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It wasnt, of course. Lively ultimately realized that the QAnon theories were false, but only after hitting bottom last summer, when she destroyed a coronavirus mask display in a Target store and posted video of the incident that went viral.

Her experience highlights how economic hardship and anxiety have served as accelerants in the radicalization of the Republican Party, experts said, part of a complex mix that includes racism along with other factors such as sexism and xenophobia and long-simmering resentment of the expansion of the federal government.

And being out of work leaves many people angry, with the time to latch onto conspiracy theories and get involved in politics.

The economic component has brought QAnon to people who otherwise would never have been involved in it, said Lively, who sought treatment afterward and now disavows QAnon. Its exploded in popularity because people are desperate.

But researchers said the role of the economy in the rightward shift of many Republicans extends beyond the unemployment line, factoring into the insecurities of white Americans that began decades ago with the onset of globalization, as well as newly empowered people of color and women benefiting from the civil rights and feminist movements. They all helped fuel the Tea Party movement during the Great Recession, Donald Trumps presidential campaign, and the rise of QAnon during the trauma of the pandemic.

An analysis this month by The Washington Post found almost 60 percent of the people facing charges in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol had signs of financial problems over the past two decades, including bankruptcies and unpaid taxes.

We often see right-wing social movements when groups are experiencing economic loss, political loss, or status-based loss, said Rory McVeigh, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame and author of the 2019 book The Politics of Losing: Trump, the Klan, and the Mainstreaming of Resentment.

The uneven recovery from the Great Recession, with wealthier people and regions bouncing back more quickly than the rest of America, created the conditions for Trump to exploit in his 2016 run for president, he said. The median wealth of middle-income families declined by a third from 2007 to 2016, while upper-income families saw their median wealth increase by 10 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Why was the angry populist message resonating? Well, a lot of people didnt really benefit from the recovery, and Trump was able to . . . appeal to that population, McVeigh said. The economic-populism message infused with racism, infused with sexism, spoke directly to the monster that had grown in the Republican Party.

Experts caution not to overstate the impact of economic distress in radicalizing people. Some are just racists, resisting the diminished influence of white men in society.

The data and a lot of the literature would suggest its more cultural and racial than economic, said Antoine Banks, director of the Government and Politics Experimental Lab at the University of Maryland. Its not that economics wasnt there, but it wasnt the main fuel behind it.

Christopher Sebastian Parker, a professor of social justice and political science at the University of Washington who has studied the Tea Party movement and Trumps supporters, said complaints about economic circumstances are primarily just a cover for people who dont want to acknowledge their racism.

They feel like theyre losing their proprietary grip on America and its because of these rapid social changes, he said.

In December, Parker and Rachel M. Blum, an assistant political science professor at the University of Oklahoma, surveyed nearly 2,000 supporters of Trumps Make America Great Again movement whom they reached through social-media ads featuring the slogan. They found half had middle-class incomes and at least 60 percent were white, Christian, and male. The results echoed what Parker had found previously, including for his 2013 book, Change They Cant Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.

The Tea Party movement proclaimed that it had economic underpinnings. It began amid the deepening Great Recession and the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the election of Barack Obama as the nations first Black president. Many Americans who already were struggling as manufacturing jobs shifted overseas and technological skills became more crucial in the workplace found themselves in dire economic circumstances. They focused their frustrations on Washington, opposing the federal governments bank bailouts and Obamas push to expand access to health care.

The average Republican base voter is a middle-aged older white person, and the problem was their lives were changing, seemingly overnight. They were losing their jobs. They were losing their industries, said Joe Walsh, an Illinois Republican who rode the Tea Party wave into Congress in 2011. A lot of it was resentment at the way this 1954 life they loved was changing overnight.

Polls showed that many in the Tea Party movement believed the lie promoted by Trump and others that Obama was not born in the United States. Walsh acknowledged there was a racism component of the movement, but said he doesnt think it was the prevailing viewpoint.

Tea Party backers advocated reining in the federal government, which had shifted to full Democratic control in 2009, and reducing the national debt. But he said that Republicans, who gained the House majority in 2011 and the Senates in 2015 on the strength of Tea Party activism, were unable to enact the major changes the movement wanted. That opened the door for Trump to radicalize many of the activists amid a sluggish economic recovery, Walsh said.

Tea Party people around the country got disenchanted, and Trump tapped the economic impact that people were feeling, said Walsh, who lost reelection in 2012 after redistricting and launched a primary bid against Trump in 2019. This whole economic nationalist strand took over.

Former Tea Party supporters became some of Trumps biggest backers in his 2016 campaign and through his first year as president, the Pew Research Center found in 2019. And their concerns about government debt, which continued to rise under Trump, largely disappeared after he replaced Obama.

The insecurity is real in an economic sense, but the genius of Trumps populism was to tie it into a notion that theres an injustice, said Adam Hilton, an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College who has studied the relationships between social movements and political parties. He spoke to some legitimate and factually based questions about the economy, but also xenophobia and racism and immigration.

Some political scientists refer to the dynamic as status threat.

A Black president, an economic crisis, and massive forms of government intervention, Hilton said. That provided an opportunity for people to feel very nervous about living in a country that they dont seem to recognize anymore.

Lively said she didnt have time for politics before the pandemic and didnt even vote for president in 2016. She said she voted for Trump in November solely on the basis of the economy and his support for Israel.' But her views of him changed after the election.

I have found all of the shenanigans post-Nov. 3 to be absolutely ludicrous and quite frankly embarrassing for anybody who espouses any sort of conservative values, said Lively, who is writing a memoir titled You Cant Cancel Me The Story of My Life.

But during her darkest financial times last year, she was open to believing anything QAnon was espousing, she said.

