A year ago this month, President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people responsible for the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. When Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor who studies domestic political violence, heard about the pardons, he says he immediately thought it was “going to be the worst thing that happened in the second Trump presidency.” The first year of Trump’s second term has been a blizzard of policies and executive actions that have shattered presidential norms, been challenged in court as unlawful, threatened to remake the federal government, and redefined the limits of presidential power. But Pape argues that Trump’s decision to pardon and set free the January 6 insurrectionists, including hundreds who had been found guilty of assaulting police, could be the most consequential decision of his second term. “There are many ways we could lose our democracy. But the most worrisome way is through political violence,” Pape says. “Because the political violence is what would make the democratic backsliding you’re so used to hearing about irreversible. And then how might that actually happen? You get people willing to fight for Trump.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. On this week’s More To The Story, Pape talks with host Al Letson about how America’s transformation to a white minority is fueling the nation’s growing political violence, the remarkable political geography of the insurrectionists, and the glimmers of hope he’s found in his research that democracy can survive this pivotal moment in history. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe. This following interview was edited for length and clarity. More To The Story transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Al Letson: Bob, how are you today? Robert Pape: Oh, I’m great. I’m terrific. This is just a great time to be in Chicago. A little cold, but that’s Chicago. I was about to say, great time for you. I’m a Florida boy, so I was just in Chicago, I was like, let me go home. So Bob, I thought I would kind of start off a little bit and kind of give you my background into why I’m really interested about the things that we’re going to be talking about today, right after Charlottesville happened. When I look back now, I feel like it was such a precursor for where we are today. And also I think in 2016 I was looking back and it felt like… Strangely, it felt like Oklahoma City, the bombing in Oklahoma City was a precursor for that. Ever since then, I’ve just really been thinking a lot about where we are as a society and political violence in America. The origins of it, which I think are baked deeply into the country itself. But I’m also very interested on where we’re going, because I believe that leadership plays a big role in that, right? And so when you have leaders that try to walk us back from the edge, we walk back from the edge. When you have leaders that say charge forward, we go over the edge. And it feels like in the last decade or so we’ve been see-sawing between the two things. So let me just say that you are quite right, that political violence has been a big part of our country and this is not something that is in any way new to the last few years. And that’s also why you can think about this when you talk about 2016, going back to 1995, with the Oklahoma City bombing here and thinking about things from the right and militia groups and right-wing political violence. Because that in particular from the seventies through 2016, even afterwards of course, has been a big part of our country and what we’ve experienced. But I just have to say a big but here, it’s not just the same old story. Because starting right around 2016, it would’ve been hard to know this in 2016 and even really 2017, ’18 and ’19, you were there right at the beginning of a new layer, so to speak, of political violence that is growing. It’s not that the old layer went away, which is why it’s been a little bit, I think, mystifying and confusing for some folks, and that’s folks who even cover this pretty closely, like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League and so forth. Because it took a few years before they started to see that there was some new trends emerging, growing political violence. It was getting larger. The old profiles of who was doing the violent attacks were starting to widen. And in many ways that’s scarier and more dangerous than if they’re kind of narrow because we like our villains to be monsters who are far away from us and they couldn’t possibly be living next door to us. Whereas the closer they come, the more edgy it feels. So what you’re really experiencing there is the very beginning of where I date the beginning of our shift to the era of violent populism. We’re in a new world, but it’s a world on top of the old world. The old world didn’t go away. No, no, no. It feels like the old world is really the foundation that this new house of violence has been raised around. All of that that happened in the past was the foundation. And then in 2016, 2017, some people would say 2014, in that timeframe, the scaffolding began to go up and then Trump gets into office and then suddenly it’s a full-blown house that now all of America is living in. Well, if you look at the attacks on African-Americans, on Jews and Hispanics, except for going all the way back to the 1920 race time, except for that, these large-scale attacks have clustered since 2016. Then we have the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, that’s the largest attack killing, mass killing of Jews ever in the United States. And then we have August, 2019, the attack at the El Paso Walmart killing more Hispanics in a day than has ever been killed in our country. So there’s a pointed wave, if you see what I mean here. And race is certainly playing a role. So when you say how does this tie to the old layer or the existing layer, one of the big foundations here is absolutely race. What’s really sad and really tragic is in this new era of violent populism, that’s a term I like to use because it’s not just the same old, but it’s not quite civil war. In this new era, we’ve seen things move from the fringe where they were bad but happened more or less rarely, to more the mainstream where they’re happening more and more. And our surveys show this, people feel very fearful right now, and there’s actual reason for that. That’s not just media hype. There have been more events. We see them and they are real. We really have a time here that people are, I’m sorry to say, concerned. And there’s reason to be concerned. Yeah, as you say, the thing that pops up in my mind is the fact that white supremacy, which I think for a long time held sway over this country. And then I think that white supremacy in a lot of ways always held onto the power. But there was a time where being a racist was not cool and looked down upon. And so racism, while still evident, still holding people down, it’s built into institutions, all of that. I’m not saying that racism was away, I’m just saying that expressing it openly is now in the mainstream. I mean, we just heard President Trump recently talking about Somalis- Absolutely, yeah. In a very… I mean, just straight up, there is no difference between what he said about Somalis than what a Klansman in the forties in front of a burning cross would say about Black people, like zero difference. Yeah. So the reason I think we are in this new era, because I think you’re right, putting your finger on the mainstreaming of fringe ideas, which we used to think would stay under rocks and so forth, and white supremacy clearly fits that bill. But what I think is important to know is that we are transitioning for the first time in our country’s history from a white majority democracy to a white minority democracy. And social changes like that in other countries around the world, so I’ve studied political violence for 30 years in many countries around the world. Big social changes like that Al, often create super issues with politics, make them more fragile and often lead to political violence. Now, what’s happening in our country is that we’ve been going through a demographic change for quite some time. America up through the 1960s was about 85% white as a country. There was ebbs and flows to be sure. Well, that really started to change bit by bit, drip by drip in the mid 1960s, whereas by 1990 we were 76% white as a country. Today we’re 57% white as a country. In about 10 or 15 years, it depends on mass deportations, and you can see why then that could be an issue, we will become truly a white minority democracy for the first time. And that is one of the big issues we see in our national surveys that helps to explain support for political violence on the right. Because what you’re seeing Al, is the more we are in what I call the tipping point generation for this big demographic shift, the more there are folks on the right, and most of them Trump supporters, mega supporters, who want to stop and actually reverse that shift. Then there of course, once knowing that, there are folks on the left, not everybody on the left, but some on the left that want to keep it going or actually accelerate it a bit for fear that with the mega crowd you won’t get it, the shift will stop altogether. These are major issues and things that really rock politics and then can lead to political violence. Talk to me a little bit about January 6th, when that happened, I’m sure you were watching it on TV. Yeah. What were you thinking as all of it was kind of coming into play? Well, so I was not quite as surprised as some folks, Al. So on October 5th in Chicago, I was on the Talking Head show in Chicago, it’s called Chicago Tonight. So on October 5th, 2020, that was just after the Trump debate where he said to the Proud Boys, stand back, but stand by. Well, the Chicago folks brought me on TV to talk about that, and I said that this was really quite concerning because this has echoes of things we’ve seen in Bosnia with some other leaders that a lot of Americans are just not familiar with, but are really