Donald Trump and maga Republicans motivate exodus of Americans looking to move to Canada

Dear Editor echo letter published in The CAP Times, newsin Wisconsin. (*Check below to read a Facebook post from Canadian journalist Alex-felix Tremblay) 

I have a cousin, a citizen of the United States, who recently moved to Canada. She and her partner will be there for three years, the maximum visa time Canada will allow them. They were hoping for a bit longer before returning. My cousin said they departed because of Donald Trump and his ilk's attitude toward LGBTQ and DEI.

My cousin is in her mid-60s, born and raised in Wisconsin, as were her parents and grandparents.

My cousin and her partner will have to return to the United States before Trump leaves office. And they are nervous about whether that will even happen. Their hope is America will at least normalize to some degree upon their return, perhaps at least to the point just before Trump descended the escalator. But they aren't waiting with bated breath because there currently is no shortage of replacements for the Trump army of hate.

I don't have specific statistics for the LGBTQ community of people who want to emigrate like my cousin. But, I am more than comfortable saying they are very far from alone. 

And, besides my being deeply embarrassed as a fellow American, I am at a loss as to what to do about the deeply embedded cancer of evil Trumpism that has invaded our country.

From Bill Walters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin

*Hello, I'm a journalist with Radio-Canada in Quebec, Canada, and I'm looking for American citizens with Canadian ancestry who are in the process of immigrating to Canada. The new Canadian law seems more permissive. Please inbox me site here.

Republicans have lost their way and the future for the once Grand Old Party is doomed

Echo essay opinion published in The Boston Globe by Thomas E. Patterson:

Republicans were in office and were widely blamed when the Great Depression struck in 1929. The Grand Old Party lost the next three presidential elections by wide margins. 

But, it was a related development during the period that ruined the GOP‘s long-term prospects. 

First-time voters backed the Democratic Party by nearly 2 to 1 and stayed loyal to it. Election after election until the late 1960s, their votes carried the Democrats to victory.

In only one period since then have young voters sided heavily with one party in a series of elections. Voters under 30 have backed the Democratic presidential nominee by a 3-to-2 margin over the past four contests. And as they’ve aged, these voters have leaned more heavily Democratic while also turning out to vote in higher numbers. They now include everyone between the ages of 21 and 45 — more than 40 percent of the nation’s adults.

Republicans are sitting on a demographic time bomb of their own making, and it could send them into a tailspin. Although the politics of division that Republicans have pursued since Richard Nixon launched his “Southern strategy” in the late 1960s — a blueprint to shore up the vote of white Southerners by appealing to racial bias — has brought new groups into their ranks, including conservative Southerners, evangelical Christians, and working-class whites, it has antagonized other groups.

Republicans are paying a stiff price for defaming immigrants. If they hadn’t, they could have made inroads with the Latinx population. Although most Latinx have conservative views on issues like abortion and national security, they vote more than 2 to 1 Democratic. A 2019 poll found that 51 percent of Latinx believe that the GOP is “hostile” toward them, with an additional 29 percent believing that the GOP “doesn’t care” about them.

Asian-Americans have also turned away from the GOP. They are America’s fastest-growing ethnic group and have the profile of a Republican bloc. They have the nation’s highest average family income and are twice as likely as other Americans to own a small business. As late as the 1992, presidential campaign, they voted 2 to 1 Republican. Today, they vote more than 2 to 1 Democratic.

Asian-Americans have also turned away from the GOP. They are America’s fastest-growing ethnic group and have the profile of a Republican bloc. They have the nation’s highest average family income and are twice as likely as other Americans to own a small business. As late as the 1992, presidential campaign, they voted 2 to 1 Republican. Today, they vote more than 2 to 1 Democratic.

