Following the Million MAGA March, complete with violence incited by Proud Boys, it makes a certain kind of sense that many people are looking to contextualize the current wave of white supremacy in the U.S. in order not only to understand it, but also to put an end to it. After all, in the weeks surrounding Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump, there have been countless acts of domestic terrorism, from Trumpers storming the home of former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to others attacking Biden supporters, unprovoked.

But there’s a right way and a wrong way to contextualize this violence, and one notable failed attempt to rationalize the far-right can be seen in the rise of hashtags like #VanillaISIS and #YallQaeda. Beyond making light of a very real threat in our country, these hashtags are also deeply racist thanks to their use of Muslim terrorist groups as a means to denounce the MAGA movement.

While it’s true that MAGA and its associations with the Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, and other local terrorist initiatives are indicative of the danger of extremist sects in our society, invoking Muslim terrorists — specifically — is wholly unnecessary and not even useful. First, it doesn’t help to either create awareness or stop violence, and rather just utilizes the same racist and classist tropes — like lumping in all “rednecks” in with white supremacists (re: “Y’all Qaeda”) — that far right-wing groups do themselves. And second, it fails to take into account the fact that white supremacist terrorists are inherently dangerous enough not to need any further context.

In the years since 9/11, white supremacists have been responsible for three times as many attacks in the United States as compared to Islamist extremists, and yet yet it’s not disgruntled white men who are likely to be profiled as a threat in the U.S. A better point of reference than ISIS would be the KKK — in fact, people like Trump have direct family connections to the Klan, and have even been endorsed by David Duke.

These hashtags appear to have begun around 2016 when the Bundys and Oregon extremists hosted armed standoffs with the government. Even then, while many stopped using the hashtags because it felt “unfair” to compare violent terrorist organizations with one another, that wasn’t a real reason to stop. Now, we are faced with the same moral dilemma. Sure, it’s easy to laugh at a hashtag that pokes fun at cultural tropes, but the implications of this are much deeper — and not laughing at them doesn’t mean you suddenly have to sympathize with the violence that far-right groups have incited.

When we rely on the easy trope, we are actually inciting a devastating level of harm and stigmatization of Muslim-Americans and Muslims worldwide, putting them at risk of violence. The proof of that is in the research, which has shown that people who are exposed to images and news of Muslim terrorism exhibit anti-Muslim prejudice. Not only that, but reducing that reality to a seemingly funny hashtag minimizes the threat that angry armed white men pose. “White people have been fanatical, violent, and murderous for a lot longer than ISIS,” tweeted Shabana Mir, author of the book Muslim American Women on Campus. “I get that it’s playful. But don’t you see how it erases all of the horrors of White settler colonial violence, slavery, Jim Crow, and continuing violence today?”

There are better ways to talk about the violence of the MAGA crowd, and people can do that by looking at the long, long history of white violence and the ways in which whiteness has used violence to conquer and oppress for hundreds of years. Or they can look to the history of the U.S. itself which, as Mir pointed out, is full of violent, racist white people. And then maybe we can just leave ISIS out of this altogether.

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How Voter Suppression Still Exists In 2020

Trump's Taking Final Power Grabs. Should We Worry?

Republicans Lied A Lot About The MAGA Maroh

Whether horrified or galvanized by Donald Trump’s rhetoric, the presidential election saw a motivated — and divided — America. Voters who wanted to “Make America Great Again” came out in droves to the polls, hoping to beat Joe Biden’s message of unity. And while they were ultimately unsuccessful, we can learn a lot from looking at who showed up to vote.

This election had more voters than ever before: Two-thirds of eligible Americans turned out to vote in 2020, with nearly 160 million voters casting ballots — 22 million more than in 2016, and the highest proportion of Americans exercising their right to vote since 1900. At the time of publication, Biden has received over 79.3 million votes, while Trump has gotten nearly 73.5 million. While a motivated Democratic Party expected to see a huge surge in votes, what was perhaps most surprising was the additional 10.1 million people who voted for Trump this year than in 2016. After Trump completely mishandled a national pandemic, spewed daily nonsense on Twitter, and literally caged children, who exactly were these 10 million new voters choosing Trump to continue leading the country? 

According to an analysis by the New York Times, Trump picked up votes in Appalachia, the Southern portion of the Piedmont region, rural Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and more agrarian sections of the Midwest. “The president made significant inroads with critical nonwhite swaths of the electorate while also growing his share of rural white voters,” Ken Spain, a Republican strategist, told the Times.

