Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children by Maxwell King

 

The TV legend possessed an extraordinary understanding of how kids make sense of language.

 

For the millions of adults who grew up watching him on public television, Fred Rogers represents the most important human values: respect, compassion, kindness, integrity, humility. On Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the show that he created 50 years ago and starred in, he was the epitome of simple, natural ease.

But as I write in my book, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, Rogers’s placidity belied the intense care he took in shaping each episode of his program. He insisted that every word, whether spoken by a person or a puppet, be scrutinized closely, because he knew that children—the preschool-age boys and girls who made up the core of his audience—tend to hear things literally.

As Arthur Greenwald, a former producer of the show, put it to me, “There were no accidents on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” He took great pains not to mislead or confuse children, and his team of writers joked that his on-air manner of speaking amounted to a distinct language they called “Freddish.”

Fundamentally, Freddish anticipated the ways its listeners might misinterpret what was being said. For instance, Greenwald mentioned a scene in a hospital in which a nurse inflating a blood-pressure cuff originally said “I’m going to blow this up.” Greenwald recalls: “Fred made us redub the line, saying, ‘I’m going to puff this up with some air,’ because ‘blow it up’ might sound like there’s an explosion, and he didn’t want the kids to cover their ears and miss what would happen next.”

The show’s final cuts reflected many similarly exacting interventions. Once, Rogers provided new lyrics for the “Tomorrow” song that ended each show to ensure that children watching on Friday wouldn’t expect a show on Saturday, when the show didn’t air. And Rogers’s secretary, Elaine Lynch, remembered how, when one script referred to putting a pet “to sleep,” he excised it for fear that children would be worried about the idea of falling asleep themselves.

Rogers was extraordinarily good at imagining where children’s minds might go. For instance, in a scene in which he had an eye doctor using an ophthalmoscope to peer into his eyes, he made a point of having the doctor clarify that he wasn’t able to see Rogers’s thoughts. Rogers also wrote a song called “You Can Never Go Down the Drain” because he knew that drains were something that, to kids, seemed to exist solely to suck things down.

In 1977, about a decade into the show’s run, Arthur Greenwald and another writer named Barry Head cracked open a bottle of scotch while on a break, and coined the term Freddish. They later created an illustrated manual called “Let’s Talk About Freddish,” a loving parody of the demanding process of getting all the words just right for Rogers. “What Fred understood and was very direct and articulate about was that the inner life of children was deadly serious to them,” said Greenwald.

Per the pamphlet, there were nine steps for translating into Freddish:

1. “State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand.” Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. ​​​​​​
2. “Rephrase in a positive manner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.
3. “Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.” As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”
4. “Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.” In the example, that’d mean getting rid of “ask”: Your parents will tell you where it is safe to play.
5. “Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.” That’d be “will”: Your parents can tell you where it is safe to play.
6. “Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.” Not all children know their parents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.
7. “Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice.” Perhaps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to listen to them.
8. “Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step.” “Good” represents a value judgment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them.
9. “Rephrase your idea a final time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.

Rogers brought this level of care and attention not just to granular details and phrasings, but the bigger messages his show would send. Hedda Sharapan, one of the staff members at Fred Rogers’s production company, Family Communications, Inc., recalls Rogers once halted taping of a show when a cast member told the puppet Henrietta Pussycat not to cry; he interrupted shooting to make it clear that his show would never suggest to children that they not cry.

In working on the show, Rogers interacted extensively with academic researchers. Daniel R. Anderson, a psychologist formerly at the University of Massachusetts who worked as an advisor for the show, remembered a speaking trip to Germany at which some members of an academic audience raised questions about Rogers’s direct approach on television. They were concerned that it could lead to false expectations from children of personal support from a televised figure. Anderson was impressed with the depth of Rogers’s reaction, and with the fact that he went back to production carefully screening scripts for any hint of language that could confuse children in that way.

In fact, Freddish and Rogers’s philosophy of child development is actually derived from some of the leading 20th-century scholars of the subject. In the 1950s, Rogers, already well known for a previous children’s TV program, was pursuing a graduate degree at The Pittsburgh Theological Seminary when a teacher there recommended he also study under the child-development expert Margaret McFarland at the University of Pittsburgh. There he was exposed to the theories of legendary faculty, including McFarland, Benjamin Spock, Erik Erikson, and T. Berry Brazelton. Rogers learned the highest standards in this emerging academic field, and he applied them to his program for almost half a century.

This is one of the reasons Rogers was so particular about the writing on his show. “I spent hours talking with Fred and taking notes,” says Greenwald, “then hours talking with Margaret McFarland before I went off and wrote the scripts. Then Fred made them better.” As simple as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood looked and sounded, every detail in it was the product of a tremendously careful, academically-informed process.

Trump added twice as much to the national debt as Biden: Analysis by Tobias Burns

 he fiscal policies of the Trump administration added twice the amount to the national deficit as have President Biden’s, a new analysis has found.

Trump’s administration borrowed $8.4 trillion during the former president’s time in office, while Biden has borrowed $4.3 trillion, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank.

 

Ignoring the pandemic relief measures enacted by both presidents, the proportion of debt addition still holds around 2-to-1, with former President Trump adding $4.8 trillion in non-pandemic-aid fiscal debt and Biden adding $2.2 trillion.

Those additions were mostly due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), changes to the Affordable Care Act, and different budgetary acts in 2018 and 2019.

Most of Biden’s non-pandemic-related additions were due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, student debt relief, appropriations bills and other executive actions.

The two parties add to the debt in different ways, with Republicans doing it mostly through bipartisan legislation and Democrats doing it more through executive actions, the CRFB says in a preview of future work.

Seventy-seven percent of the Trump administration’s additions to the national debt were attributable to bipartisan legislation, while 23 percent came from bills and actions with little to no bipartisan support.

For the Biden administration, 29 percent of additional debt has come from bipartisan laws, while 71 percent came from unilateral decisions.

 

Both Trump and Biden spent their first two years in office with their parties in control of both chambers of Congress before the House flipped during the midterm elections of each of their terms.

Budgetary pressures have intensified over the course of the Biden administration as the deficit ballooned following the fiscal measures passed in the wake of the pandemic.

U.S. debt increased by more than $3 trillion between the first and second quarters of 2020 and has risen more steeply in recent years than in those prior to the pandemic. Total debt stands at around $34.5 trillion.

 

As a percentage of gross domestic product, U.S. debts have settled on a new plateau around 120 percent versus the 100 percent prior to 2020.

Revenue-raising measures are currently under consideration by both parties ahead of individual tax cut expirations in the TCJA scheduled for the end of 2025.

The parties are drawing lines in the sand now about the scope and style of tax code changes, with key Democrats and Republicans on financial and tax-writing committees laying out signposts about where they think U.S. revenue architecture should be headed.

They took part in Apache ceremonies. Their schools expelled them for satanic activities by Nicolle Okoren

 he way the school saw it, it was devil worship.

In October 2019, three teenage girls were punished for participating in a spiritual ceremony. Their Arizona school expelled two of them, and let the third off with a warning, citing their attendance as a violation of school policy and grounds for expulsion.

Caitlyn, now 18, says she and her friends were disciplined for participating in a Sunrise Dance, a traditional Native ceremony at the core of White Mountain Apache culture.

The Monday after the dance, Caitlyn’s parents told her to stay home that day. They had received a call from East Fork Lutheran school telling them not to send their daughter in. She didn’t know why. Then around noon, her mom got another phone call. The principal wanted to meet with Caitlyn, her parents and the local preacher. The principal and preacher also invited the two other girls and their families to their own private meetings with school leadership.

At the start of each meeting, the families were chastised for participating in the dance. Caitlyn remembers her mother telling the principal and preacher how hypocritical they were to say the Apache people were not praying to God. “In the Bible, God himself says to come to me in all sorts,” she argued. “The dance is also a prayer; it’s another way.”

