Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

How Worried Should We Be?

This year, Indiana’s GOP statewide slate contains three Christian Nationalists–Beckwith, Banks and Rokita–along with ” I’ll- kiss-Trump’s-you-know-what-to- get elected” Braun.

We’ve always had zealots and ideologues in politics, and as a policy person, I find them very troubling.  I used to tell my students that crafting good policies requires negotiation and compromise. When ideologues are able to push through extreme visions of extreme policies, without considering thoughtful, informed concerns raised by people who bring other perspectives to the process, the end result is inevitably flawed—if it works at all.

The effect of America’s increasing tribalism on our ability to conduct even the most basic tasks of governance has been bad enough, but the transformation of the Republican Party into a Christian Nationalist cult threatens the continuation of America’s constitutional democracy—and I say that as someone who was an active Republican for over 35 years. The GOP of today bears absolutely no resemblance to the party I once worked for. What was once its disreputable fringe is now its mainstream.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time lately researching Christian Nationalism, which is based upon the very ahistorical insistence that America was founded as a “Christian nation” and should be governed by Christians. These are beliefs that genuine Christians reject.

According to the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty,

Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that merges Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s promise of religious freedom. It relies heavily on a false narrative of America as a “Christian nation,” founded by Christians in order to privilege Christianity. This mythical history betrays the work of the framers to create a federal government that would remain neutral when it comes to religion, neither promoting nor denigrating it — a deliberate break with the state-established religions of the colonies.

Christian nationalists have an “exclusivity” message: only “their kind” of Christians can be “real” Americans. A less frequently articulated part of that message (and the reason Black Evangelical Christians are rarely Christian Nationalists) is their racist belief that only WHITE Christian males can be real Americans.

These racist and exclusionary beliefs are entirely inconsistent with what we know about the beliefs of the Framers, and with the clear language of the Constitution. In the body of the Constitution itself is Article VI, which prohibits the use of any religious test for public office. In the text of the First Amendment, we have the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, which—read together—keep government’s hands off religion and protect the liberty of citizens to determine their own beliefs, free of government interference. (The Framers voted down proposed language that simply prohibited the creation of a national church, insisting on language that would create a broader distance between religion and government.) We also have numerous documents written by Madison, Jefferson, Adams and others, all of which support their uniform and unambiguous belief that—as Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists—there should be a “wall of separation between Church and State.”

There isn’t any debate about any of this among reputable historians and legal scholars. Less reputable ones pander to  Christian Nationalism by twisting and cherry-picking history in order to justify their efforts to remake American society into a place where women, gays and people of color occupy subservient positions and White Christian males are once again dominant.

In a very real sense, America is in the throes of a second civil war, this time mostly—but not entirely—without violence. Ironically, this war is being fought over pretty much the same ground as the last one: the assertion that some Americans are entitled to a status superior to others and that non-white, non-Christian, non-male members of society are less entitled than White Christian men to civic equality and the equal protection of the laws.

Project 2025 is a declaration of that civil war–a road map to MAGA’s desired Christian Nationalist theocracy.

Depressing research from the Public Religion Research Institute suggests that 40% of Hoosiers are either full-fledged Christian Nationalists or sympathetic to their beliefs. As we’ve seen, these folks are unwilling to participate in democratic deliberation, unwilling to accord religious liberty to others, and unwilling to accept results of democratic decision-making with which they disagree.

Like Micah Beckwith, they believe they talk to God.

It has never been more important for the sixty percent of Hoosiers who don’t fall into that category to cast their ballots for an excellent–and truly American— slate of Democratic candidates: Jennifer McCormick, Terry Goodin, Valerie McCray, and Destiny Wells, none of whom claim to be on a conversational, first-name basis with God.