White working-class voters, long the stronghold of Trump’s base, increased their support — thanks in part to a voter turnout drive that the Trump team quietly worked on for years. Trump also received the highest share of non-white votes won by a Republican candidate in 60 years. In South Florida, Trump received 200,000 more votes than he had in 2016, something likely due to Trump’s rhetoric about the Democrats being socialists, which did not play well with the large number of Cuban Americans in the county, many of whom left Cuba under Fidel Castro’s socialist government. In some predominantly-Hispanic counties in Texas, Trump also picked up support. 

Many experts have expressed surprise at the increasing support for Trump in Latinx communities, especially considering Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies and racist rhetoric, but that analysis is based on characterizing the Latinx community as a monolith — which it is not. It is a racially and ethnically diverse population of people. White Cubans, for example, have at times failed to support immigration reform because they were able to migrate to the U.S. under different conditions than people coming from South and Central America. Even still, the fact that more than one-third of Latinx people voted for Trump shows that the stereotype that Cubans vote Republican and most other Latinx people vote Democrat is a false and oversimplified binary.

Though the election is over, the party line battle is still alive: the Million MAGA March, the Republicans’ refusal to recognize Biden as President-elect, and the threats of violence from Trump supporters over vote-counting make that clear. Some people are even predicting that a 2020 loss sets Republicans up for a 2024 comeback. But everything could change in four years. If Democrats want to beat the GOP, strategists say they’re going to have to work on their messaging and lean into the progressive politics that are winning them seats.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of good candidates who their message gets overshadowed by millions of dollars of the Republican message that just literally doesn’t even use their own words,” Rep. Tony Cardenas of California, who is running to lead the DCCC, told NPR. “And those are the kinds of tactics that we’re having to combat.”

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Trump's Taking Final Power Grabs. Should We Worry?

Biden's Plan For Harassment, Shootings & Violence

Unlike Trump, Joe Biden Actually Has A COVID Plan

One of the officers who shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor has been sued for sexual assault. Brett Hankison, the officer in question, was not charged with murder for Taylor’s death but was charged with endangering Taylor’s neighbors for firing “blindly” into her apartment, and was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department. Now, he is being sued for engaging in what a complaint calls a “predatory” pattern of using his position and influence to prey on intoxicated women.

The woman who filed the lawsuit, Margo Borders, initially spoke out about Hankison’s behavior back in June after another woman came forward with story about the former police officer offering her a ride home from The Tin Roof, a bar where he worked as a bouncer. According to her story, Hankison used his role as an opportunity to make unwanted advances on her. Borders says she was a law student at the time of her assault, and she had known Hankison through mutual friends. 

The lawsuit says that Hankison — while in uniform — offered Borders a ride home from the bar and she invited him into her apartment. She left him on the couch while she went to her bedroom to change, where she fell asleep because she was intoxicated. Borders alleges Hankison assaulted her while she was passed out and she woke up and yelled for Hankison to get off her. He later sent her messages implying the incident had been consensual.

Borders was “physically injured, mentally horrified and remained in extreme emotional duress over both the assault and the feeling that any efforts made to hold officer Hankison accountable for his actions would backfire,” the lawsuit says. But she is also not alone: Borders is joined in the suit by nine other women who gave statements alleging sexual misconduct by Hankison, saying that he routinely used his standing as a police officer and job as a bouncer to target women for assault.

Several of the attorneys who filed Borders’ suit also represent the families of Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who is suing the Louisville Metro Police Department. (Aguiar and Lonita Baker are attorneys for Taylor’s family; Steve Romines represents Taylor.) The lawsuit also names former Police Chief Steve Conrad and five other officers, as well as the manager of the bar, alleging that they knew about Hankison’s behavior and failed to intervene. In a statement provided to the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Tin Roof bar says Hankison was terminated from his position there in the spring.

“This police department’s long-standing tolerance for sexual assault by their officers is disgusting,” Aguiar told NBC News. “We intend to hold all who failed to ever report or investigate Brett Hankison responsible. Too many women in this community have suffered for too long.” 

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A Cop Is Suing Breonna Taylor's Boyfriend

Breonna Taylor's Boyfriend Is Finally Speaking Out

What The Breonna Taylor Jury Tapes Tell Us

For a brief moment, much of the country seemed to forget about the coronavirus pandemic because of the high-stakes presidential election. But highly contagious viruses do not stop just because people would like to focus on something else, and experts have been warning for months that the United States should be prepared for another wave of increasing cases. That wave is here — and lockdown measures are imminently to follow.

Right now, there have been over 10 million COVID-19 cases nationwide and over a quarter of a million deaths. The country has been breaking the daily records for new cases in the past month alone: As of Tuesday, the seven-day average was more than 123,000 new cases per day. As of Wednesday, 65,368 people were hospitalized around the country with COVID-19, which is the largest number at any point so far during the pandemic. Nearly the entire country is seeing uncontrolled community spread of the virus, not long after re-opening measures were instituted in most states. But with the rising numbers only expected to get worse, many states are reversing course and putting lockdown measures back in place. 