The leadership of the school, on the Fort Apache Reservation, disagreed with that interpretation and used pictures of the event posted on Facebook as evidence for their expulsions.

The other two girls were immediately given letters of expulsion. Caitlyn was just given a warning. “I knew that I was already one of the principal’s favorites,” she says. “I think they just gave me a second chance, but they gave me a strong warning not to have a dance.”

 

For the first 12 years of her life, Caitlyn looked forward to having her own dance – a sacred coming-of-age experience celebrating the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It’s a great financial sacrifice for the family. Over four days, a girl’s community prays for her. They offer her gifts and witness her as she participates in rituals symbolizing her maturity and growth. A medicine man presides over the event, praying and singing with holy members of the community called Crown Dancers, who recite the creation story to the audience.

The idea meant the world to Caitlyn. But she didn’t have her own Sunrise Dance: if she were found out, she would be expelled from school immediately, a stain on on her permanent record that could affect her college opportunities.

At the time, her private school’s teachers were mostly white people who would often discuss the satanic nature of Apache traditions. When Caitlyn was in fifth grade, she was given an F on an art project for drawing the White Mountain Apache crest and including an eagle feather. An “A” student, she was devastated to be chastised this way. As Caitlyn remembers it, her teacher smiled and explained that this kind of project wasn’t allowed because it denoted “pagan worship”. Her father was furious but the family couldn’t do anything about it. It was what the girl and her family expected from the white people who worked on the reservation.

But these expulsions felt different. Watching other girls get publicly exiled from their school community meant that fear soon took root, cracking the foundation of Apache pride her family had worked to build beneath her.

Caitlyn finished her eighth-grade year at East Fork Lutheran school and then moved on to a school off the reservation, but the damage was done. For the next four years, Caitlyn struggled to integrate into her Apache culture. She explained: “I didn’t allow myself to engage or talk about my culture,” she says. “Even after I graduated, I had that paranoia that I would get in trouble for talking about or participating in it.”

 

Three and a half years after the expulsions, in early 2023, nine women gathered in the front room of a small house on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation to talk about this pattern of expulsions.

In the middle of the room, two recording devices lay on opposite ends of the table. Abby, an older White Mountain Apache woman with her hair in a loose bun, hosted the evening. She sat down next to the black cast iron stove which had been lit hours before to keep the room warm and texted her sisters, Millie and Althea, who were coming.

Various women walked through her front door. Some were family members, others acquaintances. Nine women gathered to finally talk about what kept happening at East Fork Lutheran school.

Althea, the oldest of the sisters, spoke first. Two of her granddaughters were expelled from school in 2018 and 2019. She still has one of the school’s letters tucked away in a box in her house.

It states that these 13-year-old girls will only be allowed to return to school if they agree to confess in front of the Wels church, school and community that they were worshiping the devil when they took part in the Sunrise Dance. They must promise never to do it again.

Maria, a younger woman in her late 30s, was there to share a similar story. The school board found that she had also participated in what they considered a satanic ceremony. Her children were not allowed to return to school the next year. The school had decided to penalize the children for the perceived sins of their mother.

Astonishingly, this pattern of Christian discipline, started more than a century ago, had never stopped.

A ‘demonic manifestation’

The Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona spans 2,625 square miles – just a little larger than the state of Delaware, but with a population just over 14,600.

Based on our reporting and speaking with members of the tribe, there are over 80 churches on the reservation, representing 27 different Christian denominations. The tribe indicated that there was an official list the churches operating on the reservation but no list has been delivered.

East Fork Lutheran school was founded in 1951 by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (Wels), a religious group which has been active in Arizona since 1893 as part of its Apache Mission – an effort to convert “unreached tribes” to Christianity. This was one of many schools built on the reservation by Wels. The mission has shifted to now being focused on training Native American Christians to lead in the ministry and serve as missionaries to other Indigenous nations throughout the US and Canada.

 

The school is not unique in its dogma opposing traditional Indigenous practices; the vast majority of the churches on Apache land teach families who participate in traditional ceremonies that they’re damning themselves by worshiping the devil. The Whiteriver Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church, stated in its missionary handbook that Crown Dancers – those who help welcome the girl into womanhood during the Sunrise Dance – could be a “demonic manifestation”.

Since 2020, Wels has published 180 sermons on its YouTube channel, Native Christians. Thirty-one of the 190 videos – almost a fifth – include disparaging remarks about tribal practices including the Sunrise Dance or medicine men, including two completely dedicated to convincing the congregation of the evil within the Sunrise Dance.

Only two Christian denominations operating on the reservation told me they do not include anti-traditional-Apache rhetoric in their sermons and ideology: the Catholic church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. Families on the reservation commonly have a similar understanding.

The influence of this religious teaching throughout the community affects the tribal government as well. Less than half of the 11-person White Mountain Apache tribal council participates in Apache ceremonies, according to the councilmember Annette Tenijieth. She believes seven council people do not participate in Sunrise Dances or support the work of medicine men.

Apache families who send their children to the East Fork Lutheran school face a complicated choice. Some families do so because students in Christian schools are seen as more successful than those attending the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools down the road. Others simply value a Christian education, and feel that their children might get on the “right path” with that background.

Still, many families have their children participate in Native ceremonies, ignoring the school’s racist policies. They just hope they do not get found out by the teachers.

‘Mom, did you know you are worshiping false idols?’

“One would think that a story like this would be out of 1890, not 2024.”

When I talked to Dr Robert P Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a non-profit, non-partisan organization, he was dismayed that churches still teach against Indigenous tradition.

“It is worth noting that the posture being described comes from this conviction that European Christianity is the pinnacle of human civilization,” he said. “And anything other than that is inferior and worse religiously because it can lead you to eternal damnation.”

The Sunrise Dance is a celebration of puberty endowing girls with blessings from God and their community. It is one of the few Apache rituals that has survived the Indigenous genocide that resulted in the death of as many as 15 million Native Americans over the last 500 years.

The dance is sacred both because of its origin and the spiritual impact it has on a girl’s life.

Bruce Burnette, a White Mountain Apache medicine man – a spiritual leader endowed with traditional knowledge of healing – oversees these dances. Burnette explained:“It’s about the girl. The Sunrise Dance is not for today, not for tomorrow. It is fixing the room for her, fixing the road to success. The reason why it is so important is that a woman has got to be strong to move on the path to what she is going to become.”

According to Burnette, the dance came in a vision to an early medicine man. The ceremony has remained the same through the generations.

“The prayer that is put down for her is that it would be easy for her, that it would be comfortable for her in whatever she wants [to do],” Burnette said. “If she wants to go to military life, school, or look to find a job – everything will be there to be successful. That is the prayer that is put down.”

Maria’s crime, as the school saw it, was that she sponsored a Sunrise Dance – never mind that it took place on the weekend and off school grounds. In doing so, she helped welcome a friend’s daughter into adulthood and created a familial bond for the rest of her life, which is a huge honor. But just before the school year started, she received an email telling her that her children were not allowed to return.

Maria had sent her children to East Fork because she hoped a Christian education would harmoniously supplement the foundation of their Indigenous heritage and identity; she now realized that East Fork was extreme in its anti-traditionalism.

She was devastated. During our interview, she cried as she explained the shame her daughters felt at not being allowed to go back to school. They were also nervous about being sent to the Bureau of Indian Affairs school, where the classes were bigger and they didn’t know anyone.

Just last year, the youngest of her three children attending the school came home from East Fork and asked: “Mom, did you know that when you go to Sunrise Dances, you are worshiping false idols?”

Maria was shocked. “Who told you that?” she asked.

