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House Ethics Committee finds George Santos Fraud

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House Ethics Committee finds George Santos Fraud

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News Article Citation:

House Ethics Committee report on George Santos finds "substantial evidence" of wrongdoing

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-ethics-committee-george-santos-report/

Political Event Summary:

At the time of the articles publishing, November 16 2023, George Santos, a newly elected New York Republican congressman, faced a lot of controversy about the fact that he made up his personal and professional experience and background. Santos received federal charges for wire fraud and money laundering, much of which was resisted by him and his Republican colleagues. A House Ethics Committee report revealed his wrongdoing, leading to a “historic” expulsion from the House with bipartisan support.

Source Evaluation:

The news source of this article, CBS news, holds a reputation for being a reliable fact-based news source that is slightly left leaning. Though it also is noteworthy that even though the source is headquartered in New York City, a predominantly liberal city, the news source broadcasts to the wider U.S. and not just the city it resides in. The article itself presents a very detailed account of the Santos fraud and consequent responses from fellow politicians and legislators—an indication of detailed and in-depth news reporting. However, readers should also be cognizant of the fact that media outlets like CBS news, whether intentionally or unintentionally, can subtly influence the interpretation of political events if the news source leans in a particular manner. For example, the quotes chosen in the article to describe Santos’s actions could have been framed in a way that demonizes the Republican Party or favors the Democratic Party. It is hard to say if this actually happened because we don’t have access to all the quotes received by the CBS reporters. However, with this in mind, because selective exposure can occur, it is beneficial to cross-reference with other news outlets to diminish the effect of editorializing. Considering CBS is a news source that broadcasts to the entire U.S. and not just the liberal city it is based in, however, it is likely that the news source aims to remain as neutral and middle ground as possible. However, a political scandal is where biases can come about.

Connection to a political psychological concept from class:

The Santos scandal as shown in the CBS News article can be looked at through a concept we learned in class on 2/6 on biases called “cognitive dissonance.” This concept is under consistency theory, and explains “an aversive state of psychological tension that results when our behavior is inconsistent with our attitudes.” In the case of Santos, cognitive dissonance is able to be applied to both the reactions of his fellow politicians/the public and his own actions. When he made up his background and denied evidence it is possible it shows that there was a state of tension between the reality of his actions and his desired self-image. With this dissonance, it likely propelled him to maintain those fabrications even when there was evidence against it, because if he admitted the truth there would not only be great psychological discomfort but also it would threaten his career (which it did). For his colleagues/the public, cognitive dissonance can be applied when people experience tension with their support for Santos in light of all the evidence of his unethical behavior, especially for people who initially defended Santos. Their reassessment of his character and their judgment creates further conflict with earlier support. However, the decision of many republicans and the public to support him leaving the House reflects resolution of the dissonance, forcing realignment of the beliefs of the public to restore consistency in psychological beliefs and values.

- Marissa Mathieson

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Ted Cruz: Depicting Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Ted Cruz: Depicting Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Link to the news article: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-is-put-on-republican-hot-seat-over-gender-critical-race-theory/2022/03

Article Summary

Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Katanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the highest court in the land (presumably), provided several days of testimonials to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Her historic nomination has generated ferocious scrutiny by various staunch conservatives on the Committee, particularly Senator Ted Cruz and other white, male Republican senators, which highlighted partisan, race-related assumptions in our political climate.

Source Evaluation

The news source, Education Week, faces two primary threats to its credibility and comprehensiveness: reliance on donor money from highly-influential, opinionated figures (partisan bias) and over-emphasis on school-related topics (coverage bias).

Connection to Class Concepts (1-3)

1. ) Motivated Reasoning

Senators that scrutinized Jackson on her relationship to elite, progressive high school Georgetown Day School, in addition to her vague opinions on gender definitions, seem to strongly accept information that is consistent with their predisposed views on Jackson.

2.) Selective Attention

Cruz latched onto this minor detail in Jackson’s biography in order to fulfill a cohesive, consistent, and coherent narrative about the nominee.

3.) Misinformation, In the Light of Corrective Information

Though this misinformation was largely deflected by Jackson, the repetition of these details may have a lasting effect on how people view her as a candidate even with a change of narrative.

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Link to news article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/

Article Summary: An investigative report has found that a new conspiracy called QAnon has gained a surprising number of followers, implying that it may not be as fringe of a movement as investigators previously thought. The conspiracy asserts that there is a corrupt cabal of world leaders who are secretly torturing children around the world while Q (a mystery intelligence insider) and Donald Trump are working tirelessly to thwart them.

Source Evaluation: Readers should be cognizant of the potential left-leaning bias of the article’s author and how the article’s length may make readers susceptible to selective exposure if they do not take time to process the whole piece.

Class Connection: When examining complex conspiracies like QAnon, it can be tempting to oversimplify the complex issue by discounting its believers as unintelligent. But an understanding of the psychology of politics adds nuance to the issue and helps us understand that QAnon believers are normal people caught in the misinformation echo chamber who engage in the same dissonance-relieving heuristics to which all humans are prone. We can better understand the rise of QAnon by recognizing that its believers likely engage in selective exposure, selective attention, selective interpretation, or motivated reasoning to ease the dissonance they may feel when reality is not in line with their conspiratorial beliefs.

External Source: This podcast from The New York Times includes interviews with some QAnon conspiracy theorists after Joe Biden was inaugurated. Some of the people interviewed are the same ones interviewed by LaFrance in The Atlantic article. The interviews offer a firsthand account of how QAnon believers tried to ease their cognitive dissonance when Joe Biden was inaugurated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/podcasts/the-daily/qanon-conspiracy-theory-trump.html

-- Will Slatin

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If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler's plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look-which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don't care. You know that a small group of manipulators, operating in the shadows, pull the planet's strings. You know that they are powerful enough to abuse children without fear of retribution. You know that the mainstream media are their handmaidens, in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the secretive denizens of the deep state. You know that only Donald Trump stands between you and a damned and ravaged world. You see plague and pestilence sweeping the planet, and understand that they are part of the plan. You know that a clash between good and evil cannot be avoided, and you yearn for the Great Awakening that is coming. And so you must be on guard at all times. You must shield your ears from the scorn of the ignorant. You must find those who are like you. And you must be prepared to fight. You know all this because you believe in Q.
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I. GENESIS

The origins of QAnon are recent, but even so, separating myth from reality can be hard. One place to begin is with Edgar Maddison Welch, a deeply religious father of two, who until Sunday, December 4, 2016, had lived an unremarkable life in the small town of Salisbury, North Carolina. That morning, Welch grabbed his cellphone, a box of shotgun shells, and three loaded guns-a 9-mm AR-15 rifle, a six-shot .38‑caliber Colt revolver, and a shotgun-and hopped into his Toyota Prius. He drove 360 miles to a well-to-do neighborhood in Northwest Washington, D.C.; parked his car; put the revolver in a holster at his hip; held the AR-15 rifle across his chest; and walked through the front door of a pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong.

Comet happens to be the place where, on a Sunday afternoon two years earlier, my then-baby daughter tried her first-ever sip of water. Kids gather there with their parents and teammates after soccer games on Saturdays, and local bands perform on the weekends. In the back, children challenge their grandparents to Ping-Pong matches as they wait for their pizzas to come out of the big clay oven in the middle of the restaurant. Comet Ping Pong is a beloved spot in Washington.

That day, people noticed Welch right away. An AR-15 rifle makes for a conspicuous sash in most social settings, but especially at a place like Comet. As parents, children, and employees rushed outside, many still chewing, Welch began to move through the restaurant, at one point attempting to use a butter knife to pry open a locked door, before giving up and firing several rounds from his rifle into the lock. Behind the door was a small computer-storage closet. This was not what he was expecting.

Welch had traveled to Washington because of a conspiracy theory known, now famously, as Pizzagate, which claimed that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. The idea originated in October 2016, when WikiLeaks made public a trove of emails stolen from the account of John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and then the chair of Clinton's presidential campaign; Comet was mentioned repeatedly in exchanges Podesta had with the restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, and others. The emails were mainly about fundraising events, but high-profile pro-Donald Trump figures such as Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones began advancing the claim-which originated in trollish corners of the internet (such as 4chan) and then spread to more accessible precincts (Twitter, YouTube)-that the emails were proof of ritualistic child abuse. Some conspiracy theorists asserted that it was taking place in the basement at Comet, where there is no basement. References in the emails to "pizza" and "pasta" were interpreted as code words for "girls" and "little boys."

Shortly after Trump's election, as Pizzagate roared across the internet, Welch started binge-watching conspiracy-theory videos on YouTube. He tried to recruit help from at least two people to carry out a vigilante raid, texting them about his desire to sacrifice "the lives of a few for the lives of many" and to fight "a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard." When Welch finally found himself inside the restaurant and understood that Comet Ping Pong was just a pizza shop, he set down his firearms, walked out the door, and surrendered to police, who had by then secured the perimeter. "The intel on this wasn't 100 percent," Welch told The New York Times after his arrest.

Welch seems to have sincerely believed that children were being held at Comet Ping Pong. His family and friends wrote letters to the judge on his behalf, describing him as a dedicated father, a devout Christian, and a man who went out of his way to care for others. Welch had trained as a volunteer firefighter. He had gone on an earthquake-response mission to Haiti with the local Baptist Men's Association. A friend from his church wrote, "He exhibits the actions of a person who strives to learn biblical truth and apply it." Welch himself expressed what seemed like genuine remorse, saying in a handwritten note submitted to the judge by his lawyers: "It was never my intention to harm or frighten innocent lives, but I realize now just how foolish and reckless my decision was." He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Pizzagate seemed to fade. Some of its most visible proponents, such as Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist who is now a correspondent for the pro-Trump cable-news channel One America News Network, backed away. Facing the specter of legal action by Alefantis, Alex Jones, who runs the conspiracy-theory website Infowars and hosts an affiliated radio show, apologized for promoting Pizzagate.
Read: The lasting trauma of Alex Jones's lies
While Welch may have expressed regret, he gave no indication that he had stopped believing the underlying Pizzagate message: that a cabal of powerful elites was abusing children and getting away with it. Judging from a surge of activity on the internet, many others had found ways to move beyond the Comet Ping Pong episode and remain focused on what they saw as the larger truth. If you paid attention to the right voices on the right websites, you could see in real time how the core premises of Pizzagate were being recycled, revised, and reinterpreted. The millions of people paying attention to sites like 4chan and Reddit could continue to learn about that secretive and untouchable cabal; about its malign actions and intentions; about its ties to the left wing and specifically to Democrats and especially to Clinton; about its bloodlust and its moral degeneracy. You could also-and this would prove essential-read about a small but swelling band of underground American patriots fighting back.

All of this, taken together, defined a worldview that would soon have a name: QAnon, derived from a mysterious figure, "Q," posting anonymously on 4chan. QAnon does not possess a physical location, but it has an infrastructure, a literature, a growing body of adherents, and a great deal of merchandising. It also displays other key qualities that Pizzagate lacked. In the face of inconvenient facts, it has the ambiguity and adaptability to sustain a movement of this kind over time. For QAnon, every contradiction can be explained away; no form of argument can prevail against it.

Conspiracy theories are a constant in American history, and it is tempting to dismiss them as inconsequential. But as the 21st century has progressed, such a dismissal has begun to require willful blindness. I was a city-hall reporter for a local investigative-news site called Honolulu Civil Beat in 2011 when Donald Trump was laying the groundwork for a presidential run by publicly questioning whether Barack Obama had been born in Hawaii, as all facts and documents showed. Trump maintained that Obama had really been born in Africa, and therefore wasn't a natural-born American-making him ineligible for the highest office. I remember the debate in our Honolulu newsroom: Should we even cover this "birther" madness? As it turned out, the allegations, based entirely on lies, captivated enough people to give Trump a launching pad.

Nine years later, as reports of a fearsome new virus suddenly emerged, and with Trump now president, a series of ideas began burbling in the QAnon community: that the coronavirus might not be real; that if it was, it had been created by the "deep state," the star chamber of government officials and other elite figures who secretly run the world; that the hysteria surrounding the pandemic was part of a plot to hurt Trump's reelection chances; and that media elites were cheering the death toll. Some of these ideas would make their way onto Fox News and into the president's public utterances. As of late last year, according to The New York Times, Trump had retweeted accounts often focused on conspiracy theories, including those of QAnon, on at least 145 occasions.
Read: The coronavirus conspiracy boom
The power of the internet was understood early on, but the full nature of that power-its ability to shatter any semblance of shared reality, undermining civil society and democratic governance in the process-was not. The internet also enabled unknown individuals to reach masses of people, at a scale Marshall McLuhan never dreamed of. The warping of shared reality leads a man with an AR-15 rifle to invade a pizza shop. It brings online forums into being where people colorfully imagine the assassination of a former secretary of state. It offers the promise of a Great Awakening, in which the elites will be routed and the truth will be revealed. It causes chat sites to come alive with commentary speculating that the coronavirus pandemic may be the moment QAnon has been waiting for. None of this could have been imagined as recently as the turn of the century.

QAnon is emblematic of modern America's susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and its enthusiasm for them. But it is also already much more than a loose collection of conspiracy-minded chat-room inhabitants. It is a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. And we are likely closer to the beginning of its story than the end. The group harnesses paranoia to fervent hope and a deep sense of belonging. The way it breathes life into an ancient preoccupation with end-times is also radically new. To look at QAnon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion.

Many people were reluctant to speak with me about QAnon as I reported this story. The movement's adherents have sometimes proved willing to take matters into their own hands. Last year, the FBI classified QAnon as a domestic-terror threat in an internal memo. The memo took note of a California man arrested in 2018 with bomb-making materials. According to the FBI, he had planned to attack the Illinois capitol to "make Americans aware of 'Pizzagate' and the New World Order (NWO) who were dismantling society." The memo also took note of a QAnon follower in Nevada who was arrested in 2018 after blocking traffic on the Hoover Dam in an armored truck. The man, heavily armed, was demanding the release of the inspector general's report on Hillary Clinton's emails. The FBI memo warned that conspiracy theories stoke the threat of extremist violence, especially when individuals "claiming to act as 'researchers' or 'investigators' single out people, businesses, or groups which they falsely accuse of being involved in the imagined scheme."
Read: Instagram is full of conspiracy theories and extremism
QAnon adherents are feared for ferociously attacking skeptics online and for inciting physical violence. On a now-defunct Reddit board dedicated to QAnon, commenters took delight in describing Clinton's potential fate. One person wrote: "I'm surprised no one has assassinated her yet honestly." Another: "The buzzards rip her rotting corpse to shreds." A third: "I want to see her blood pouring down the gutters!"

When I spoke with Clinton recently about QAnon, she said, "I just get under their skin unlike anybody else ... If I didn't have Secret Service protection going through my mail, finding weird stuff, tracking the threats against me-which are still very high-I would be worried." She has come to realize that the invented reality in which conspiracy theorists place her is not some bizarre parallel universe but actually one that shapes our own. Referring to internet trolling operations, Clinton said, "I don't think until relatively recently most people understood how well organized they were, and how many different components of their strategy they have put in place."

II. REVELATION

On October 28, 2017, the anonymous user now widely referred to as "Q" appeared for the first time on 4chan, a so-called image board that is known for its grotesque memes, sickening photographs, and brutal teardown culture. Q predicted the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton and a violent uprising nationwide, posting this:

HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M's will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.

And then this:

Mockingbird HRC detained, not arrested (yet). Where is Huma? Follow Huma. This has nothing to do w/ Russia (yet). Why does Potus surround himself w/ generals? What is military intelligence? Why go around the 3 letter agencies? What Supreme Court case allows for the use of MI v Congressional assembled and approved agencies? Who has ultimate authority over our branches of military w/o approval conditions unless 90+ in wartime conditions? What is the military code? Where is AW being held? Why? POTUS will not go on tv to address nation. POTUS must isolate himself to prevent negative optics. POTUS knew removing criminal rogue elements as a first step was essential to free and pass legislation. Who has access to everything classified? Do you believe HRC, Soros, Obama etc have more power than Trump? Fantasy. Whoever controls the office of the Presidency controls this great land. They never believed for a moment they (Democrats and Republicans) would lose control. This is not a R v D battle. Why did Soros donate all his money recently? Why would he place all his funds in a RC? Mockingbird 10.30.17 God bless fellow Patriots.