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When The Speaker Of The House Talks To God…

On October 9th, I will join the Reverend Beau Underwood on a panel moderated by retired lawyer Don Knebel, to discuss why Christian Nationalism is a threat to democracy. (You can access information about that zoom event here.) Regular readers of this blog already know my concerns about the rise of Christian Nationalism–concerns shared by numerous members of the Christian clergy, who point out that the movement is many things, but “Christian” isn’t one of them.

The problem with much of the discussion of this troubling movement is that it tends to be future oriented–to stress the likely results if adherents gain political power. But as a recent article by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post makes clear, Christian Nationalists already occupy powerful positions in Congress, and are largely responsible for the current inability of that body to function properly.

Six weeks after his improbable rise from obscurity to speaker of the House in late 2023, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson decided to break bread with a group of Christian nationalists. He gave the keynote address (at the Museum of the Bible) to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a group whose founder, “proud” Christian nationalist Jason Rapert, has said: “I reject that being a Christian Nationalist is somehow unseemly or wrong.”

Rapert’s organization promoted the pine-tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which was among the banners flown at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021 — and which, by total and remarkable coincidence, was proudly displayed outside Johnson’s congressional office.

The article noted that remarks by the event’s speakers and award recipients included: a man who proposed that gay people should be forced to wear labels across their foreheads, a woman who blamed gay people for Noah’s flood and other natural disasters, and forthright adherents of “dominionist” theology, which holds that the United States should be governed under biblical law by Christians.

“I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here,” Johnson teased the group, unaware that his hosts were streaming video of the event. Johnson informed his audience that God “had been speaking to me” about becoming speaker, communicating “very specifically,” in fact, waking him at night and giving him “plans and procedures.”

God, you see, is taking Johnson across our “Red Sea moment” to the promised land. Unfortunately, as the article noted,

In 11 months as speaker, Johnson has led the House Republicans not to the promised land but into deeper water, where they have been thrashing, splashing and dog paddling without end. Johnson inherited a dysfunctional House GOP majority from Speaker Kevin McCarthy — the first in history to be ousted midterm — and managed to make it even worse by catering to the whims of former president Donald Trump even more than his predecessor had.

Milbank proceeded to remind readers just how dysfunctional this Congress has been, noting that It is “on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving.” It’s one thing to be a “do-nothing” legislative body, but as Milbank notes, Johnson’s House “isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic.”

Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican. 

What about the bills this sorry assemblage has passed? Well, they did manage to enact the Refrigerator Freedom Act, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards (SUDS) Act.  Milbank notes that on at least seven occasions, House Republicans even voted down their own leadership’s routine attempts to begin floor debates.

These people are not serious policymakers. They are performative wannabe’s–think Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan or Jim Banks and several others–all of whom profess to be Christian Nationalists, and all of whom are playing to a MAGA base that is disproportionately Christian Nationalist, uninterested in policy, and dismissive of constitutional principles.

Christian Nationalism isn’t just a threat to our future. It is a threat to America in the here and now.

In November, we need to purge it from our governing institutions.

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I Know Facts Don’t Matter…

In a recent column, Jennifer Rubin took on the “big lie” of 2024, Trump’s insistence that “millions” of illegal immigrants vote in American elections. This assertion is manifestly untrue, and self-evidently an effort to lay the groundwork for another excuse for losing an election. As Rubin noted,

Undocumented immigrant voting has never been an actual problem. “On the heels of Trump’s first campaign for president in 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice examined about 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions, looking for evidence of the illegal voting by noncitizens that Trump had claimed was prevalent,” Axios reported. “It found about 30 suspected illegal votes.” Likewise, the libertarian Cato Institute debunked a bogus study in 2020 attempting to show that large number of undocumented immigrants voted.

The column reported on additional studies concluding that non-citizen voting (which has always been illegal) is vanishingly rare–and when it occurs, is usually due to a mistake rather than an improper motive.