“My teacher. She said watching the Crown Dancers is worshiping Satan.”

To hear this – and for her daughters to be told such insulting falsehoods – was mind-blowing. “Our ceremonies are what we were blessed with, our language, our everything,” Maria said. “Those are the things we were blessed with to be Apache people. So I try to explain it to them in a way where they understand: no, we’re not doing anything bad here. We’re not.”

Maria described feeling powerless – like she was hitting a wall in speaking to church leaders. (The Guardian received no answer from Wels after asking about Maria’s experience.)

All the while, her kids were wading in uncertainty about the nature of their cultural identities. Were they evil if they participated in ceremonies, or was it permitted? Who was right?

“I felt like the longer I kept them at the school, the more confused they were,” Maria said.

Still, she hoped to keep them there because the classroom setting was good. The student-to-teacher ratio was small. They received guaranteed attention by their teachers and a thorough education.

When it came time for registration, Maria did not receive any notification from the school. It finally notified her two weeks before the school year started that her children would not be invited back. She had to move them to the public school. “Now that they’re in a public school, and they’ve adjusted to it, they are more proud of their traditions or culture, they’re more proud of who they are,” she said.

A Wels spokesperson responded to requests for comment by saying, “Wels churches serve people by proclaiming the entirety of God’s message to us as presented in the Bible. Apache members, teachers and pastors have been faithful leaders as our Wels churches strive to present God’s truth among communities with their own valued religious practices. Wels has had a trusted partnership with members of the White Mountain Apache Tribe in sharing the message of the Bible dating back to 1893.”

Maria and her family no longer attend church. Though they are still devoted Christians, they’re not comfortable in that space. “Rather than giving a lecture about the Bible, the preachers bring it back to culture – ‘You’re not supposed to be doing this. You’re not supposed to be doing that,’” she explained.

Even the programs handed out at the beginning of the service have an unwelcome message written on the front: it states that if you have participated in a Sunrise Dance, you cannot take communion.

‘Kill the Indian in him, and save the man’

In August 2022, the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota voted to kick out a missionary from the Pine Ridge Reservation who was distributing anti-traditional proselytizing materials. The nation now requires all missionaries and religious groups to register and go through a background investigation before entering the reservation and working.

No Indigenous nations in Arizona have publicly enacted these same regulations for a myriad of reasons – one being the short-term welfare perks of having religious groups freely operating on the reservation. Religious groups bring in donations, food and clothes to a population impoverished by crippling racist policies and the psychological legacy of genocide and spiritual abuse. The price for these benefits can include being forced to let go of tradition and Indigenity.

Tenijieth, the councilmember, explained that the White Mountain Apache Tribe is caught in a difficult position when it comes to expelling Wels from East Fork. “We can take that land back if we want to, but nobody has brought it up because there is a school there,” she explained. “Even though they are twisting the children’s minds, it is still a better school than others. We need to stand strong. Keep your language strong. Teach your children how to speak Apache … that’s the reason why we’re a sovereign nation.”

 

There is a straight line between the beliefs that underwrote Christopher Columbus’s claims to the Americas and the current attitudes of religious leaders on the reservation.

Columbus modeled the essence of the 1493 papal decree the doctrine of discovery, which consecrated any “new” territory not yet inhabited by Christians for the Christian world. When Columbus landed in the Americas, he claimed it for both Catholicism and Spain, officially intertwining religion with real estate.

In 1845, the doctrine of discovery was reminted for the country’s largely Protestant population as the doctrine of manifest destiny – the spiritual right for new Americans to expand westward and claim all territory in the name of “progress”.

Year after year, new policies were drafted to ensure that the Indigenous nations already living westward would help keep pioneers who chose to cross the Mississippi River safe. Treaties were signed under the illusion that the US government would honor land rights and cultural identity.

But in 1883, the Office of Indian Affairs, within the Department of Interior, established the Code of Indian Offenses, making it illegal to participate in traditional ceremonies. It wasn’t until 1978, with the passing of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, that participating in the Sunrise Dance was decriminalized.

The establishment of the Office of Indian Affairs paved the way for the 1887 Dawes Act, which divided tribal lands into allotments and included a provision that entitled religious organizations that worked with Indigenous people to keep up to 160 acres of federal land to support their missions.

To this day, these churches still draw from the spiritual legacies of Christian missions and receive funding from off-reservation congregations under that definition. Global Ministries of the United Methodist church spent over $11m in 2022 for missionary services. Wels spent $661,018 just for the Apache missions and over $23.5m for all missions, as laid out in its most recent report, from 2023.

Wels first came to Arizona in 1892, five years after the Dawes Act. When it was clear that exterminating the Apache people would not be possible, the federal government engaged Christian denominations working with the military to force the assimilation of the Indigenous people. RH Pratt, the superintendent of the first “industrial” boarding school under this policy, coined the term that embodied the philosophy behind these institutions: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

 

Federal boarding school policy allowed the military to forcibly remove Apache children from their families and send them to industrial schools in an attempt to militarize and alter their identities. They were forbidden to practice their religion or speak their language, and reports of physical and sexual abuse were common. Many children never returned home.

If an Indigenous child was found outside during school hours, Indigenous police were appointed to snatch the child and deliver them to a school under the US military’s jurisdiction. If a parent sought to hide their child, they could be imprisoned or cut off from food and other necessary daily supplies.

Apache children were kidnapped and taken as far as Pennsylvania, where they were forced to fully assimilate into Anglo-Christian society. Their clothes were burned, their language forgotten. Many children died of disease, neglect or abuse. And while the number of deaths is not yet known, it is believed that Apache children comprise a quarter of the graves at Carlisle Indian Industrial school.

To think that 1800s attitudes towards Apache children have changed would be a mistake.

Outside of the Wels mission, volunteers of other denominations drive around in colorful buses and still pick children up throughout the reservation, whether on the side of the road or other public areas. They take them to play games and learn about their version of Jesus and then drop the kids off again where they found them hours before. Parents are not always told or asked permission.

Ministry members post on social media about the good they are doing by “be[ing] the hands and feet of Jesus to some of the most vulnerable kids in our nation”. They then post pictures of themselves surrounded by garbage, validating their projection of vulnerability on these families.

Referring to how white missionaries target communities of color and paint their converts as impoverished victims in need of Christianity, Jones, the Public Religion Research Institute founder, said: “I’ll put it as bluntly as I can. I think it’s because most white Christian denominations in this country have hardly begun to reckon with how white supremacy has become deeply embedded in our faith. So we perpetuate it, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously.”

He continued: “If you happen to be a Christian and of European extraction in some way, it’s a pretty powerful drug to think that your race and your religion were chosen by God and represent the pinnacle of human achievement. There’s power in asserting that vision. And at the end of the day, it’s about power. While we are beginning to see serious efforts to try to disentangle white supremacy from Christianity, that legacy still haunts us.”

As recently as 2022, the Wels leadership published an article directly translating the words of an early pastor from German to English detailing how Hitler’s regime united Lutheranism in Germany, although it does describe misgivings about how Hitler handled the rest of the country.

This article was featured in the quarterly magazine sent to all of their congregation members throughout the country.

‘That’s a stupid question. That is a white-person question’

Millie’s husband, Ramon Riley, the Apache cultural resource director at the White Mountain Apache Culture Center and Museum, attends the Catholic church and remains devoted to the traditions and rituals of his Apache identity.

I asked him how he reconciles his Christian faith with the history of violence upon the Apache people in the name of Jesus Christ.

He took a beat. “That’s a stupid question. That is a white-person question.”

 

His response, when pressed, encapsulates the huge gap in understanding about the religious binary white people operate in and the spiritual life Riley identifies with. “I have intergenerational historical trauma. I get through it by doing my sweat.”