On Wednesday, New York announced new restrictions and paused elements of their re-opening process. “This is our LAST chance to stop a second wave,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter. “We can do it, but we have to act NOW.” The new restrictions include limiting gatherings to 10 or less people indoors, and closing restaurants and bars at 10 p.m.

Other states are following suit. New Jersey Gov. Philip D. Murphy put new limits on indoor dining, Connecticut issued limits on gatherings and reduced capacity for dining establishments, and Massachusetts has instituted overnight stay-at-home orders. Ohio issued a mask mandate, and other states, like Iowa, North Carolina, and Indiana, have put limits on indoor gathering. California has banned indoor dining again and paused the re-openings of schools. Utah and Maryland also began tightening restrictions on public indoor gatherings.

How strict the limits become and how many states adapt them is yet to be seen, but with cases spiking the way they are, people across the country should expect their state to follow suit with at least some new restrictions. People should also brace themselves for lockdowns in some places as numbers go up, which will be difficult as outdoor gatherings become harder as the weather gets colder, and will put a damper on the winter holiday season.

“You should be prepared for how bad it’s going to get,” infectious disease doctor William Haseltine told The Daily Beast, adding that “we’re not even near the peak.”

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Don’t Thank Trump For Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine

How To Tailor Your Job Applications To Right Now

Unlike Trump, Joe Biden Actually Has A COVID Plan

Following Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and the Trump administration refusing to accept the results, stoking ire and spreading misinformation among the president’s supporters, some disgruntled Trump voters are getting violent. Such is the case in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where a 50-year-old man attacked an elderly couple who was holding a home-made sign supporting President-elect Biden.

The assailant, Mark A. Ulsaker, has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, threats of violence, assault of a police officer, and resisting arrest, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He is being held on $25,000 bail. Ulsaker reportedly drove by a group who was holding signs in support of Biden, five days after the November 3 election. Among the group was a married couple, a 78-year-old woman and her 80-year-old husband. 

According to their complaint, Ulsaker slowed his pickup truck down and shoulted a vulgarity at the group, which they ignored. He then came back wielding a golf club and approached them from behind. Ulsaker began swinging it at the couple, which reportedly broke when it hit the chair the wife was sitting in, and he punched the husband in the head. Ulsaker also drove his pickup truck over the curb and towards the wife, in what he admitted was an attempt to scare her.

Police tracked Ulsaker after a witness wrote down his license plate number. When they arrived at his home, Ulsaker reportedly tried to punch the officer and only stopped resisting after being threatened with a taser. He admitted to “flipping off” the group and said their signs enraged him because he is a Trump supporter. The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

While no one has been seriously hurt following the election results, there have been plenty of threats. People counting ballots in Arizona and Pennsylvania had to contend with angry mobs of armed people accusing them of tampering with the ballots after Trump demanded those states stop counting votes.

This is also an extension of the fear-mongering the Trump administration has spread over the course of the past four years. This summer, armed groups of white supremacist Trump supporters showed up to the Michigan capitol. And, as recently as last month, authorities discovered far-right conspirators plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Trump has been accused of trying to incite violence among his supporters in the past, and some people worry that his administration’s continued lies and refusal to concede the election will have dire consequences. This is one example that could have ended much worse than it did. 

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How Trump's Voter Fraud Conspiracy Is Unraveling

Megyn Kelly Talks "Feelings" After Attacking Biden

Jon Voight Calls Joe Biden Satan In Bizarre Video

The presidential election has been called for Joe Biden, but Donald Trump and his team are not quite ready to admit defeat. In their attempt to steal an election, administration officials like Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are using lies and brute political force (or farce, really) to try to game the system. Meanwhile, president-elect Biden is patiently waiting to be acknowledged by the sitting administration. 

But there’s one major player in all of this who hasn’t quite gotten her due until now: Whoopi Goldberg. Yes, that’s right, the longtime co-host of The View, a daytime talk show, is as much to blame for the temper tantrum being thrown by Trump supporters and the GOP as the current president’s administration — or at least according to one Fox News reporter.

On an episode of her show on Monday, Goldberg said, “I want to say to all those people who don’t believe that Americans actually got out and voted, let me say this to you: When you-know-who was elected four years ago, Hillary Clinton didn’t say, ‘Hey wait a minute, this doesn’t feel right. Stop the count.’ She didn’t say any of that, so all of you, suck it up! Suck it up, like we sucked it up.”