Clinton was not arrested on October 30, but that didn't deter Q, who continued posting ominous predictions and cryptic riddles-with prompts like "Find the reflection inside the castle"-often written in the form of tantalizing fragments and rhetorical questions. Q made it clear that he wanted people to believe he was an intelligence officer or military official with Q clearance, a level of access to classified information that includes nuclear-weapons design and other highly sensitive material. (I'm using he because many Q followers do, though Q remains anonymous-hence "QAnon.") Q's tone is conspiratorial to the point of cliché: "I've said too much," and "Follow the money," and "Some things must remain classified to the very end."
The destruction of the global cabal is imminent, Q prophesies. One of his favorite rallying cries is "Enjoy the show"-a reference to a coming apocalypse.
What might have languished as a lonely screed on a single image board instead incited fervor. Its profile was enhanced, according to Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins of NBC News, by several conspiracy theorists whose promotion of Q in turn helped build up their own online profiles. By now, nearly three years since Q's original messages appeared, there have been thousands of what his followers call "Q drops"-messages posted to image boards by Q. He uses a password-protected "tripcode," a series of letters and numbers visible to other image-board users to signal the continuity of his identity over time. (Q's tripcode has changed on occasion, prompting flurries of speculation.) As Q has moved from one image board to the next-from 4chan to 8chan to 8kun, seeking a safe harbor-QAnon adherents have only become more devoted. If the internet is one big rabbit hole containing infinitely recursive rabbit holes, QAnon has somehow found its way down all of them, gulping up lesser conspiracy theories as it goes.
From the September 2017 issue: How America lost its mind
In its broadest contours, the QAnon belief system looks something like this: Q is an intelligence or military insider with proof that corrupt world leaders are secretly torturing children all over the world; the malefactors are embedded in the deep state; Donald Trump is working tirelessly to thwart them. ("These people need to ALL be ELIMINATED," Q wrote in one post.) The eventual destruction of the global cabal is imminent, Q prophesies, but can be accomplished only with the support of patriots who search for meaning in Q's clues. To believe Q requires rejecting mainstream institutions, ignoring government officials, battling apostates, and despising the press. One of Q's favorite rallying cries is "You are the news now." Another is "Enjoy the show," a phrase that his disciples regard as a reference to a coming apocalypse: When the world as we know it comes to an end, everyone's a spectator.

People who have taken Q to heart like to say they've been paying attention from the very beginning, the way someone might brag about having listened to Radiohead before The Bends. A promise of foreknowledge is part of Q's appeal, as is the feeling of being part of a secret community, which is reinforced through the use of acronyms and ritual phrases such as "Nothing can stop what is coming" and "Trust the plan."

One phrase that serves as a special touchstone among QAnon adherents is "the calm before the storm." Q first used it a few days after his initial post, and it arrived with a specific history. On the evening of October 5, 2017-not long before Q first made himself known on 4chan-President Trump stood beside the first lady in a loose semicircle with 20 or so senior military leaders and their spouses for a photo in the State Dining Room at the White House. Reporters had been invited to watch as Trump's guests posed and smiled. Trump couldn't seem to stop talking. " You guys know what this represents? " he asked at one point, tracing an incomplete circle in the air with his right index finger. "Tell us, sir," one onlooker replied. The president's response was self-satisfied, bordering on a drawl: "Maybe it's the calm before the storm."

"What's the storm?" one of the journalists asked.

"Could be the calm-the calm before the storm," Trump said again. His repetition seemed to be for dramatic effect. The whir of camera shutters grew louder.

The reporters became insistent: "What storm, Mr. President?"

A curt response from Trump: "You'll find out."

Those 37 seconds of presidential ambiguity made headlines right away-relations with Iran had been tense in recent days-but they would also become foundational lore for eventual followers of Q. The president's circular hand gesture is of particular interest to them. You may think he was motioning to the semicircle gathered around him, they say, but he was really drawing the letter Q in the air. Was Trump playing the role of John the Baptist, proclaiming what was to come? Was he himself the anointed one?
Read: Covfefe and the real meaning of a Trump typo turned meme
It's impossible to know the number of QAnon adherents with any precision, but the ranks are growing. At least 35 current or former congressional candidates have embraced Q, according to an online tally by the progressive nonprofit Media Matters for America. Those candidates have either directly praised QAnon in public or approvingly referenced QAnon slogans. (One Republican candidate for Congress, Matthew Lusk of Florida, includes QAnon under the "issues" section of his campaign website, posing the question: " Who is Q?") QAnon has by now made its way onto every major social and commercial platform and any number of fringe sites. Tracy Diaz, a QAnon evangelist, known online by the name TracyBeanz, has 185,000 followers on Twitter and more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers. She helped lift QAnon from obscurity, facilitating its transition to mainstream social media. (A publicist described Diaz as "really private" and declined requests for an interview.) On TikTok, videos with the hashtag #QAnon have garnered millions of views. There are too many QAnon Facebook groups, plenty of them ghost towns, to do a proper count, but the most active ones publish thousands of items each day. (In 2018, Reddit banned QAnon groups from its platform for inciting violence.)

Adherents are ever looking out for signs from on high, plumbing for portents when guidance from Q himself is absent. The coronavirus, for instance-what does it signify? In several of the big Facebook groups, people erupted in a frenzy of speculation, circulating a theory that Trump's decision to wear a yellow tie to a White House briefing about the virus was a sign that the outbreak wasn't real: "He is telling us there is no virus threat because it is the exact same color as the maritime flag that represents the vessel has no infected people on board," someone wrote in a post that was widely shared and remixed across social media. Three days before the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus a pandemic, Trump was retweeting a QAnon-themed meme. "Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!" the president wrote on March 8, sharing a Photoshopped image of himself playing a violin overlaid with the words "Nothing can stop what is coming."
From the March 2020 issue: The billion-dollar disinformation campaign to reelect the president
On March 9, Q himself issued a triptych of ominous posts that seemed definitive: The coronavirus is real, but welcome, and followers should not be afraid. The first post shared Trump's tweet from the night before and repeated, "Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming." The second said: "The Great Awakening is Worldwide." The third was simple: "GOD WINS."

A month later, on April 8, Q went on a posting spree, dropping nine posts over the span of six hours and touching on several of his favorite topics-God, Pizzagate, and the wickedness of the elites. "They will stop at nothing to regain power," he wrote in one scathing post that alleged a coordinated propaganda effort by Democrats, Hollywood, and the media. Another accused Democrats of promoting "mass hysteria" about the coronavirus for political gain: "What is the primary benefit to keep public in mass-hysteria re: COVID‑19? Think voting. Are you awake yet? Q." And he shared these verses from Ephesians: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil."

Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has become an object of scorn among QAnon supporters who don't like the bad news he delivers or the way he has contradicted Trump publicly. In one March press conference, Trump referred to the State Department as the "Deep State Department," and Fauci could be seen over the president's shoulder, suppressing a laugh and covering his face. By then, QAnon had already declared Fauci irredeemably compromised, because WikiLeaks had unearthed a pair of emails he sent praising Hillary Clinton in 2012 and 2013. Sentiment about Fauci among QAnon supporters on social-media platforms ranges from "Fauci is a Deep State puppet" to "FAUCI is a BLACKHAT!!!"-the term QAnon uses for people who support the evil cabal that Q warns about. One person, using the hashtags #DeepStateCabal and #Qanon, tweeted this: "Watch Fauci's hand signals and body language at the press conferences. What is he communicating?" Another shared an image of Fauci standing in a lab with Barack Obama, with the caption "Obama and 'Dr.' Fauci in the lab creating coronovirus [ sic]. #DeepstateDoctor." The Justice Department recently approved heightened security measures for Fauci because of the mounting volume of threats against him.
Read: If someone shares the 'Plandemic' video, how should you respond?
In the final days before Congress passed a $2 trillion economic-relief package in late March, Democrats insisted on provisions that would make it easier for people to vote by mail, prompting Q himself to weigh in with dismay: "These people are sick! Nothing can stop what is coming. Nothing."

III. BELIEVERS

On a bone-cold Thursday in early January, a crowd was swelling in downtown Toledo, Ohio. By lunchtime, seven hours before the start of Trump's first campaign rally of the new year, the line to get into the Huntington Center had already snaked around two city blocks. The air was electric with possibility, and the whole scene possessed a Jimmy Buffett-meets-Michigan Militia atmosphere: lots of white people, a good deal of vaping, red-white-and-blue everything. Down the street, someone had affixed a two-story banner across the top of a burned-out brick building. It read: president trump, welcome to toledo, ohio: who is q ... military intelligence? q+? ("Q+" is QAnon shorthand for Trump himself.) Vendors at the event were selling Q buttons and T-shirts. QAnon merchandise comes in a great variety; online, you can buy Great Awakening coffee ($14.99) and QAnon bracelets with tiny silver pizza charms ($20.17).

I worked my way toward the back of the line, making small talk and asking who, if anyone, knew anything about QAnon. One woman's eyes lit up, and in a single fluid motion she unzipped and removed her jacket, then did a little jump so that her back was to me. I could see a Q made out of duct tape, which she'd pressed onto her red T-shirt. Her name was Lorrie Shock, and the first thing she wanted me to know was this: "We're not a domestic-terror group."

Shock was born in Ohio and never left, "a lifer," as she put it. She had worked at a Bridgestone factory, making car parts, for most of her adult life. "Real hot and dirty work, but good money," she told me. "I got three kids through school." Today, in what she calls her preretirement job, she cares for adults with special needs, spending her days in a tender routine of playing games with them and helping them in and out of a swimming pool. Shock came to the Trump rally with her friend Pat Harger, who had retired after 32 years at Whirlpool. Harger's wife runs a catering business, which is what had kept her from attending the rally that day. Harger and Shock are old friends. "Since the fourth grade," Harger told me, "and we're 57 years old."

Now that Shock's girls are grown and she's not working a factory job, she has more time for herself. That used to mean reading novels in the evening-she doesn't own a television-but now it means researching Q, who first came to her notice when someone she knew mentioned him on Facebook in 2017: "What caught my attention was 'research.' Do your own research. Don't take anything for granted. I don't care who says it, even President Trump. Do your own research, make up your own mind."
Read: Trump needs conspiracy theories
The QAnon universe is sprawling and deep, with layer upon layer of context, acronyms, characters, and shorthand to learn. The "castle" is the White House. "Crumbs" are clues. CBTS stands for "calm before the storm," and WWG1WGA stands for "Where we go one, we go all," which has become an expression of solidarity among Q followers. (Both of these phrases, oddly, are used in the trailer for the 1996 Ridley Scott film White Squall- watch it on YouTube, and you'll see that the comments section is flooded with pro-Q sentiment.) There is also a "Q clock," which refers to a calendar some factions of Q supporters use to try to decode supposed clues based on time stamps of Q drops and Trump tweets.

At the height of her devotion, Shock was spending four to six hours a day reading and rereading Q drops, scouring documents online, taking notes. Now, she says, she spends closer to an hour or two a day. "When I first started, everybody thought I was crazy," Shock said. That included her daughters, who are "very liberal Hillary and Bernie supporters," Shock said. "I still love them. They think I'm crazy, but that's all right."

Harger, too, once thought Shock had lost it. "I was doubting her," he told me. "I would send her texts saying, Lorrie."

"He was like, 'What the hell?' " Shock said, laughing. "So my comment to him would be 'Do your own research.' "

"And I did," Harger said. "And it's like, Wow."

Taking a page from Trump's playbook, Q frequently rails against legitimate sources of information as fake. Shock and Harger rely on information they encounter on Facebook rather than news outlets run by journalists. They don't read the local paper or watch any of the major television networks. "You can't watch the news," Shock said. "Your news channel ain't gonna tell us shit." Harger says he likes One America News Network. Not so long ago, he used to watch CNN, and couldn't get enough of Wolf Blitzer. "We were glued to that; we always have been," he said. "Until this man, Trump, really opened our eyes to what's happening. And Q. Q is telling us beforehand the stuff that's going to happen." I asked Harger and Shock for examples of predictions that had come true. They could not provide specifics and instead encouraged me to do the research myself. When I asked them how they explained the events Q had predicted that never happened, such as Clinton's arrest, they said that deception is part of Q's plan. Shock added, "I think there were more things that were predicted that did happen." Her tone was gentle rather than indignant.
"I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction."
Harger wanted me to know that he'd voted for Obama the first time around. He grew up in a family of Democrats. His dad was a union guy. But that was before Trump appeared and convinced Harger that he shouldn't trust the institutions he always thought he could. Shock nodded alongside him. "The reason I feel like I can trust Trump more is, he's not part of the establishment," she said. At one point, Harger told me I should look into what happened to John F. Kennedy Jr.-who died in 1999, when his airplane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard-suggesting that Hillary Clinton had had him assassinated. (Alternatively, a contingent of QAnon believers say that JFK Jr. faked his death and that he's a behind-the-scenes Trump supporter, and possibly even Q himself. Some anticipate his dramatic public return so that he can serve as Trump's running mate in 2020.) When I asked Harger whether there's any evidence to support the assassination claim, he flipped my question around: "Is there any evidence not to?"

Reading Shock's Facebook page is an exercise in contradictions, a toggling between banality and hostility. There she is in a yellow kayak in her profile photo, bright-red hair spilling out of a ski hat, a giant smile on her face. There are the photos of her daughters, and of a granddaughter with Shirley Temple curls. Yet Q is never far away. On Christmas Eve, Shock shared one post that seemed to come straight out of the QAnon universe but also pulled in an older, classic conspiracy: "X marks the spot over Roswell NM. X17 Fifth Force Particle. X + Q Coincidence?" That same day, she shared a separate post suggesting that Michelle Obama is secretly a man. Someone responded with skepticism: "I am still not convinced. She shows and acts evil, but a man?" Shock's reply: "Research it." There was a post claiming that Representative Adam Schiff had raped the body of a dead boy at the Chateau Marmont, in Los Angeles-Harger shows up here, with a "huh??" in the comments-and a warning that George Soros was going after Christian evangelicals. In other posts, Shock playfully taunted "libs" and her "Trump-hating friends," and also shared a video of her daughter singing Christmas carols.
Peter Beinart: Trump's fantasy world got him into this
In Toledo, I asked Shock if she had any theories about Q's identity. She answered immediately: "I think it's Trump." I asked if she thinks Trump even knows how to use 4chan. The message board is notoriously confusing for the uninitiated, nothing like Facebook and other social platforms designed to make it easy to publish quickly and often. "I think he knows way more than what we think," she said. But she also wanted me to know that her obsession with Q wasn't about Trump. This had been something she was reluctant to speak about at first. Now, she said, "I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction. I feel like if it was deceitful, in my spirit, God would be telling me, 'Enough's enough.' But I don't feel that. I pray about it. I've said, 'Father, should I be wasting my time on this?' ... And I don't feel that feeling of I should stop."

Arthur Jones, the director of the documentary film Feels Good Man, which tells the story of how internet memes infiltrated politics in the 2016 presidential election, told me that QAnon reminds him of his childhood growing up in an evangelical-Christian family in the Ozarks. He said that many people he knew then, and many people he meets now in the most devout parts of the country, are deeply interested in the Book of Revelation, and in trying to unpack "all of its pretty-hard-to-decipher prophecies." Jones went on: "I think the same kind of person would all of a sudden start pulling at the threads of Q and start feeling like everything is starting to fall into place and make sense. If you are an evangelical and you look at Donald Trump on face value, he lies, he steals, he cheats, he's been married multiple times, he's clearly a sinner. But you are trying to find a way that he is somehow part of God's plan."