Without the vote of white evangelical Protestants, the GOP would already be a second-rate party. Eliminate the evangelical vote in the 2016 election and the GOP would have received barely more than 40 percent of the popular vote. Even the GOP’s reputation as a “white” party owes to evangelicals. Non-evangelical whites voted Democratic by a 53-47 percent margin in 2016. Moreover, white evangelicals’ ability to prop up the GOP is declining. America’s fifth wave of religious revival began to wane two decades ago. White evangelicals now constitute a sixth of the population, down from a fourth in the 1990s.

There was no gender gap until the GOP adopted evangelicals’ version of family values, including opposition to abortion. Women are now the Democrats’ largest voting bloc, and their loyalty has increased, reaching record highs in the 2016 and 2018 elections. And Republicans’ embrace of evangelicals’ position on gay rights has alienated the LGBTQ community. They are now second only to Black Americans in their Democratic loyalty. The GOP’s rigid stance on social issues has also eroded its standing with college-educated voters. Once heavily Republican, most of them now side with the Democratic Party.

To assess the threat of demographic change to the GOP, I projected the outcome of future elections based on the US Census Bureau’s population change estimates. The Republican Party faces a dim future, as the groups supporting it shrink in size while those opposing it grow in number. By 2032, Democrats would have a 59-to-41 percent edge based solely on population change.

A maxim of two-party politics is that a party needs to be inclusive — a big tent — to be competitive. Whatever the short-term advantage of the GOP’s politics of division, it is now facing the fallout. Millions of younger adults, women, Blacks, Latinx, Asian Americans, LGBTQ, and the college-educated will be pulling the Democratic lever for years to come.

Author: Thomas E. Patterson is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center. This series is adapted from his book “Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?”

Antisemitism extends into dangerous extremist views about all minority groups

The eruption of neo-Nazism and White Supremacy across the country has exposed the public to symbols, terms, and ideology drawn directly from Nazi Germany and Holocaust-era fascist movements. (More information at this site here.)

Neo-Nazis surge in Florida. Don’t you dare act surprised | Commentary.

The leaders of today’s Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist organizations are not Adolf Hitler, and America is not Germany, but, in order to understand their agenda, it is vital to understand the history of these code words, symbols, and ideologies.

Echo opinion by Scott Maxwell published in the Orlando Sentinel Florida has been full of Nazi news lately.

Neo-Nazi groups have staged demonstrations near Disney and in Altamonte Springs. They’ve blanketed neighborhoods with flyers, urging others to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”

One neo-Nazi was arrested for criminal mischief Sunday. Another was arrested a few days earlier.

A man used a rifle with a swastika on it to slaughter three people in Jacksonville.

Rolling Stone assessed the stories, root causes and reactions, concluding: “Neo-Nazis Gloat as Florida Becomes a Magnet for Hate”

CAM is a global coalition engaging more than 700 partner organizations and three million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred. We act collaboratively to build a better future, free of bigotry, for Jews and all humanity.

This may make you mad. Or sad. It should. But don’t you dare act surprised.

Because this is an ugly, natural extension of the divisive culture wars that have been celebrated in Florida in recent years. You can’t demonize gay people and Black people and then go: Gee, I wonder why some folks are also demonizing Jewish people?

Besides, neo-Nazi groups don’t just preach hate against Judaism. They also demonize people of color and different sexual orientation.

As Mike Igel, chairman of the Florida Holocaust Museum, said in a recent Sentinel story: “You don’t meet a bigot, a neo-Nazi who says, ‘I hate Jewish people but I sure do love the gay community or the Black community.’ ”

Hate doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If love is love is love, then hate breeds hate breeds hate.

So when you see a politician who responds to a group that targets black people, gay people and Jewish people by saying only: “But I love the Jewish people,” they’re showing themselves.

I don’t lay this rise in extremism and extremist-related incidents — an 80% increase in Florida over the last two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League — at the feet of any single politician. 

Nor do I believe all members of any one party are to blame. I’ve found that neither bigotry nor compassion is limited to any one political party.

But there’s a growing segment of politicians on the right who’ve decided the easiest way to build a rabid following is by vilifying already marginalized communities. So they peddle a nonstop narrative of you-vs.-them:

THEY are coming for your job. Or your kid’s spot on the swim team. Or your freedom of religion.