“All of you, suck it up — suck it up like we sucked it up.”@WhoopiGoldberg to those who won’t acknowledge that Biden won: “You’re bringing into question all these Americans who voted legally, came out and stood and voted. How dare you question it?” https://t.co/f8u2wbJuik pic.twitter.com/LxcHhqbLXW

— The View (@TheView) November 9, 2020

And for that reason, according to Fox News contributor Howard Kurtz, she is as bad as the current members of the GOP who are essentially attempting a coup in the United States of America. “From Trump’s GSA barring Biden transition officials from federal buildings to Whoopi Goldberg telling his voters to suck it up, both sides are playing the politics of payback,” Kuntz tweeted, with a link to his column on Fox News’ website in which he lambasts “both sides” for not playing nice enough in the aftermath of an election that one side clearly lost.

But it’s not just Kurtz who is angry at Whoopi for telling Trump voters to “suck it up.” Actor Antonio Sabato, Jr., a Trump supporter, fired back at Goldberg. “Whoopi’s talking about sucking it up? You are voting for socialism? You are voting for locking people up?” Sabato Jr. said during an appearance on FOX Business Network. “The American people won this election because, at the end of the day, whether you like Trump as a person or not, you know that he’s counting on you and he’s working for you. These people — Biden — hasn’t done anything in 48 years.” Fox News analyst Brit Hume also spent time and energy lambasting Goldberg on air for her comments.

What’s perhaps news to the rest of us is that “both sides,” according to Fox reporters, includes “the president of the United States” and “Whoopi Goldberg.” But here we are. Nevermind the fact that Goldberg simply told Trump supporters to toughen up a bit and accept the outcome of a democratic election, while Trump supporters have spent the last four years trying to “own the libs,” telling Democrats “fuck your feelings,” and wearing shirts literally threatening to lynch journalists for doing their jobs.

You know Whoopi’s doing something right when she is cited for being as politically influential as a presidential administration. Personally, we love this for her.

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Megyn Kelly Talks "Feelings" After Attacking Biden

Jon Voight Calls Joe Biden Satan In Bizarre Video

TikTokers Are Trolling Trump's Voter Fraud Hotline

In the chaotic year of our lord 2020, nothing is off the table — not even a failed conservative politician pretending to be a Black gay man on Twitter, which is exactly what yesterday’s main event seemed to be about. But then, like most things in 2020, it turned out to be something else entirely and ended with legend Patti LaBelle’s name being dragged into a…very weird mess. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s ok — I’m not totally sure either, but I will try to explain it. 

For those who weren’t online yesterday to watch this all go down in real-time, here’s a quick recap: Dean Browning, a former member of the Lehigh County Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners and a conservative politician who lost his primary in a bid for Congress earlier this year, was not happy about Joe Biden’s presidential victory. “What Trump built in 4 years, Biden will destroy in 4 months,” he tweeted on November 8th. Someone replied to Browning’s tweet critically, saying, “You mean what Obama built in 8 years.” But it wasn’t until after this brief correspondence that things got very, very strange.

Browning replied to his critic: “I’m a Black gay guy and I can personally say that Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse,” he tweeted. “Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected — which I never do when Democrats are involved.”

But here’s the (first) mic drop: Browning is, by all accounts, a white, heterosexual man. Occam’s razor would have us believe that the most likely scenario was that Browning had a burner account in which he pretended to be a Black, gay Trump supporter and had forgotten to log out of his main account when posting his reply. Twitter users then scoured the Internet to try and find the suspected burner when they landed on @DanPurdy322. The account, belonging to a man named Dan Purdy, was created in October and replied to Browning quite regularly, often citing his credentials as being Black and gay. Purdy even posted a video in which he confirmed who he said he was, and confirmed that he sent Browning the message (and this is also what Browning claimed in his apology).

If this seems like an open and shut case, wait for the celebrity twist. Internet sleuths working overtime in 2020 discovered something familiar about Dan Purdy, whose account has since been deactivated: the man in the video had other social media accounts and identified himself as either Byl Holte or William Holte. And this is where you don’t need to be a sleuth to find out some answers, because William Holte — along with the same person whose face appeared in the video — is listed online as Patti LaBelle’s son. But wait, there’s more: shortly after Holte was declared to be the real Dan Purdy and LaBelle’s son, new information showed that he actually might be her nephew. This confusion tidbit stems from the fact that LaBelle adopted her sister’s children, including Holte, following her sister’s death in 1989.