Riley attends Catholic mass and then immediately does a ceremonial sweat. He finds solace in both practices and brings up the Catholic church’s repeated apologies for past wrongdoing.

In 1987, Pope John Paul II came to Arizona and made it clear that ceremony and tradition were not a threat to Catholicism. And in March 2023, Pope Francis repudiated the doctrine of discovery. On a 2022 tour of atonement in Canada, he said: “Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.”

When asked the same question about the relationship between Native traditional religion and Christianity, Tenijieth’s answer is similar: “God hears our prayers. Who are we praying to? We are praying to the same God as they’re praying to. White people cannot judge us, you know? Only God can judge us.”

She explained that Christianity and traditional religion are the same: both worship the same God. She will defend her Christian beliefs as hard as she will defend her right to the protection of the Sunrise Dance.

Dr Greg Johnson, professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, notes that many Christian traditions tout an all-or-nothing viewpoint. “Time and again, Native peoples have said, ‘You know what, we will re-engineer your Christianity to better suit our purposes. So even if you tell us it’s exclusive, even if you discipline us in a way, cut our hair, dress us, make us feel a certain way, we’re not done being Apache and we will make your Christianity do things you didn’t expect.’”

 

The morning of Good Friday, Father John Cormack, presiding priest of St Francis of Assisi Catholic church in Fort Apache, agreed to an interview in his office. His ministry – a rarity on the reservation – is an example of the weaving of Apache tradition into Christianity. The chapel is decorated in Apache symbols and sacred tools. When he collects written prayers, Father John uses Apache traditional burden baskets, canes and other ceremonial objects. Above the door are Eagle feathers, a sacred symbol of strength.

He’s known to attend Sunrise Dances and offer a prayer at the ceremony when invited to do so. “We encounter God in many, many ways. And each other in all these beautiful traditions,” he said.

Father John, who came from Castlebar, in Ireland, took on this role right before the pandemic hit. He grew emotional as we spoke, pausing throughout the conversation to consider the parallel of the British empire’s impact on Ireland and the US occupying the land of the Indigenous nations.

He cried over the shared injustice of his people and also the people he was serving. He cried over the sins of the past and present committed in the name of Christ.

“We have to always look for justice. Gandhi, in another country under British rule, said, ‘If it weren’t for Christians, I’d be a Christian.’ It’s difficult to talk about but no matter what, you should always seek justice for all of us. That is what Christ did.” (Gandhi was quoted as saying: “I like your Christ, but not your Christianity.”)

Wels went as far as banning Millie from participating in communion because she sponsored a Sunrise Dance.

The Guardian reached out to each of the six Wels pastors preaching in the White Mountain Apache and San Carlos Apache Reservations separately to discuss their beliefs surrounding the Sunrise Dance and received no response.

Millie, Althea and Abby have spoken to their Wels pastor to ask why the church is becoming more determined in its anti-Indigenous ideology. In the past, the preachers did not actively scout out those who participated in Apache traditions and then cut them off from church services. They have received no substantial response.

Private schools operate as they choose, and there are no legal precedents, nor federal laws or policies, which could be used to protect Indigenous beliefs in this context. Even in public schools, Indigenous students and communities are still fighting in court to be allowed to wear traditional tribal regalia, traditional hairstyles, or tribal clothing, especially during high school graduation ceremonies.

‘We still have to use the white man’s weapon to keep what is rightfully ours’

 

When Naelyn Pike, of the Chiricahua Apache Nation, was just 14 years old, she moved from Mesa, Arizona, back to the San Carlos Apache Reservation. A few weeks in, a school friend pressured her to convert to Lutheranism, making her question whether she would go to hell if she did not convert and give up her traditional ways.

Pike, now 24, was shocked. As a young woman with an ancestry of activists and community leaders, Naelyn knew that to better serve her people, she needed to understand what these missions were teaching them.

Once she started college, she decided to take catechism lessons to better understand what her community was taught. She went to college in Mesa – three hours from the reservation – and drove back to the reservation on weekends to attend classes.

“I would go to church sometimes to see what it was like. The one thing I remember is one of the pastors had told the congregation, ‘It’s OK if you wear your camp dress, but it’s when you believe in it [as a spiritual or cultural act], you shouldn’t wear it. It’s OK to eat your fry bread, but it’s when you believe in eating the frybread that you shouldn’t eat it,” she said.

Naelyn was devastated. Following a visit to the church, she got in her car to make her way back to Mesa Community College, but made one sacred stop at Oak Flat, a swath of land in the Tonto national forest of utmost sanctity. It is believed to be the largest copper deposit in North America, and the federal government wants to transfer it to Resolution Copper, a mining project owned by the mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP.

That day, Naelyn walked towards the mesa and, through her sadness and heartbreak, she prayed for her people.

“There’s so many missionaries or organizations that come in thinking that they can [teach the Apache people that living in their culture is wrong] because now we’re the shadow in this country. We’re the dust underneath the carpet. We’re the people that are never seen, even though we’re the First People. There’s this whole idea that we’re people of the past, we’re not people of the present or the future.”

On 1 March 2024, the ninth circuit court of appeals ruled 6-5 in favor of Resolution Copper. The decision is expected to be appealed to the US supreme court in the upcoming months.

The court’s decision will be largely dependent on the interpretation of the 1852 treaty of Santa Fe, and was signed by representatives of the US government and various Apache leaders, including Chief Mangas Coloradas.

 

More than 170 years later, Mangas Coloradas’s direct descendant Michelle Colelay sits at a table with three of her four daughters and her husband, Chester, a descendant of another great chief, Chief Alchesay.

“We’re still fighting,” she said. “We still have to use the white man’s weapon to keep what is rightfully ours, so we are fighting in court. What are they going to do with it? It doesn’t have any meaning to them, except monetary. They wouldn’t allow us to go into their homes and take whatever we wanted. So why would they do the same to us? In many different ways. It is hurtful. It is frustrating.”

When the Colelays’ first daughter was six or seven years old, she asked her parents if it was true what she was learning at the Wels church, that participating in traditional ceremonies was tied to the devil.

After that Sunday, they never went back to the Wels church.

“We tell our stories to our kids. We want them to feel it, see it, live it, and be part of it,” Chester said. “When the Spirit gets to you, you can either be at the river, on top of the mountain, praying in front of your house, inside a church, it could be at a Sunrise ceremony. Wherever the spirit catches you is where you belong. That’s where God is at. God is not just in church. God is everywhere.”

Through it all, the Colelay family said, “we’re still here.

“We’re still surviving. And we are always Apache first.”

 

Corporations face reversal of fortune as 2025 tax debate heats up by Brian Faler

 Businesses were a big winner in the Republicans’ 2017 tax law, but with debt concerns mounting, they are on the defensive.

 Corporations were among the biggest winners when Republicans pushed through sweeping tax cuts in 2017, getting a whopping 14-percentage point cut in their tax rate.

But with lawmakers facing intense pressure to extend trillions in tax cuts next year that mostly benefit individual Americans, both Republicans and Democrats see corporations as a potential piggy bank to cover the huge hit to the budget.

 

“There’s a bubbling-up concern that we should not be doing the bidding of corporate America,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who says he’d consider kicking the corporate rate up to 25 percent, from the current 21 percent, if it means being able to extend breaks for individuals and small businesses.

 

It’s a sign that next year’s debate over whether to extend major portions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act could be very different from the one that created it.

 

The Biden administration says any tax agreement must not add to the deficit. Most Republicans are not going that far, but some say they need to do a better job containing costs this time around.

Though Trump would cut just a single percentage point off the corporate rate — a plan he floated earlier this month to the Business Roundtable — it would add billions to lawmakers’ budget headaches.