You can't always tell what kind of Q follower you're encountering. Anyone using a Q hashtag could be a true believer, like Shock, or simply someone cruising a site and playing along for a vicarious thrill. Surely there are people who know that Q is a fantasy but participate because there's an element of QAnon that converges with a live-action role-playing game. In the sprawling constellation of Q supporters, Shock and Harger seem prototypical. They happened upon Q and something clicked. The fable plugged neatly into their existing worldview.

IV. PROFESSIONALS

Q may be anonymous, but leaders of the QAnon movement have emerged in public and built their own large audiences. David Hayes is better known by his online handle: PrayingMedic. In his YouTube videos, he exudes the even-keeled authoritarian energy of a middle-school principal. PrayingMedic is one of the best-known QAnon evangelists on the planet. He has more than 300,000 Twitter followers and a similar number of YouTube subscribers. Hayes, a former paramedic, lives in a terra-cotta-roofed subdivision in Gilbert, Arizona, with his wife, Denise, an artist whom he met on the dating site Christian Mingle in 2007. Both describe themselves as former atheists who came to their faith in God, and to each other, late in life, after previous marriages. Hayes has been following Q since the beginning, or close to it. "Q Anon is pretty darn interesting," he wrote on his Facebook page on December 12, 2017, six weeks after Q's first post on 4chan. That same day, he wrote about a sudden calling he felt:

My dreams have suggested that God wants me to keep my attention focused on politics and current events. After some prayer, I've decided to do a regular news and current events show on Periscope. I'm trying to do one broadcast a day. (The videos are also being posted to my Youtube channel.) That is all.

Hayes is a superstar in the Q universe. His video "Q for Beginners Part 1" has been viewed more than 1 million times. "Some of the people who follow Q would consider themselves to be conspiracy theorists," Hayes says in the video. "I do not consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist. I consider myself to be a Q researcher. I don't have anything against people who like to follow conspiracies. That's their thing. It's not my thing."

Hayes has developed a following in part because of his sheer ubiquity but also because he skillfully wears the mantle of a skeptic- I'm not one of those crazies. Hayes is not a QAnon hobbyist, though. He's a professional. There are income streams to be tapped, modest but expanding. On Amazon, Hayes's book Calm Before the Storm, the first in what he says could easily be a 10-book series of "Q Chronicles," sells for $15.29. Hayes writes in the introduction that he and Denise have devoted their attention full-time to QAnon since 2017. "Denise and I have been blessed by those who have helped support us while we set aside our usual work to research Q's messages," he wrote. He has published several other books, which offer a glimpse into an earlier life. The titles include Hearing God's Voice Made Simple, Defeating Your Adversary in the Court of Heaven, and American Sniper: Lessons in Spiritual Warfare. Hayes registered Praying Medic as a religious nonprofit in Washington State in 2018.
Read: The reason conspiracy videos work so well on YouTube
Hayes tells his followers that he thinks Q is an open-source intelligence operation, made possible by the internet and designed by patriots fighting corruption inside the intelligence community. His interpretation of Q is ultimately religious in nature, and centers on the idea of a Great Awakening. "I believe The Great Awakening has a double application," Hayes wrote in a blog post in November 2019.

It speaks of an intellectual awakening-the awareness by the public to the truth that we've been enslaved in a corrupt political system. But the exposure of the unimaginable depravity of the elites will lead to an increased awareness of our own depravity. Self-awareness of sin is fertile ground for spiritual revival. I believe the long-prophesied spiritual awakening lies on the other side of the storm.

Q followers agree that a Great Awakening lies ahead, and will bring salvation. They differ in their personal preoccupations with respect to the here and now. Some in the QAnon world are highly focused on what they perceive as degeneracy in the mainstream media, a perception fueled in equal measure by Q and by Trump. Others obsess over the intelligence community and the notion of a deep state. An active subsection of Q followers probes the Jeffrey Epstein case. There are those who claim knowledge of a 16-year plan by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to destroy the United States by means of mass drought, weaponized disease, food shortages, and nuclear war. During the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, some Q followers promoted the idea that Trump was secretly working with Robert Mueller, and that the special counsel's report would both exonerate Trump and lead to mass arrests of members of the corrupt cabal. (The eventual Mueller report, released in April 2019, neither exonerated Trump nor led to mass arrests.)

These divergent byways are elemental to QAnon's staying power-this is a very welcoming belief system, warm in its tolerance for contradiction-and are also what makes it possible for a practical man like Hayes to play the role that he does. QAnon is complex and confusing. People from all over the internet seek guidance from someone who seems levelheaded. (Hayes was quick to respond to my emails but declined requests for an interview. He complained to me that journalists refuse to see QAnon for what it really is, and therefore cannot be trusted.)

The most prominent QAnon figures have a presence beyond the biggest social-media platforms and image boards. The Q universe encompasses numerous blogs, proprietary websites, and types of chat software, as well as alternative social-media platforms such as Gab, the site known for anti-Semitism and white nationalism, where many people banned from Twitter have congregated. Vloggers and bloggers promote their Patreon accounts, where people can pay them in monthly sums. There's also money to be made from ads on YouTube. That seems to be the primary focus for Hayes, whose videos have been viewed more than 33 million times altogether. His "Q for Beginners" video includes ads from companies such as the vacation-rental site Vrbo and from The Epoch Times, an international pro-Trump newspaper. Q evangelists have taken a "publish everywhere" approach that is half outreach, half redundancy. If one platform cracks down on QAnon, as Reddit did, they won't have to start from scratch somewhere else. Already embroiled in the battle between good and evil, QAnon has involved itself in another battle-between the notion of an open web for the people and a gated internet controlled by a powerful few.

V. WHO IS Q?

Any new belief system runs into opposition. In December 2018, Matt Patten, a veteran SWAT-team sergeant in the Broward County Sheriff's Office, in Florida, was photographed with Vice President Mike Pence on an airport tarmac. Patten wore a patch on his tactical vest that bore the letter Q. The photograph was tweeted by the vice president's office and then went viral in the QAnon community. The tweet was quickly taken down. Patten was demoted. When I knocked on his door on a gloomy day in August, no one answered. But as I turned to leave, I noticed two large bumper stickers on the white mailbox out front. One said trump, and the other said #qanon: patriots fight.

Late last summer, Q himself lost his platform. He had migrated from 4chan (fearing that the site had been "infiltrated") to the image board 8chan, and then 8chan went dark. Three days before I stood on Patten's doorstep, 22 people had been killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and police revealed that the alleged killer had posted a manifesto on 8chan just before carrying out the attack. The episode had eerie similarities to two other shootings. Four months earlier, in April 2019, the suspected shooter in a murderous rampage at a synagogue in Poway, California, had posted an anti-Semitic letter on 8chan. Weeks before that, the man who killed 51 worshippers at two New Zealand mosques had posted a white-supremacist manifesto on 8chan.

After El Paso, 8chan's owner, Jim Watkins, was ordered to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Watkins had bought the site four years earlier from its founder, Fredrick Brennan, now 26, who eventually cut all ties to 8chan. "Regrettably, this is at least the third act of white supremacist extremist violence linked to your website this year," wrote Representatives Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama, when they summoned Watkins to Capitol Hill. "Americans deserve to know what, if anything, you, as the owner and operator, are doing to address the proliferation of extremist content on 8chan."

8chan had already lost crucial services, which had forced it to shut down. The CEO of Cloudflare, which had helped protect the site from cyberattacks, explained his decision to drop 8chan in an open letter after the El Paso shooting: "The rationale is simple: They have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths." Watkins promised to keep the site off the internet until after his congressional appearance. He is a former U.S. Army helicopter repairman who got into the business of websites while he was still in the military. Among other things, in 1997, he launched a successful porn site called Asian Bikini Bar. On his YouTube channel, where he posts under the username Watkins Xerxes, he frequently sings hymns, reads verses from the Bible, praises Trump, and touches on themes underlying QAnon-warning against the deep state and reminding his audience members that they are now "the actual reporting mechanism of the news." He also shows off his fountain-pen collection and practices yoga. When he arrived on Capitol Hill, in September 2019, Watkins wore a bulbous silver Q pinned to his collar. His testimony was behind closed doors. In November, 8chan flickered back to life as 8kun. It was sporadically accessible, limping along through a series of cyberattacks. It received assistance from a Russian hosting service that is typically associated with spreading malware. When Q reappeared on 8kun, he used the same tripcode that he had used on 8chan. He posted other hints meant to verify the continuity of his identity, including an image of a notebook and a pen that had appeared in earlier posts.

Fredrick Brennan's theory is that Jim and his son Ron, who is the site's administrator, knew 8kun needed Q to attract users. "I definitely, definitely, 100 percent believe that Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins, or was hired by Jim or Ron Watkins," Brennan told me. Jim and Ron have both denied knowing Q's identity. "I don't know who Q is," Ron told me in a direct message on Twitter. Jim told an interviewer on One America News Network in September 2019: "I don't know who QAnon is. Really, we run an anonymous website." Both insist that they care about maintaining 8kun only because it is a platform for unfettered free speech. "8kun is like a piece of paper, and the users decide what is written on it," Ron told me. "There are many different topics and users from many different backgrounds." But their interest in Q is well documented. In February, Jim started a super PAC called Disarm the Deep State, which echoes Q's messages and which is running paid ads on 8kun.
Renée DiResta: The conspiracies are coming from inside the house
Brennan has long been feuding with the Watkinses. Jim is suing Brennan for libel in the Philippines, where they both lived until recently, and Brennan is actively fighting Jim's attempts to become a naturalized citizen there. "They kept Q alive," Brennan told me. "We wouldn't be talking about this right now if Q didn't go on the new 8kun. The entire reason we're talking about this is they're directly related to Q. And, you know, I worry constantly that there is going to be, as early as November 2020, some kind of shooting or something related to Q if Trump loses. Or parents killing their children to save them from the hell-world that is to come because the deep state has won. These are real possibilities. I just feel like what they have done is totally irresponsible to keep Q going."

The story of Q is premised on the need for Q to remain anonymous. It's why Q originally picked 4chan, one of the last places built for anonymity on the social web. "I've often related Q to previous figures like John Titor or Satoshi Nakamoto," Brennan told me, referring to two legends of internet anonymity. Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the unknown creator of bitcoin. John Titor is the name used on several message boards in 2000 and 2001 by someone claiming to be a military time traveler from the year 2036.

QAnon adherents see Q's anonymity as proof of Q's credibility-despite their deep mistrust of unnamed sources in the media. Every faction of QAnon has its own hunches, alliances, and interpersonal dramas related to the question of Q's identity. The theories fit into three broad groups. In the first group are theories that assume Q is a single individual who has been posting all alone this entire time. This is where you'll find the people who say that Trump himself is Q, or even that PrayingMedic is Q. (This category also includes the possibility, raised by people outside of QAnon, that Q is a lone Trump supporter who started posting as a form of fan fiction, not realizing it would take off; and the idea that Q began posting in order to parody Trump and his supporters, not anticipating that people would take him seriously.) The second group of theories holds that the original Q posted continuously for a while, but then something changed. This second category includes Brennan's idea that the Watkinses are now paying Q, or are paying someone to carry on as Q, or are even acting as Q themselves. The third group of theories holds that Q is a collective, with a small number of people sharing access to the account. This third category includes the notion that Q is a new kind of open-source military-intelligence agency.

Many QAnon adherents see significance in Trump tweets containing words that begin with the letter Q. Recent world events have rewarded them amply. "I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom," Trump began one tweet on March 29. The day before, he had tweeted this: "I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE." The Q crowd seized on both tweets, arguing that if you ignore most of the letters in the messages, you'll find a confession from Trump: "I am ... Q."
Read: I was a teenage conspiracy theorist
VI. REASON VERSUS FAITH

In a Miami coffee shop last year, I met with a man who has gotten a flurry of attention in recent years for his research on conspiracy theories-a political-science professor at the University of Miami named Joseph Uscinski. I have known Uscinski for years, and his views are nuanced, deeply informed, and far from anything you would consider knee-jerk partisanship. Many people assume, he told me, that a propensity for conspiracy thinking is predictable along ideological lines. That's wrong, he explained. It's better to think of conspiracy thinking as independent of party politics. It's a particular form of mind-wiring. And it's generally characterized by acceptance of the following propositions: Our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places. Although we ostensibly live in a democracy, a small group of people run everything, but we don't know who they are. When big events occur-pandemics, recessions, wars, terrorist attacks-it is because that secretive group is working against the rest of us.

QAnon isn't a far-right conspiracy, the way it's often described, Uscinski went on, despite its obviously pro-Trump narrative. And that's because Trump isn't a typical far-right politician. Q appeals to people with the greatest attraction to conspiracy thinking of any kind, and that appeal crosses ideological lines.
QAnon carries on a tradition of apocalyptic thinking that has spanned thousands of years. It offers a polemic to empower those who feel adrift.
Many of the people most prone to believing conspiracy theories see themselves as victim-warriors fighting against corrupt and powerful forces. They share a hatred of mainstream elites. That helps explain why cycles of populism and conspiracy thinking seem to rise and fall together. Conspiracy thinking is at once a cause and a consequence of what Richard Hofstadter in 1964 famously described as "the paranoid style" in American politics. But do not make the mistake of thinking that conspiracy theories are scribbled only in the marginalia of American history. They color every major news event: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the moon landing, 9/11. They have helped sustain consequential eruptions, such as McCarthyism in the 1950s and anti-Semitism at any moment you choose. But QAnon is different. It may be propelled by paranoia and populism, but it is also propelled by religious faith. The language of evangelical Christianity has come to define the Q movement. QAnon marries an appetite for the conspiratorial with positive beliefs about a radically different and better future, one that is preordained.

That was part of the reason Uscinski's mother, Shelly, 62, was attracted to QAnon. Shelly, who lives in New Hampshire, was tooling around on YouTube a couple of years ago, looking for how-to videos-she can't remember for what, exactly, maybe a tutorial on how to get her car windows sparkling-clean-and the algorithm served up QAnon. She remembers a feeling of magnetic attraction. "Like, Wow, what is this? " she recalled when I spoke with her by phone. "For me, it was revealing some things that maybe I was hoping would come to pass." She sensed that Q knew her anxieties-as if someone was taking her train of thought and "actually verbalizing it." Shelly's frustrations are broad, and directed primarily at the institutions she sees as broken. She's fed up with the education system, the financial system, the media. "Even our churches are out of whack," she said. One of the things that resonated most with her about Q was his disgust with "the fake news." She gets her information mostly from Fox News, Twitter, and the New Hampshire Union Leader. "In my lifetime, I guess, things have gotten progressively worse," Shelly said. She added a little later: "Q gives us hope. And it's a good thing, to be hopeful."

Shelly likes that Q occasionally quotes from scripture, and she likes that he encourages people to pray. In the end, she said, QAnon is about something so much bigger than Trump or anyone else. "There are QAnon followers out there," Shelly said, "who suggest that what we're going through now, in this crazy political realm we're in now, with all of the things that are happening worldwide, is very biblical, and that this is Armageddon."
Read: The paranoid style in American entertainment
I asked her if she thinks the end of the world is upon us. "It wouldn't surprise me," she said.

Joseph Uscinski is disturbed by his mother's belief in QAnon. He's not comfortable talking about it. And Shelly doesn't quite appreciate the irony of the family's situation, because she doesn't believe QAnon is a form of conspiracy thinking in the first place. At one point in our conversation, when I referred to QAnon as a conspiracy theory, she quickly interrupted: "It's not a theory. It's the foretelling of things to come." She laughed hard when I asked if she had ever tried to get Joseph to believe in QAnon. The answer was an unequivocal no: "I'm his mom, so I love him."

VII. APOCALYPSE
Read: The normalization of conspiracy culture
Watchkeepers for the End of Days can easily find signs of impending doom-in comets and earthquakes, in wars and pandemics. It has always been this way. In 1831, a Baptist preacher in rural New York named William Miller began to publicly share his prediction that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent. Eventually he settled on a date: October 22, 1844. When the sun came up on October 23, his followers, known as the Millerites, were crushed. The episode would come to be known as the Great Disappointment. But they did not give up. The Millerites became the Adventists, who in turn became the Seventh-day Adventists, who now have a worldwide membership of more than 20 million. "These people in the QAnon community-I feel like they are as deeply delusional, as deeply invested in their beliefs, as the Millerites were," Travis View, one of the hosts of a podcast called QAnon Anonymous, which subjects QAnon to acerbic analysis, told me. "That makes me pretty confident that this is not something that is going to go away with the end of the Trump presidency."