And here’s a selection of times @DanPurdy322, whose account is brand new and who replies to @DeanBrowningPA A LOT, has described himself as a black gay guy. pic.twitter.com/z5xabE2Fgn

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) November 10, 2020

so the video was taken down, but here it is in case you want your brain to melt: pic.twitter.com/umGPjt5sN4

— alex (@alex_abads) November 10, 2020

Are you confused yet? Because same. It’s a wild story and, to watch it unfold in real-time was like watching one door after another open for increasingly absurd reveals, eventually ending with Patti LaBelle. But what is really chaotic about this Twitter tale is the fact that Republicans are so quick to claim fraud when they regularly engage in lying and deception. Even though in this one particular instance it turned out that there was an actual person behind the suspected sock puppet account, it wouldn’t have been out of line to expect Republicans to be running burners, or for Browning himself to be operating in bad faith.

Back in 2016, massive networks of pro-Trump bot accounts were identified. Clemson University social media researcher Darren Linvill has found more than two dozen Twitter accounts claiming to be Black Trump voters. And even before the Trump years, Black feminists created #YourSlipIsShowing to unmask accounts pretended to be women of color in attempts to discredit social and racial justice work online. And of course, the GOP is now known to have paid fake whistleblowers to say they saw massive ballot fraud or knowingly placing misleading ballot boxes all over California.

Browning himself has been spreading falsehoods online, claiming without evidence that the election was stolen and continuing to ride the Trump train as it careens off a cliff, so sadly, the mistaken tweet isn’t even the most embarrassing thing going on for Browning this week.

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Jon Voight Calls Joe Biden Satan In Bizarre Video

TikTokers Are Trolling Trump's Voter Fraud Hotline

Megyn Kelly Talks "Feelings" After Attacking Biden

As the country waits anxiously for the results of the 2020 presidential election, many pundits are attempting to draw premature conclusions from incomplete data, in an attempt to explain why this year’s races played out the way they did. One topic of particular interest is voters who switched from one party to another in the span of a few years. This is what former Missouri Senator, Democrat Claire McCaskill, attempted to do during an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday night — only she did so by employing harmful stereotypes about different groups of people.

“I think it began around cultural issues,” McCaskill said, referencing the waning support for Democrats among certain blocs of voters. “Whether you’re talking guns, or issues surrounding the right to abortion in this country, or things like gay marriage and the rights for ‘transsexuals’ and other people who we as a party have tried to ‘look after’ and make sure that they’re treated fairly. As we circled those issues, we left some voters behind and Republicans dove in with a vengeance and grabbed those voters… You saw it in the South, I’ve seen it in some rural areas of my state.”

McCaskill continued: “So we’ve got to get back to the meat and potatoes issues, we’ve got to get back to the issues where we are taking care of their families, and we also need to quit acting like we’re smarter than everybody else because we’re not.”

Claire McCaskill: “Whether you are talking guns or…abortion…or gay marriage and rights for ‘transexuals’ and other people who we as a party ‘look after’ and make sure they are treated fairly. As we circled the issues we left voters behind and Republicans dove in.” pic.twitter.com/bMh9JALAxg

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) November 5, 2020

By saying this, McCaskill didn’t only throw marginalized people and progressive issues under the bus: She also blamed Southern and rural voters as being too close-minded and bigoted to support these communities and issues, thus making it seem like caring about things like LGBTQ+ rights was an elitist issue, and not something that mattered to “meat and potatoes” — aka “regular” — Americans.

McCaskill later said her remarks were misconstrued, and that what she “was trying to say we need to also focus on the economic issues we champion.” While that is no excuse for her conflation of gay marriage, gun control, abortion rights, and gender identity, nor is it for using the outdated term “transsexuals” for trans people — it also demonstrates a disturbing understanding about who it is that makes up the Democratic party in 2020, and why it’s a straw man argument to say that it’s merely “economic issues” that are making people vote Republican, and that, in fact, it is Republicans who have focused on identity issues, rather than Democrats.

What McCaskill didn’t mention when blaming Democrats for being too identity-oriented is that there have been candidates over the past few years who have focused on identity — only they’ve been Republicans, and they made anti-trans legislation the crux of their campaign. Perhaps she should Google Pat McGrory’s 2016 gubernatorial campaign in North Carolina, where McGrory obsessed over “bathroom bills,” or Matt Bevin’s 2019 race in Kentuckyansas. Both those candidates lost — but they clearly weren’t afraid of using identity issues to appeal to voters, including Southern and rural ones.

In fact, McCaskill’s pivot to blaming Southern and rural voters is out-of-touch in a variety of ways. The South is home to the highest concentration of Black people in the country and local organizers have been on the ground in those states putting in the work for a long time (hello, Stacey Abrams in Georgia!). So when McCaskill says “Southern” and “rural,” what she really means is “white working-class.” But a look at the polling shows that more voters who make under $1500,000 per year voted for Biden.

