it always does.” And they don’t notice as the prerogative state expands, and their own freedom leaches away.

Donald Trump and the Republicans have recreated that dual state in our country. To be sure, we have more tools than the Weimar Republic to fight back. But the dangers are very real—and, for some, fatal.

White Americans can ignore the savagery of ICE–which, after all, is being directed primarily at people of color. They live in the normative state, where there is oversight, and bad officers are (usually) relieved of duty. But as we’ve seen repeatedly, ICE officers occupy a Trumpian space “where the law is no more than the armed weaponization of his desires. It is his prerogative whether someone gets arrested, charged, or even killed.”

A second example is what happened after Trump was convicted of 32 felonies in a normative state operation. Trump’s prerogative state intervened. Jim Jordan held hearings in the House to discredit the judge and create the impression that Trump’s prosecution had been political. Andrew Boutros—Chicago’s US Attorney–launched an investigation into the judge’s daughter’s firm in an effort to create an  impression that an impropriety existed, although it was never clear what that impropriety might be. (Boutros was also responsible for the fraudulent indictments of the Broadview Six). Abuse of power is a hallmark of the prerogative state.

A third example is what Trump’s government did after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered by ICE operatives.

The federal government opened an investigation—not into the killings, but instead targeting labor unions, environmental groups, the Democratic Socialists of America, and a local activist coalition.

They were looking for evidence that these groups supported protesters. It is not illegal to protest in America. It is not illegal to support protesters in America. Not in the normative state. But in the prerogative one, instead of investigating the murder of Americans, the tools of government coercion target the regime’s critics.

As the essay notes, there are plenty of other examples.

There is welcome evidence that occupants of the normative state are increasingly aware of the threat, and are powering a growing resistance. But as the essay also notes, those resistance efforts are predicated on the rule of law. They rely on a system that protects us from arbitrary power.

In America, unlike in Russia, our government cannot just jail us. In America, unlike in Tiananmen Square, our government cannot just shoot us.

And yet, in some instances, that is exactly what is happening.

It’s hard to argue with the essay’s conclusion:

The prerogative state in America still faces real constraints. We still have space to push back. But we are in a race. We simply must win in November, and we must insist that the winners be seated in Congress. But we cannot stop there. As Fraenkel witnessed, no one is safe in a dual state. The Executive Branch is powerful. So long as Donald Trump leads it, it acts to satisfy his whims rather than our laws. Until he is removed from power, American freedom is at risk.

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Making America Sick

As we prepare to go to the polls in the most consequential election of my (long) life, I thought I’d focus on just one of the multiple threats posed by this rogue administration–the assault on public health orchestrated by the loon conspiracist Trump put in charge of Health and Human Services.

Talking Points Memo recently published a handy list of Kennedy’s “biggest hits” to America’s well-being.

The report began by noting that, just this summer, “the FDA has discovered salmonella in granola, salad dressing, jalapenos, and animal food; glass in fruit popsicles; and metal in sourdough, as well as the “bouts of diarrhea lettuce and E. Coli blueberries.”  The author suggested that the “sweeping staff and budget cuts on the FDA, CDC and HHS may not have been the best idea.”

The report then assembled a list of just some of the massive failures of public health under Kennedy. It began with teeth.

Water fluoridation has long been touted as a public health achievement, reducing tooth decay by more than 25% in children and adults. RFK, Jr., however, calls fluoride “industrial waste.” He’s spread misinformation about its health risks, prompting Utah and Florida to ban its further use, and lawmakers in at least 21 states to propose measures to prohibit or roll back the addition of fluoride to public water systems.

The Trump admin entirely dismantled the CDC’s Division of Oral Health, nixing its research for and assistance with fluoridation programs. And TPM fellow Farrell Brenner reported that these RFK-fueled conspiracy theories are also prompting patients to turn down fluoride treatments at the dentist’s office and throw out their kids’ fluoridated toothpaste.

We have recently become aware of Kennedy’s drastic cuts to parasite monitoring, which led to the recent outbreak of cyclosporiasis. More than 17,000 cases had been documented as of Aug. 2026; that number includes 922 hospitalizations and two deaths.

Kennedy has also joined the GOP’s incessant attacks on reproductive care. Despite the fact that women are increasingly dying preventable deaths thanks to state abortion bans and cuts to Medicaid and the VA, he has joined in efforts to ban use of the abortion pill mifepristone, launching a review of the drug’s “safety profile” despite the fact that the FDA has found it to be safe and effective when used as indicated.

Kennedy’s vendetta on vaccination is probably the most well-known of his assaults on medical science. He’s slashed the number of vaccines children are scheduled to receive; cancelled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research; replaced the CDC’s expert vaccine advisory panel with cranks; and promoted discredited links between vaccination and autism. As a result, vaccination rates have fallen, and measles–among other diseases we’d once eradicated–has returned with a vengeance.

It isn’t just measles. As TPM reports, declining vaccination rates are also expected to bring about a rise in diseases like mumps, whooping cough and meningitis.

I have previously reminded readers that the more “mundane” activities of a properly functioning government are aimed at harm prevention–keeping airplanes from crashing, banks solvent, food safe to eat, air safe to breathe. When government doesn’t function properly, public health and safety are increasingly at risk. Rather obviously, that risk is greatest when a know-nothing, anti-science crank is in charge of a department responsible for protecting public health. With this one appointment, Trump has jeopardized the health of the entire American population.

The indiscriminate cuts to staff (based upon a massive lack of understanding of the mission and importance of agency functions) have significantly increased the threats to public health, but that isn’t even the most discouraging outcome. The refusal to fund medical research–including the interruption and cancellation of research projects already underway–will set back medical science efforts to eradicate diseases like Parkinson’s, cancer and many others, for years.

Furthermore, the very public disregard for science and probative evidence continues to create concern and doubt among vulnerable members of the population. Lack of trust has given us declining vaccination rates, and is undoubtedly leading many people with treatable conditions to ignore medical advice and turn instead to the various quackeries that prey on anxious and frantic folks.

There may be parts of the “Trump agenda” that don’t concern the more fortunate, who think “I’m not Black or female or Muslim, and my stock portfolio is doing fine…so I’ll vote Republican. Or stay home.” The overwhelming incompetence of Trump’s administration, however, endangers every American. We all board airplanes, deposit money in banks, breathe the air…

And we’re all at risk of buying contaminated lettuce or dying of a once-eradicated disease.

Thanks, MAGA…

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