QAnon carries on a tradition of apocalyptic thinking that has spanned thousands of years. It offers a polemic to empower those who feel adrift. In his classic 1957 book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the historian Norman Cohn examined the emergence of apocalyptic thinking over many centuries. He found one common condition: This way of thinking consistently emerged in regions where rapid social and economic change was taking place-and at periods of time when displays of spectacular wealth were highly visible but unavailable to most people. This was true in Europe during the Crusades in the 11th century, and during the Black Death in the 14th century, and in the Rhine Valley in the 16th century, and in William Miller's New York in the 19th century. It is true in America in the 21st century.

The Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are thriving religious movements indigenous to America. Do not be surprised if QAnon becomes another. It already has more adherents by far than either of those two denominations had in the first decades of their existence. People are expressing their faith through devoted study of Q drops as installments of a foundational text, through the development of Q-worshipping groups, and through sweeping expressions of gratitude for what Q has brought to their lives. Does it matter that we do not know who Q is? The divine is always a mystery. Does it matter that basic aspects of Q's teachings cannot be confirmed? The basic tenets of Christianity cannot be confirmed. Among the people of QAnon, faith remains absolute. True believers describe a feeling of rebirth, an irreversible arousal to existential knowledge. They are certain that a Great Awakening is coming. They'll wait as long as they must for deliverance.

Trust the plan. Enjoy the show. Nothing can stop what is coming.
This article appears in the June 2020 print edition with the headline "Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming." It was published online on May 14, 2020.

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If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler's plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen.

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Political Event Summary:
On January 6th, 2021, supporters of then President Donald J. Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building with the intent of halting the certification of the electoral college vote by Congress. Inspired by claims of voter fraud, the false notion that then Vice President Mike Pence could halt the election, and the dissatisfaction of Biden’s victory, these protestors turned violent and began destroying federal property and harassing Capitol police.

Source Evaluation:
The news source for this article is the Associated Press (AP News). Widely considered non-partisan in its reporting, the AP has been known to lean leftward on occasion. A number of fact-checking organizations have called the AP a centrist source. Still, some acknowledge its political coverage can lack sources and insert left-leaning opinions in some articles.

Connection to Class:
Despite the AP’s centrist reputation, a number of biases affect how we absorb this information including the hostile media effect. Those with strong preexisting (often partisan) doubts about the validity of the election are likely to view any media coverage of the January 6th insurrection as biased against them. Meanwhile those who had strong opinions about the uncompromised validity of the 2020 election likely view any media coverage as biased against them and not punitive enough towards insurrectionists. Arguments swirled around right-wing circles at the time that “Antifa” had orchestrated the insurrection because for many, the idea was what they wanted to believe. Rather than conclude that “law-and-order Republicans” had assaulted numerous officers and invaded a government building, it was easier to accept the conclusion that it simply was not Republicans. This motivated reasoning, in combination with the hostile media effect, helped calm the cognitive dissonance many experienced. In similar ways it affects those who, despite opposing the carceral system and perhaps even government, also believe that the rioters should be arrested or punished. Regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum, reactions to January 6th are impacted by attempts to relieve dissonance. This impacts consumption of news at the time of an event as well as any future references to the event.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - A violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers into hiding, in a stunning attempt to overturn America's presidential election, undercut the nation's democracy and keep Democrat Joe Biden from replacing Trump in the White House.

The nation's elected representatives scrambled to crouch under desks and don gas marks, while police futilely tried to barricade the building, one of the most jarring scenes ever to unfold in a seat of American political power. A woman was shot and killed inside the Capitol, and Washington's mayor instituted an evening curfew in an attempt to contain the violence.

The rioters were egged on by Trump, who has spent weeks falsely attacking the integrity of the election and had urged his supporters to descend on Washington to protest Congress' formal approval of Biden's victory. Some Republican lawmakers were in the midst of raising objections to the results on his behalf when the proceedings were abruptly halted by the mob.

Together, the protests and the GOP election objections amounted to an almost unthinkable challenge to American democracy and exposed the depths of the divisions that have coursed through the country during Trump's four years in office. Though the efforts to block Biden from being sworn in on Jan. 20 were sure to fail, the support Trump has received for his efforts to overturn the election results have badly strained the nation's democratic guardrails.

Congress reconvened in the evening, lawmakers decrying the protests that defaced the Capitol and vowing to finish confirming the Electoral College vote for Biden's election, even if it took all night. Shortly before 11 p.m., senators soundly defeated, by a 93-6 vote, the first objection, to election results from Arizona that had been raised by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

Vice President Mike Pence, reopening the Senate, directly addressed the demonstrators: "You did not win."

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the "failed insurrection" underscored lawmakers' duty to confirm the vote. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would show the world "what America is made of" by finishing the count.

The president gave his supporters a boost into action Wednesday morning at a rally outside the White House, where he urged them to march to the Capitol. He spent much of the afternoon in his private dining room off the Oval Office watching scenes of the violence on television. At the urging of his staff, he reluctantly issued a pair of tweets and a taped video telling his supporters it was time to "go home in peace" - yet he still said he backed their cause.

Hours later, Twitter for the first time time locked Trump's account, demanded that he remove tweets excusing violence and threatened "permanent suspension."

A somber President-elect Biden, two weeks away from being inaugurated, said American democracy was "under unprecedented assault, " a sentiment echoed by many in Congress, including some Republicans. Former President George W. Bush said he watched the events in "disbelief and dismay."

The domed Capitol building has for centuries been the scene of protests and occasional violence. But Wednesday's events were particularly astounding both because they unfolded at least initially with the implicit blessing of the president and because of the underlying goal of overturning the results of a free and fair presidential election.

Tensions were already running high when lawmakers gathered early Wednesday afternoon for the constitutionally mandated counting of the Electoral College results, in which Biden defeated Trump, 306-232. Despite pleas from Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, more than 150 GOP lawmakers planned to support objections to some of the results, though lacking evidence of fraud or wrongdoing in the election.

Trump spent the lead-up to the proceedings publicly hectoring Pence, who had a largely ceremonial role, to aid the effort to throw out the results. He tweeted: "Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!"

But Pence, in a statement shortly before presiding, defied Trump, saying he could not claim "unilateral authority" to reject the electoral votes that make Biden president.

In the aftermath, several Republicans announced they would drop their objections to the election, including Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who lost her bid for reelection Tuesday.

Earlier, protesters had fought past police and breached the building, shouting and waving Trump and American flags as they marched through the halls. Lawmakers were told to duck under their seats for cover and put on gas masks after tear gas was used in the Capitol Rotunda. Some House lawmakers tweeted they were sheltering in place in their offices.

Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., told reporters he was in the House chamber when rioters began storming it. Security officers "made us all get down, you could see that they were fending off some sort of assault." He said they had a piece of furniture up against the door. "And they had guns pulled," Peters said.

"And they just told us to take our pins off," he added, referring to lapel pins members wear so Capitol Police can quickly identify them. Then the lawmakers were evacuated.

Staff members grabbed the boxes of Electoral College votes as the evacuation took place. Otherwise, said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the ballots likely would have been destroyed by the protesters.

The woman who was killed was part of a crowd that was breaking down the doors to a barricaded room where armed officers stood on the other side, police said. She was struck in the chest and sent to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. Officials believe she was struck by law enforcement but were investigating.

Trump supporters posting on internet forums popular with far-right fringe elements celebrated the chaos. Messages posted on one turned from profane frustration over the content of Trump's speech to glee when supporters stormed the building. At least one leading figure was livestreaming video from inside the Capitol during the siege.

The mob's storming of Congress prompted outrage, mostly from Democrats but from Republicans as well, as lawmakers accused Trump of fomenting the violence with his relentless falsehoods about election fraud.

"Count me out," said Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "Enough is enough."

Several suggested that Trump be prosecuted for a crime, which seemed unlikely two weeks from when his term expires.

"I think Donald Trump probably should be brought up on treason for something like this," Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., told reporters. "This is how a coup is started. And this is how democracy dies."

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who's at times clashed with Trump, issued a statement saying, "Lies have consequences. This violence was the inevitable and ugly outcome of the President's addiction to constantly stoking division."

Despite Trump's repeated claims of voter fraud, election officials and his own former attorney general have said there were no problems on a scale that would change the outcome. All the states have certified their results as fair and accurate, by Republican and Democratic officials alike.

The Pentagon said about 1,100 District of Columbia National Guard members were being mobilized to help support law enforcement at the Capitol. More than a dozen people were arrested.

As darkness fell, law enforcement officers worked their way toward the protesters, using percussion grenades to clear the area around the Capitol. Big clouds of tear gas were visible. Police in full riot gear moved down the steps, clashing with demonstrators.

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Kevin Freking, Alan Fram, Matthew Daly, Ben Fox and Ashraf Khalil in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Pro-Trump mob storms US Capitol in bid to overturn election

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WASHINGTON (AP) - A violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers into hiding, in a stunning attempt to overturn America's presidential election, undercut the nation's democracy and keep Democrat Joe Biden from replacing Trump in the White House.

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Georgia House Passes Problematic Voting Bill

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Georgia House Passes Problematic Voting Bill

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Article: https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-house-approves-elections-bill-allowing-for-more-investigations/2RLL2O7IAFFBDE2TA2V5CWYJOQ/

Summary: Two weeks ago, the Georgia House passed a bill that would allow the Bureau of Investigators to investigate voter fraud allegations, make ballots public record, and diminish all donations from non-profit organizations in future elections.

Source Evaluation: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been evaluated as leaning left, and it's important to note that it's the only major newspaper in Atlanta, which is a majority Democrat and minority area. While the article is seemingly unbiased at first glance, the author chose to only pinpoint and focus on the negative parts of the bill that would be passed, despite the fact that the bill includes much more than the three main areas he focuses on. It's important to note that the parts of the bill he focuses on are the parts seemingly most opposed by Democratic respondents.

Class Connection: The decision to pass the bill was voted for, mostly, by Republican leaders. Their decision to support the bill was, most likely, driven by the misinformation that was spread by Donald Trump after the 2020 election, during which he made numerous claims and accusations that the election was rigged due to miscounts of votes and voter fraud. The Republican leaders have chosen to buy into this misinformation, which has led to the passing of a bill that violates voters' privacy and polices poll stations, mostly because they've fallen victim to the False-Consensus Effect. They refuse to believe in a situation where someone, whom they think is a competent leader and the obvious choice for most Americans, wasn't actually the first pick for the majority of Americans.

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Georgia House approves elections bill to allow for more investigations

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The Georgia House voted 98-73 on Tuesday to advance an elections bill that would empower the GBI to conduct election fraud investigations, allow public ballot inspections and restrict nonprofit election funding. The legislation, House Bill 1464, now advances to the state Senate.

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Ukrainian Snake Island soldiers are believed to be alive, but details of their captivity are unclear

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Ukrainian Snake Island soldiers are believed to be alive, but details of their captivity are unclear

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Article:
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/ukrainian-snake-island-soldiers-are-believed-to-be-alive-but-details-of-their-captivity-are-unclear/.

Summary:
On February 25th, in a radio communication of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island to Russian forces, they proclaimed,“Russian warship. Go f— yourself.” It was presumed that they died heroically with even Zelenssky honoring their deaths, but it was found out a few days later that they were still alive and in Russian custody.

Source Evaluation:
The news source, Poynter, operates on a bipartisan agenda, but it seems a lot more tailored to calling out false things conservatives say. Even more, in the few mentions of statements by liberals, PolitiFact deems what they say as true or mostly true. Additionally, the reports that the soldiers died heroically were initially issued from Ukraine. The later reports then came from Russian state media as well as Ukraine, hotly contesting the nature in which the soldiers were captured instead of killed. Anything coming out of Russia at this time is incredibly biased towards portraying Ukraine as weak and Russia as strong, so they insisted that the soldiers willingly surrendered. Ukraine wants to assert the opposite.

Class Connection:
This chain of events can be tied into what we’ve learned regarding political ads and their subsequent effects. Although what is happening isn’t directly being tied to a political election, this war propaganda and misinformation spreading seems to have a remarkably similar structure. Both Ukraine and Russia are attempting to run smear campaigns on each other all while bolstering their own self-images. While the ultimate purpose is winning a war instead of winning an election, the media-driven pathways to success are almost the same. The misinformation here probably led to decreased morale for Ukrainian citizens after learning that the inspiring people that “gave up their lives” to defend Ukraine were actually alive. It doesn’t even really matter the method of their capture, solely the fact that they were still alive took away some of the empowerment brought upon by the supposed sacrifice.

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Businesses oppose Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ ban on discussion of LGBTQ issues in public schools - Charlie Yeldham

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Businesses oppose Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ ban on discussion of LGBTQ issues in public schools - Charlie Yeldham

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^ This video describes a couple of the provisions in HB 1557  in additional to presenting several perspectives from parents and teachers on the morality of this bill.

Article Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/29/businesses-oppose-floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-banning-talk-of-lgbtq-issues-in-public-schools.html

Article Summary:
In March 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1557 into law, which explicitly bars public schools educators teaching kids in grades K-3 about LGBTQ+ issues. Accordingly, 45 businesses signaled opposition to this new law, most notably the Walt Disney Company, whose Walt Disney World theme park operates in Orlando, Florida.

Source Evaluation:
One can generally rely on CNBC to provide factual information in its articles; however, the source's relatively minor, but still pronounced liberal bias likely affects the way in which this article frames HB 1557 as well as the way it chooses which perspectives on which to focus.

Connection to a Class Concept:
The class concept to which this article is connects is the notion that emotions, namely anger, anxiety, fear, and enthusiasm, have driven political behavior and attitudes pertaining to HB 1557. Anger has motivated Americans to act and decreased trust in Floridian political institutions; anxiety has increased hyper-vigilance regarding LGBTQ+ rights in education, inspiring many demonstrations; fear has increased risk perception and reduced reliance on prior beliefs; and enthusiasm has more broadly increased political participation both in Florida and outside of the state.

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Parents And Teachers In Florida Debate So-Called “Don’t Say Gay” Bill

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Ketanji Brown Jackson: Outrage after she 'can't' define the word woman

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Ketanji Brown Jackson: Outrage after she 'can't' define the word woman

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Article: https://www.foxnews.com/media/outrage-ketanji-brown-jackson-tells-senators-woman-bizarre

Summary:
Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is posed to become the first Black woman and first former public defender to join the court. During her confirmation hearing process, Republican senators interrogated Jackson on her child-🤬 sentencing record, her record defending Guantanamo Bay detainees, and on several culture-war issues—like critical race theory and defining the word “woman.”

Source Evaluation:
Fox is a right-leaning institution and also surreptitiously often conflates their news stories with opinion-based stories. The article faces credibility issues because Fox chose to focus only on Jackson's response to the question (of defining "woman") as their sole coverage from her second day of questioning, and because Fox tried to link her response (or lack thereof) to her being an far-left extremist.

Connection to Class:
The confirmation bias theory can be applied to the author and Fox's framing of event--they want to understand the event as evidence of Judge Jackson being "radically woke" and "far left" because of their preexisting belief that she already is that. The selective exposure theory can then be applied to Fox viewers, who too likely hold the belief that she is a far-left liberal, and thus seek information that is consistent with this already-established belief. The Fundamental Attribution Error can also be applied to Fox attributing Judge Jackson's response to a personality-based explanation (that she is far-left and woke), rather than acknowledging the possibility that her response could've been due to the seemingly random nature of the question. Finally, Statement Bias in the media also seems present in how Fox covertly includes their opinions in news-based stories to viewers.