quite worrisome. And I said what this meant was we had to be worried about the counting of the vote, not just ballot day, the day of voting. And we had to be worried about that all the way through January 6th, the certification of the election. But you made a point earlier, Al, about the importance of leaders. This is part of the reason why it’s hard to predict. It’s not a precise science, political violence. I like to use the idea, the analogy of a wildfire when I give talks. When we have wildfires, what we know as scientists is we can measure the size of the combustible material and we know with global warming, the combustible dry wood that could be set afire is getting larger. So you know you’re in wildfire season, but it’s not enough to predict a wildfire because the wildfire’s touched off by an unpredictable set of triggers, a lightning strike, a power line that came down unpredictably. Well, that is also a point about political leaders. So it was really, I did see some sign of this that Donald Trump said too about the Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. And no other president had said anything like that ever before in our history, let’s be clear. And because of my background studying political violence, I could compare that to some playbooks from other leaders in other parts of the world. That said, even I wouldn’t have said, oh yeah, we’re 90% likely to have an event, because who would’ve thought Donald Trump would’ve given the speech at the Ellipse, not just call people to it, it will be wild. His speech at the Ellipse, Al, made it wild. You co-authored a pretty remarkable study that looked at the political geography of January 6th insurrectionists. Can you break down the findings of that paper? Yeah. So one of the things we know when we study as a scholar of political violence, we look at things other people just don’t look at because they just don’t know what’s important. We want to know, where did those people live, where’d they come from? And when you have indictments and then you have the court process in the United States, you get that as a fact. So now it does mean I had to have big research teams. There’s a hundred thousand pages of court documents to go through. But nonetheless, you could actually find this out. And we found out something stunning, Al, and it’s one of the reasons I came back to that issue of demographic change in America. What we found is that first of all, over half of those who stormed the capitol, that 1,576 were doctors, lawyers, accountants, white collar jobs, business owners, flower shop owners, if you’ve been to Washington DC, Al, they stayed at the Willard. I have never stayed at the Willard- Yeah. So my University of Chicago doesn’t provide that benefit. That is crazy to me because I think the general knowledge or what you think is that most of the people that were there were middle class to lower, middle class to poor. At least that’s what I’ve always thought. Yeah, it’s really stunning, Al. So we made some snap judgments on that day in the media that have just stayed with us over and over and over again. So the first is their economic profile. Whoa, these are people with something to lose. Then where did they come from? Well, it turned out they came from all 50 states, but huge numbers from blue states like California and New York. And then we started to look at, well, where are in the states are they coming from? Half of them came from counties won by Joe Biden, blue counties. So then we got even deeper into it. And what’s happening, Al, is they’re coming from the suburbs around the big cities. They’re coming from the suburbs around Chicago, Elmhurst, Schomburg. They’re not coming from the rural parts of Illinois. They’re coming… That’s why we call them suburban rage. They’re coming from the most diversifying parts of America, the counties that are losing the largest share of white population. Back to that issue of population change, these are the people on the front lines of that demographic shift from America is a white majority democracy, to a white minority democracy. These are the counties that will impact where the leadership between Republican and Democrat have either just changed or are about to change. So they are right on the front lines of this demographic change and they are the folks with a lot to lose. And they showed up, some took private planes to get there. This is not the poor part, the white rural rage we’re so used to hearing about. This is well off suburban rage, and it’s important for us to know this, Al, because now we know this with definitiveness here. So it’s not like a hand-wavy guess. And it’s really important because it means you can get much more serious political violence than we’re used to thinking about. Yeah. So what happens, let’s say if circumstances remain as they are, IE, the economy is not doing great, the middle class is getting squeezed and ultimately getting smaller, right? The affordability thing is a real issue. What wins? The first big social change that’s feeding into our plight as a country is this demographic social change. There’s a second one, Al, which is that over the last 30 years, just as we’re having this demographic shift to a white minority democracy, we have been like a tidal wave flowing wealth to the top 1%. And we’ve been flowing wealth to the top 1% of both Republicans and Democrats. And that has been coming out of the bottom 90% of both Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, both can be poorer and worse off. Whites can be worse off because of this shift of the wealth to the top 1%. And minorities can be worse off because of the shift. And you might say, well, wait a minute, maybe the American dream, we have social mobility. Well, sorry to say that at the same time, we’re shifting all this money to the top 1%, they’re spending that money to lock up and keep themselves to top 1%. It’s harder to get into that top 1% than it’s ever been in our society. And so what you see is, I just came back from Portland. What you see is a situation in Portland, which is a beautiful place, and wonderful place where ordinary people are constantly talking about how they’re feeling pinched and they’re working three jobs. Yeah. Just to make their middle, even lower middle class mortgages. I mean, this is what’s happening in America and why people have said, well, why does the establishment benefit me? Why shouldn’t I turn a blind eye if somebody’s going to attack the establishment viciously? Because it’s not working for a lot of folks, Al. And what I’m telling you is that you put these two together, you get this big demographic change happening, while you’re also getting a wealth shift like this and putting us in a negative sum society. Whoa, you really now have a cocktail where you’ve got a lot of people very angry, they’re not sure they want to have this shift and new people coming into power. And then on top of that, you have a lot of people that aren’t sure the system is worth saving. I really wanted to dive in on the polls that you’ve been conducting, and one of those, there seems to be a small but growing acceptance of political violence from both Democrats and Republicans. What do you think is driving that? I think these two social changes are underneath it, Al. So in our polls, just to put some numbers here, in 2025, we’ve done a survey in May and we did one in the end of September. So we do them every three or four months. We’ll do one in January I’m sure. And what we found is that on both sides of the political spectrum, high support for political violence. 30% in our most recent survey in September, 30% of Democrats support the use of force to prevent Trump from being president. 30%. 10% of Democrats think the death of Charlie Kirk is acceptable. His assassination was acceptable. These represent millions and millions of adults. That’s a lot of people, you see. What you’re saying is right, we’re seeing it. And I think what you’re really seeing here is as these two changes keep going, this era of violent populism is getting worse. Yeah, I mean, so I’ve seen that Democrats and Republicans are accusing each other of using violent rhetoric. So in your research, what’s actually more common in this modern area where we are right now, is it right wing or left wing on the violent rhetoric, but also who’s actually doing it? So we’ve had, just after the Kirk assassination, your listeners will probably remember and they can Google, we had these dueling studies come out almost instantly, because they’re kind of flash studies and they’re by think tanks in Washington DC. One basically saying there’s more right-wing violence than left. And one saying there’s more left-wing violence than right. Well, I just want your listeners to know that if you go under the hood, so my job is to be like the surgeon and really look at the data. You’re going to be stunned, maybe not so stunned, Al, because you live in the media, to learn the headlines and what’s actually in the content are very different. Both studies essentially have the same, similar findings, although slightly different numbers, which is they’re both going up. They’re both going up. So it’s really not the world that it was either always been one side or now it’s newly the other. So the Trump administration’s rhetoric, JD Vance is wrong to say it’s all coming from the left, but it’s also wrong to say it’s all coming from the right. Now, what I think you’re also seeing, Al, is that the politicians, if left to their own devices, rarely, I’m sorry to say do the right thing, they cater to their own constituents. But there’s some exceptions and they’ve been helpful, I think. There’s two exceptions I want to draw attention to, one who’s a Republican and one who’s a Democrat. On the Democratic side, the person who’s been just spectacular at trying to lower the temperature is Governor Shapiro. He’s a Democrat, the Governor of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro has given numerous interviews public, where he has condemned violence on all sides. He’s recognizing, as very few others are, that it’s a problem on both sides. He personally