The Atlantic: White Evangelicals Can't Quit Donald Trump

A new survey released this week by PRRI, where I serve as the CEO, finds white evangelical support for Trump remains strikingly high, with 75 percent holding a favorable view of the president and only 22 percent holding an unfavorable view. This level of support far exceeds his favorability among all Americans, which is at 42 percent. Among all non-white evangelical Americans, Trump’s favorability is only 36 percent. [...]

Even with the recent allegations of infidelity—with adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whose respective lawsuits have become tangled in the Russia investigation—white evangelical Protestants are showing no signs of a sunset on their support. By a margin of 3 to 1, or 69 percent versus 23 percent, white evangelical Protestants who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party say they would prefer Trump over another candidate to be the GOP nominee for president in 2020.  

A PRRI poll conducted in the fall of 2017 suggested how unshakeable the white evangelical-Trump connection has become: Among the 72 percent of white evangelical Protestants who approved of Trump’s job performance at the time, approximately four in 10 agreed with the following statement: “There’s almost nothing President Trump could do to lose my approval.” [...]

As the Trump and white evangelical movements become increasingly intertwined, young people are increasingly at odds with both. In this week’s PRRI poll, only 33 percent of young adults ages 18 to 29 rate the president favorably. Nearly two-thirds, or 65 percent, hold an unfavorable opinion, including a striking 41 percent who report they hold a very unfavorable view. While white evangelicals as a whole are still fighting the late 20th century culture wars, young adults are moving on: Nearly eight in 10 support same-sex marriage and approximately two-thirds say abortion should be legal in all or most cases and available in their local communities. And while, generally speaking, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric resonates among white evangelicals, young adults overwhelmingly support policies like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally. White evangelicals’ association with Trump’s alleged indiscretions, divisive speech, and policy priorities will likely make retaining and attracting younger members to the faith even more difficult than it would otherwise be.

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The Atlantic: Post-Parkland Unity Is Officially Over

That Friday’s walkouts were organized by a student with little connection to gun violence shows how post-Parkland activism has morphed into a thriving national student movement. But as the movement expands, it’s also becoming clear just how hard it is to find a unified student voice. A student’s personal background—including race, class, and past connections to gun violence—shapes his or her relationship with the movement, and youth are navigating the difficult task of finding common ground. A movement that first framed itself as a call to action from young people to adults is now just as much a dialogue among different factions of the country’s youth.

When the post-Parkland movement first sprung up, some observers questioned whether the tremendous attention it garnered was attributable in part to the students’ relative affluence. Friday’s walkouts are another case of large-scale activism organized by students from privileged schools: Fewer than 4 percent of students at Murdock’s Ridgefield High receive free or reduced-price meals. Youth organizers have certainly endeavored to make their protest inclusive, demonstrating their solidarity with communities that suffer from daily gun violence in part by encouraging walkout participants to wear orange, a color that has come to symbolize gun reform after teenagers used it to memorialize a 15-year-old shot and killed in Chicago in 2015. For their part, students in Chicago planned a citywide school walkout in conjunction with Murdock’s campaign. But despite their efforts to involve schools in neighborhoods with varying income levels and racial makeups, organizers—who attend Walter Payton College Prep, a selective-enrollment magnet school, and the private Francis W. Parker School—struggled to bring the walkout to fruition at most of the city's schools. [...]

It’s also worth noting that students at Columbine High School are not participating. The school has commemorated the day annually by having students engage in community-service work rather than attend classes—an approach that its principal promoted this year as an alternative to walkouts. Some Columbine students expressed disappointment that the Connecticut organizers chose the anniversary of the 1999 massacre for their national protest. “This is the worst day for our community,” said Kaylee Tyner, a junior who believes in the protest’s cause and helped organize Columbine’s participation in the March 14 student walkouts. “It was like using our anniversary to push this political agenda … It could’ve been on the 19th or something,” she said. A student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland told The New York Times that MSD administrators are urging students not to walk out out of respect for the Columbine students.

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Ministry Of Ideas: Forbidden Fruit

Contemporary diet culture is only the latest manifestation of a long history of religious fervor about food.

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BBC4 A Point of View: The Museum of Deportation

"The past is concretised and solidified in things", writes Stella Tillyard "and they vibrate with the experience of their use".

Stella tells the story of a small Italian Museum - the Museum of Deportation and Resistance - and reflects on how we remember the past.

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Bloomberg: Germany Has a New Anti-Semitism Problem

Adam Armoush, a 21-year-old student who grew up in an Arab family in Israel, wore a kippa in Berlin as an experiment: Would he be attacked for it? The provocation worked almost immediately: A youngster ran at him on the street in one of the city's poshest areas, swinging a belt and shouting anti-Semitic abuse in Arabic. [...]