THEY want to make you feel guilty about your past. And to recruit your children.

You are a victim, a target. Let us protect you … from them.

It’s all music to the ears of neo-Nazi recruiters.

Reasonable people can certainly have different opinions on sensitive topics, whether it’s affirmative action or transgender competitors in sports.

But too often, we don’t see reasonable. Instead, we see transgender people labeled as freaks, Black protestors labeled as animals and gay citizens and their allies being called “groomers.” Not by rogue, swastika-toting Nazis, but by top state officials, state legislators or even from inside the governor’s office.

Volusia County Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby referred to LGBTQ citizens who had testified against a proposed bill in Tallahassee as “demons” and “mutants.”

If you don’t understand why that’s not OK, listen to Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood, who said comments like that “put a target” on the backs of transgender citizens, adding: “It’s not OK to dehumanize people who aren’t hurting anyone.”

You think comments like Barnaby’s don’t embolden neo-Nazis?

Or from Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is quick to decry antisemitism even as he disparages other marginalized groups.

Fine has targeted LGBTQ citizens with both legislation and rhetoric, accusing them of “grooming” children and mocking their requests for dignity. “I was just asked my pronouns,” Fine said on Facebook last year. “For future reference, they are: You / Are / A / Fu&$ng / Moron.”

This from a guy who claims he’s been approached about leading a state university.

A lot of people don’t understand why it’s OK to vilify one minority group but not others. I don’t. Neither do many kids.

So while there’s a surge in neo-Nazi incidents among in Florida, there shouldn’t be any surprise that we’re also seeing it among our youth — with swastikas showing up on bathroom and school walls at high schools in Orange and Volusia counties. Even at a K-8 school in Seminole.

The kids are watching the adults. And they’re learning — not only how to hate, but how to feel emboldened about doing so out loud.

So if you’re appalled by Hitler salutes and White supremacist talk, good. You should be.

But don’t you dare act surprised. Especially if you keep supporting the people who are serving up this divisive, toxic stew.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Ron DeSantis wants America to be like Florida? But Florida is sinking!

The Los Angeles Times echo opinion letter to the editor: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now officially a Republican presidential candidate. I understand that he wants to make America like Florida. (Maine Writer, does Ron D.Santis aka "Ron DeSantis", know that his state Florida is sinking?)

Florida’s Opportunity to Lead on
Climate is Running Out

Well, Gov. DeSantis, I say no thank you.

• I do not want to live in an America that bans books. 
• I do not want to live in an America that takes rights away from anyone, including women, LGBTQ+ people and ethnic minorities. 
• I do not want to live in an America that calls out successful businesses that speak up - using their right to free speech- about cultural issues.

You can keep your anger and vindictiveness in Florida. You can also keep your bugs, heat, humidity, hurricanes and traffic!

From Mike Reardon, Fallbrook, in San Diego County, California

Free speech does not exist in Florida. Big Brother Governor Ron DeSantis will decide what is legally "free speech"

America, Right-Wing Censors and the ‘Battle for the Next Century, echo essay published in The New York Times, by Charles M. Blow.

Christopher Rufo, the man who orchestrated the attack on critical race theory, underscored a new focus this month. Unfortunately, he is best known for his activism against critical race theory,

“Conservatives must move the fight from ideology to bureaucracy,” he tweeted. “We’ve won the debate against CRT; now it’s time to dismantle DEI.”

D.E.I. stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, a concept that goes far beyond just the racial prism of critical race theory and moves into the worlds of ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age and class.

What Rufo is proposing is the distorting and demonizing of legitimate practices and areas of academic inquiry. He admitted as much in a 2021 tweet, back when he was still focused primarily on critical race theory: “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” he wrote. “We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

Republicans who are elected officials are quick to “amen” Rufo’s talking points. Representative Chip Roy of Texas, for instance, amplified Rufo’s tweet this month about moving on from fighting “ideology” to taking on the entire bureaucracy. Rufo, Roy said, was “speaking my language.”