A one-point reduction would cost at least $130 billion, but that’s probably not all. It would also put a lot of pressure on lawmakers to reduce taxes on unincorporated “pass-through” businesses as well, so they don’t favor one over the other. And that could squeeze out other myriad priorities lawmakers hope to include.

Conversely, budget forecasters have been ratcheting up how much money could be brought in from a corporate rate hike, making it a tempting target for cost-conscious lawmakers. The old rule of thumb was that every percentage point increase generates $100 billion.

Then, in December 2022, forecasters kicked that up to $130 billion. They haven’t released a revised estimate, but it’s likely more now thanks to higher corporate profits.

Back then, Republicans were primarily concerned the then-35 percent corporate rate was so much higher than in other countries that it put American firms at a competitive disadvantage. They had considered cutting it to 20 percent, as Trump is now proposing, and even to as little as 15 percent, before deciding that was too expensive and settling on 21 percent.

This time, the focus for lawmakers in both parties is different, as they try to prevent tax increases for millions of Americans, even as warning lights are blinking red over the deficit.

Lower tax rates, a bigger standard deduction, a larger child credit and a slew of other provisions affecting individual Americans are set to expire at the end of next year.

Extending everything in TCJA would cost $4 trillion. Even if lawmakers only re-up provisions benefiting people under $400,000, as the administration demands, the tab would still run more than $2 trillion over a decade.

At the same time, budget forecasters are warning the deficit this year will reach $2 trillion, despite low employment. And next year, the Congressional Budget Office predicts, annual interest payments on the debt will exceed $1 trillion for the first time.

 

Compounding the challenge for corporate America: It has fewer friends on Capitol Hill.

Most of the Republicans who pushed TCJA into law have since retired, replaced by more populist-leaning members who have battled big business in recent years over everything from diversity programs to the 2021 Capitol Hill riots to socially conscious investing.

 

At the House Ways and Means Committee, former Chair Kevin Brady, a one-time chamber of commerce executive, has been replaced by Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who makes no secret of his skepticism about big business. It was Smith who warned last month that some of his Republican colleagues are ready to join Democrats in hiking the corporate tax, though he did not advocate that himself.

Over in the Senate Finance Committee, the business community had a reliable ally in since-retired Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) — whose replacement, Republican J.D. Vance, recently teamed up with liberal Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to propose raising taxes on corporate mergers.

 

Asked about Republicans’ appetitive for further reducing the rate, Smith was noncommittal, saying that’s something lawmakers could study.

Of course, big business will face far tougher sledding if Democrats win in November. For many of the party’s lawmakers, raising the corporate rate is a foregone conclusion, and only the beginning.

“Every Democrat thinks the 21 percent corporate rate is far lower than is necessary,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a tax writer. He says he’d put it at 27 percent or 28 percent.

Added Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.): “Western civilization is not going to end if there’s some increase.”

Biden, who’d pin the corporate tax at 28 percent, has also proposed more than $1 trillion in other business tax increases, including quadrupling a new charge on stock buybacks, expanding a minimum tax on some companies and hiking levies on foreign profits.

Republicans could consider some of those as well.

Many Republicans are in the leave-it-alone camp when it comes to the corporate rate — neither seeking an increase nor a decrease.

“I am satisfied with it” at 21 percent, said Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa), a tax writer.

Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), another tax writer, definitely doesn’t want to increase the rate.

“I’m very concerned about undoing what we did that, I think, has been very productive,” he said.

“I’d like to see corporations getting with the program and saving America, instead of just looking at their bottom line.”

Such anti-corporate sentiment is running high among increasingly populist-minded Republicans, and former President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to shave a point off the corporate rate will face resistance from some GOP lawmakers.

Business lobbyists are already blitzing Congress, making their case about the costs of higher taxes.

“The last place that policymakers ought to look in trying to fix the fiscal situation is with business tax increases because those businesses are the ones that are creating jobs,” said Josh Bolten, head of the Business Roundtable, adding his group intends to spend eight figures fighting for lower taxes.

Boost your immune system with this centuries-old health hack: Vaccines by Aimee Pugh Bernard & David Higgins

 

There are a dizzying number of tips, hacks and recommendations on how to stay healthy, from dietary supplements to what color of clothes promotes optimal wellness. Some of these tips are helpful and based on good evidence, while others are not.

However, one of the easiest, most effective and safest ways to stay healthy is rarely mentioned: vaccination.

We are a preventive medicine physician and an immunologist who want people to live the healthiest lives possible. Among the many research-backed ways to live healthier, we encourage people to eat well, exercise regularly, get good sleep and care for their mental health.

And when it comes to your immune system, nothing can replace the essential role vaccines play in promoting whole health. The protection that vaccines provide is an irreplaceable part of living the healthiest lifestyle possible.

 

Vaccines are essential to health

Some healthy people think they don’t need a vaccine. But your immune system needs more than just a healthy lifestyle to protect your body when vaccine-preventable diseases come knocking on the door.

Imagine the cells of your immune system as athletes preparing for the Olympics. Just as athletes undergo rigorous and specialized training to meet every possible challenge they might face in their event, immune cells need to be primed and ready to fight off every pathogenic challenge you encounter.

Vaccines expose your immune cells to inactivated versions of a pathogen, providing them with practice sessions to recognize and combat the real threat with speed and precision. Vaccines ensure that your immune cells are at their peak performance when faced with the actual infection. Just as well-trained athletes can tackle their competition with skill and confidence, vaccinated immune cells can swiftly and effectively protect your body from diseases.

If a person is unvaccinated and exposed to a disease they haven’t encountered before, their immune cells are unprepared and must play catch-up to fight the pathogen. This leaves your body vulnerable to severe disease.

 

Even people at the pinnacle of health can unnecessarily suffer from vaccine-preventable diseases because their immune systems might not have been well-trained. Take the story of Austin Booth, a healthy and athletic 17-year-old who was not vaccinated for influenza. Just days after he started to feel ill, he died of the disease.

For healthy people, vaccination can reduce the risk of death from influenza by two-thirds. When people choose to skip vaccines recommended as an essential part of their overall health, there is a greater chance of serious complications or death from a vaccine-preventable disease, regardless of how healthy they may be. These people are playing a potentially life-altering and deadly game of chance.

Vaccine-preventable diseases are still common. In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of adults are hospitalized and thousands die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases such as influenza, pneumococcal pneumonia, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19. And tens of thousands of adults develop cancer every year from vaccine-preventable diseases such as HPV.

Vaccines are the safest immune health hack

Many of the trendiest health hacks have little to no evidence of improving health. Some are even dangerous. But vaccines are one of the most tested and proven ways to stay healthy.

Vaccines have been used for centuries. In the past 50 years, they have saved an estimated 154 million lives worldwide. Mathematical models estimate that a 25-year-old now has a 35% greater chance of living to their next birthday thanks to vaccines alone.

 

Not only are vaccines effective, but they are also safe. Yes, vaccines can come with mild and limited side effects – who hasn’t felt a little sluggish or bumped their sore arm after getting vaccinated? More severe vaccine side effects are extremely rare. If you have concerns, talk to your doctor. As opposed to dietary supplements, trendy health hacks and even many over-the-counter medications, there are robust systems in place to test and monitor the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

Of all the tips available to improve your health, one recommendation is clear: Even healthy, fit people need recommended vaccines to stay healthy and live well.

 

 

How to tell if a conspiracy theory is probably false by H. Colleen Sinclair

 Conspiracy theories can muddle people’s thinking.

 

Conspiracy theories are everywhere, and they can involve just about anything.

People believe false conspiracy theories for a wide range of reasons – including the fact that there are real conspiracies, like efforts by the Sackler family to profit by concealing the addictiveness of oxycontin at the cost of countless American lives.