Perhaps it’s time that cable news organizations stop booking people like McCaskill, who lost her re-election bid in 2018 to a Republican, to provide political commentary at all. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said as much on Twitter: “McCaskill tried her approach. She ran as a caravan-hysteria Dem& lost while grassroots organizers won progressive measures in MO. Her language here shows how she took her base for granted.”

This morning, McCaskill offered a mea culpa. “I’m so sorry I used hurtful term last night. I was tired, but never a good excuse,” she tweeted. “People have misinterpreted what I was trying to say. Our party should never leave behind our fight 4 equality for trans people or anyone else who has been marginalized by hate. My record reflects that.”

McCaskill’s language may have been an honest mistake, but during an election where stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for the rights of trans folks and other marginalized groups, that language matters — and so does leaving behind the outdated ideas behind it. People’s lives depend on it.

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Paula White Is The High Priestess In Trump's Cult

Black Voters Help Biden Secure Michigan

Yes, Election Stress Disorder Is A Thing

Two days after Election Day, the country is still waiting to find out who the next president will be, and as anxiety grows, people are employing different methods to deal with it: Biden is telling his supporters to be patient and wait for all the votes to be counted, while Trump is demanding that votes stop being counted in cities that are likely to vote against him. Others, like White House “spiritual advisor” Paula White, are simply praying for Trump’s victory.

On Wednesday, a video of White made the rounds, where she was preaching in rushed and nonsensical tones that bordered on demonic tongue. “We break and divide every demonic confederacy against the election, against America, against that who you have declared to be in the White House,” White said, chanting so quickly that each word blended into the next. “We break it up in the name of Jesus. We lose confusion into demonic confederacy directed right now at this election, directed specifically at the six states.”

And of course, the age-old prayer: “We come against people that are working at high levels right now with demonic confederacies and secrecies and demonic plans and networks, we break it up and we command that it be exposed right in the name of Jesus.” White later went on to claim that “Angels have been dispatched from Africa” and that she hears “the sound of victory.” Sounds a bit cult-like, no?

Wow. This is Trumps spiritual adviser Paula White. Who is currently leading a prayer service in an effort to secure Trump’s reelection. Not like we needed much confirmation, but Trumpism is has all the trappings of a full blown cult.

pic.twitter.com/7sq7J3TQLD

— Dr. Jennifer Cassidy (@OxfordDiplomat) November 5, 2020

While many people may not have heard of White before this video, she has been around Trump for decades and is a well-known televangelist. And although White doesn’t have an official title within the administration, the Washington Post reported in 2017 that she serves as a “spiritual advisor” and pastor to the president, as well as heading a group of about 35 Evangelical pastors who formed a pseudo-council for Trump. Of her relationship with Trump, she told the Post at the time, “I don’t preach to anyone [including the president] on behavior modification… Everyone needs a safe place in life, and pastors can be people’s safe place. That’s why I have this relationship, because I don’t talk about it.”

But as many pundits were quick to point out, White built her empire preaching in predominantly Black churches and to predominantly Black audiences — at one point, she was the highest-rated preacher on Black Entertainment Television, where she signed a $1.5 million deal in 2001. In 2007, Sen. Chuck Grassley began an investigation into White and her then-husband, whose church was bringing in $40 million per year, for misuse of donations (in 2010, the investigation was closed).

As the video of White’s bizarre prayer began to circulate online, she was quickly accused of appropriating the style and tenor of Black faith leaders — and not for the first time, either. “Paula White is one of countless examples of White preachers cosplaying with Black cadences while ignoring Black issues. You can’t just want our rhythm without wanting our blues. This is how you exploit your neighbor, not how you love them,” wrote one Twitter user.

Her support for Trump has strained her relationship with her the Black community in some ways before, but perhaps more than ever now. White’s congregation has reportedly lost several hundred members and over $10,000 per week in donations since she began working in the Trump White House — but she has continued to preach in majority Black churches, something that many people see as predatory and actively harmful to her congregants.

“Man. I remember Paula White coming to my very diverse, Evangelical church in South Dallas back in the day. The black women in my family were huge supporters. And now….” wrote The Washington Post‘s Karen Attiah on Twitter.

This grifter built her career preaching in Black churches and mimicking Black preachers. @Paula_White took over a megachurch built by a Black man but now extols the virtues of a white supremacist POTUS and tells Blacks they’ll go to hell for opposing him. pic.twitter.com/kkIInjJCzV

— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) November 5, 2019

Her preaching may be bizarre and unnerving to people who don’t follow White’s teachings, but it’s looking like Trump is going to need more than a prayer to pull off a victory.

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What Happens If Trump Actually Demands A Recount?