- Axel Motulsky

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The confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (Sean Chopra)

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The confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (Sean Chopra)

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https://youtu.be/xETm9mL9sJY

Article Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-hearings.html

Article Summary:
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has completed her testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearings were increasingly hostile as Republicans heavily pushed Jackson on her past record as a Judge and attorney.

Source Evaluation:
The article was published in the New York Times which is often accused of having a liberal bias. In this article the authors portray the Republican Senators in a mostly  negative light, calling their questioning "hostile" and 'bruising." It is important when reading the article to be able to identify when the authors are inserting their opinions and when they are simply reporting facts.

Class Connection:
Anger stemming from previous Supreme Court hearings likely played a big role in the Republicans' behavior this time around, which perhaps explains the dehumanization in the form of disrespect toward Judge Jackson. Republicans likely came into the hearings already holding preconceived views of Jackson and in line with motivated reasoning, rather than trying to be persuaded differently, they instead pushed their narrative and tried to prove they were right. Motivated reasoning likely played a role in Democrats treatment of her as well, as because they liked her and knew she is likely to behave the way they would want a Supreme Court Justice to behave, they will take their foot off the pedal in terms of asking hard questions and will instead seek to prop her up and make her look good.

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WATCH: Sen. Cotton questions Jackson on past representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees

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Political Event Summary:

As the economy plummets, and inflation is skyrocketing, there are different theories surrounding how much the Biden administration is to blame. This news segment features Fox News host Brian Kilmeade interviewing US Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart, ultimately placing blame on Biden for failing to make amends and repair our fragile economy.

Source Evaluation: Fox News is a conservative news service, notorious for its biased reporting in favor of the Republican party, its politicians, and its ideologies, while portraying the Democratic party in a negative light. Fox News vehemently denies bias in its reporting, claiming that its news reporting operates independently of right wing biases. However, countless evidence proves the contrary. Fox News is known for delivering news in a simplistic and entertaining way, providing millions of Republicans with an all-encompassing news platform. Fox News targets different people in different ways; For example, for those who are not very politically engaged, it provides them with a means with which to get involved, easily manipulating their political ideologies with a “fun” and simple delivery of current events. Fox News also fuels people who are staunchly Republican by confirming their attitudes and political ideologies and even stirring up more feelings of resentment by demonizing the Democratic party. In this way, Fox News is extremely divisive and wields a frightening amount of control over a platform of people who typically use it as their only news outlet.

Connection to a political psychological concept from class:

There are two main psychological concepts at play in this news segment– framing and consequently causal misattribution. The way in which the host (Brian Kilmeade) “frames'' his delivery of the information encourages misattribution within his viewers; in blaming the current state of our economy on the Biden administration, Brian is forcing a certain narrative and an over-simplified causal relation that doesn’t necessarily exist.

From just the headline of the News segment, we can already see how “framing” comes into play through charged language– “Biden administration needs to stop demonizing what we do: Oil and gas exec”. This is not a neutral description, it is a specific stance/opinion on why our economy is the way that it is. This is with the goal that the person consuming the news will interpret the event in a specific way. Brian Kilmeade starts off the interview with prompting questions, saying: “I really sense the anger in that– and now you’re being blamed for gouging. What is your reaction?”. Not only is he speaking on behalf of Tim Stewart, but he is immediately framing his statement to elicit an emotional response. He has put forth a particular narrative designed to provoke outrage and upset.

Moreover, president of US Oil and Gas Association Tim Stewart says that in order to “get back to where we were a year ago” the Biden administration needs to revoke some policies and “back track”. Here, he is framing his argument to put the White House in a negative light, ultimately perpetuating this misguided cause-effect situation in which people will believe that it is solely Biden’s fault that inflation is accelerating so rapidly. He doesn’t explicitly dismiss other factors at play, but he fails to mention a single one of them, merely framing the situation in terms of what the White House is failing to do. Stewart fails to mention that the president has limited control, framing his statement to say that our current economic state as if Biden is the only one who wields the ultimate power.

Brian Kilmeade indicates that it is solely the White House that is holding back progress, fueling his audience’s resentment against the government. Through statements like, “they need to stop demonizing what we do”, not only is he infusing what should be an unbiased news report with emotions and charged language, he is framing what is a much larger, complex situation in a way that labels conservatives as the victims and the democratic party as the perpetrators. Again, this is rocket fuel for causal misattribution.

Individuals’ causal accounts of national issues are influenced greatly by the delivery or “framing” of these issues on television. In this case, Brian’s explanations of this national issue powerfully affects his audience’s attitudes toward government. Causal thinking is so ingrained in the way humans process information and we like to have simple explanations for why something is happening. Kilmeade takes advantage of this psychological pitfall by forcing a more complex political issue into a simple cause-effect: the Biden administration is the sole cause for our current economic issues. We learned in class that opinions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors are organized around beliefs about causation, which is why this kind of narrative is so dangerous, especially when people use Fox News as their sole consumption of current events.

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Biden administration needs to stop 'demonizing what we do': Oil and gas exec

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American Dissonance: Why There is a Partisan Split on Opinions of Biden's Ukraine Response 

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American Dissonance: Why There is a Partisan Split on Opinions of Biden's Ukraine Response 

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Article Link: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/15/public-expresses-mixed-views-of-u-s-response-to-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/

Summary:
According to a national survey conducted by Pew Research of 10,441 Americans, there is a general bipartisan consensus on the actions the United States should take in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These points of agreement include working with European allies, continuing economic sanctions, and avoiding military action that would lead to World War. Despite supporting similar policy responses, there exists a major partisan divide in the public's opinion of the Biden administration's response.

Source Evaluation:
Pew Research is a highly credible, data-driven think-tank that typically does a good job at avoiding partisan bias. While the information provided is relatively objective, it is easy to attribute findings to varying biases/heuristics which may skew the way an individual interprets the data.

Connection to Class:
One possible explanation for the partisan divide over opinions of Biden's response to the invasion of Ukraine is media consumption and media bias. Specifically, as it relates to statement bias, the source through which an individual receives their information helps to shape narratives, create perceptions, and form opinions. If an individual who claims to be providing objective facts is actually littering their information with personal opinions, the viewer's opinion on that subject is likely to mimic the one provided, as opposed to having the ability to cognitively and rationally determine their own opinion. Therefore, it is a possibility that the partisan divide over Biden's response is not actually based on what Biden is doing, but rather on how the media is covering it. Issues with media bias are only enhanced by selective exposure and other tactics to avoid the cognitive dissonance that may come from admitting that Biden's response to Ukraine was objectively a failure or success.

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Thomas is the wife of sitting Associate Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, prompting serious concerns of his possible conflict of interest regarding 1/6/21

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Virginia Thomas' initiative to push Trump's Big Lie is unearthed.

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Virginia Thomas' initiative to push Trump's Big Lie is unearthed.

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Article:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ginni-thomas-mark-meadows-text-messages/index.html

In recent days, the January 6th House Select Committee discovered texts between conservative activist Virginia "Ginni" Thomas and Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The exchange between the two is making national headlines, as it becomes quite clear that Thomas was a staunch supporter of Former President Donald Trump, including his efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. In some of the texts, Thomas is angrily lashing out at American policymakers, most prominently, Former Vice President Mike Pence, in their refusal to facilitate overturning the election in Trump's favor. The matter has become particularly concerning for policymakers in Washington, as Thomas is married to a sitting Associate Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas, a Justice who is considered to be one of the most conservative on the court, has been a frequent supporter of arguments that are in favor of conservative causes. One such case in which he was the sole Justice who supported  the complainant was a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump to invoke "executive privilege" pertaining to thousands of documents that Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving the White House in January 2021. Thomas' ruling on this case (among others), coupled with his wife's intense activism in favor of the Former President and his conspiracy theories, have prompted grave concerns regarding Clarence Thomas' ability to remain impartial in cases related to the January 6th insurrection. Many see this as another threat to ensuring American democracy.

This article that I have selected, which essentially outlines everything that was just mentioned above, is not an op-ed or any type of opinionated piece. It truly just states the facts and the parties to the issue. With that being said, I believe that this article is one with generally strong credibility given that it is being presented as a nonpartisan, completely factual representation of a series of events and people. However, there does exist some issues when considering this article within the context of the current American political climate. CNN is a generally well-rounded source, but it is predominantly followed by people who see themselves as more liberal on the political spectrum. The media outlet is headquartered in a fairly liberal location (Atlanta, Georgia) and has widespread international connections. According to statistical organizations, CNN is one of the news outlets that most liberals name when asked to point to a news source that they mostly use for media consumption.  I thought it was worth noting that articles like this may not actually be as impartial as people think (at least by today's standards), as they tend to cater to a more liberal audience overall. So while this article is purely informative, it could also be construed by some as biased in favor of Democrats.

A concept from class that I thought would be worth connecting to Ginni Thomas' behavior was the idea of the Appraisal Theory of emotion. Something established by this Theory in particular was that emotions ultimately cause people to make political decisions in unique ways depending on the context–different from the choices that other individuals make. I felt that something relevant to the situation was the emotion of anger also outlined by this Theory. What was apparent in the exchange between Thomas and Meadows was that she was angry. Angry that the Big Lie was not being seen to fruition by all parties that had been loyal to Trump with the goal of getting the election overturned. There are some key points in which anger plays a role in political decision-making. Anger is generally associated with action, increases political engagement, decreases trust in political institutions, and prevents those from seeking additional quality news. Ultimately, all of these key points apply to Thomas in her task to get the election overturned. Thomas is generally reported to have been active in pressuring individuals in Trump's inner circle to jump on the band wagon in support of falsifying the results of the election while also having been reported to have attended at least one pro-Trump rally. Her continued support of conspiracy theories in favor of Trump show her decreased trust in American political institutions. Additionally, while the article does not cover this directly, there is the implication that she would not have been searching for other types of quality news that would be factual as it may actually counter her already existing beliefs.

--Jacob Hammer

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The historic turnout at the 2020 election was historic, here is why:

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The historic turnout at the 2020 election was historic, here is why:

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Article:
https://www.cfr.org/blog/2020-election-numbers

Summary:

Article Summary
Joe Biden and Donald Trump had very different paths to their nominations for president in 2020. While Donald Trump had next to no competition, Joe Biden was considered all but out after the first two primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Only through hard work campaigning in minority-heavy states like South Carolina did Joe Biden gather enough momentum to beat his main challenger Bernie Sanders. The 2020 election between Biden and Trump was the largest voter turnout ever and the largest in terms of the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in 120 years.  Why?

Source Evaluation
The Council for Foreign Relations is a New York think tank focused on international relations. Their propensity for factual reporting is widely recognized, and according to Media Bias Fact Check, they haven't failed a fact check in five years.  While they are self-described as nonpartisan and they are seen as minimally biased, the main point of concern I noticed is that many of their sources were publications known to be slight to moderately left-leaning. This includes National Public Radio and the New York Times.  So while they may be trusted with factual reporting and citing any claims, it is worth noting their propensity for democratic leaning sources.

Class Connection
Here are the three main reasons people don't vote and why 2020 was special in minimizing them:

- People can't vote -- With the massive rise in mail-in ballots, demographics such as Americans 60+ who are already the most likely to vote, are even more able to.
- People don't want to -- With mail-in ballots, many sources of social anxiety are removed such as large crowds, last-minute canvassers, or long wait times.
- People are not asked to -- With the rise in social media campaigning, demographics that have historically been underrepresented in the electorate such as younger people 18-24 have been activated to vote.  Members of Congress made posts on at least one social media 50% more often during the 2020 election cycle than in the 2016 election cycle. Additionally, overall engagement through likes and favorites jumped 586% between election cycles.

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WATCH: What you need to know about mail-in voting in 2020

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Summary:
The 2020 election marked the highest voter turnout in over a century, attributed to mail in ballots, among other modifications, in response to the COVID pandemic. In a polarizing election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, voting reforms provided more access, creating an “election season” rather than an Election Day.

Source Evaluation:
This New York Times article, written by Nick Corasaniti and Jim Rutenberg, appears to be reliable, as the majority of statistics are all cited from conducted and verified studies, it isn’t opinionated, eliminating any direct bias, and it features anecdotes from leaders from both red and blue states; despite its credibility, the potential liberal bias may be hidden and thus should be read more for the facts than the analysis.

Connection to Class Concept:
People don't vote for three reasons (Brady et al.)

They can't: extended time available to vote allows individuals to engage in their commitments and vote simultaneously, not wait in line and eliminates need for transportation, increasing the ability to vote.

They don't want to: mail-in ballots eliminates the social anxiety obstacle as there is no socialization required for civic engagement and reduce the added stress of voting, minimizing reasons why one may not want to vote

Nobody asked: voters received voter registration in the mail, increasing the amount of access they have to vote and with increased use of the internet during COVID, there are more opportunities to be approached and engage with these networks.

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Almost 160 million people voted this year, as new options made necessary by the pandemic removed many of the traditional barriers to casting ballots. Will it change the way America conducts elections?

People waited in line to vote early in Columbus, Ohio, in October. The expansion of voting options in 2020 created a prolonged period of voting, a fall "election season" rather than a sole Election Day Credit... Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Nearly 160 million Americans voted in the 2020 elections, by far the most in history and a level of turnout not seen in over a century, representing an extraordinary milestone of civic engagement in a year marked by a devastating pandemic, record unemployment and political unrest.

With all but three states having completed their final count, and next week's deadline for final certification of the results approaching, the sheer volume of Americans who actually voted in November was eye-opening: 66.7 percent of the voting-eligible population, according to the U.S. Election Project, a nonpartisan website run by Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who tracks county-level data.

It is the highest percentage since 1900, when the voting pool was much smaller, and easily surpasses two high-water marks of the modern era: the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy and the 2008 election of Barack Obama. Since the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote and roughly doubled the voting eligible population, turnout had never surpassed 64 percent.

The shifts that led to this year's surge in voting, in particular the broad expansion of voting options and the prolonged period for casting ballots, could forever alter elections and political campaigns in America, providing a glimpse into the electoral future.

A backlash from the right could prevent that, however. In many ways, the increase in voting is what Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are now openly campaigning against in their floundering bid to overturn his clear loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. - whose popular vote lead grew to seven million on Friday. Republicans have portrayed the burgeoning voting ranks as nefarious and the expanded access to voting options as ripe for fraud - despite the fact that the record turnout provided them numerous victories down ballot.

Though Mr. Trump and the party have not managed to prove a single claim of fraud in the courts - where they and their allies have lost or withdrawn dozens of cases - Republicans at the state level are vowing to enact a new round of voting restrictions to prevent what they claim - without evidence - is widespread fraud.

The swell in voting this year was powered by a polarizing presidential race and the many steps that election officials took to make voting safer - and therefore easier - during the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, 94 percent of voters said that voting in the November election was "easy."

That ease in voting could also be read as "access." The expansion of vote by mail, early voting, online registration and online ballot requests broke down many of the traditional barriers that sometimes kept people away from the ballot box. Others simply used long-existing laws as they sought to deliver a verdict on Mr. Trump's four tumultuous years in office.

The expansion of voting options also created a fall "election season" rather than a sole Election Day, a change that is likely to endure and force political campaigns to restructure fall operations with a greater emphasis on getting out the vote over a period of weeks.

"We opened the doors to access," said Adrian Fontes, the top election official in Maricopa County, the largest county in Arizona, where, for the first time, more than 80 percent of the eligible population voted in the general election. It also flipped from Republican to Democratic for the first time in 72 years.

"I think the most telling number is the 165,000 in-person Election Day voters," Mr. Fontes said about voter turnout in Maricopa County. "When you get over two million people casting a ballot and less than 200,000 of them are actually walking in on Election Day and casting a fresh ballot, that's important."

In interviews, election officials tempered their enthusiasm over this year's turnout by acknowledging several only-in-2020 factors. Mr. Trump is a unique public figure who drew considerable personal enmity from voters opposed to him. He ran at a time of extreme economic and social upheaval because of the pandemic. And lockdown orders and mass furloughs and layoffs gave Americans more time to consume news - both on the internet and through the old-fashioned network newscasts, which had their highest viewership in more than a decade - increasing their engagement with the election.