This is the same Roy who voted against the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, one of only 14 members of the House to do so, on the grounds that it created “a separate Independence Day based on the color of one’s skin.”

This is the same Roy who, during a congressional hearing a few years ago, referred to an “old saying” that seemed to be celebrating lynching: “Find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree.”

OMG! Christopher Rufo is a right wing extremist prominent advocate for bans on teachers discussing LGBTQ issues in classrooms.

This is the same Roy who was one of only three representatives to vote against the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, saying that the legislation “simply raises the punishment” for offenses that are already federal crimes “in an effort to advance a woke agenda under the guise of correcting racial injustice.”

Meanwhile, Roy has been pushing his Restoring Military Focus Act, a bill he first introduced two years ago that would, if passed, eliminate the Department of Defense’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.

In 2022, Senator Marco Rubio introduced companion legislation in the Senate, and together, the two men released a report on political influences in the military titled “Woke Warfighters.”

The report, which featured on its cover six cartridges strapped to the back of a helmet, each one carrying a rainbow-colored bullet, repeatedly invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as it railed against the Pentagon’s attempts to deal with racism within its ranks.

The report also focused on trans people serving in the military and receiving gender-affirming care, as well as what it called the military’s promotion of “individual identity and self-actualization in recruitment and retention efforts, particularly for the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community.”

This year, just a week before Roy responded to Rufo’s tweet, he reintroduced the bill, this time to a House that Republicans controlled.

This fight against D.E.I. isn’t confined to public institutions and bureaucracies. As the leader of this movement, Rufo has set his sights on corporate America as well. In July he published what he called a survey of the “programming” of every Fortune 100 company and found they had all adopted D.E.I. programs, including those that “promote the most virulent strands of critical race theory and gender ideology.”

When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law limiting D.E.I. in the workplace last April, Rufo likened him to Teddy Roosevelt and praised his “muscular” strategy for combating “corporate malfeasance.” “Conservatives,” he wrote, “need to build on these efforts by developing a comprehensive agenda for pushing back against left-wing ideology in corporate America.”

In fact, Rufo sees Florida as the seeding ground for his censorship, where it can take root and spread, and Texas has already followed suit. This month, just a few days after DeSantis announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on D.E.I., the office of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, issued a memo warning state agency and public university leaders that the use of D.E.I. in hiring was illegal.

This was precisely the worry of Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at U.C.L.A. and Columbia, who played a leading role in developing critical race theory into a discipline, when I spoke with her recently.

She said: “They started with C.R.T. They moved to ‘Don’t Say Gay.’ Now they’re moving to all of Black studies. It’s not going to be long before they include all ethnic studies. We’ve already seen they’re attacking diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. 

Ron DeSantis wants to outlaw free speech.  Is this issue destined to the Supreme Court?

And the real thing, Charles, is going to be when they come for diversity, equity and inclusion in corporations.”

This is the New Right’s strategic plan: a relentless push to re-establish and strengthen the straight, cis, patriarchal, white supremacist power structure. And, Crenshaw said, “this thing will not be satisfied by one victory. This is just one skirmish, in a wider, broader battle to make racism unspeakable and basically to contain the power of Black folks, queer folks, women and pretty much everybody else who doesn’t agree to the agenda of reclaiming this country that the MAGA group claims.”

In fact, every perceived win will only embolden the extremists. The objective is to win the war against progress and to freeze America in a yesteryear image of itself. This is a swing-for-the-fences play. They are seeking to widen the conservative aperture in their quest to suppress and reverse, to promote a universal vision on oppression, to apply uniform pressure.

As Crenshaw put it, “I believe that this is the battle for the next century.”

Christian opposition to "Christian Nationalism"

Rev. William Barber II, the prominent Pastor speaks out against Christian Nationalism as 'Heresy':  Echo opinion published in Faithful Citizens for Truth. 

