1.19.19 The Atlantic: “Impeach Donald Trump”

The Atlantic: “Impeach Donald Trump”

A call for impeachment was featured on the cover of the newest issue of The Atlantic. The article, by Yoni Appelbaum, argues that President Trump has not preserved, protected, or defended the U.S. Constitution, breaking his inauguration pledge. “Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal,” Appelbaum writes. According to a recent PRRI Spotlight, nearly half (47 percent) of Americans say that based on what they have read or heard, President Trump should be impeached, compared to 51 percent who disagree. In February 2017, shortly after Trump took office, only three in ten (30 percent) Americans supported Trump’s impeachment. 
Trump Losing Support Among His White Evangelical Base

The president may be losing support among white evangelicals—some of his core supporters—according to a new Marist poll. Writing about that poll, Mark Silk at Religion News Service points to a seven percentage-point drop in support among Trump’s white evangelical base. “Even more notably, just 58 percent of white evangelicals said they would definitely vote for Trump in 2020. Given that 80 percent of them voted for him in 2016, that ought to give the president’s reelection campaign the willies,” Silk writes. The author illuminates recent events that may have contributed to this shift, including the resignation of James Mattis and the ongoing probe into the president’s relationship with Russia, but argues that the government shutdown may be playing the largest role. Citing PRRI data, Silk concludes, “To be sure, two-thirds of white evangelicals support Trump’s proposal for a Southern border wall, according to PRRI. . . But he’s lost the others, at least for now. They not only can imagine him doing something that’s not good for the country, they believe he’s done it.”
Boyle Heights Teacher is the Face of L.A. Teacher’s Strike

The Los Angeles Times released an article this week showcasing the face of the recent L.A. teachers’ strike: Roxana Dueñas, who has been featured in United Teachers Los Angeles posters across the city. According to the story, Ernesto Yerena, the designer and artist who created the poster, “said he wanted to highlight a teacher of color because of the nationwide ethnic disparity between students and teachers.” As a daughter of immigrants, Dueñas says she knows this disparity all too well and is determined to bring adequate representation to the L.A. public school system. In 2014, she and two other teachers created an ethnic studies curriculum at Roosevelt High School that became a required yearlong class for ninth-graders. Beloved by her students and community, the article explains that Dueñas continues to fight for a better education system with “smaller classes and more counselors and nurses.” Dueñas says the strike is “an opportunity to really demonstrate to […] students that it’s not just reading about it in history books. We’re fighting for [teachers’] rights and for [students’] rights.”
Reckoning With a Racist Past

Josina Guess wrote a piece in The Christian Century discussing a trip last September to two Jackson, Mississippi museums (the Civil Rights Museum and the Museum of Mississippi History) as part of a series of road trips through the South. Guess argues that while these museums bear witness to an ugly American past, the current weight of racism isn’t sufficiently recognized. “Visitors can simultaneously lament the cruelty of the state toward its people and celebrate the courage of people who persevered to change the story. . . What is less clear is the state’s willingness to acknowledge the wounds that continue to be inflicted,” she writes. After visiting both museums, Guess relays her conflicted feelings about the experience, including the notable lack of white visitors at the Civil Rights museum. “I saw many black families taking it all in, but I really wished that more white families—especially the ones whose ancestors had fought for segregation—would visit, making it a priority to learn and truly repent,” she writes.