"Voters really thought about how they were going to vote, and many had a plan and executed on that plan," said Kim Wyman, the secretary of state in Washington.

Although election experts caution against viewing the expansion of mail voting as the sole driver of turnout, it is clear that states that increased mail balloting or went to a complete vote-by-mail system had the highest participation. States that did not offer expansive vote-by-mail options were on the lower end of the scale.

Hawaii, for instance, had the lowest voter participation in 2012 and 2016. But last year, it passed a universal vote-by-mail system, and last month, it experienced the highest voting increase in the country. Early voting increased there by nearly 111 percent compared with 2016, and the state's turnout of 57.5 percent was up by more than a third over all.

Other states that encouraged voters to use existing mail options also saw their records increase. In Minnesota, which had the highest percentage turnout in the country at 79.96 percent, election officials mailed out ballot applications to every registered voter and ran an $830,000 voter education advertising program to explain options already on the books.

"There was no huge legal shift in the legal terrain, or some new method of voting that was not on the books before," said Steve Simon, the secretary of state in Minnesota. "This was emphasizing and showcasing an option that had been there for a long time."

In a sense, the pandemic brought with it the realization of a long-held dream of voting rights advocates. For decades, they have sought to increase turnout by making voting easier through provisions such as day-of-vote registration, early voting and voting by mail.

Their goal was to help the country overcome a stubborn, national problem: For the better part of the past century, fewer than 60 percent of eligible voters have participated in national elections, and in some years, turnout has been far lower - ranking the United States' voter participation rate well below that of most of the developed world.

Democrats have been generally supportive of efforts to increase turnout. Polls and population data have repeatedly shown that the voters most affected by the difficulties of in-person, Election Day voting - transient workers, people who move often or low-wage single parents who can't easily wait in long lines at polls on a Tuesday - traditionally vote more for Democrats than for Republicans.

Similarly, polling and census data show that Black Americans, Hispanics and young people - important elements of the Democratic coalition - are more likely to be nonvoters than are older white people, a majority of whom regularly vote for Republican presidential candidates.

The introduction of same-day registration and early voting, for instance, contributed to a surge in participation by Black voters in North Carolina in 2008, helping make Mr. Obama the first Democrat to win there since 1976. Republicans in statehouses there and elsewhere have spent the years since trying to place new restrictions on voting, at times running afoul of the courts.

In Harris County, home to Houston and 4.7 million residents, election officials opened up drive-through voting sites across the county as a safe way to vote during a pandemic. More than 130,000 voters used the option. County officials also created multiple 24-hour voting sites for shift workers, and roughly 10,000 voters used them to cast their ballots.

"A good chunk of them told us that they would not have voted any other way, that this made voting possible for them," said Chris Hollins, the clerk for Harris County.

Voting rights advocates have long viewed vote by mail as an important remedy for low turnout, but only with changes that would make it easier without compromising security. In many states, absentee voting has come with certain strings such as requirements for excuses, witness signatures or even notarization.

Colorado, Utah, Washington State, Oregon and Hawaii have moved to nearly universal, mail-in voting systems and have had their turnout rates rise without any significant instances of fraud or irregularities.

"When we see vote by mail increase in any state, we simultaneously see a turnout increase,'' said Amber McReynolds, chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute and an architect of the vote-by-mail system in Colorado. "It's about making the process more accessible."

Mr. McDonald, the professor, said that the wider embrace of voting by mail could have a significant effect on down-ballot elections, which traditionally have lower turnout; high propensity voters, he said, would be more likely to vote in local, municipal or off-year elections if a ballot arrived at their homes.

Almost as soon as the coronavirus spread throughout the United States, Democrats pushed for the easier vote-by-mail provisions, arguing, for instance, that the acquisition of the witness signatures could be difficult during a pandemic, particularly for at-risk older voters who live alone.

Democrats in Congress sought to make a similar push nationally, but they ran into stiff opposition from Mr. Trump, who gave rare public voice to the idea that Republicans don't want to make voting easier because that would make it harder for them to win. "They had things - levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again," he said in March.

In fact, Mr. Trump's logic - that increased mail-in voting would automatically help Democrats - proved flawed. Several academic studies have found that mail voting does not necessarily give one party an advantage over another. In Georgia, for instance, the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said that Mr. Trump would have won his state had he not dissuaded his own voters from using mail ballots.

Georgia, which voted for a Democrat for president for the first time in nearly 30 years, had 67 percent turnout.

Of course, even as barriers to voting were toppled and a broad voter education effort spilled across newspapers, cable news and social media, some political operatives saw the expansion of voting as rooted in the singular force that dominated American politics for the past four years.

"Two words," said Robby Mook, the former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton in 2016, in an email. "DONALD TRUMP."

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Republicans Pushed to Restrict Voting. Millions of Americans Pushed Back. (Published 2020)

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Almost 160 million people voted this year, as new options made necessary by the pandemic removed many of the traditional barriers to casting ballots. Will it change the way America conducts elections?

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The Delay and Debate of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court Confirmation

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The Delay and Debate of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court Confirmation

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Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/27/by-trashing-jackson-gop-magnified-right-wing-courts-legitimacy-problem/

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is currently awaiting Senate confirmation to be a justice on the Federal Supreme Court. If confirmed, she would be the first black woman in this role, and the third ever black justice on the Supreme Court. However, as with all Supreme Court nominations, there is opposition from the opposing party, attempting to air out the candidate’s flaws and delay the vote.

This article was an opinion piece, and it was very much opinionated. The author bashed the Republican party frequently; he opens his article by saying “By choosing the low road and smearing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson with false charges and vile innuendo, conservative Republicans did more than engage in self-besmirching behavior.” Washington Post is known to be relatively left leaning. I do not think this author represents the general views and beliefs of Washington Post as a whole, however they were still allowed permission to publish this article, showing there was some level of support and not too much resistance. This article provides some context of the situation and debate, however a less-opinionated article would be a better place to start for someone hoping to learn more about Judge Jackson and the confirmation delays.

Emotion plays a role in these delays. Though there is both immediate emotions, such as frustration from the Democrats and disgust and anger from the Republicans, they also act in a way to prevent emotions in the long run. Knowing that this confirmation could cause a change to their status quo, there is an incentive for Republicans and others more conservative leaning to do what they can now, before down the line they are faced with emotions such as anxiety and fear as they watch their rules changed and court decisions be flipped. Although her confirmation would not change the current 6-3 balance on the Supreme Court, it is a vacancy that they do not want to see filled by someone liberal-leaning. Although they may see her as an intelligent judge, her political ideologies and conflicting views from their own are what they will consider in whether or not to confirm her. It is a shame to see how politicized a supposedly unbiased role has become, however that is the nature of American politics and our two party system.

Charis Riebe

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LGBTQ+ advocates protest the signing of the Don't Say Gay Bill in Florida

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Emotional Responses to LGBTQ+ rights in response to Florida's recent Don't Say Gay bill

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Emotional Responses to LGBTQ+ rights in response to Florida's recent Don't Say Gay bill

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Article: https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-governor-signs-controversial-dont-gay-bill-law/story?id=83719304

The Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the Don’t Say Gay bill, was recently signed into law in Florida restricting public schools from educating students on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.

ABC News has a slight left-leaning bias that could affect or influence the readers' beliefs.

The reasons for which this bill was written as well as why those affected are fighting back are good representations of the Cognitive Appraisal Theory and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis. Emotions play a large role in the discussion of LGBTQ+ rights for both liberal and conservative political beings. The feeling of anger toward those who divert from the status quo leads to the creation of restrictive legislation. Similarly, the feeling of anger can motivate people to take action in fighting against such legislation.

Jo Palisoc

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Students engage in voting initiatives through the New Georgia Project 

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New Georgia Project Goes to the Classrooms to Increase Voter Turnout 

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New Georgia Project Goes to the Classrooms to Increase Voter Turnout 

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stacey-abrams-group-ga-public-schools

In August of 2021, former Georgia Democratic House leader Stacey Abrams and her organization the New Georgia Project, partnered with the Atlanta Public Schools to launch voting rights classes called Democracy Class Atlanta. These classes are being offered to around 2,000 high school students and aim to combat low voter turnout and educate new voters about the harms of voter ID laws.

Fox News, a conservative news outlet, criticized the New Georgia Project, motivated by the project's advocacy of liberal policies to make the organization appear irrelevant, if not corrupt.

Concepts of social pressure, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), and ideas surrounding anger and political participation help explain why the New Georgia Project was created, why it could be effective, and how backlash surrounding the program could manifest. ELM specifically explains how students may benefit from the central route of persuasion, engaging in motivated learning and deep cognitive thinking through class conversations that will allow them to take away knowledge regarding the importance of voting. Students will also be motivated to vote through social pressure, both from compliance when they are directly asked to vote, and conformity as when more of their peers are motivated to vote, each student will experience an increased desire to conform.

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Title: Justice> New Georgia Project (NGP) – AwokeNet.com

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Framing around the Florida Parental Rights in Education bill 

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Framing around the Florida Parental Rights in Education bill 

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Article:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/florida-desantis-signs-parental-rights-education-bill
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-governor-says-he-is-signing-bill-limiting-lgbtq-instruction-schools-2022-03-28/

In Florida, the Parental Rights in Education bill, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade, has been signed into law. The bill has created a passionate debate between opponents of the bill that describe it as a policy that discriminates against the LGBT community and proponents of the bill that emphasize the importance of parental involvement in education.

Both articles are from credible mainstream news organizations in the United States; however, bias is present in both of the articles when it comes to the relevant information included in the story.

The way that an issue is framed can be instrumental in the opinions that form around that topic. In this political event, the process of trying to frame an issue is seen clearly as both sides struggle to portray the issue in a certain way. Opponents of the bill discuss the negative impact that the bill will have on the LGBT community and have named the legislation the "Don't Say Gay" bill while proponents of the policy have highlighted the way that the bill allows parents to have more control over their children's education.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPiQlQVyIWE

Here I have linked a video of citizen testimony about the legislation that exclusively focuses on the role of parents in education and barely addresses the issue of sexual orientation and gender identity. The video is a good example of how proponents of the bill frame the issue.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Monday a parental rights bill that bans teachers from giving classroom instruction on "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" in kindergarten through third grade.

"In Florida, we not only know that parents have a right to be involved, we insist that parents have a right to be involved," DeSantis said at a press conference at the Classical Preparatory School in Spring Hill, Florida.
DEMOCRATS CLAIM FLORIDA IS PUSHING 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL. HERE'S WHAT THE LEGISLATION ACTUALLY SAYS

The Parental Rights in Education bill, which passed the Republican-controlled state legislature this month, has been dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by Democrats who misleadingly claim it bans any discussion pertaining to being gay in Florida schools.

The bill was mocked at the Oscars Sunday night, with co-hosts Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall repeating the word "gay" as the crowd applauded.

DeSantis hit back at his critics in Hollywood, saying, "If the people who held up degenerates like Harvey Weinstein as exemplars and as heroes and as all that, if those are the types of people that are opposing us on parents' rights, I wear that like a badge of honor."

"They don't want to admit that they support a lot of the things that we're providing protections against," he said.

"For example, they support sexualizing kids in kindergarten. They support injecting woke gender ideology into second grade classrooms. ... And so what they're doing with these slogans and these narratives is they are trying to camouflage their true intentions."

President Biden called it a "hateful bill" in a tweet last month.

But absent from much of the discussion around the bill are the actual contents of the legislation.

The bill does prohibit classroom instruction on "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" with children in third grade or younger, "or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."

The bill does not ban the word "gay" in school settings, and it does not ban casual discussions of topics relating to sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom.

DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw said in a statement earlier Monday that the governor is unfazed by threats of boycotts against the state over the bill.

"Many of the tourists in Florida have visited us from states with mandates and restrictions, to enjoy the freedoms and sense of normalcy that Florida has become renowned for, under Gov, DeSantis' leadership," she wrote. "Business is thriving here as well, because the governor has kept our state open, and our tax burden remains the lowest in the country.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"These are things that everyone can appreciate, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation," she added. "Therefore, we are not concerned about boycotts or other economic harm to Florida as a result of any legislation. But even if we were: no amount of money would convince Governor DeSantis to change his position. He will always stand for parental rights and protecting children."

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Florida's DeSantis signs Parental Rights in Education bill, hits back at Hollywood critics

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Monday a parental rights bill that bans teachers from giving classroom instruction on "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" in kindergarten through third grade. "In Florida, we not only know that parents have a right to be involved, we insist that parents have a right to be involved," DeSantis said at a press conference at the Classical Preparatory School in Spring Hill, Florida.

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Thomas's Texts: Motivated Reasoning, Misinformation Processing and Political Anger (Robert Burch)

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Thomas's Texts: Motivated Reasoning, Misinformation Processing and Political Anger (Robert Burch)

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Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/26/us/politics/ginni-thomas-donald-trump.html.

Summary:
Evidence from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' texts turned over to the January 6th Committee show that Supreme Court Justice Thomas's wife Virginia Thomas repeatedly texted Meadows, pushing election-related conspiracy theories and advocating for overturning the election. This raises serious ethical concerns about Justice Thomas's ability to judge fairly on matters related to the election and January 6, and has prompted the January 6th Committee to further investigate the Ms. Thomas and Meadows' correspondence on the matter.

There are a couple possible sources of bias related to this article: the likely liberal-leaning bias in the non-fact reporting parts of this New York Times article (which includes a bit of analysis), and the polarized perceptions of the NYT depending on political ideology which could influence people's acceptance of the reporting

One connection between Thomas's Texts and the course learning is the fact that political anger (a common theme of her texts), is connected to the motivation to act, the distrust of institutions, weakening of democratic institutions, and the decrease in quality of information-seeking demonstrated by Ms. Thomas. Because she is a politically knowledgable individual with low trust in the government, Ms. Thomas also demonstrates two key aspects of misinformation processing and susceptibility to conspiracy theories. Finally, there is clearly motivated reasoning occurring, as Ms. Thomas is believing a proven lie consistent with her ideology rather than accepting an inconvenient truth about the election outcome.

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Democrats call for recusal of Justice Thomas in 2020 election cases after wife's texts

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US Map overviewing the changes to abortion laws that would follow the overturning of Roe v. Wade as well as other abortion laws currently in place.

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Article: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/23/politics/oklahoma-house-near-total-abortion-ban/index.html

As abortion laws nationwide continue to become more restrictive, many have begun to follow in the footsteps of Texas, whose restrictive laws include a provision that private citizens can sue anyone who assists in the aiding of a person receiving an abortion. One of these copy-cat states is the neighboring state of Oklahoma, with their law including an even earlier limitation date for people seeking abortions than Texas.

This article comes from CNN so there is a definite left-leaning bias from the source itself, and for the readers of this article who are right-leaning, this is likely to result in the hostile media effect.

Emotions play an extremely significant role in the debate over abortion and the way in which people become politically involved as a result. One of the most obvious psychological concepts that explain this is the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, helping to identify why people are actually inclined to sue other people for assisting a person receiving an abortion, as well as why people on both sides of the debate often prioritize their emotional views of this issue rather than cognitive. Hot cognition also helps to explain why many people instinctively vote for those who agree with their views on this issue, as how they feel often outwieghs how they would deeply think.

--Sydney Greer

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How emotion explains the response to the conflict in Russia-Ukraine

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How emotion explains the response to the conflict in Russia-Ukraine

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Link:
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-1000-protesters-arrested-ukraine-invasion/31738786.html

During March of 2022, Russia is invading Ukraine which has led to a worldwide anti-war reaction against Russia. This article specifically discusses some anti-war protests which have occurred in Russia and how a significant number of the people who went out to protest were arrested by the Russian government.

The source of this article is called Radio Free Europe, which is an organization funded by the US government to distribute news and other information to countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, and some other areas of the world. Given that this is a US funded organization and Russia is a political opponent to the US, it is worth noting that this article will likely try to paint Russia in an even worse light than necessary.