The extreme consequences of unfounded conspiratorial beliefs could be seen on the staircases of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and in the self-immolation of a protestor outside the courthouse holding the latest Trump trial.

But if hidden forces really are at work in the world, how is someone to know what’s really going on?

That’s where my research comes in; I’m a social psychologist who studies misleading narratives. Here are some ways to vet a claim you’ve seen or heard.

 

Step 1: Seek out the evidence

Real conspiracies have been confirmed because there was evidence. For instance, in the allegations dating back to the 1990s that tobacco companies knew cigarettes were dangerous and kept that information secret to make money, scientific studies showed problematic links between tobacco and cancer. Court cases unearthed corporate documents with internal memos showing what executives knew and when. Investigative journalists revealed efforts to hide that information. Doctors explained the effects on their patients. Internal whistleblowers sounded the alarm.

But unfounded conspiracy theories reveal their lack of evidence and substitute instead several elements that should be red flags for skeptics:

• Dismissing traditional sources of evidence, claiming they are in on the plot.
• Claiming that missing information is because someone is hiding it, even though it’s common that not all facts are known completely for some time after an event.
• Attacking apparent inconsistencies as evidence of lies.
• Overinterpreting ambiguity as evidence: A flying object may be unidentified – but that’s different from identifying it as an alien spaceship.
• Using anecdotes – especially vaguely attributed ones – in place of evidence, such as “people are saying” such-and-such or “my cousin’s friend experienced” something.
• Attributing knowledge to secret messages that only a select few can grasp – rather than evidence that’s plain and clear to all.

Step 2: Test the allegation

Often, a conspiracy theorist presents only evidence that confirms their idea. Rarely do they put their idea to the tests of logic, reasoning and critical thinking.

While they may say they do research, they typically do not apply the scientific method. Specifically, they don’t actually try to prove themselves wrong.

So a skeptic can follow the method scientists use when they do research: Think about what evidence would contradict the explanation – and then go looking for that evidence.

Sometimes that effort will yield confirmation that the explanation is correct. And sometimes not. Like a scientist, ask yourself: What would it take for you to believe your perception was wrong?

 

Step 3: Watch out for tangled webs

When theories claim large groups of people are perpetrating wide-ranging activities over a long period of time, that’s another red flag.

Confirmed conspiracies typically involve small, isolated groups, like the top echelon of a company or a single terrorist cell. Even the alliance among tobacco companies to hide their products’ danger was confined to those at the top, who made decisions and enlisted paid scientists and ad agencies to spread their messages.

False conspiracies tend to implicate wide swaths of people, such as world leaders, mainstream media outlets, the global scientific community, the Hollywood entertainment industry and interconnected government agencies.

The online manifesto of Max Azzarello – the man who self-immolated on the steps of a New York courthouse in April 2024 – railed against a conspiracy allegedly including every president since Bill Clinton, sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, even the writers of “The Simpsons.”

Remember that the more people who supposedly know a secret, the harder it is to keep.

Step 4: Look for a motive

Confirmed conspiracies tell stories about why a group of people acted as they did and what they hoped to gain. Dubious conspiracies involve a lot of accusations or just questions without examining what real benefit the conspiracy nets the conspirators, especially when factoring in the costs.

For instance, what purpose would NASA have to lie about the existence of Finland?

Be particularly suspicious when conspiracies allege an “agenda” being perpetrated by an entire sociodemographic, which is often a marginalized group, such as a “gay agenda” or “Muslim agenda.”

Also look to see whether those spreading the conspiracy theories have something to gain. For example, scholarly research has identified the 12 people who are the primary sources of false claims about vaccinations. The researchers also found that those people profit from making those claims.

Step 5: Seek the source of the allegations

If you can’t figure out who is at the root of a conspiracy allegation and thus how they came to know what they claim, that is another red flag. Some people say they have to remain anonymous because the conspiracists will take revenge for revealing information. But even so, a conspiracy can usually be tracked back to its source – maybe a social media account, even an anonymous one.

Over time, anonymous sources either come forward or are revealed. For instance, years after the Watergate scandal took down Richard Nixon’s presidency, a key inside source known as “Deep Throat” was revealed to be Mark Felt, who had been a high-level FBI official in the early 1970s.

Even the notorious “Q” at the heart of the QAnon conspiracy cult has been identified, and not by government investigators chasing leaks of national secrets. Surprise! Q is not the high-level official some people believed.

Reliable sources are transparent.

 

Step 6: Beware the supernatural

Some conspiracy theories – though none that have been proven – involve paranormal, alien, demonic or other supernatural forces. People alive in the 1980s and 1990s might remember the public fear that satanic cults were abusing and sacrificing children. That idea never disappeared entirely.

And around the same time, perhaps inspired by the TV series “V,” some Americans began to believe in lizard people. It may seem harmless to keep hoping for evidence of Bigfoot, but the person who detonated a bomb in downtown Nashville on Dec. 25, 2020, apparently believed lizard people ran the Earth.

The closer the conspiracy is to science fiction, the closer it is to just being fiction.

Step 7: Look for other warning signs

There are other red flags too, like the use of prejudicial tropes about the group allegedly behind the conspiracy, particularly antisemitic allegations.

But rather than doing the work to really examine their conspiratorial beliefs, believers often choose to write off the skeptics as fools or as also being in on it – whatever “it” may be.

Ultimately, that’s part of the allure of conspiracy theories. It is easier to dismiss criticism than to admit you might be wrong.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Happy Seventy-eighth Birthday, Mr. Ex-President by Susan B. Glasser

 

On Thursday, when Donald Trump met with Republicans in Washington, it was the first time he’d visited Capitol Hill in the four years since he pressed Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In a statement, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized him for “returning to the scene of the crime” and warned that he was on a “mission of dismantling our democracy.” Trump’s allies in the Republican Party, meanwhile, suggested that he would be in forward-looking policy mode as he talked about plans for a second term in the White House. Yeah, right.

Trump, it will perhaps not surprise you to learn, has not been reborn as a statesman or a wonk. Reliable accounts suggest that his private remarks before the House Republicans were pretty much in keeping with his public appearances these days—sclerotic, rambling, nasty, and often incomprehensible. Fox News’s senior congressional correspondent reported, rather tactfully, that the ex-President meandered through “lots of tangents”; a small sampling, from the many accounts to emerge of what went on in the room, included Trump sharing his opinion on everything from Taylor Swift’s prospective endorsement of Joe Biden, to the “dirty, no-good bastards” at the Justice Department, to why he is a “big fan” of William McKinley. (Tariffs!) Trump wondered if his close ally Marjorie Taylor Greene was being “nice” to Speaker Mike Johnson these days. He called Biden a “dope” and, in one of those split-screen moments that tells you everything about the stakes of the 2024 election, warned that Ukraine is “never going to be there for us”; Biden, meanwhile, was in Europe, pledging unequivocal support to Ukraine in the form of a ten-year bilateral security agreement. Trump even trashed Milwaukee, where Republicans are soon to meet to nominate him as their Presidential candidate for a third straight election, as “a horrible city.” Once Trump’s comment became public, there were many competing explanations from attendees as to why he might think so; he apparently did not say

 

In another notable soliloquy, Trump opined about Pelosi, seeming to suggest that maybe he and the eighty-four-year-old former Democratic Speaker could have made a good couple if only she weren’t older than he is. Huh? Here’s the full comment from Trump, as reported by Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman: “Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a whacko,” who “told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together, there’s an age difference though.”

Even among House Republicans, whose ranks have been purged of all but two remaining members who voted to impeach Trump after the events of January 6, 2021, the performance wore thin. “I lost interest after about 45 minutes,” one Republican representative told Chad Pergram, the Fox News senior congressional correspondent. Speaking to reporters after the session, Johnson merely expressed relief that Trump had been so nice to him and his members. Trump “said very complimentary things about all of us,” he recounted. “We’re grateful for that.” A cult of personality, I guess, does not require the object of one’s veneration to be coherent. It is perhaps most telling of all that the packed breakfast meeting began with a chorus of House G.O.P. members singing “Happy Birthday” to their former President.