was almost burned to death, only minutes from being burned to death with his family here back in April. So he knows this personally about what’s at stake and he has done a great job, I think in recognizing that here. Now on the Republican side, we have Erika Kirk and what Erika Kirk, of course the wife of Charlie Kirk who was assassinated did, was at Kirk’s funeral, she forgave the shooter. But let’s just be clear, she’s a very powerful voice here. Now, I think we need more of those kind of voices, Al, because you see, they really are figures people pay attention to. They’re listening to people like that. They have personal skin in the game and they can speak with sort of a lens on this few others can. But we need more people to follow in that wake and I wish we had that, and that can actually help as we go forward. And I’m hoping they, both of those people will do more and more events, and others who have been the targets of political violence will come out and do exactly the same thing. I want to go back a little bit to January 6th and just talk about those insurrectionists. So when President Trump pardoned them, what was going through your mind? That it was probably going to be the worst thing that happened in the second Trump presidency. And I know I’m saying quite a bit. I know that he’s insulted every community under the sun many, many, many times. But the reason I’m so concerned about this, Al, is that there are many ways we could lose our democracy, but the most worrisome way is through political violence. You see, because the political violence is what would make the democratic backsliding you’re so used to hearing about, irreversible. And then how might that actually happen? You get people willing to fight for Trump. And already on January 6th, we collected all the public statements on their social media videos, et cetera, et cetera, in their trials about why those people did it. And the biggest reason they did it was Trump told them so, and they say this over and over and over again, I did it because Trump told me to do it. Well, now Trump has not forgiven them, he’s actually helping them. They may be suing the government to get millions of dollars in ‘restitution’. So this is going in a very bad way if you look at this in terms of thinking you’re going to deter people from fighting for Trump. And now of course others are going to know that as well on the other side. So again, this is a very dangerous move. Once he pardoned it, no president in history has ever pardoned people who use violence for him. Yeah. So you have the insurrectionist bucket. But there’s another bucket that I’ve been thinking about a lot and I haven’t heard a lot of people talk about this, and that is that under President Trump, ICE has expanded exponentially. Yep. The amount of money that they get in the budget is- Enormous. Enormous. I’ve never seen an agency ramp up, A, within a term, like so much money and so many people- It is about to become its own army. Right. And Al, what this means concretely is, we really don’t want any ICE agents in liberal cities in October, November, December. We don’t want to be in this world of predicting, well, Trump would never do X, he would never do Y. No, we’ve got real history now to know these are not good ways to think. What we just need to do is we need to recognize that when we have national elections that are actually going to determine the future of who governs our country, you want nothing like those agents who, many of them going to be very loyal to Trump, on the ground. We should already be saying, look, we want this to stop on October 1st to December 31st, 2026, and we want to have a clean separation, so there’s no issue here of intimidation. And why would you say that? It’s because even President Trump, do you really want to go down in history as having intimidated your way to victory? So I think we really need to talk about this as a country, Al. And we really want a clean break here in the three months that will be the election, the run-up to the election, the voting, and then the counting of the vote. In closing, one of the major themes of this conversation has been that America is changing into a white minority. The question that just keeps coming to mind to me is, as somebody who studies this, do you think that America can survive that transition? Well, I am going to argue, and I’m still a little nervous about it, but we are in for a medium, soft landing. Okay. One of the things we see is that every survey we’ve done, 70% to 80% of Americans abhor political violence. And that’s on both sides of the aisle. And I think in many ways there are saving grace and it’s why, Al, when we have public conversations about political violence, what we see in our surveys is that helps to take the temperature down. Because you might worry that, oh, we’ll talk about it, we’ll stir people up and they’ll go… It seems to be the other way around, Al, as best we can tell. That there’s 70% to 80% of the population that really, really doesn’t want to go down this road. They know intuitively this is just a bad idea. This is not going to be good for the country, for their goals. And so they are the anchor of optimism that I think is going to carry us to that medium soft landing here. I think we could help that more if we have some more politicians joining that anchor of optimism. They’re essentially giving voice to the 70%, 80%. And if you look at our no Kings protests, the number of people that have shown up and how peaceful they have been, how peaceful they have been, those are the 70% to 80%, Al. And I think that gives me a lot of hope for the future that we can navigate this peacefully. But again, I’m saying it’s a medium soft landing, doesn’t mean we’re getting off the hook without some more… I’m sorry to say, likely violence, yeah. Listen, I’ll take a medium. I would prefer not at all, but the way things are going, I’ll take the medium. Thank you very much. Bob, Professor Robert Pape, it has been such a delight talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time out. Well, thank you Al, and thanks for such a thoughtful, great conversation about this. It’s just been wonderful. So thank you very much.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said that her defense of survivors of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and threat to disclose the identities of some of the men who abused them broke her relationship with President Donald Trump, who said his “friends will get hurt” if she went through with it.  Greene’s claim came in remarks from two long interviews published Monday in the New York Times Magazine. After a closed-door meeting with Epstein victims in September and a subsequent news conference where she made the threat to share the names of some of the men, Greene said Trump rebuked her.  “The Epstein files represent everything wrong with Washington,” the congresswoman told Robert Draper of New York Times Magazine, highlighting how Epstein went unpunished for decades and was allowed to continue to sexually assault girls and young women.  Greene announced in November that she would resign on January 5, 2026, a year before her term ends. “Standing up for American women who were raped at 14 years old, trafficked, and used by rich, powerful men should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for,” she stated in the video. Greene told the Times that the last conversation she had with Trump was when she requested that he invite some of the survivors to the Oval Office. Trump, she recounted, replied that they did not deserve the opportunity.  The congresswoman committed to opposing Republican leadership in the House and Trump, joining Rep Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in a bill that would force the Justice Department to release all of its documents on Epstein.  Another breaking point was the fallout following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. She was shocked when Trump gave the “worst statement” possible at Kirk’s memorial service. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them,” Trump said, noting it as the right-wing political activist’s weakness.  This was un-Christian to Greene, and she realized that she was part of a “toxic culture” in Washington.  “Our side has been trained by Donald Trump to never apologize and to never admit when you’re wrong,” Greene told the Times earlier this month. “You just keep pummeling your enemies, no matter what.” This was a stark contrast to many of her fellow public figures on the far right, who blamed the left for Kirk’s assassination. As my colleague Anna Merlan wrote earlier this month, this has led to a MAGA rift, along with conflicts over antisemitism that I reported about last week.  Since the disputes over Epstein and Kirk, Trump contributed to death threats made against her, she claims, including calling her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green (sic)” in a November Truth Social post.    Greene told the Times that she understood that loyalty to Trump was just “a one-way street” that ends “whenever it suits him.”  All of this calls into question whether Greene’s departure from Trump is genuine. She told the Times that she remains a steadfast supporter of the policies on which Trump campaigned. But these clearly have not worked. Greene’s departure also calls into question the future of the Republican Party. Turning Point USA has endorsed JD Vance, but where other groups in the Republican Party go remains uncertain.  Greene’s rehabilitation has doubt attached to it, too, regardless of whether the angle is a campaign for another political position or not. As Mother Jones’ Julianne McShane reported, the congresswoman has still made attempts to reconcile with Trump. And as the Times pointed out, Greene admitted that she only spoke out against Trump when his attacks targeted her.  There’s also the fact that we still live in a political climate ruled by elites. Greene herself is a wealthy co-owner of a construction firm. It’s not a “big tent”—it’s still people at the top conversing with other people at the top on the direction of the country.