For years, the leaders of the German Jewish community have warned that wearing a kippa could be dangerous in Berlin, especially in areas with a large Muslim population. But German police statistics would make it look as though the issue doesn't exist. According to them, 522 anti-Semitic crimes were registered in Germany in 2017, 479 of them committed by "right-wing extremists" -- that is, neo-Nazis. Only 19 incidents were ascribed to "foreign ideology" or "religious ideology" -- tags that could apply to Jew-hatred as practiced in the Islamic world. But Ann-Christin Wegener wrote in a recent study for the state of Hessen's constitutional protection department that the police tended to attribute the crimes to right-wing extremists when they had no clue of the perpetrators' motivations. Besides, she wrote, "right-wing extremist symbols are banned in Germany, a criminal offense to which there is no Islamist equivalent, and crimes committed using the Arabic or Turkish language result in police attention less frequently." The Israeli in Berlin had the advantage of understanding exactly what his attacker was shouting. [...]

The German authorities or society haven't done much about this. To the left, Islamophobia has been a higher priority than anti-Semitism in recent years, and the center-right has been careful about raising the subject for fear of being branded Islamophobic. But in recent weeks, politicians have turned their attention to the Muslim variety of anti-Semitism. After two German rappers, Kollegah and Farid Bang, received the prestigious Echo music award earlier this month -- on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, to boot -- they were sharply criticized for a song they'd co-authored. In it, Bang, whose real name is Farid El Abdellaoui and who is of Moroccan descent, raps, "My body is more defined than those of Auschwitz prisoners."

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Bloomberg: Europe’s Depopulation Time Bomb Is Ticking in the Baltics

The trend is hitting especially hard in the Baltics. Latvia, with a current population of 1.96 million, has lost about 25 percent of its residents since throwing off Soviet control in 1991. The UN predicts that by 2050, it will have lost an additional 22 percent of its current population—second only to Bulgaria—and by 2100, 41 percent. [...]

As bad as those numbers look, the trend looks even worse for Ukraine and Moldova. The UN predicts 36 percent and 51 percent declines in those nations by the end of the century, respectively. Russia, meanwhile, is expected to lose 13 percent by 2100.

Several factors are contributing to the depopulation of Eastern Europe, and Latvia has all of them: low income, compared with more developed EU nations; insufficient growth; and strong anti-immigrant sentiment. The average annual take-home pay among all EU nations was 24,183 euros ($29,834) in 2015, according to Eurostat, while in Latvia it was only 6,814 euros ($8,406).  [...]

Nine out of 10 countries with the lowest acceptance rate of immigrants are former members of the Eastern bloc. Of these, the three Baltic nations had been previously forced to accept Russian-speaking migrants. In Latvia, the issue is so controversial that in 2015, when the EU insisted it accept just a few hundred Syrian refugees, nationalists initially threatened to withdraw from the government. That same year, Latvia came in second to last in the Migrant Integration Policy Index, which ranks 38 democracies according to the quality of immigration policies. Only Turkey did worse. Latvia was fourth from the bottom in Gallup’s 2017 Migrant Acceptance Score list, which ranks countries in order of their populations’ attitudes to immigrants. 

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Politico: The last thing Catalonia needs is more autonomy

For many outside observers, the situation is an easy puzzle to be solved. Just give Catalans more autonomy in exchange for renouncing their efforts to achieve independence. But that would be a gross mistake. Autonomy is not the solution; it’s part of the problem. [...]

Most political parties in Spain, both right and left, are strongly attached to the centuries-old project of building a centralized unitary state mirrored on France. Any concessions obtained by Catalonia would be perceived as an intolerable step in the wrong direction. Thanks to the support of a demographic majority in the country, these parties would be able to block or neutralize any advance in autonomy that Catalans are able to extract on paper.

At the same time, an increase in administrative or financial autonomy is not going to satisfy a majority of Catalans. Many would feel bitterly disappointed that their struggle has brought them back to the same cage they were trying to escape from. They would perceive Spain’s concessions as insubstantial, as long as the central state and the largely hostile demographic majority it represents remain in control.  [...]

In my opinion, Spain will have to accept that Catalonia has a right to self-determination, while Catalonia will have to accept that such a right will require a reinforced, two-thirds majority in a referendum to be effectively exercised.

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The Guardian view on Brexit and the Irish border: alchemy fails again

Downing Street has been working on technical solutions to this problem, fleshing out formulas described by the prime minister in a speech last month as “a highly streamlined customs arrangement” or “customs partnership”. On Friday, it emerged that those proposals have been flatly rejected by the European commission as unworkable, both from a legal and a practical perspective. [...]

One difference is that the opposition envisages negotiating enhancements to a recognised model: the customs union. By contrast, Mrs May is trying to reach for special favours from behind red lines that deny her an institutional template for a deal. Also, she is negotiating against a howling chorus of Europhobia from her own party, which corrodes goodwill in Brussels. The EU side was always going to be legalistic – that is in the nature of a negotiation that must accommodate the interests of 27 countries and respect existing treaties. But the commission has been made even less flexible by Tory noises off, which hint at readiness to disregard existing rules and boasting that no deal is required.

It is important to recall how Mrs May came to her current impasse. The commitment not to erect a hard border in Northern Ireland reflects recognition that doing so would sabotage a social and political compact put in place by the Good Friday agreement. Brexiters ignored that hazard during the referendum and have belittled it ever since. Their pursuit of the ideological chimera of absolute trade sovereignty blinds them to the reality of a fragile peace treaty that demands respectful, judicious handling.

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