On Friday, Trump will turn seventy-eight years old. If he wins another term in the White House, he would become the oldest President ever—except for the current President. Biden’s eighty-one years tend to get much of the attention these days. But why, exactly, is that?

If there were ever a case for age-related diminishment of a candidate, Trump is it. The ex-President’s bizarre rambles and odd obsessions—remember the whole cancer-causing-windmills thing?—have long characterized his public performances. But, in the 2024 campaign, the weird has got decidedly weirder. Just this past weekend, Trump interrupted a campaign rally in Nevada for an extended discourse on what one should do about a hypothetical shark attack when aboard a hypothetically sinking electric boat, and how he himself would prefer electrocution to being eaten by the shark—a sentence, which, as I am writing it, makes absolutely no sense and yet is a more or less accurate summary of what Trump said.

 

It’s also worth noting that Trump, pushing eighty, has made so many gaffes involving mixed-up names and places that they are hardly treated as major news—he has confused Pelosi with his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley, forgotten that he is running against Biden and not Barack Obama, and once thought that he was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when he was in Sioux City, Iowa. Wherever one stands on the broader question of Trump’s mental health, the evident decline in his ability to speak clearly and coherently feels striking. Just look at some of the clips assembled by the health-news service STAT back in 2017, when they consulted experts who saw clear evidence, in the course of decades, of Trump’s cognitive “deterioration.” That was seven years ago. When I look back at Trump’s speeches from 2016, or even from 2020, they seem positively lucid compared with his 2024 rallies.

Four years ago, in fact, age was a significant factor that counted against Trump in his first race with Biden. At least in part, that was because of the scrutiny attracted by the man’s own big mouth. Who could forget Trump’s famous brag in the summer of 2020, to a visibly uncomfortable Fox News interviewer, that he had aced a mental-acuity test? “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” He even congratulated himself on air for remembering the five words in the correct order. “It’s actually not that easy,” he said. “But for me it was easy.” Thanks no doubt to such performances by Trump, Biden’s older age did not seem to materially hurt him in that fall’s election.

Not this time. The combination of a years-long barrage by Trump and his allies to brand Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” and the very visible signs of Biden’s physical aging in the past four years, have made the question of the President’s continued fitness for office perhaps his toughest obstacle to reëlection. Many members of his own party, never mind swing voters, remain unconvinced. They see a President slower in step, wispier in voice. In a Times/Siena College survey this March, seventy-three per cent of voters agreed that Biden is “just too old to be an effective President,” versus forty-two per cent who said the same of Trump. When the Wall Street Journal recently ran a long story about Biden’s age issues, the bulk of the reporting leaned heavily on Republican politicians who have endorsed Trump claiming that Biden was slipping. “He’s not the same person,” the former House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in the story’s lead-off quote. Trump did not make an appearance until well into the piece, in a few to-be-sure paragraphs that also quoted a spokesperson as saying he was “sharp as a tack.” The Journal has not run a similar reported piece about Trump and age, on its front page or anywhere else.

Is it because there is just too much material already, and all available in the public record? The Journal, I should say, is hardly alone on this, and the reasons for the uneven coverage are not necessarily evidence of bias. Trump has so many liabilities as a candidate that it can be hard to single out just this one. How does age rank, after all, against multiple criminal indictments, including for helping to incite an insurrection? For Biden, age is at the top of a much shorter list.

Whatever the rationale, it should not be lost on anyone that deflection has long been one of Trump’s favored tactics for dealing with just about any vulnerability. “He can’t put two sentences together,” Trump complained of Biden earlier this year, on the very same day that he confused Haley and Pelosi. His evident delight in mocking Biden as a doddering old fool has inspired a robust marketplace of Republican imitators, who post clips of Biden’s every halting stutter or blank stare as proof of his senescence, while ignoring the many miscues of their own leader. Among the many political lessons that the right has learned during the Trump era in politics, one of the most successful—and pernicious—is this: With Trump, don’t defend the indefensible; simply pretend it does not exist.

No wonder House Republicans kept the birthday celebration for Trump on Thursday morning private. I say: Bring out the cake, strike up the band, let him blow out the candles in public. Trump loves it when he’s the center of attention, and I can think of no better subject for the public’s attention than the fact that Trump is getting another year older. ♦

Six states where housing is hard to find: Here’s what governors are doing about it By POLITICO Staff

 Politicians risk the wrath of voters if they can’t make headway on an issue that has huge financial ramifications for most households.

 

Population changes spurred by the pandemic. Byzantine zoning laws that make construction agonizingly slow and expensive. Stagnant wages amid stubborn inflation rates.

All these factors have contributed to years of skyrocketing housing prices — and leaders in Washington, including President Biden — have shown little ability to get a handle on the issue. That’s putting even more pressure on governors to come up with solutions to the affordable housing crisis.

 

But those state leaders are facing steep obstacles — and potential electoral consequences in November if they fail to make inroads. The issue is increasingly critical for Americans across demographic and partisan lines, with a recent poll showing three-quarters of voters citing housing affordability as a significant problem.

Governors are responsible for guiding a broad strategy for building more houses, and they must navigate cumbersome laws and regulations that hike up construction costs and delay ribbon cuttings for new developments.

“If governors don’t successfully confront the need to get rid of some of these expensive rules, they are going to pay a political cost because people are seeing they’re talking so much about housing but nothing is changing,” said Michael Andersen, director of cities and towns with Sightline Institute, a think tank focused on affordable housing issues.

 POLITICO took a look at what steps governors from across the country are taking to ease the affordable housing crisis, from prioritizing construction of smaller-footprint homes to expanded protections for renters. They’re testing a variety of approaches in hopes that some will make a dent in a systemic problem that has a huge impact on the monthly budgets of most Americans.

 

CALIFORNIA

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s strategy to address California’s worst-in-the-nation housing shortage is, effectively, a crackdown on local governments that make it difficult to build in affluent coastal areas.

Since his first month in office, Newsom has touted lawsuits filed against cities that flout state-assigned targets for building new homes. He’s also signed dozens of bills that mandate local governments streamline their planning processes.

Newsom argues that cities, especially his hometown of San Francisco, have blocked new housing by subjecting developers to endless planning reviews and complaints from neighbors, including objections over architectural character and obstructed views.

 

The governor has been equally sharp in his criticism of deep-blue and red locales that object to housing mandates — from the liberal Bay Area to GOP-led beach towns in Orange County.

“You’re either part of the problem or you’re not,” Newsom said last month at a press conference where he criticized Millbrae, a small city south of San Francisco that is fighting a project to convert a La Quinta Inn into homeless housing.

 State officials estimate that California must plan for 2.5 million new housing units by 2030 to begin to meet the needs of its 39 million residents and address soaring prices. That would require cities to plan for about 180,000 new units annually; last year, construction started on fewer than 112,000 units.

Jason Elliott, Newsom’s deputy chief of staff and closest adviser on housing, said the governor’s perspective that California cities have exacerbated the housing crisis was forged by his time as a mayor and city supervisor in San Francisco — when he often faced opponents who used the city’s lengthy planning process to block construction.

“Up until Governor Newsom, there was no consequence for saying ‘No’ to housing,” Elliott told POLITICO. “Housing death by 1,000 paper cuts will never help us solve our affordability challenge.” (Dustin Gardiner)

UTAH

Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has called Utah’s skyrocketing housing prices the biggest threat faced by the state.