This article shows that people are willing to act even in the face of prosecution from their government when given a cause that they care enough about. The intense emotions felt by people around the world have a significant impact on the reactions we have seen and the political actions that we have seen as well. For instance, according to the article some of these anti-war protests in Russia have resulted in more than 2300 detainments in Moscow, and in some protests (such as one in St. Petersburg) around half of the protesters were detained. The anger these protesters feel towards their (the Russian) government is likely a driving factor in their willingness to protest in the face of likely detainment by their government.

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A compilation of protests, including the January 6th attack on the capitol: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/january-6-insurrection-families --- Source of image 

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Polarized Reactions to January 6th and Misinformation Processing

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Polarized Reactions to January 6th and Misinformation Processing

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Link to article: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22814025/democracy-trump-january-6-capitol-riot-election-violence

Following the attacks on the U.S. Capitol inspired by claims of election fraud, Zack Beauchamp argues that we would have expected lessening political polarization and a unified condemnation of the insurrection. Instead, the article contends, we have seen less unity and greater divides between political parties, with many maintaining the election was stolen, and a subsequent greater threaten of instability in our democracy. Vox is a widely know and credible source, but also often includes a liberal bias in its reporting that readers should be cognizant of. We can apply the class concept of Misinformation Processing to better understand why many Trump supporters and believers of election fraud, when faced with contradicting evidence, instead were motivated by the incongruent information to  search more fervently for evidence in support of their opinion. Not only is this engaging in selective exposure, but also reflects motivated reasoning of viewing sources in agreement with our own perspective as being stronger or more persuasive than those that are not. These psychological explanations explain the resistance and failure to acknowledge the significant ramifications from the January 6th attack and Trump's likely role in propagating it.

Link to podcast discussing this surprising reaction to the insurrection:  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/podcasts/the-daily/january-6-capitol-riots-anniversary.html

--- David Bix

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Increase in Covid-19 Vaccination Rate After FDA Approval Show Lack of Backfire Effect

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Increase in Covid-19 Vaccination Rate After FDA Approval Show Lack of Backfire Effect

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Article: https://news.gallup.com/poll/355073/vaccinated-delta-surge-fda-decision.aspx

In the month after the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine, there was a 6% increase in vaccination rate, despite rates being almost flat for several months. There was also a large increase in Republican vaccination rate and a large decrease in people saying they were not vaccinated because of the lack of FDA approval.

Some sampling and response bias is likely for the articles data because vaccine supporters are probably more likely to respond to Gallup polls, and some people may have lied to pollsters to be viewed more favorably, given the 70% of the country who is vaccinated.

This data adds to the findings of Wood and Porter (2009) that instead of there being a "backfire effect," voters were able to integrate information that contradicted their beliefs and update their opinions. These findings are mirrored in this instance by those who said they were waiting for FDA approval seemingly choosing to get vaccinated instead of clinging to their beliefs by selecting different reasons to oppose vaccination.

I found this chart while looking for sources, and I think it visualized vaccination rate better than Gallup (and was also just pretty to look at): https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/

Gallup also has a lot of other interesting polls about Covid-19. Here's a blog post with some findings they picked out: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/308126/roundup-gallup-covid-coverage.aspx

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Story Highlights

75% of U.S. adults report being vaccinated, up six points in past month

Majority of Republicans are now vaccinated after sharp uptick

15% of white-collar, 33% of blue-collar workers are vaccine reluctant

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of U.S. adults who report being vaccinated for COVID-19 jumped to 75% in September, after three months when the figure languished at just under 70%. An additional five percent of adults say they plan to be vaccinated, pushing the combined percentage either vaccinated or planning to be up to 80%, the highest yet this year.

The relatively sharp upturn in U.S. adults being vaccinated this month follows an eventful period in the pandemic.

Public worry about contracting COVID-19 has been higher the past two months amidst a spike in infections around the country due to the delta variant of the coronavirus. Forty percent of adults now say they are very or somewhat worried about being infected, similar to 39% in August but up from 29% in July and 17% in June.

On August 23, the Food and Drug Administration announced its decision to give full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use with people 16 and older -- the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive that designation. Accordingly, Gallup tracking finds a sharp decline in vaccine-resistant Americans saying they are waiting for FDA approval.

According to Gallup polling, there has been a big jump -- from 19% in August to 29% in September -- in the percentage of U.S. workers who report that their employer will require workers to be vaccinated.

Line graph. Monthly trends from January to September 2021 in the percentage of U.S. adults reporting they are vaccinated as well as the total percentage vaccinated or planning to be. Seventy-five percent of adults in September say they have been fully or partially vaccinated against COVID-19, up six points from 69% in August as well as July. The total percentage of adults who either have been vaccinated or plan to be is now 80%, up from 77% the prior two months and the highest yet in 2021

The latest results are based on a Sept. 13-19 update of Gallup's monthly COVID-19 tracking survey, conducted by web using the probability-based Gallup Panel.

Majority of Republican Adults Now Vaccinated

Vaccination for COVID-19 continues to vary sharply by party ID, with much larger percentages of Democrats than Republicans reporting they have taken the vaccine.

However, for the first time, a majority of Republicans, 56%, say they have received at least one dose. This is up six percentage points from August, the largest monthly uptick in vaccination among Republicans since April when vaccines were just becoming widely available.

Line graph. Monthly trends from January to September 2021 in party groups' reported COVID-19 vaccination status. In September, 92% of Democrats, 68% of independents and 56% of Republicans report being fully or partly vaccinated. Democrats' vaccination is up only slightly in recent months, while the percentage of independents who are vaccinated is up six points since August and the percentage of Republicans is up seven points.

Still, Republicans retain the lowest vaccination rate of any major subgroup of Americans. By contrast, more than 70% of men and women, White and non-White adults, and adults in all four major regions of the country say they have been vaccinated.

Vaccination varies only slightly by age, with those younger than 35 (79%) and 55 or older (77%) more likely than adults 35 to 54 (68%) to report already being vaccinated.

Employed Adults Match National Average in Vaccination

On September 9, President Joe Biden announced plans to require all federal workers to be vaccinated and mandating that large private employers require their employees be vaccinated. While it is too soon for that policy to affect workers' vaccination status, the September poll finds that employed Americans are identical to the national average in their vaccination status -- 75% of employed adults report they have received one or two shots. Unemployed workers (70%) and homemakers (63%) fall below that level while retirees (79%) are slightly above it.

There are also notable differences by type of occupation, with 80% of white-collar workers reporting they are vaccinated, compared with 62% of blue-collar workers. Additionally, a notable 90% of those in the education field and 82% of healthcare workers (groups excluded from Gallup's definition of white-collar workers for this analysis) say they are vaccinated against COVID-19.

All of these figures increase when factoring in those who say they plan to be vaccinated. That leaves about two in 10 employed Americans -- including 15% of white-collar workers and 33% of blue-collar workers -- who don't plan to be vaccinated. This may present challenges to large employers if their employees refuse to comply or look for alternate employment.

Fewer Vaccine Resisters Cite Awaiting FDA Approval

With 80% of Americans indicating they are willing to be vaccinated or that they already have been, 20% are now resistant to taking the shot. That is down from 23% in August and the lowest recorded since coronavirus vaccines became available to the general public earlier this year.

Of that 20%, just 1% in September says the main reason they do not plan to get vaccinated is that they are waiting for FDA approval or otherwise have their concerns about the safety of coronavirus vaccines addressed. That is down from 5% in August, prior to the FDA's decision on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Another 5% of Americans say they are not getting vaccinated because they have already had COVID-19 or they have the antibodies.

Four percent are reluctant to get vaccinated because they still have concerns about the timeline for developing the vaccines. This figure has been fairly constant all year, as are the percentages saying the reason is they don't trust vaccines in general (3%), that they are concerned about having an allergic reaction (2%), or that they are waiting to see how effective the vaccines are (2%).

Meanwhile, the percentage thinking they wouldn't face serious health consequences from COVID-19 should they be stricken is now 3%, similar to the August rate but down from 6% in February.

What is the main reason that you would not agree to receive a coronavirus/COVID-19 vaccine, if one was available to you now?

Bottom Line

Three in four U.S. adults are now vaccinated, at least partially, for the coronavirus, while another 5% plan to be. Additionally, 5% of adults report that they don't plan to be vaccinated but have had COVID-19 or have tested positive for the antibodies. While this doesn't meet public health standardsfor preventing the spread of COVID-19 or satisfy Biden's mandate that certain workers be vaccinated, it may at least afford these vaccine-resisters some immunity, though it is unclear how much and for how long.

Several factors may have helped boost the U.S. vaccination rate six points over the past month. This could include the FDA's recent approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and heightened concern about contracting the coronavirus after two straight months of the delta surge. Additionally, while Gallup data show most remote workers are still not back to an office or other worksite, some may have gotten vaccinated in anticipation of going back after Labor Day.

Future efforts at encouraging Americans to get voluntarily vaccinated will be most effective if they target the 5% of adults who already plan to take the shot. Then addressing the subset of vaccine resisters who have concerns about vaccine safety or the accelerated timeline for vaccine development could be fruitful, particularly if the FDA issues full approval for additional COVID-19 vaccines. Improved clarity around the immunity afforded to people who have had COVID-19 could either convince some recovered adults to finally get vaccinated or exempt them from vaccination, depending on what the research ultimately shows.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how compliant unvaccinated workers will be with the patchwork of employer, state and federal vaccine mandates affecting the workplace, and in some cases, being challenged in statehouses and courts. Those employees may ultimately have to decide between giving in to being vaccinated, or finding a job with a new employer, possibly in a different field of work, that doesn't require employee vaccinations.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.
Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.

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More in U.S. Vaccinated After Delta Surge, FDA Decision

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Story Highlights 75% of U.S. adults report being vaccinated, up six points in past month Majority of Republicans are now vaccinated after sharp uptick 15% of white-collar, 33% of blue-collar workers are vaccine reluctant WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of U.S.

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Why is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court Nomination so Contentious? A Psychological Analysis of Partisan Divide

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Why is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court Nomination so Contentious? A Psychological Analysis of Partisan Divide

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Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/25/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court/

In February, President Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman ever nominated to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Jackson’s nomination is met with contentious debate between Republicans and Democrats over Jackson’s qualifications. This article comes from The Washington Post, which is a slightly liberal-biased publication due to its liberal-leaning editorial board. Ultimately, the contentious reaction to Jackson’s nomination can be boiled down to extreme partisanship that resulted from motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. On both sides of the aisle, politicians seek to confirm their pre-existing beliefs and ignore conflicting information—engaging in motivated reasoning. Thus, Republicans are focusing on arguments opposing Jackson without considering her qualifications, whereas Democrats are supporting Jackson without regard for her shorter judicial record. Politicians then experience confirmation bias when members of their party are weary or supportive of Jackson for the same reasons. This has been evident especially in the hearings, as linked in the video above, where Senators are questioning Jackson solely on her political beliefs rather than on her judicial policy.

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Debate Gets Heated in Senate Confirmation Hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson

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Social Identity as an Explanation for Virginia Thomas' Text Messages

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Social Identity as an Explanation for Virginia Thomas' Text Messages

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Virginia Thomas, the wife of Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, came under heavy fire this past week for her efforts in attempting to undermine the 2020 election. Documents released by the Bipartisan January 6th Congressional Committee show that Virginia Thomas exchanged numerous text messages with President Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to overturn the election results. The implications of Ms. Thomas' texts only became more ominous after Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter on a Supreme Court case which required President Trump to hand over sensitive materials related to the January 6th riot. Questions have arisen about whether Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the case due to his wife's personal ties to the matter. Nevertheless, we can understand Virginia Thomas' actions and motivations through her social identity. Virginia Thomas is married to the most conservative member of the Supreme Court who was appointed by a Republican and has mingled with some of the most prominent conservative political figures of the past few decades. She has been fully immersed into the Republican party as a result of her social network. Her strong partisan attachment to the Republican Party explains why she is a staunch defender of President Trump and why she has refused to acknowledge that the 2020 election was rightfully won by Joe Biden. This caused her to mischaracterize the left as having engaged in a "heist." This whole political fiasco has grave implications for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and calls into question whether justices can really separate their personal beliefs and social identities from their jurisprudence.

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The House committee is reaching out to the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas after public disclosure of text messages documenting her support for President Donald J. Trump's efforts to overturn the election.

Some top investigators had initially argued against sending a subpoena to Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Credit... Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is likely to reach out soon to Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, to request that she sit for an interview, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The decision - which ends intense internal debate about the matter - came after the revelation last week of Ms. Thomas's text messages to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, in which she relentlessly urged him to pursue a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Although the committee has been in possession of Ms. Thomas's text messages for months, not everyone on the panel had seen the documents before they were published in news reports. That prompted debate among the committee's members, several of whom urged the panel to try to interview her.

A person familiar with the discussions said the panel concluded that Ms. Thomas had relevant information, and that it was important for investigators to hear from her. CNN earlier reported the committee's decision.

An adviser to Ms. Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

For at least several weeks, the committee's senior investigators have discussed whether to call Ms. Thomas, who is known as Ginni, to testify. They have also discussed whether to issue subpoenas for any other communications she may have had with the White House or the President Donald J. Trump's legal team about the election, including a message that she told Mr. Meadows she had sent to Jared Kushner, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

Some top investigators had initially argued against sending a subpoena to Ms. Thomas, because they viewed her as a minor player in the attempts to subvert the election. But the disclosure of the text messages, first by The Washington Post and CBS News, and public pressure renewed those discussions.

A New York Times Magazine investigation last month examined the political and personal history of Ms. Thomas and her husband. That included her role in efforts to overturn the election from her perch on the nine-member board of C.N.P. Action, a conservative group that helped advance the "Stop the Steal" movement, and in mediating between feuding factions of organizers "so that there wouldn't be any division around Jan. 6," as one organizer put it.

Ms. Thomas acknowledged that she had attended the rally that preceded the violence in an interview with a conservative news outlet this month, but she has otherwise downplayed her role. Then came disclosure of the texts to Mr. Meadows.

In the messages, she called the 2020 election a "heist" and even suggested the lawyer who should be put in charge of that effort.

There are plenty of leads to pursue. The committee could recall Dustin Stockton, a rally organizer who told The Times about a conversation he had with Caroline Wren, a Republican who helped raise money for the "March for America" on Jan. 6, in which she described Ms. Thomas's peacemaking role. They could also recall Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin, rally organizers close to Ms. Thomas, to ask about her postelection communications with them.

Capitol Riot's Aftermath: Key Developments

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In the weeks before the Capitol riot, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Virginia Thomas' text messages. sent several text messages imploring Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trump's chief of staff, to take steps to overturn the vote. The messages appear to have exposed a rift within the House committee investigating the attack.

The House committee investigating the attack on Jan. 6 Potential contempt charges. said that it would consider contempt of Congress charges against Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff, for refusing to comply with its subpoenas.

Representative Mo Brooks, who challenged President Biden's victory on Jan. 6, claimed that Donald J. Trump had asked him to Requests to "rescind" the election. illegally "rescind" the election. The statement came after Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the G.O.P. primary for Alabama's Senate seat.

The panel could subpoena records from not only Ms. Thomas, but also C.N.P. Action, which was deeply involved in the effort to spread falsehoods about the election. Investigators could ask the name of the friend Ms. Thomas was referring to when she wrote back to thank Mr. Meadows, saying: "Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now ... I will try to keep holding on." (Ms. Thomas and her husband have publicly referred to each other as their best friends.)

Ultimately, the committee could ask her whether she had discussed with her husband Mr. Trump's fight to overturn the election.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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Jan. 6 Panel to Seek Interview With Ginni Thomas

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The House committee is reaching out to the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas after public disclosure of text messages documenting her support for President Donald J. Trump's efforts to overturn the election. WASHINGTON - The House committee investigating the Jan.