Jewish Cemetery Vandalized With "MAGA" Graffiti

Of Course, Melania Trump Went Maskless To Vote

As the countdown to Election Day draws to a close, businesses across the country are preparing for the unknown fallout of the tensest political contest in recent history. Major retailers like Nordstrom, Tiffany & Co., and Saks Fifth Avenue are boarding up storefronts in anticipation of potential unrest following Tuesday’s election — regardless of who wins.

Across the country, storefronts have been boarded up with plywood, signaling to most that the election results will be a far shot from swift or painless. In Washington, D.C. the streets are lined with wood-covered windows, and even the White House is building a “‘non-scalable’ fence to secure the [White House] complex, Ellipse and Lafayette Square,” according to NBC News White House correspondent Geoff Bennett.

In New York City, too, Macy’s is “implementing additional security measures” out of “an abundance of caution,” a spokesperson told NBC New York. Shane Fernett, who owns a contracting business called Jack of All Trades in Colorado Springs, told the New York Times that he’s been stocking up on plywood to board the windows of his retail customers because “we think all hell is going to break loose.”

Experts say people are right to be concerned. “What we fear is that guns, protests and elections do not mix well,” Hrair Balian, director of the Conflict Resolution Program at The Carter Center, told NPR. Balian is referring to the increasingly militant armed groups of Trump supporters who have become increasingly visible over the last few years — from showing up at the Michigan State Capitol, to riding around in pro-Trump caravans, to arriving at polls to intimidate voters. Right-wing groups have also been a huge presence at nationwide protests over racial injustice since the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer this summer.

But violent conflict surrounding elections — which we have seen since Donald Trump’s first campaign in 2016 — is quite common in American history, even going back to the founding of the country. Even the well-known story of the death of Alexander Hamilton in a duel against Aaron Burr was the result of Burr’s anger at Hamilton working to deny him the political positions Burr craved.

This is entirely different, though: the kind of fear around mass unrest we are seeing today is unprecedented — partly because of the ways in which Trump has fanned the flames of his supporters, both in sending them messages to “stand by,” but also in his refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, which has been the hallmark of American democracy since the country’s inception.

“Probably the biggest issue is the president of the United States right now, who has portrayed himself as somebody who, you know, is not necessarily interested in calming the waters,” Stephen Pomper, senior director for policy at the International Crisis Group, told NPR, adding that Trump “might actually court unrest in order to serve his political and personal goals.”

The uncertainty around whether or not there will be massive political unrest following the election is a sign of an unstable democracy, and evidence of how much Trump has degraded so many aspects of American life over the last four years. America’s democracy was never perfect — the GOP has long used voter suppression in order to maintain any semblance of power in the U.S. and the electoral college is far from fair. But under Trump, the hallmarks of tradition and engaging in the system in good faith have all gone out the window.

Boarded up windows ahead of Election Day are a very 2020 sighting — between the ongoing protests against police violence and racial injustice that have lead to property damage, to the vacant storefronts of shuttered businesses that have fallen victim to the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, these are not the images of “Joe Biden’s America” as Trump may purport. They are — literally — the images of a Trump presidency, and everything that has happened under his watch.

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In Harris County, Texas, four Republicans are attempting to have nearly 127,000 votes thrown out — again. Arguing that the ballots violate the constitution because they were cast via drive-thru polling sites, a Republican state rep, two GOP candidates, and one conservative activist filed a lawsuit to ensure that these votes are not counted in the 2020 election. Their complaint will be evaluated Monday morning in an emergency hearing in a Houston federal court by U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen, who is known as “a deeply conservative magistrate,” according to NPR.

But, if these votes are thrown out, it will mean nearly 10 percent of the in-person early votes in the Democratic-leaning county will not be counted. This would also be a significant act of voter disenfranchisement, since both drive-thru and early voting options are accessibility measures meant to ensure that more people — including disabled or immunocompromised people — have access to the democratic process. 

The drive-thru polling stations were set up as a health precaution during the coronavirus pandemic. According to Texas law, curbside voting is available to any voter who is “physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring the voter’s health.” The argument that they are illegal tries to state that because the drive-thru locations are an extension of the curbside voting, they should only be available to voters with disabilities.

This is also the third attempt by these four conservatives to have the same batch of votes rejected, though their first two were unsuccessful. Over the weekend, the entirely-conservative Texas Supreme Court rejected the case, as they did last month regarding a similar case targeting drive-thru voting that was filed by some of the same plaintiffs.

But the lawsuits are of no surprise in the days leading up to the election, where all eyes are on Texas in an attempt to flip the state and turn it blue. Texas has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980 and has 38 electoral votes, making it an incredibly important state for either candidate to win.