Utah, like most of the Mountain West, has experienced a huge population boom driven by remote workers lured by Utah’s outdoor recreation culture. A recent legislative audit found that Utah needs to build nearly 28,000 new housing units just to keep up with projected growth.

That rapid growth is one reason why home prices have soared: The medium price of a home in Utah is $501,652 compared to the national average of $342,941.

So Cox has set a goal of building 35,000 “starter houses” costing less than $300,000 by 2028.

 The state Legislature largely got on board with that vision this session, passing several bills intended to ease the cost of building single-family homes. That included a measure that created a $300 million fund to supply builders with lower-interest loans under an agreement that 60 percent of the houses they build must be “attainable” starter homes. But they stopped short of granting Cox the $150 million he requested to pursue his starter home vision.

 Cox is up for reelection and facing a primary challenger who has blamed Utah policies that favor large developers for the high cost of housing. While Cox’s opponent, state Rep. Phil Lyman, earned support from two-thirds of delegates at the GOP convention in April, Cox maintains a sizable lead in polls.

Cox has taken a free-market-based approach in encouraging cities and towns to take the lead in spurring housing development — for now. But he has threatened that if municipal officials don’t quickly act on their own to increase housing stock, state officials may step in with more aggressive action like changing zoning laws — a move that would set up a bitter fight between state and local leaders. (Liz Crampton)

OREGON

Oregon has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country.

Homeless encampments have particularly plagued the state, and the battle between its residents and government officials trying to police the encampments has reached the Supreme Court. The state ranks fourth in failing to produce enough housing for its residents, behind California, Colorado and Utah. Oregon is currently behind in building 140,000 housing units and needs to produce over 400,000 homes in the next 20 years to keep up with demand.

Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek made it a top priority this year for the Legislature to pass her $500 million request addressing the housing shortage, though the legislature slashed that number down to $369 million.

 Kotek signed the funding bill in April meant to help backfill the decadeslong housing shortage. The funding package allocates money toward building middle-income housing, homeless shelters, infrastructure projects such as the extension of sewer systems and rental assistance to prevent evictions.

 State Rep. Pam Marsh, chair of the state House’s Committee on Housing and Homelessness, pointed to the pandemic and wildfires in 2020 as events that supercharged homelessness in the state.

The year 2020 was also when Oregon became the first state to decriminalize the possession of “hard drugs” after voters approved a ballot measure, though it didn’t take effect until February 2021. Elected officials have since blamed the law for open-air drug use and overdoses, and Kotek signed a bill into law in April repealing the measure. Nationally, more than one-third of homeless people experience alcohol and drug problems.

“It’s very challenging across the state because we’ve had to really quickly build a homelessness support system,” Marsh said. “We’ve built out our shelters over the last four years significantly. We are trying to understand the breadth of issues that people need when they’re on the street in order to move into stability.” (Kierra Frazier)

NEW YORK

Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul took a victory lap on housing this spring.

After a yearslong stalemate, she managed to strike a deal with the state Legislature in April on a suite of reforms to address New York’s worsening housing crisis.

The wide-ranging package, which aims to spur residential construction and expand protections for renters, won’t solve the problem overnight.

 But it reflects the heightened political pressure on lawmakers to act amidst a decades-in-the-making housing crunch that has spurred record-high rents and extreme competition for apartments.

The package, which focused primarily on New York City, included priorities Hochul had pushed for years — like reviving a property tax break for rental housing, allowing denser residential development and incentivizing office landlords to convert buildings into apartments.

 The deal also included a policy Hochul had resisted that was a top priority of left-leaning Democrats — but fiercely opposed by the city’s influential real estate industry — to restrict how much landlords can raise rents on market-rate apartments.

 But a series of data points fueled a sense of urgency, painting an increasingly dire picture of the housing crisis. These include a rising homeless population, a decline in new construction and a rental vacancy rate in New York City that’s at its lowest in more than 50 years.

In celebrating the deal, Hochul called it the “most significant improvement in housing policy in three generations.”

State legislators are up for reelection this year, which led to skepticism they would take serious action on contentious housing issues.

 But what ultimately passed was far more limited than the ambitious statewide plan she proposed in 2023. That plan sought to force localities around the state to build more housing, or risk the state overriding local zoning rules. It faced staunch opposition in suburban counties, especially on Long Island, and failed to get through the Legislature.

 Hochul dropped those mandates this year, with an eye towards protecting Democrats in competitive House races. But housing advocates say a statewide strategy is essential to truly tackling the housing crisis, and hope Hochul will revive that push next year.

 “I don’t think we would have ended up with such a broad or strong package if she hadn’t continued to advocate for housing as a top issue,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, a research and advocacy group. “The state should be doing a lot more but I think we got as far as we could in an election year.” (Janaki Chadha)

MASSACHUSETTS

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey is pushing a $4.1 billion housing bond bill her office estimates would help generate 65,000 new units of housing.

The massive borrowing bill leans on a mix of tax breaks and policy changes meant to spur construction in a state that needs at least 200,000 more units of housing to meet demand, in the administration’s estimation.

It’s been slow going shuttling the package through Beacon Hill, however. The Massachusetts House voted Wednesday on their own version of the plan, ditching a key policy that would’ve allowed municipalities to levy taxes on high-dollar real estate transactions. But the chamber also tacked on more than $2 billion in borrowing to the bill’s bottom line, sending a $6.5 billion proposal to the state Senate, where leaders will craft their own version of the legislation.

 “I’m going to continue to stay in close touch with the Legislature on all of this. We know how important housing is,” Healey told reporters last week. “I hope at the end of the day we get the very best law in place that will do what we’re trying to do, which is to increase production.”

 

Healey has also thrown her political weight behind a controversial zoning law that’s aimed at generating new housing near transit centers. The so-called MBTA Communities law created deep divides across the state between its supporters and those that take issue with aspects of the law’s application and enforcement. It’s even drawn a lawsuit from the state’s Democratic attorney general, Andrea Campbell, who sued the town of Milton in a case now pending before Massachusetts’ highest court.

As state officials wait for the legal battle to play out, Healey and her number two, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, have essentially hit the campaign trail, holding housing-related events across the state and heaping praise on the communities that have already come into compliance with the law. And this spring, Healey and Driscoll launched a nonprofit advocacy group, One Commonwealth Inc., to push grassroots support for pro-housing policies at the local level. (Kelly Garrity)

 ALABAMA

Alabama has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the country, with barely half of adults employed. State officials are hoping that by bolstering the supply of affordable housing for low-income workers they’ll be able to encourage more people to join the workforce.

 Legislation sponsored by Republican state Rep. Cynthia Lee Almond would have initially allocated $15 million annually for 10 years to pay for tax credits designed to spur developers to create affordable housing. Rents in projects that benefit from the credit would be capped at 30 percent of income.

The program would piggyback on a federal tax credit that’s been in existence since the 1980s, but that Alabama has failed to tap into, leaving federal dollars on the table. A fiscal analysis estimated that the program would lead to the creation of 2,500 housing units per year.

 But the annual allocation was eventually scaled back to $5 million before passing both legislative chambers. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the legislation last month as part of a six-bill package aimed at bolstering the state’s workforce.

Almond pointed to two pockets of Alabamans who are likely to benefit from the program. The first is people who are currently in Section 8 housing, but would lose eligibility if their income exceeds a certain threshold. The second are people who would be attracted to jobs in fast-growing areas of the state like Huntsville, but are scared off by the high cost of housing.

 She sees the modest effort as potentially a gateway to take more aggressive action to address housing affordability in the future.

“We’ll still have an affordability issue even if this is fully implemented,” Almond said. “If we see even small success, we can grow the program and actually make a dent in helping Alabamians afford to return to work and fill these jobs that will in turn help grow our economy.” (Paul Demko)