American opposition to immigration isn’t simply racist/xenophobic–it is economically suicidal. Some years back, I did some research on the subject in preparation for a speech. Here’s some of what I found:

Immigrants make up about 14% of the U.S. population; more than 43 million people. Together with their children, they are about 27% of us. Of that number, approximately 11 million are undocumented. Individuals who fly in and overstay their visas  outnumber those who cross the border.

Immigrants were 17% of the U.S. workforce in 2014; two-thirds of those were here legally. Collectively, they were 45% of domestic workers, 36% of manufacturing workers, and 33% of agricultural workers.

What about the repeated claims that immigrants are a drain on the economy? The data unequivocally shows otherwise.  Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars into Social Security for benefits they will never receive. These are people working on faked social security cards; employers deduct the social security payments and send them to the government, but because the numbers aren’t connected to actual accounts, the worker cannot access their contributions. The Social Security system has grown increasingly—and dangerously–reliant on that revenue; in 2010, the system’s chief actuary estimated that undocumented immigrants contributed roughly 12 billion dollars to the program.

Approximately half of undocumented workers pay income taxes, but all of them pay sales and property taxes. In 2010, those state and local taxes amounted to approximately 10.6 billion dollars.

By far the most significant impact of immigration, however, has been on innovation and economic growth. The Partnership for a New American Economy issued a research report in 2010: key findings included the fact that more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Collectively, companies founded by immigrants and their children employ more than 10 million people worldwide; and the revenue they generate is greater than the GDP of every country in the world except the U.S., China and Japan.

The names of those companies are familiar to most of us: Intel, EBay, Google, Tesla, Apple, You Tube, Pay Pal, Yahoo, Nordstrom, Comcast, Proctor and Gamble, Elizabeth Arden, Huffington Post. A 2012 report found that immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans. As of 2011, one in ten Americans was employed by an immigrant-run business.

I did my research several years ago. More recently, the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy has studied taxation of undocumented immigrants. Among their findings:

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments.,

For every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue.

More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.

At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion).

Income tax payments by undocumented immigrants are affected by laws that require them to pay more than otherwise similarly situated U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants are often barred from receiving meaningful tax credits and sometimes do not claim refunds they are owed due to lack of awareness, concern about their immigration status, or insufficient access to tax preparation assistance.

None of this matters to the White Supremacists whose hatred of “those people” –and whose willingness to lie about them–outweighs the facts.

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Indiana–Aspiring To Be Mississippi

I frequently begin these daily rants by promising to “connect the dots.” That’s because Americans have a distressing tendency to argue policy in silos–ignoring the fact that the effects of policy A will often have a significant effect on policies B, C and D.

A friend recently sent me a column by Michael Hicks that connected our state’s disastrous education policies with our efforts at economic development. Hicks is a conservative and an economist, and his observations are based on data, not ideology. As he reports, Indiana’s economy is not keeping up with national trends. (Evidently, keeping taxes too low to provide the infrastructure necessary to an attractive quality of life isn’t the most intelligent approach. But then, that’s my snarky take.)

First, the data.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation turns 20 years old in early 2025. In 2005, Indiana had 104,854 businesses, 2.96 million jobs and 6.28 million people.

In the most recent year for all these data, 2021, Indiana had 99,280 businesses, 3.23 million jobs and 6.81 million residents.

If the state had grown at the same pace as the rest of the nation, we would have 110,305 businesses, 3.23 million jobs and 7.05 million people. That leaves Indiana with a two-decade growth shortfall of more than 11,000 businesses, 151,000 jobs and 240,000 people.

Hicks says the reality is even worse than these numbers suggest.

Since its formation in 2005, Hoosier factory employment has declined by almost 55,000 jobs, or 10%. Indeed, since Indiana’s LEAP district was announced, the state has shed a further 14,000 factory jobs, while the nation as a whole added 166,000 manufacturing positions.

Over the past two decades, average real wages for manufacturing workers in Indiana dropped by a stunning 14.4%. Nationwide, they rose by just under 1%.