The attack on drive-thru vote, though, is simply part of a much larger national strategy of voter suppression by the GOP ahead of Tuesday’s election. “This is simply an un-American attempt to disenfranchise voters,” Democratic Harris County clerk, Chris Hollins, told NPR’s Weekend Edition, calling the lawsuit “baseless” and saying that Democrats still expect to win in the state.

It’s looking as though the four challengers may have met their end, though. In last month’s attempt to have these ballots thrown out, the Texas Tribune reported that the state’s chief election official, Keith Ingram, said that drive-thru voting is “a creative approach that is probably okay legally.” Not only that, a court filing from Friday argued that “more than a century of Texas case law requires that votes be counted even if election official[s] violate directory election laws.” In other words, even if the drive-thru locations are technically a violation, the votes cast at them are still valid and must be counted.

Hollins said that in the worst-case scenario, they “would need to encourage those 127,000 Harris County voters to come back out on Tuesday and cast a provisional ballot to make sure that in any circumstance their vote was counted.” Still, there is hope that the court will once-again deny the claim that the votes are illegal and continue to count them toward the 2020 election.

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After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Vanity Fair cover reveal, the attacks from her critics were almost instantaneous. It’s no surprise, of course, because there is no one conservatives (and perhaps a few centrists) loves to hate more than AOC. And it seems that even a profile story on the freshman congresswoman was enough to needlessly cause speculation.

The criticism this time is centered around the ethics of Ocasio-Cortez wearing expensive, designer clothing on a magazine cover — and whether it is at-odds with her values as a Democratic Socialist. “AOC on the cover of Vanity Fair. The clothes are estimated to cost $14,000,” tweeted writer Sunanda Vashisht. “So happy that AOC is upholding the long established hypocritical tradition of Socialists who believe Socialism is for [the] poor while they enjoy the fruits of Capitalism.”

Hoards of critics — conservative or otherwise — began to attack Ocasio-Cortez for her borrowed white Aliétte suit. And as quickly as the antagonists arrived, other advocates came to her defense to simply explain that none of this disputes the values of Democratic Socialism. Unlike Vashisht’s claim that Ocasio-Cortez wearing an expensive suit is hypocritical to the socialist movement, others countered to say that socialism is not asking people to take a vow of poverty — it’s believing that maybe everyone deserves to have nice things (like health care and basic human rights) instead of just the population’s one percent.

I was waiting for this stupid argument. Clothes you wear at photoshoots are loaned. Democratic socialism doesn’t mean you can’t have nice things. It’s the belief that, perhaps, in lieu of one personing owning a billion $14,000 suits, maybe everyone can have one health insurance. https://t.co/GNwgI9o2jk

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) October 29, 2020

While it’s common knowledge that clothing worn for magazine photoshoots is usually loaned, this was simply just an excuse: It’s easier for people to criticize AOC because she is a threat — both to Republicans, for whom she challenges the tenuous grasp on power they currently hold, and to establishment Democrats, for whom she risks making obsolete and irrelevant. 

This is also not the first time AOC’s clothing has caused a backlash. In 2018, after Interview magazine ran photos of the Congresswoman in a suit and Manolo Blahnik heels, an outfit totaling about $3,500, she was dragged for being “someone who pretends to be a champion of the people” while wearing a suit that costs the equivalent of several months’ rent. Earlier this year, she was criticized for daring to wear (gasp!) a designer dress on television, causing her to explain that she borrows, rents, and thrifts her clothing (an explanation she never should have had to give in the first place).

Even Ocasio-Cortez’s $300 haircut and highlights — a pretty standard styling cost in a city like Washington, D.C. — came under fire last year. Meanwhile, President Trump wrote off $70,000 worth of “hair styling” costs during his time hosting The Apprentice.

But Ocasio-Cortez’s identity as a young, Latina woman has only intensified that criticism waged against her; it’s easy to lean into sexist stereotypes to suggest that an established politician might not fully grasp the ideals with is fighting for — like Democratic Socialism — and try to discredit her on something as surface-level as her appearance.

Despite the utter lack of legs this argument against Ocasio-Cortez has, it’s only given her many supporters the opportunity to further explain what the congresswoman is fighting for: providing Americans with living wages, and “basic levels of dignity so that no person in America is too poor to live,” Ocasio-Cortez told Business Insider in 2018. “That’s what Democratic Socialism means.”

And in case there was a question of whether she was rattled by this completely empty criticism, she has already responded to it:

Republicans are Very Mad (again) about my appearance. This time they’re mad that I look good in borrowed clothes (again).

Listen, if Republicans want pointers on looking your best, I’m happy to share.

Tip #1: Drink water and don’t be racist

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 29, 2020

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