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News Article Citation: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/28/906676695/ignoring-fbi-and-fellow-republicans-trump-continues-assault-on-mail-in-voting

Padlet Summary: This article by NPR written in the midst of the 2020 election details how Trump's anti vote-in mail message was receiving push back from many prominent political figures, including many republicans. NPR has the reputation of being a liberally biased source, but someone who consumes NPR content on a fairly consistent basis, I can say that this article would read very noncontroversial to most readers. As for the class connection, I connected this article to our class discussions on how campaigns both mobilize and persuade voters. I touch on the idea of how, over the course of the 2020 election, the Trump campaign managed to both change the attitudes of Trump voters into distrusting mail in voting and change the behaviors of the same voters, resulting in a massive partisan difference between who voted in person and who voted through the mail.

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Misinformation and Motivated Reasoning

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Misinformation and Motivated Reasoning

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On February 24th, Russia began to invade Ukraine by firing missiles into towns and military targets, and having Russian vehicles and troops pour into the country. When reporting on this issue it is important to recognize the possibility of status-quo bias, since it is very much the majority's belief that Russia is at fault. One important aspect of the invasion of Ukraine are the Russian people's responses to Putin's decision. Due to a large misinformation campaign being used in Russia, many citizens may be engaged in selective exposure and motivated reasoning, focusing on their prior beliefs that Putin is a good man. Because of this the response by Russians may be to support the war, rather than search for incongruent information about the morality of the invasion.

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Scalise on US energy production: 'You want to save the plant? Make more things in America'

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Scalise on US energy production: 'You want to save the plant? Make more things in America'

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US gas prices have been rising due to the war in Russia against Ukraine. Biden’s administration has been repeatedly blamed for the rising gas prices, and many Republicans, including House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, believe there is a superior solution to lower the prices. In the Fox News article “Scalise on US energy production: ‘You want to save the planet? make more things in America,’” author Brooke Singman wrote about Scalise’s point of view on this topic. She used many direct quotes to limit biases and efficiently presented the article without statement bias. Scalise believes that Biden should allow the US to produce its own energy. This would lower the cost of gasoline and would reduce carbon emissions. The US can use less carbon than Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela when producing oil, which would help the environment. In addition, this would allow for the creation of new jobs for Americans. Scalise strategically presented his ideas against the Biden administration in a way that would appease a multitude of Republican citizens. He promotes two important ideals to many Americans, by addressing the environment and the workforce, thus he successfully positions himself against Biden. Overall, the article accounts for many political issues that stem from the increase in gas prices. Although the article leans towards the right, it incorporates some ideas (helping the environment) that may appeal to more liberal citizens.

Sammie Godwin

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This article was about the protests that erupted around the country after the murder of George Floyd, that protested racial injustice and police brutality. This was a CNN article, which has a left-leaning slant and therefore the author does not delve into the violence that occurred during these mostly peaceful protests. These protests can be better understood through the relationship between emotions and politics; specifically the emotions of fear, anxiety, and anger. Each of these emotions incentivize people to act and engage in politics due to factors such as increased vigilance and decreased trust in political institutions. It is clear that many people felt these emotions after hearing George Floyd's story which according to the Affective Intelligence Theory incentivized them to act in order to produce change.

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Many Trump voters are still convinced that the 2020 election was stolen. Why? 

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Many Trump voters are still convinced that the 2020 election was stolen. Why? 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/politics/republicans-voter-fraud.html

After the 2020 election, Donald Trump brought 60 lawsuits alleging voter fraud that resulted in a stolen election. Trump lost 59 of these lawsuits, discrediting his claims; however, many Trump voters and Republican politicians still believe that Trump won and have used this claim to support their voter suppression efforts.

The New York Times is slightly left leaning but also tends to report factually, suggesting that readers should be aware of the bias but, in general, can still trust the facts being reported.

Motivated reasoning, a tenet of why people believe misinformation, argues that people tend to believe information that is consistent with their beliefs and reject information that isn't. As many Trump voters believed that Trump would win, they resist evidence that disproves stolen election claims because it is not consistent with their prior beliefs. Selective exposure, another explanation for believing misinformation, contends that to avoid dissonance, people are inclined to seek information that supports their prior beliefs; Trump voters probably seek information about stolen election claims from right wing sources that agree with them, strengthening their false beliefs and allowing them to evade dissonance.

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This article details the record high number (over 1.7 million) migrants detained along the US-Mexico border in 2021. The article acknowledges how contentious United States immigration policy has been during former President Trump and current President Biden's administrations, while commenting on both administration's failures to formulate an effective bipartisan solution. The BBC news agency is a well- known and reputable news agency with a slight left leaning spin; however, they are highly rated for their accurate reporting of facts and information as well as their ability to temper their own biases with moderate and even right leaning admissions and acknowledgements. Within the scope of political psychology and immigration policy, disgust sensitivity, or the measure of how susceptible an individual is to feeling disgusted, is an important factor to understand. Correlational data has shown people to be more politically conservative when they exhibit higher disgust sensitivities. This aligns with the general Republican immigration policy stance which focuses on increased funding for border security and opts to pass on funding programs that improve living conditions along border detainment facilities.

-Robbie Mazer

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Record high migrant detentions at US-Mexico border

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More than 1.7 million people were stopped in the past year, including 145,000 unaccompanied children.

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A chart of daily COVID-19 cases in the US, demonstrating a stark rise in cases to unprecedented levels in later winter of 2021.

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We didn't vote COVID out of office: Fundamental attribution error and presidential messaging on COVID

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We didn't vote COVID out of office: Fundamental attribution error and presidential messaging on COVID

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/18/politics/white-house-omicron-warning-joe-biden/index.html
As omicron sent COVID-19 case numbers skyrocketing (see above graph), the Biden White House went from touting the US’ low case counts and “freedom from the virus” as a major success on the part of his administration in comparison to the previous one to instead claiming that, “It's not about cases. It's about severity.”
I would suggest reading this piece with a critical eye, as CNN often blurs the lines between opinion and reporting in its political coverage, which can make it hard to determine what is meant to be objective or not, especially when reading an analysis piece that's meant to provoke thought and provide perspective on an issue.
This is a clear example of the fundamental attribution error, as Biden attributes high case numbers under Trump to Trump’s negative dispositional traits and then attributes low case numbers under himself to his positive dispositional traits in comparison to Trump. However, this totally negates a major confounding factor––the vaccine, which played a large role in reducing case numbers. We continue to see the positivity effect in this CNN article, as, now that Biden is failing to contain COVID, he suddenly shifts course and attributes case numbers to situation factors, like an unexpected variant, rather than his own leadership.

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Presidential polls saw the highest level of error in 40 years according to a task force with the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

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Presidential Polls, Error, and Social Desirability Bias

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Presidential Polls, Error, and Social Desirability Bias

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2020 pre-election polls were characterized by widespread error, with underestimated support for former President Trump and overestimated support for President Biden. The unprecedented error levels raised concern for many who wondered how this magnitude of error occurred. Polling experts at the American Association for Public Opinion Research came together to examine thousands of polls at the state and national level. Still, they could not deduce a conclusive explanation for the errors. This article was featured in The Conversation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that seeks to make information from experts accessible to the general public. The source is relatively unbiased as it only allows individuals with “proven expertise” to publish on the platform, and requires authors to sign a disclosure affirming that no conflicts of interest have biased their work. Social desirability bias, or the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a way that they believe will be viewed favorably by others, helps to explain some of the error seen. Many of the entities responsible for conducting polls are (or are perceived as) left-leaning (e.g., news media, academics, etc.). Using social desirability bias as a framework for analysis, it makes sense that Trump supporters would be less likely to express support for Donald Trump to an entity that they believe may judge said preference. Furthermore, SDB leaves individuals more likely to report “good behavior” that will be received favorably by others. In this vein, when interacting with what they perceive to be a left-leaning entity, Trump supporters were more likely to report “good behavior,” or support for President Biden, even if their true preference was for Donald Trump. This helps to explain underreporting of support for Donald Trump and overreporting of support for Joe Biden.

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Easing Covid Restrictions following the Omicron Surge 

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Easing Covid Restrictions following the Omicron Surge 

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Link: https://nypost.com/2022/02/16/americans-are-split-over-states-ending-mask-mandates/

Summary: As a result , many governors are removing mask requirements. This is a controversial decision and most Democrats support keeping mask guidance as recently as February 2022.

Source Evaluation: The New York Post, is a widely read newspaper serving the New York City area with a central right leaning bias. In light of this, it is important for people reading this information to recognize that the New York Post may be pulling statistics that paint Republicans in a better light, and the Democrats in a worse one, even if the statistics are not entirely relevant or potentially deceptive.

Class Connection:  In several instances, the article uses trivialization to make sure members of their audience can maintain their attitudes and behavior even when survey results show left leaning opinions are widely supported. For example, the plurality of individuals in the survey said that they “believe local governments should be encouraging COVID-19 vaccinations and masking in indoor spaces,” which is an opinion that is viewed as left leaning. Support for the government continuing to push covid restrictions is trivialized in the article when the New York Post focuses on how this number of cases has decreased since September 2021, rather than discussing that the plurality of voters who still think covid precautions should be pushed by local governments.

-- Rachel Schoeman

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Turnout in 2020 election spiked among both Democratic and Republican voting groups, new census data shows

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Turnout in 2020 election spiked among both Democratic and Republican voting groups, new census data shows

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Link:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/turnout-in-2020-spiked-among-both-democratic-and-republican-voting-groups-new-census-data-shows/

This article comes from a centrist left organization but offers little biases because it is mostly made of statistics they gathered on the 2020 election. It focused on voter turnout and the large increase it made in 2020. One might interpret these statistics with bias and attribute negative or positive reaction to certain voting groups based on their statistics. And one could use this to confirm their already existing beliefs without reading the other statistics or the context behind them. A way I used to intercept the reasoning behind the large increase in voter turnout for this presidential election was through an increase in social pressures and individual differences. Although personality doesn't have a large impact on voting it can explain why many people were advocating and more involved in campaigns. With an increase in social media they could perpetuate and get across their endorsements for their candidates easier and with a larger platform. A decrease in stress on election day could also explain the increase in votes. Because many people voted early or by mail, it relieves the stress from going in person and on election day and more votes could have been casted. Along with genetic and inheritable traits that value voting or one’s civic duty could also explain why people voted. One’s environment and genetics could lead one to consistently participate in elections. Another large reason is social pressure, I argue in this election there was a push upon people to vote and participate in this election from social media and communities that lead to an increase in votes.

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Turnout in 2020 election spiked among both Democratic and Republican voting groups, new census data shows | Brookings

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Turnout in the 2020 election was exceptionally high, resulting in a victory for Joe Biden. In response, some Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted measures that would restrict voting in future elections among groups that often vote Democratic.

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The Senate acquits Donald Trump on charges of incitement of insurrection. 

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Trump Escapes Impeachment by the Senate — Again!

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Trump Escapes Impeachment by the Senate — Again!

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Link: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-acquitted-in-second-impeachment-trial-for-inciting-jan-6-capitol-riot

Source Evaluation: On January 13, 2021, Donald Trump became the first president of the United States to be impeached twice after the US House of Representatives incriminated him for incitement of insurrection due to his role in the attack on the Capital. Despite the fact that seven Republicans and the majority of the Senate voted against Trump, they ultimately fell short of the supermajority needed to convict, which marked Trump’s second acquittal after his first trial in February 2020.

Connection to Class:

The second acquittal of Donald Trump connects to three topics from political psychology – the importance of party identification, motivated reasoning, and cognitive dissonance. Understanding that party identification is one of the most important heuristics by which people make decisions, and that using motivated reasoning can make people susceptible to misinformation can allow us to understand why so many Republicans continued to support Trump during his trial. Additionally, reducing cognitive dissonance through behavior change allows us to understand why several Republicans voted Trump during the trial.

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A Supreme Court Nomination for the History Books

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A Supreme Court Nomination for the History Books

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-hearings.html
Joe Biden has made a historic Supreme Court nomination, with Ketanji Brown Jackson being the first ever black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Following the nomination, Judge Jackson sat for two days before U.S. Senators to be questioned about her previous court case decisions, policy beliefs, and even some non-legal related topics such as critical race theory. The article provides an overview of the hearings, specifically referencing the “aggressive approach by Republicans.” Although following the completion of the hearings many Republican Senators recognized Judge Jackson’s qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court, it seems unlikely that many will vote across party lines in favor of confirming her. While it is possible that some Republicans are using retrospective decision-making to determine that they will not vote to confirm Judge Jackson, it is more likely that Senators are aligning with their party identification for this vote. Evidently, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has already announced that he will not be voting to support Judge Jackson’s confirmation. Importantly, we must recognize that the article was biased, as most news sources are. The article was published in the New York Times and at many points drew attention to the politically irrelevant and aggressive questioning by Republican Senators. To combat the biases in this article and others, readers should seek to fact check information and diversify news sources to gain new perspectives. More specifically, with events like the one in the article, readers should watch and follow the events themselves in order to create their own interpretations of it.

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Defeat the Mandates Rally and Media Bias

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Defeat the Mandates Rally and Media Bias

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https://time.com/6141699/anti-vaccine-mandate-movement-rally/
Summary: On January 23, 2022, there was a “Defeat the Mandates Rally” in Washington, D.C. in which people protested mask and vaccine mandates. This movement used to be just anti-vaccination but has shifted to being one that opposes mandates and government overreach in an attempt to attract more individuals.
Source Evaluation: TIME is a less partisan outlet than the NYT or MSNBC, yet favors the left as well. It is a well-respected source that consistently passes fact checks, which was perfect for this assignment, as it enabled me to explore the rally through an article with little bias.
Connection: Those who watch Fox News are more frequently exposed to anti-vaccination rhetoric and how mask mandates impose on our freedoms. The combination of coverage and statement bias along with gatekeeping has led to the widespread belief that masks limit our freedoms and vaccinations are dangerous. The manner in which news sources share information varies based on their goals, and the sources that those who participated in the rally tend to listen to share negative information regarding masks and vaccines. Unbiased news is rare, which is how groups like this form and rallies such as this one occur.

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Anti-Vaccine Mandate Protests During Omicron Surge

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How Negative Emotions in 2020 Affected Record Turnout

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How Negative Emotions in 2020 Affected Record Turnout

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[Maxwell Juhas]
In my article by Forbes, an analysis of social media mentions of Biden and Trump before the 2020 election found a high percentage of negativity when discussing Trump's policy positions, even in Republican states. Forbes suggested that this negativity would decrease turnout among right-leaning voters, a prediction that is dramatically inconsistent with the record-breaking 2020 turnout, as explained in the linked video here. The Forbes article displays your average mainstream slightly left-leaning bias, and, despite in-article transparency about how the data was collected, doesn't include valid links to the data source. Still, I felt the underlying assumptions about negativity in the 2020 election were true, and therefore examined why Forbes, which uses the Demobilization Hypothesis in its predictions, ended up being so wrong.  Forbes used the "ostrich" approach to negativity, believing the unsupported claim that negative publicity turns people off to voting. If we understand this negativity instead through Martin's ideas of the Mobilization Hypothesis, we can see instead that negativity in 2020 stimulated voters' republican duty, made them anxious about the future, and made them perceive the election as close, all culminating in the highest turnout in well over 100 years.

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Michael McDonald breaks down 2020's RECORD-BREAKING voter turnout

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A diagram showing how Attribution Theory helps explain the different placement of blame between Republicans and Democrats.

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Attribution Theory and Blame for Rising Gas Prices

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Attribution Theory and Blame for Rising Gas Prices

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See https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/597883-republicans-seize-on-rising-gas-prices-amid-ukraine-conflict?rl=1 for the article.

Gas prices are rising at an unprecedented rate, with Republicans blaming the policies of President Biden and Biden (as well as many experts) blaming Russia. The effects on gas prices of various policies – both enacted and proposed – were discussed.  This source was rather unbiased, but mainly discusses policies as part of a political competition, potentially leading the reader to apply partisan biases to information processing on such policies. Attribution Theory indicates that Republicans were inclined to blame President Biden due to the Negativity Effect, while Biden himself and Democrats were inclined to blame outside factors (such as Russia) due to the Positivity Effect. Beyond obvious political incentives, the subconscious biases that are part of Attribution Theory can help explain why Republicans and Democrats placed blame for rising gas prices differently.