Rev. William Barber II

Traditional approach to politics and faith is often seen as a competition between two sides: left vs. right, woke vs. unwoke, Red State Jesus vs. Blue State Jesus. However, the Rev. William J. Barber II, a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and contemporary leader who has been compared to Martin Luther King Jr., has developed a different approach: "fusion politics."

Christian Nationalism is a euphemism for white supremacy.

This approach brings together coalitions that often transcend the traditional conservative vs. progressive divide. Barber believes that by uniting marginalized groups such as the poor, immigrants, working-class whites, religious minorities, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community, a powerful force for change can be created. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Barber argues that these groups share a common enemy, citing how the same forces that demonize immigrants also attack low-wage workers, the same politicians that deny living wages also suppress the vote, and the same people who deny the climate crisis and refuse to act are also willing to deny access to healthcare to millions of Americans.

By leading one of the nation’s most sustained and visible anti-poverty efforts as co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, Barber has become one of the country's most prominent activists and speakers, known for his fusion politics approach.

Who is Rev. William J Barber II?

Rev. William J. Barber II has made a name for himself as a powerful speaker and organizer, known for his "fusion politics" approach. He delivered an electrifying speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that was called a "drop the mic" moment by one commentator. Barber also regularly organizes and marches with groups such as fast-food workers and union members, at a time when both political parties have been accused of ignoring the working class.

Barber has also been outspoken about the importance of voter turnout among marginalized communities, saying, "there is a sleeping giant in America." He believes that poor and low-wealth folks now make up 30% of the electorate in every state and over 40% of the electorate in every state where the margin of victory for the presidency was less than 3%. He argues that if these marginalized communities vote, they could fundamentally shift every election in the country.

Rev. Barber will take his fusion politics approach to the Ivy League as the founding director of Yale Divinity School's new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. In this role, he hopes to train a new generation of leaders who will be comfortable "creating a just society both in the academy and in the streets."

Rev. William J. Barber II has announced that he will step down as pastor of the North Carolina church where he has served for 30 years, but he has made it clear that he is not retiring from activism. He remains the president of Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit organization that promotes moral fusion politics.

Against Christian Nationalism

Barber has recently spoken out against White Christian nationalism, a movement that insists that the US was founded as a Christian nation and seeks to erase the separation of church and state.

When asked why poverty is so urgent to face now, Barber responded: "Doctor King used to say America has a high blood pressure of creeds, but an anemia of deeds. In every generation we’ve had to have a moment to focus on the urgency of the right now. We will never be able to fix our democracy until we fully face these issues. We will constantly ebb and flow out of recessions because inequality hurts us all." Barber also cites Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's book "The Price of Inequality," which argues that it costs more as a nation for these inequalities to exist than it would for us to fix them. Barber also argues that paying a living wage would not hurt business, but rather it is the lack of it that does.

Rev. William J. Barber II, an advocate of "fusion politics" has spoken out against the concept of White Christian nationalism, arguing that it is flawed because it goes against the core values of Christianity.

He explains that the scriptures say that God loves all people and that if a nation is going to embrace Christian values, then one must know what those values are, and they certainly aren't discriminatory or exclusive. He also explains his view of the word “evangel” which means good news and that when Jesus used that phrase it was in his first sermon, which was a public policy sermon. He said it in the face of Caesar, where Caesar had hurt and exploited the poor. He also explains that he embraces the kind of evangelicalism that Jesus embraces and that is to start where Jesus started, preaching good news to the poor.

He also speaks about his health challenges and how he keeps going year after year and keeps himself from being burned out. He finds inspiration in reading the Bible and seeing that all the people that God used in a major way had some physical challenge, it helped him overcome any pity party and made him see that Moses couldn't talk, Ezekiel had strange post-traumatic syndrome types of emotional issues, Jeremiah was crying all the time from his struggles with depression, Paul had a physical thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7–10) and Jesus was acquainted with sorrow.