Who’s Afraid of a White Minority?

The battle over how to project the future population of the United States has profound political implications, writes Thomas Edsall in The New York Times. Pointing to how the changing demographics of the country have created consternation, particularly among white Americans, the nation faces a tall task in addressing these fears, the author notes. Edsall quotes PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones within the piece. Jones says that these issues are deep-seated in American history, arguing, “At the current moment in U.S. history, we actually need the admittedly fictional concept of ‘whiteness’ to understand recent events that are driven by a motivation to defend a perceived threat to white demographic and cultural dominance: the mass murder of nine worshipers in Charleston by the Confederate flag wielding Dylann Roof, the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville chanting ‘you/Jews will not replace us,’ and even the unlikely but unflagging support for Donald Trump among white evangelical Protestants nostalgic to resurrect the cultural world of the 1950s.”

Business Insider Highlights The Dying California Dream

A Tuesday piece from BusinessInsider.com examines PRRI’s latest data, and how it could impact Californians. In August, PRRI released “A Renewed Struggle for the American Dream.” Tanza Loudenback writes, “Taken as a whole, Californians without a college degree are more likely to encourage young people to move elsewhere for opportunity than those with a college degree — a difference of nearly 15 percentage points. About 55 percent of California residents say the American Dream is harder to achieve in their state than other places in the US, while 16 percent say it’s easier and 29 percent say it’s about the same.” Loudenback later cites Bay Area Council data that shows that the number of residents who say they will move away soon has gone up 11 points from 35 percent to 46 percent in the last two years.

Ayanna Pressley Makes History in Stunning Primary Victory

Ayanna Presley made history Tuesday night when she defeated ten-term incumbent Michael Capuano in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts’ 7^th district. In the last poll before the election, Pressley was trailing Capuano by thirteen points, but ended up winning the race by a margin of eighteen points. Pressley, who is running unopposed in the general election, is poised to become the first woman of color in the state to serve in the House of Representatives. Pressley, whose platform included Medicare-for-all, abolishing ICE, and abortion rights, is widely seen as a yet another symbol of mounting challenges coming from the party’s left this election season. Mary MacDonald, a biotech researcher in Cambridge and Pressley voter, told The New York Times that Pressley “represents a perspective that Congress is lacking and that resonates with me. As a woman of color, she understands my concerns, as a lesbian. Capuano has done a great job for the district, but he doesn’t get it.” According to a 2016 PRRI survey, 58 percent of Americans believe the country would be better off if there were more women serving in public office. However, more than three-quarters (77 percent) of Democrats say the U.S. would benefit from more women serving in political leadership roles.

Trump Rips Book That Describes White House Chaos

President Donald Trump took to Twitter this week to try to discredit a new book from reporter Bob Woodward. Woodward, of “All The President’s Men” and Watergate fame, released passages of his new book “Fear” to several news outlets on Monday. The book describes a chaotic White House and a presidency teetering on the edge of collapse. Though Trump praised Woodward during a recent phone call, the audio of which was released by The Washington Post, he was highly critical of Woodward after passages from the book were written about across the country. Trump tweeted, “The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.” I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!” Trump also openly questioned why politicians in Washington, D.C. have not written legislation harsher on libel.

Mueller Reportedly One Step Closer to Getting His Trump Answers

According to a Tuesday report in The New York Times, sources familiar with special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation claim that Mueller will accept written responses from President Trump to specific questions related to the investigation. Whether Trump would ever agree to an interview with Mueller has been fodder for much media speculation over the last year. According to the authors of the report, Maggie Haberman and Michael S Schmidt, Trump will be able to answer some, but not all of Mueller’s questions in writing. Haberman and Schmidt write, “Mr. Mueller will accept written answers from Mr. Trump on questions about whether his campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference, Mr. Mueller’s office told the president’s lawyers in a letter, two people briefed on it said on Tuesday.” The president will not be asked to answer questions related to whether he tried to obstruct Mueller’s investigation. A 2018 PRRI study found that (45 percent) of Americans felt that outside interference from a foreign government was a big problem in U.S. elections.

Teacher Allowed to Return to Work After 17 Years

Nearly two decades after she was fired from her teaching position for marrying a divorced man, Resurrección Galera, a public school teacher in Spain, is reporting back to work. According to El País, the Catholicism teacher was dismissed in 2001 after the local diocese discovered her marriage. After over a decade of legal back and forth, the Supreme Court of Spain ruled in Galera’s favor and the Diocese of Almeria was ordered to pay her 17 years of back-pay, and renew the contract they terminated in 2001. Though the diocese appealed the decision on two separate occasions, they ended their court battle on Monday and said they respected the decision of the court.

Supreme Court Nominee Kavanaugh Faces Grilling

On Wednesday, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, was back on Capitol Hill for the second day of hearings. He faced questions from lawmakers on a range of issues including assault weapons, if anyone had asked him about Roe v. Wade in the leadup to his nomination, and whether a sitting president can be subpoenaed. Kavanaugh faced criticism from Democrats after giving his answer on whether a sitting president can be subpoenaed. “My understanding is that you’re asking me to give my view on a potential hypothetical, and that is something that each of the eight justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court, when they were sitting in my seat, declined to decide potential hypothetical cases,” he answered.