Former Vice President Mike Pence poached over a dozen senior officials from the Heritage Foundation to join his own conservative think tank in the latest sign that all is not well in right-wing politics. The Heritage Foundation is arguably the most prominent conservative think tank in America. Pence, meanwhile, started his competing think tank, Advancing American Freedom, to promote “exactly what the Trump-Pence Administration did every day.” Many prominent Republicans framed this to the Journal as a return to conservative fundamentals, blocking out “what they see online.”  As my colleague Anna Merlan recently reported, MAGA is eating itself alive. Pence’s move came after the Heritage Foundation’s leader, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson for hosting white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his show, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The Heritage Foundation notably published Project 2025, the policy document that detailed Trump 2.0’s slash-and-burn approach to governance. But this specific beef dates back to October, when Carlson, a high-profile conservative political commentator, interviewed Fuentes. Fuentes asserted that we need “to be pro-white,” promoted conspiracy theories of “organized Jewry in America,” and decried Christian Zionism. There was immediate outrage within the right: US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to name a few. Roberts disagreed, describing the criticism as an attempt to cancel Carlson.  “Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” he said.  Roberts’ remarks led to further fallout. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) countered, “Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.” That’s when top Heritage Foundation members began resigning. John Blackman, who stepped down on Sunday, wrote that the think tank had abandoned its principles and conformed to President Trump and a coalition of the right’s “rising tide of antisemitism.” “Heritage has always welcomed debate, but alignment on mission and loyalty to the institution are non-negotiable,” Andy Olivastro, the foundation’s chief advancement officer said in a statement to the Journal. “A handful of staff chose a different path.” All of this calls into question what the future of the Republican Party will look like after Trump. Turning Point USA, which showed signs of unraveling during this past weekend’s convention, has its hopes pinned on JD Vance, but other factions of the political party may have a different idea come 2028. 

On Thursday, in a 51-48 vote, the Senate rejected a Democratic plan to extend Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits, as well as a Republican alternative that boosted a health savings account model. It is now all but certain that the credits, which began under the Biden administration, will expire at the end of the year. As I previously reported, that expiration will lead, for millions of Americans, to the greatest single rise in health care premiums ever. In a video recorded after the votes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) expressed her anger towards Republican colleagues. “They voted to increase health care costs across the board, and now millions of Americans are left with the impossible decision of choosing between paying for health insurance or paying their rent,” Warren said. “They’ve all fallen in line behind Donald Trump and left American families in the dirt.” On New Year’s Day, the Urban Institute estimates, at least four million ACA marketplace users will become uninsured. People seeking ACA insurance will have until Monday to select a plan in order to be covered on January 1. Some of those people may now choose plans that are less comprehensive because it’s what they can afford, said University of Pittsburgh assistant professor Miranda Yaver, who focuses on health policy. That would leave an even greater number of Americans underinsured. “The average American cannot accommodate an unexpected $1,000 emergency medical expense,” Yaver said. “It is not exactly hard to run up a thousand-dollar tab in the American health care system, and having a good health insurance plan can insulate us from that cost.” American Public Health Association executive director Georges C. Benjamin said in a press release that Congress had failed its duty to safeguard the health of Americans. “Rather than addressing a serious issue that has been on our radar for years, Congress, earlier this year, rejected the opportunity to extend the enhanced tax credits,” Benjamin said, “and instead passed legislation to gut the Medicaid program and make additional changes to the ACA that will result in 16 million Americans losing their health coverage.” “We’re probably going to see more and more people forgoing coverage and care, which is only going to exacerbate existing health conditions,” said Marilyn Cabrera, the nonprofit Young Invincibles‘ health care policy and advocacy manager. Yaver is also skeptical of the health savings account model being pushed by Republicans as an alternative. They are not practical, she says, for the low and middle-income people that the Affordable Care Act is supposed to help. “You have to have the means to put a lot of money into your health savings account, and if you’re barely scraping by and living paycheck to paycheck, it’s just not going to happen,” Yaver said. Among some people whose health insurance is now in jeopardy, there is anger at Congress on both sides of the aisle. Some Democrats, Yaver said, are willing to “sort of allow a certain amount of harm in the next plan year, not wanting to bail Republicans out from their unwillingness to extend the marketplace subsidies,” ahead of elections. And for Republican politicians, Yaver said, “there is a real lack of connection to everyday Americans’ struggles with accessing health care, which is not a luxury item. It is basic survival for a lot of people.”