This performance–as Hicks acknowledges– is “policy failure in its purest, most unadulterated form.” But as he also acknowledges, the failures aren’t attributable to poor performance by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which he says is one of the better such concerns. The problem is that the IEDC represents a “state with increasingly poor economic fundamentals”.

Hicks predicts a future performance that is even worse, thanks to Indiana’s war on education. There is, to begin with, 15 years of funding cuts to state universities–funding cuts that have left us with 10 years of declining attendance and graduation. Our legislature’s failure to reverse that decline places us behind Mississippi, of all places,  where one-third more high school graduates attempt college each year than here in Indiana.

The lack of action on college completion removes from our economic development organizations the single most important aspect of a region’s future economic performance — educated young people.

To illustrate this disaster, we can look to the recent past. Since 1980, 72% of population growth, and almost all job growth, went to the 15% of U.S. counties with the highest educational attainment. There are only six of those in Indiana — four in the Indianapolis suburbs and the host counties of Purdue and Indiana University.

Over the same four decades, the least well-educated half of Indiana counties lost 13,764 people. This will inevitably worsen in the decades to come. Education is now more, rather than less, important to economic growth and prosperity.

Indiana’s education failures aren’t limited to higher education. There’s a reason fewer of our high school graduates to to college.

Indiana spends less per student on K-12 education than we did in 2010. One result is the average college graduate working in one of Indiana’s public schools is paid less than they were in 2004. On top of that, Indiana’s proposed high school curriculum will make it among the weakest in the nation…Either Indiana gets a lot more kids to finish college each year, or it gets used to slow growth, declining relative incomes, fewer businesses, wage declines and economic stagnation.

If Indiana’s goal is to be worse than Mississippi, then we’re doing great. Not only are we spending less on education at all levels, we are siphoning off what we do spend on educational vouchers that have done nothing to improve educational outcomes, but have deprived the public school system of critically-needed resources in order to support religious schools and enrich upper-middle-class families.

Early voting in Indiana begins on October 8th. By November 5th, Hoosiers will have made a choice between Jennifer McCormick, a gubernatorial candidate who understands the importance of education to economic development and overall quality of life, and Mike Braun, a candidate who wants to destroy public education by using our tax dollars to fund a “universal voucher” program.

McCormick has consistently done her homework. Braun clearly has not.

We will either elect someone who can begin to reverse Indiana’s steady decline, or we can continue to vie with Mississippi for the title of America’s most failed state.

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Why Democracy Is At Risk

The punditry keeps telling us that democracy is at risk. There’s a reason why that is.

Yes, Donald J. Trump (aka “the former guy”) poses an existential risk to American democracy. But let’s be honest– crazy Donald and Project 2025 are only threats because of the actual, underlying reason for the erosion of our democratic processes: the systemic distortions that continue to promote minority rule.

I have used this platform to pontificate about several of those distortions, from the Electoral College (hugely undemocratic) to the current form of the filibuster (significantly undemocratic), but especially (and yes, repeatedly) gerrymandering.

In one of Heather Cox Richardson’s recent Letters from an American, she explained more eloquently than I have the degree to which partisan redistricting–aka gerrymandering–mutes the voice of the electorate. As a result, I’m quoting her explanation at length.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction…. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system.

There is much more, and I encourage you to click through and read Richardson’s letter in its entirety–or, for that matter, if you are not now a subscriber, to become one. As a historian, she provides an illuminating historical context to the problems we face.

One of those problems is that, in a democracy, many voters–perhaps most—fail to recognize the immense importance of the systems within which We the People operate. Only when those systems operate to facilitate fair play and to provide a level playing field are the people we elect incentivized to heed the will of their constituents.

Richardson says there are two possible outcomes to today’s corrupted system: the election of Republicans who will follow the Project 2025 playbook, or a voters’ revolt sufficient to dislodge its beneficiaries and prompt reform of the cult that has replaced the GOP.

In November, we’ll know which of those outcomes we’ve chosen.

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