"Victim" Group Is a Front for Utility Companies

A number of posts have discussed Astroturf, i.e., artificial grassroots lobbying.  Interest groups create front groups to disguise their true aims.

Melody Petersen at LAT:

A group claiming to represent California fire survivors began sending mailers and paying for social media ads this spring, calling on lawmakers to take action to reduce the rising cost of wildfires.

“Contact your legislator and tell them we need to fix our wildfire problem to make California more affordable,” said a mailer sent this month by the group called Wildfire Victims First.

“Stand with wildfire victims,” the group’s website states, urging people to join its cause.

The group was created with money from California’s three biggest for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — which government investigators found ignited at least six of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires.

The corporate campaign has angered wildfire survivors, including some of the thousands of families in Altadena who lost their homes in last year’s Eaton fire. The blaze, which killed 19 people, remains under investigation. Edison has said its century-old transmission line is the likely cause.

The utility-funded group is lobbying in Sacramento for proposals in a study that Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered to guide lawmakers in writing wildfire-related bills. The study largely ignored utilities’ responsibility for igniting fires.

Among its dozens of proposals is limiting amounts victims can get for pain and suffering, capping fees for attorneys representing survivors and requiring property insurers to bear more of the cost of utility-sparked fires.

”Each proposal would shift more of the cost of catastrophic fires away from the corporations responsible and onto survivors, policyholders, taxpayers, and the public,” wrote Joy Chen of Every Fire Survivor’s Network in a letter to Newsom this week.

Chen wrote that the industry-funded Wildfire Victims First campaign “created the appearance that wildfire survivors supported” the findings of the study. “We do not.”

Opinion on Immigration Proposals

Many posts have discussed immigration. 

Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Beyond general views on immigration, the telephone poll measured Americans’ support for five specific policy proposals. The highest levels of support are seen for two proposals related to citizenship, with slightly more in favor of allowing immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements (81%) than doing the same for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally (75%). In each case, more Americans “strongly favor” the proposal than just “favor” it.

 

Trust Over Time

 Many posts have discussed confidence in institutions.

Bruce Mehlman:

Aging Congress

Many posts have discussed the state of Congress.

Elena Shao at NYT:

The sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham, the 71-year-old Republican of South Carolina, has renewed criticism of an increasingly aging Congress and the systems and norms that continue to reward seniority and tenure.

More than a third of U.S. senators are 70 or older. In the Senate and the House, that age cohort has grown markedly over the past few decades, and now makes up a quarter of membership across both chambers.

 

"Heritage Americans"

Many posts have discussed patriotism and the role of religion in American life. 

The late John McCain said: "We are citizens of the world's greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil."

Karl Rove at WSJ:

Creating America wasn’t easy, and the fulfillment of our founding documents still demands much. But we make a grave mistake if we think this nation is only for what some call “heritage Americans,” whose forebears—specifically Anglo and Scots-Irish Protestants—fought in the Revolution or Civil War.

This notion that there is a select subset of “real” Americans is being pushed by, among others, Vice President JD Vance. He says that “America is not just an idea” but “a particular place, with a particular people.” Our country is more than an idea, but it began as one. Our people are particular, yet it makes no difference whether your forebear wintered at Valley Forge or fought at Gettysburg. What matters is living up to the Declaration’s promises.

It is ironic that Mr. Vance, a Catholic convert, would advocate “heritage Americans.” In the past, such movements routinely declared Catholics unacceptable members of our national family. One of the largest such groups was the American Protective Association, an anti-immigrant organization in the Gilded Age. It claimed 2.5 million adherents at its height. Its members swore an oath denouncing the pope and “the diabolical work of the Roman Catholic Church.” The APA was particularly strong in Mr. Vance’s home state of Ohio.

This notion of “heritage Americans” is at odds with the Declaration. America’s birth didn’t include a new aristocracy based on inherited valor.

Consider some Americans without Revolution or Civil War forebears: Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlize Theron, Hakeem Olajuwon, former Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Salma Hayek, Henry Kissinger, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Bob Hope, Irving Berlin, Interactive Brokers’ founder Thomas Peterffy, Yo-Yo Ma, Alex Trebek and at least 40 winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Noncitizens on the Voter Rolls?

Many posts have discussed immigration. Illegal voting by noncitizens is rare.

 Last night, Trump claimed there were 278,000 noncitizens who had registered to vote.  At PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson provides reasons for skepticism.

Experts cited several reasons to be cautious about the headline number and how Trump and Mullin framed it.

For starters, Homeland Security’s letters to state officials used more cautious language — glossed over in public remarks by Trump and Mullin — that called it a "preliminary review" and said that there "may be as many as" the number of noncitizens they found on the voter rolls.

At his press conference, Mullin did not identify the individuals as potential noncitizens; he simply called them "noncitizens."

Another reason for caution is history.

In the past, when government officials have announced initial numbers of noncitizens on voter rolls, those figures have dropped dramatically after months of vetting by state and local officials and the media.

In 2012, then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered state officials to clear the rolls of noncitizen voters ahead of the election.

Florida initially assembled a list of about 180,000 potential noncitizens. With more scrutiny, however, officials whittled the count to about 2,600 names, then 198, then 85. The initial list was rife with errors, even flagging a Brooklyn-born World War II veteran.

In Global Public Opinion, the US is Losing to China

Many.posts have dealt with international views of the United States.  They have taken a negative turn.

Jonathan Schulman, Laura Silver, Laura Clancy, and William Miner at Pew:

Global views of the United States worsened last year as President Donald Trump’s second term began, though most people still had a more positive opinion of the U.S. than China. This year, that is no longer the case.

Views of China have improved in recent years while opinions of the U.S. have worsened, to the point where China is now seen more positively than the U.S. in most of 36 countries surveyed.

Confidence in these countries’ respective leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs has followed a similar pattern. In the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency, confidence in him was higher than confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping across most countries surveyed, though Biden’s rating declined in many places from 2023 to 2024.

During the first two years of Trump’s second term, ratings of the U.S. president worsened significantly. While many people still lack confidence in Xi, positive views of him have become more widespread, and more overall now say they have confidence in Xi than in Trump.

One area where the U.S. still gets higher ratings than China has to do with personal freedoms: More say the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people than say the same of the Chinese government. Still, the gap has been narrowing – driven by large drops in the shares saying the U.S.  government respects personal freedoms.