When Curtis Sliwa called me on Wednesday afternoon, the failed New York City Republican mayoral candidate sounded chipper, even a bit boastful. “Everybody loves Curtis,” Sliwa told me. “It’s just a question of getting them to vote for you.” But everybody does not, in fact, love the red beret-wearing, subway vigilante-turned mayoral candidate. His unusually optimistic stance, despite his resounding loss to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, came amid a sustained fury against him from those who see Sliwa as directly responsible for Andrew Cuomo’s loss. That includes Republicans turned reluctant supporters of the former New York governor and conservatives who claim Sliwa siphoned votes from Cuomo. There was disgraced ex-congressman and recently-commutated felon George Santos, who wrote on X: “Fuck you [Sliwa] I HATE YOU, your dumb wife, that stupid Beret of yours and all your fucking cats!” “You fucking sold out like fucking Judas sold out fucking Jesus,” David Rem, former failed mayoral and congressional candidate and a self-described “childhood friend” of President Donald Trump, was also recorded shouting at the Cuomo watch party. But Sliwa is, in a word, unbothered. He dismissed Santos as “the most corrupt of all of our recent electeds—and that’s saying a lot.” As for the allegations that he split the anti-Mamdani vote, Sliwa resents the implication he should have stepped aside for the man he repeatedly called “the Prince of Darkness.” When I asked if he really believed he had a chance at winning, Sliwa replied emphatically: “Of course!” As Sliwa, who took home about 146,000 votes, compared to Cuomo’s approximately 855,000, and many political pundits have pointed out, even if he had dropped out and all his votes went to Cuomo—an unlikely prospect in itself—the tally would still fall at least 35,000 votes short of Mamdani’s 1,036,000. To Sliwa, that’s because Cuomo ran a minimal ground game. “He was entitled, and he didn’t run a race,” Sliwa said. “He doesn’t run races, do retail politics. I treat the public like a mosh pit. I was down in the subway every day.” “Friends or foes, I love people,” he continued. “I’m a happy warrior. Cuomo thinks he’s above it all.” For Sliwa, such pompous thinking could be attributed to Cuomo’s heavy backing by “the most powerful people in the world”—namely, the billionaire Bill Ackman, who reportedly backed Cuomo to the tune of nearly $2 million as of late last month. “He’s a hedge fund guy,” Sliwa said, referring to Ackman. “They always hedge. This guy lives in Chappaqua. He doesn’t know anything about the streets.” Then, there are the wealthy Cuomo backers whom we don’t know. When I asked about his previous claim to the New Yorker that he had received seven bribes trying to get him to drop out, Sliwa painted a picture of a rather dramatic bidding war. “Each offer would be topped by another offer until it capped out at 10 million, and that’s when I basically put everybody on blast and said, ‘This better stop, because this sounds criminal to me.'” Sliwa still refuses to identify who offered the alleged bribes—”I’m a man of honor…they spoke to me in confidence”—but he claimed that they were from childhood friends dispatched by the Cuomo campaign. ‘”This is classic Cuomo,” Sliwa said. “He is a muckraker. He is nefarious.” In a statement provided to Mother Jones, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi called Sliwa “a liar, a fool, and a clown. New Yorkers saw it for themselves,  which is why his voters deserted him in droves.” So, what does Sliwa think comes next for Cuomo? “He is like Napoleon. He will return to his island of Elba, called the Hamptons, to his billionaire friends, and he will spend every day plotting a return one way or the other. That’s all he does.” As for Mamdani, Sliwa says he plans to be “the loyal opposition.” “The problem that I know is going to come about is the fantasy of everything he advocated,” he said. “All sounds good, but the money ain’t there.” For now, though, Sliwa plans to lie low. “Every mayor is entitled to a grace period.” Mamdani, he added, “won a mandate.” (Sliwa was the only candidate to call Mamdani to concede, the mayor-elect said.) But for all his critiques of Mamdani, Sliwa can’t help but sound like him sometimes. “I’m a populist Republican representing the working-class people,” he continued. “This was people power, democracy in full effect. The people united will not be defeated. You don’t hear those words from a Trump Republican.”

In a wide-ranging Sunday night interview on CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” President Donald Trump put his desire for unchecked power on full display. He bragged to correspondent Norah O’Donnell that, thanks to the Insurrection Act of 1792, he can invade your city whenever he wants. He said immigration raids—including acts of police violence such as using tear gas in residential neighborhoods, throwing people to the ground, and breaking car windows—”haven’t gone far enough.” And he said the government shutdown will last until Democrats in Congress bend to his will—or until Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) agrees to eliminate the filibuster, which Thune, so far, has rejected. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s comments on domestic policy: Trump blamed the shutdown on the Democrats As the federal government shutdown enters its fifth week—on pace to be the second-longest in history after the one that stretched from December 2018 into January 2019—O’Donnell had a straightforward question for Trump: “What are you doing as president to end the shutdown?” His answer? Blaming the Democrats. “The Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” Trump said. “They’ve lost their way,” he added. “They become crazed lunatics.” Senate Democrats have said they will vote to reopen the government if the legislation includes an extension of Obamacare subsidies; without those, the health policy think tank KFF has estimated, average monthly premiums on people who get their insurance through the ACA marketplace would more than double. Trump also claimed Obamacare is “terrible,” adding, “We can make it much less expensive for people and give them much better health care.” But, yet again, he failed to outline his alternative. (Remember his “concepts of a plan“?) > What is President Trump doing to end the government shutdown? > > “What we're doing is we keep voting. I mean, the Republicans are voting almost > unanimously to end, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” says > Trump. pic.twitter.com/f6smwqi8Jn > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 3, 2025 He defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s violent tactics Citing videos of ICE officers tackling a mother in court, using tear gas in a residential neighborhood in Chicago, and smashing car windows, O’Donnell asked Trump if some of the raids have “gone too far?” Trump gave what may have been his most direct answer of the interview: “No, I think they haven’t gone far enough,” he said. “We’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in [the federal courts] by Biden and by Obama.” “You’re okay with those tactics?” O’Donnell pressed. “Yeah, because you have to get the people out,” he replied. > "I think they haven't gone far enough," says President Trump, defending ICE > raids. In one case, ICE tackled a young mother and in another tear gas was > used in a residential neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/b7tEYqWyUv > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 2, 2025 He bragged that he can send the military into any city, at any time O’Donnell asked Trump what he meant when, at a speech in Japan last week, he said: “If we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard.” Trump has already sent guard troops into Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; and Memphis, Tenn. Trump seemed delighted to remind O’Donnell and viewers of what he sees as his vast power: “Well, if you had to send in the Army, or if you had to send in the Marines, I’d do that in a heartbeat. You know you have a thing called the Insurrection Act. You know that, right? Do you know that I could use that immediately, and no judge can even challenge you on that. But I haven’t chosen to do it because I haven’t felt we need it.” > “If you had to send in the Army or if you had to send in the Marines, I'd do > that in a heartbeat,” says President Trump. He has ordered the National Guard > to five major U.S. cities. https://t.co/GAtK4KJNAf pic.twitter.com/Yx0SoiGDFQ > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 3, 2025 This is not the first time Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to override federal law that prohibits the military from acting as law enforcement, in order to “suppress rebellion.” But the law has not been used in more than three decades and is widely seen by legal experts as having a frightening potential for abuse. “So you’re going to send the military into American cities?” O’Donnell pressed. “Well, if I wanted to, I could, if I want to use the Insurrection Act,” Trump responded. “The Insurrection Act has been used routinely by presidents, and if I needed it, that would mean I could bring in the Army, the Marines, I could bring in whoever I want, but I haven’t chosen to use it. I hope you give me credit for that.” He claimed he has been “mild-mannered” when it comes to political retribution In only nine months, Trump has made good on his long-running promise to prosecute his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “There’s a pattern to these names. They’re all public figures who have publicly denounced you. Is it political retribution?” O’Donnell asked. Trump promptly played the victim: “You know who got indicted? The man you’re looking at,” he replied. “I got indicted and I was innocent, and here I am, because I was able to beat all of the nonsense that was thrown at me.” (He was, indeed, found guilty in New York last year on 34 felony counts in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.) > “I think I've been very mild-mannered. You're looking at a man who was > indicted many times, and I had to beat the rap,” says President Trump after > the recent indictments of high-profile figures who have publicly denounced > him. https://t.co/XHoIr77Eh1 pic.twitter.com/tLH0fxW2wI > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 3, 2025 Despite posting a Truth Social message in September demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi speed up the prosecutions, just days before Comey was indicted and a couple weeks before Bolton and James were, Trump insisted he did not instruct the Department of Justice to pursue them. “No, you don’t have to instruct them, because they were so dirty, they were so crooked, they were so corrupt,” he said, proceeding to praise the work of Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. “I think I’ve been very mild-mannered,” Trump continued. “You’re looking at a man who was indicted many times, and I had to beat the rap, otherwise I couldn’t have run for president.” He think he’s “better looking” than Zohran Mamdani Trump insisted that the frontrunner in New York City’s Tuesday mayoral election, 34-year-old self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, is a “Communist.” When O’Donnell asked Trump what he makes of comparisons between himself and Mamdani—”charismatic, breaking the old rules,” as O’Donnell put it—Trump replied: “I think I’m a much better-looking person than him.” He then reiterated his threat to withhold federal funding from his home city if Mamdani wins over ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “It’s going to be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said. He claimed that he is “not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other,” but added, “If it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I’m going to pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.” > Some have called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist front-runner for New > York City mayor, a left-wing version of President Trump. > > "I think I'm a much better looking person than him," says Trump, after calling > Mamdani a "communist." pic.twitter.com/p9FDWNcoGs > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 2, 2025

Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson welcomed prominent white nationalist Nick Fuentes onto the former Fox News host’s video podcast.  As my colleague Kiera Butler described their conversation: Fuentes “made the case for the importance of Americans ‘to be pro-white,’ sang the praises of brutal Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and bemoaned the problem of ‘organized Jewry in America.'” Much of their friendly chat involved lambasting Republicans who support Christian Zionism—the belief among some evangelicals that Christians should support the state of Israel. Carlson said that Republican Christian Zionists like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee were “seized by this brain virus.” “I dislike them more than anybody,” Carlson added. Butler has written extensively about Christian Zionism, and how, at its core, the movement does not embrace adherence to Judaism: > Once the Messiah arrives, many Christian Zionists are convinced that Jews will > convert en masse to Christianity; in many versions, those who don’t convert > will perish. But this was not the reason Carlson and Fuentes disavowed Christian Zionism. Rather, Fuentes has routinely espoused antisemitic views, even expressing disbelief in the Holocaust.  “Six million cookies? I’m not buying it,” he said in 2019, for example, comparing baked goods to the six million Jews killed by Nazis. In 2022, Fuentes said that all he wanted was “revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory.” But perhaps just as striking as Fuentes’ beliefs, or that Carlson gave him a massive platform from which to share them, was that Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted his own video later in the week on X, unapologetically supporting Carlson’s decision to have Fuentes on the show in the first place.  As conservatives split over Fuentes’ appearance, Roberts described the critics as a “venomous coalition” whose “attempt to cancel [Carlson] will fail.” “Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” said Roberts, whose organization published Project 2025, a blueprint of sorts for Trump’s second term in the White House. (To this, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell replied: “Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.”) Carlson “always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation,” Roberts concluded his full-throated defense. Roberts’ response only deepened the right’s rift over the Fuentes-Carlson interview. “Siding with Hitler and Stalin over Churchill is not conservative or consistent, no matter what Tucker claims,” conservative author Bethany Mandel wrote on X. “In deciding to side with him, Kevin Roberts has shifted the foundations on which the Heritage Foundation was built.” The onslaught of negative feedback prompted Roberts to clarify his views about Fuentes with an X post Friday afternoon: “[T]he Heritage Foundation and I denounce and stand against his vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history,” Roberts said, before making a point to say antisemitism has “blossomed on the Left,” too. But it’s not so easy to put the genie back in the bottle. As of Saturday morning, Roberts’ video supporting the objectionable Carlson-Fuentes interview has far more views (15.9 million) than the original interview itself (4.7 million).

Pastor Oliver Carter is in a strange predicament. For the last few years, he’s run a food bank serving the needy through No Limits Outreach Ministries, his church in a Maryland suburb just outside of Washington, DC. Now, his family is among those struggling to make ends meet. His wife, Pamelia, works for the US Department of Agriculture. As a result of the government shutdown, she is one of more than 700,000 federal employees who have been furloughed—or forced to take a temporary, unpaid leave of absence—since October 1. Her last paycheck was about half of its usual amount, and her most recent one was $0. That’s what she will receive until the government reopens. “Thank God for the food bank,” Carter says, noting his family’s piling bills. “Because that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about.” As we talk, hundreds of furloughed federal workers have lined up on a sidewalk outside the Hyattsville church. Even though food distribution won’t begin until noon, people began arriving in the brisk 40-degree weather with folding chairs and blankets as early as 7:30 AM. There’s only enough frozen meat—the most sought-after item—for the first 50 to 100 people of the nearly 500 who will likely appear. Everyone else will get shelf-stable items, like tuna pouches and peanut butter. Near the front, a woman who was furloughed from the Department of Health and Human Services tells me that she’s been applying for second jobs to pay her daughter’s tuition and provide for her aging mother. She says she’d also apply for food stamps, but as of Saturday, the program won’t have any funds. These struggles are replicated all over the country and embody the string of compounding food crises created by the government shutdown. While hundreds of thousands of furloughed workers are going without pay, food stamps (formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) are due to run out on Saturday. Normally, the federal government would use contingency money to keep SNAP going, but the Trump administration said last week it had no intention of doing so. (More than 20 states sued over the suspension of benefits on Tuesday, arguing that not making use of the available funds is illegal.) Virginia and New Mexico have announced plans to temporarily fund SNAP beneficiaries with electronic transfers, but the vast majority of the 42 million Americans who rely on the program—including 14 million children and 1.2 million veterans—will lose their modest grocery assistance by the end of the week. But there’s another wrinkle, too. As individuals look for help putting dinner on the table, the food banks themselves are also down resources because of previous budget cuts. “There’s absolutely more need, but less food,” Carter tells me in his cluttered church office, located in a small strip mall. “It’s bad.” A Federal Bureau of Investigation Police officer receives food as World Central Kitchen workers distribute free meals to federal employees and their families in Washington Canal Park in Washington, DC, on the 29th day of a government shutdown.Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP Coincidentally, while DC-area federal workers lined up at the food bank in Hyattsville and at pop-up tents organized by José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen at the Navy Yard in the Southeast corner of the city, dozens of nonprofit leaders, members of Congress, food industry experts, and other stakeholders were convening at George Washington University for a previously planned food and agriculture policy summit. There, keynote speakers and panels explored big-picture topics like food waste and sustainability. But in between sessions, attendees were also pondering more imminent problems. “There’s the stuff happening on the plenary floor, and then there’s [the conversations] happening in the hallway corridors, where you have a lot of people who are preparing for a very different, challenging landscape next week,” explains Alexander Moore, the chief development officer at DC Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that has prepared full meals for homeless shelters and other food-insecure groups since it was created in 1989. Moore says nonprofits like his are already operating at capacity. DC Central Kitchen, for example, serves 17,000 people daily and operates around the clock seven days a week. And that is when government programs were still functioning. Anticipating increased demand once SNAP funding runs dry on November 1 and about 137,500 DC residents lose their benefits, the nonprofit is preparing to serve up to 500 additional meals per day. > “It’s hard to fathom this severe a blow to food security.” “It’s hard to fathom this severe a blow to food security,” Moore says, adding that the last time things felt as dire was when the pandemic began. Food banks are still recovering from earlier crises, too. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration canceled $500 million worth of food shipments from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). In DC, that resulted in 780,000 fewer meals, according to a spokesperson for Capital Area Food Bank, which distributes pallets of food to smaller food banks in the area, like Carter’s. In March, the Trump administration also ended the Local Food Purchase Agreement Program, a $1 billion outlay that enabled food banks and schools to purchase food from local farmers. Together, these two initiatives had been vital in helping food banks procure fresh produce and meat. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox News that the latter program, which began during COVID, “was an effort by the left to continue spending taxpayer dollars that were not necessary.” Back in Hyattsville, Carter has started to plan for the near future should the government shutdown extend into the holidays. Without SNAP and other programs, he has decided to reach out to grocery stores and local farmers, asking for anything they might be able to give. Recently, he received six frozen turkeys from a donor. They are a drop in the bucket compared to the growing demand, but still cause for celebration. He leads me to the dual-purpose church worship room and food bank storage space to show them to me. A nearby freezer sits empty, ready to accommodate future donations, big or small. After all, Carter will have thousands more struggling people to feed over the next few weeks, especially as the holidays approach—including his own family.

Earlier this week, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson hosted far-right influencer Nick Fuentes on his livestream show. Carlson had undoubtedly anticipated a blockbuster interview, and Fuentes, the leader of the extremist “groyper” movement, delivered handsomely, offering a buffet of provocative sound bites designed to spread far and wide on social media. He made the case for the importance of Americans “to be pro-white,” sang the praises of brutal Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and bemoaned the problem of “organized Jewry in America.” But perhaps the most widely shared moments of the discussion had to do with Carlson and Fuentes’ shared distaste for Christian Zionism, the popular evangelical movement that calls Christians to support Israel. The conversation began with Carlson and Fuentes musing about the origins of the neoconservative movement—populated by such notables as William Kristol and Irving Podhoretz—that they blame for interventionist US foreign policy. “It arises from Jewish leftists who were mugged by reality when they saw the surprise attack in the [1973] Yom Kippur war,” suggested Fuentes. This explanation didn’t satsify Carlson who countered, “But then how do you explain [US Israel ambassador] Mike Huckabee, [Texas senator] Ted Cruz, and [former national security adviser] John Bolton?” Carlson then went on to include, “George W. Bush, Karl Rove— all people I know personally who I’ve seen be seized by this brain virus. And they’re not Jewish. Most of them are self-described Christians.” He continued, “And then the Christian Zionists who are, well, Christian Zionists. What is that? I can just say for myself, I dislike them more than anybody, because it’s Christian heresy. And I’m offended by that as a Christian.” The backlash by the right wing on X was swift. In a tweet to his 411,000 followers, Will Chamberlain, an organizer of the influential National Conservatism conference, accused Carlson of betraying the memory of avid Israel supporter the late Charlie Kirk. An anonymous account with the name Insurrection Barbie tweeted to a million followers. “Christian Zionist here and I’ll gamble my eternal salvation on my theology over that of Tucker Carlson all day.” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told his two million followers, “Wasn’t aware that Tucker despises me. I do get that a lot from people not familiar with the Bible or history. Somehow, I will survive the animosity.” Jumping to Huckabee’s defense, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has 7.1 million followers on X, tweeted, “Mike Huckabee is a pastor and a patriot who loves America, loves Israel, and loves Jesus. I’m proud to be in his company!” There are, in fact, a lot of people in his company. In a recent piece, I wrote about the astounding size of this movement. > A 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of white American > evangelicals believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, > compared with 81 percent of ultra-­Orthodox Jews and 44 percent of respondents > overall. A 2024 survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 64 > percent of white evangelicals believed Israel’s actions in Gaza were > justified, compared with 32 percent of the American public overall. Christians > United for Israel, the evangelical Zionist group founded in 2006 by Texas > pastor John Hagee, claims 10 million members, more than the entire population > of 7.5 million Jews in the United States. The movement has enormous financial > heft: A 2018 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that > Christian groups had invested an estimated $50 to $65 million in Israeli > settlements in the West Bank over the previous decade. The online skirmish over Carlson’s remarks about Christian Zionists is only the latest evidence to emerge of a growing fissure on the right over the extent to which the United States should be involved in foreign conflicts, especially those in the Middle East. As I wrote in a piece around the time that the United States bombed Iran, Christian Zionism has everything to do with this schism: > Broadly speaking—though there are certainly exceptions—many of the most ardent > supporters of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran identify as Christian Zionists, a > group that believes that Israel and the Jewish people will play a key role in > bringing about the second coming of the Messiah. As Christians, they are > called to hasten this scenario, says Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the > Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore and author > of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening > Our Democracy. “The mission, so to speak, is to get the Jews back to Israel > and to establish themselves within Israel,” he says. “Then you fulfill the > preconditions, or one of the preconditions, for the second coming.” Christian Zionists often profess to love both Israel and the Jewish people, but for many of them, this devotion is intrinsically tied to their beliefs about the fate of the Jews in the end times—and it’s not pretty: > During his first term, Taylor noted, Trump made strong connections with > influential figures in the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, a charismatic > Christian movement that teaches followers to take “dominion” over all aspects > of society, including government. Over the last decade or so, Christian > Zionism has become an important part of NAR theology—so much so that during > worship, some adherents now wear Jewish prayer shawls and blow shofars, the > ram’s horn instruments that ancient Israelites used to call troops to battle > and still features in some Jewish holidays. This is an example of what Taylor > refers to as philosemitism—the idea of loving Jewish customs and cultures. But > within end-times theology lurks a dark side to Christian Zionists’ fixation on > Judaism. Once the Messiah arrives, many Christian Zionists are convinced that > Jews will convert en masse to Christianity; in many versions, those who don’t > convert will perish. It can be tricky to disentangle anti-interventionism from straight-up antisemitism—especially after the October 7 Hamas attacks that kicked off the catastrophic war in Gaza. But it’s worth noting that the Christian Zionist faction of the pro-interventionist side isn’t necessarily in it for the love of the Jewish people, either. “If you actually read up on antisemitism and philosemitism,” Taylor told me, “they really are two sides of the same coin.” Image credit: Jason Koerner/Getty; Al Drago/CNP/Zuma, Bob Daemmrich/Zuma (2), Mattie Neretin/CNP/Zuma

Vice President JD Vance would like you to do anything but pay attention to those abhorrent leaked texts from young Republicans that Politico covered on Tuesday. And if you do read them, he wants you to think they’re just “kids” saying “edgy, offensive” things. Except that they appear to be full-grown adults, according to Mother Jones‘ analysis of public records and reports of the participants’ ages. The messages, culled from thousands of private texts between eleven young GOP leaders in four states, were exchanged between January and mid-August of this year, according to Politico. The texts show the Republicans extensively using racist, antisemitic, and homophobic slurs, among other consistently bigoted insults. Here’s a taste from the Politico story: > William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words > “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in > the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans > at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was > chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone > that votes no is going to the gas chamber.” Since Politico‘s story published, several prominent Republican politicians and organizations have condemned the messages. The National Young Republicans group said in a statement that the langauge used was “vile and inexcusable,” adding, “such behavior is disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents.” The statement called for participants in the chat to resign from any leadership roles in GOP groups. Leaders of the state Republican parties in both New York and Kansas, states that had participants represented in the chat, condemned the texts. So did Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has been rumored to be running for governor and told Politico she was “appalled” by the texts. Another top Republican, though, had a different take: Vice President JD Vance. On the right-wing cable channel Real America’s Voice on Wednesday, Vance dismissed the messages as representing only the immaturity of “kids,” arguing that they were getting far too much attention. “By focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat—grow up! I’m sorry,” Vance said. “Focus on the real issues. Don’t focus on what kids say in group chats.” One problem with this defense? The people in the group chat aren’t “kids” but full-grown adults. By scanning public records and media reports, Mother Jones determined the ages of eight of the 11 participants in the chat: They appear to range from 24 to 35. Ages for three other participants—Bobby Walker, Michael Bartels, and Rachel Hope—were not publicly available. (Bartels declined to comment to Politico, and the outlet could not reach Hope for comment. Walker told Politico parts of the chat “may have been altered, taken out of context, or otherwise manipulated,” adding, “The language is wrong and hurtful, and I sincerely apologize.”) Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones on Wednesday night, including about at what age Vance believes people are adults who should be held responsible for their actions. > Vance on public outrage over the "I love Hitler" group chat: "Grow up! Focus > on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chats… The reality > is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, > offensive jokes. That's what kids do." pic.twitter.com/POLAnldP2P > > — The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) October 15, 2025 Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans vice chair, and Luke Mosiman, chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, were, at 24, the youngest participants in the chat whose ages Mother Jones could determine through public reporting and records. Politico reported Hendrix used variations of a racial slur more than a dozen times in the chat. According to Kansas NPR affiliate KCUR, Hendrix lost his job as communications assistant for Kansas’ Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach after Politico reporters asked his boss, who is also the state GOP chair, about the texts. (Hendrix did not respond to Politico‘s requests for comment. The Kansas GOP said it was “disgusted” by the comments and that they do not reflect the views of Kansas Republicans, who it emphasized “elected a black chair a few months ago.” The Kansas Young Republicans reportedly became “inactive” after the messages were published.) > Hitlergate wasn’t about kids, and Vance knows it. In the chat, Mosiman called for the rape of a rival young Republican leader, and at another point said, “The Spanish came to America and had sex with every single woman.” (He declined to comment to Politico.) The oldest appears to be Joe Maligno, who public records suggest is 35. In the chat, he spoke about gas chambers and used a racial slur towards Chinese people. Maligno previously identified himself as general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans. (Maligno did not respond to requests for comment from Politico. According to a Wednesday follow-up report from the outlet, he lost his job as an employee of the New York State Unified Court System.) A handful of other participants seem to fall in the middle of that age range. According to public records, Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member who, in response to Maligno’s comment about gas chambers, said “I’m ready to watch people burn now,” is 28. Alex Dwyer, chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, who wrote a series of numbers used by white supremacists and wrote, “Sex is gay,” is 29; Peter Giunta, former chair of the New York State Young Republicans, who referred to Black people as “watermelon people” and “monkeys” and said, at another point, “I love Hitler,” is 31. Chat member and supposed “kid” Samuel Douglass is a 27-year-old state senator in Vermont, according to reports. In the group chat, he claimed a woman a mutual friend was dating, who some presumed was Indian, “didn’t bathe often.” Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott has called on Douglass to resign; Douglass has apologized but has not yet said whether he would resign.) (Kaykaty and Dwyer declined to comment to Politico. Giunta apologized for the messages in a statement but claimed they were part of a “highly-coordinated year-long character assassination” effort by fellow New York politicos. According to Politico‘s follow-up story, Giunta lost his job working for New York Assemblymember Mike Reilly. Politico characterized Giunta as “the most prominent voice in the chat spreading racist messages—often encouraged or “liked” by other members.) Vance’s defense, though, did not stop at suggesting the participants were too young to take responsibility for their actions. He also implied that they should not have to, casting members of the chat as unfairly victimized. Instead of saying he planned to warn his children not to use such vile language, for example, Vance said he would tell his three kids—”especially my boys”—”don’t put things on the Internet; be careful with what you post; if you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.” “But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys—they tell edgy, offensive jokes,” Vance continued. “That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives. And at some point we’re all going to have to say, ‘enough of this BS, we’re not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old’s group chat to ruin a kid’s life for the rest of time.'” This is particularly rich coming from one of the top officials representing a party that just mounted a mass cancellation campaign to push for the firing and punishment of anyone who its devotees felt mourned assassinated MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk insufficiently. Tl;dr: Hitlergate wasn’t about kids, and JD Vance knows it.