The reason why QAnon started with weirdos in basements is because all of the normal people were out living their lives before the pandemic, and the pandemic completely changed the paradigm, she said. When people are employed and people are busy theres no time to be spending 10 hours a day watching conspiracy videos on YouTube.

Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera.

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Economic hardship and anxiety have accelerated the Republican Partys radicalization, experts say - The Boston Globe

She added, It is way too much control for one branch to have over another branch, particularly where one of its charges is to rein in the excesses of the legislative branch.

If the Republican bill becomes law, Pennsylvania would become just the fifth state in the country, after Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Illinois, to wholly map its judicial system into electoral districts, according to the Brennan Center. And other states may soon join Pennsylvania in trying to remake the courts through redistricting.

Republicans in the Texas Legislature, which is also controlled by the G.O.P., recently introduced a bill that would shift districts for the state appellate courts by moving some counties into different districts, causing an uproar among state Democrats who saw the new districts as weakening the voting power of Black and Latino communities in judicial elections and potentially adding to the Republican tilt of the Texas courts.

Gilberto Hinojosa, the chair of the Texas Democratic Party, called the bill a pure power grab meant to keep Blacks and Latinos from having influence on courts as their numbers in the state grow.

These judicial redistricting battles are taking shape as Republican-controlled legislatures across the country explore new restrictions on voting after the 2020 elections. In Georgia, Republicans in the state legislature are seeking a host of new laws that would make voting more difficult, including banning drop boxes and placing sweeping limitations on mail-in voting. Similar bills in Arizona would restrict mail-in voting, including barring the state from sending out mail ballot applications. And in Texas, Republican lawmakers want to limit early voting periods.

The nationwide effort by Republicans follows a successful four-year drive by the partys lawmakers in Washington to reshape the federal judiciary with conservative judges. Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, until recently the majority leader, and Mr. Trump, the Senate confirmed 231 federal judges, as well as three new Supreme Court justices, over the former presidents four-year term, according to data maintained by Russell Wheeler, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In a state like Pennsylvania, which has two densely populated Democratic cities and large rural areas, this could give outsize representation to sparsely populated places that lean more conservative, particularly if the legislature resorts to a gerrymandering tactic similar to one used in Pennsylvania in 2011.

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How the Pennsylvania GOP is Trying to Increase Their Control of State Courts - The New York Times

Where do Americas two leading political parties go from here?

How might things change as the presidency and the U.S. Senate shift from Republican to Democratic control?

And how, after the violent events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, can we return to even marginally more civil dialogue and bipartisanship?

Those were some of the questions on the virtual table in a Wednesday night panel discussion hosted by the University of Virginias Center for Politics. The all-star panel included Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times columnist and UVA alumnus; Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and another alumnus; David Ramadan, an executive and international consultant and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates; and Tara Setmayer, a CNN political commentator, ABC News political contributor and former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill. All four are visiting scholars at the Center for Politics, with Krebs as the newest addition.

The event was part of the centers national, yearlong Civility Project, announced in January as an effort to promote civic engagement and civil dialogue. The hope, Center for Politics Associate Director Ken Stroupe said Wednesday, is to use national, state and local partnerships, events and scholarship to lower the temperature in politics by focusing on what unites Americans of goodwill, rather than what divides us.

Our system is adversarial by design, but the events of Jan. 6 underscore that the partisanship and negative partisanship have reached levels that have already threatened the American republic and may continue to do so unless there are concerted efforts by every American of goodwill to try to change this trajectory, Stroupe said. As we kick off this series, we thought it important to look at the state of Americas two political parties and where they might be headed in the future.

All four panelists careers have afforded them an up-close look at Americas often-cantankerous two-party system: Bouie as a journalist, Setmayer as a commentator and former GOP consultant who formally left the Republican Party in 2020 after 27 years, and Ramadan as a Republican elected official and consultant with a reputation for working across the aisle.

Krebs, however, has perhaps the most experience with the personal costs of bitter partisanship. The senior cybersecurity officer responsible for securing the 2020 presidential election, Krebs was appointed to that position by former President Donald Trump in 2018 and then fired by Trump in November after asserting that the election, contrary to Trumps protests, was in fact secure.

Bringing all of those experiences to the discussion, the four panelists explored everything from the consequences of the filibuster rule in the Senate to the possibility of a three-party system.

Here are some key takeaways from their discussion. You can also watch the full event here.

Both parties are facing identity questions.

On the Republican side, panelists agreed, the key question is what Republicanism looks like now that Trump is no longer in office and the Democratic Party controls both the White House and congressional majorities.

Ramadan and Setmayer both pointed to members of the Republican Party who did not embrace Trump, or who questioned his claims that the 2020 election had been rigged, such as U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney or U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse. However, they also acknowledged that the majority of the party has continued to support Trump. Setmayer cited one recent poll showing that although 25% of Republicans no longer supported the former president, 75% remained confident in him.

Bouie also pointed out that aspiring Republican presidential candidates, including Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and others, appear to be fashioning political personas in Trumps image.

They are clearly interested in making a run for the White House, and they are not walking away from Trump. If anything, they are trying to find what part of his political persona or style they can use to win votes, Bouie said. That, to me, is the clearest indication that, to the extent that there is a civil war in the Republican Party, its already over. The direction the party is going is the direction that Trump has forged.

On the Democratic side, panelists said, there is a divide between the most progressive wing of the party and more centrist elements. Bridging that divide and keeping both groups happy will be a key challenge for President Joe Biden and his administration. Questions about student loan forgiveness offer one current example, as Biden has refused to commit to canceling up to $50,000 in student debt per borrower, but proposed canceling up to $10,000.

I have a hunch that we will consistently see the Biden White House under-promising and attempting to over-deliver, Bouie said. He has voiced support for forgiving $10,000 in student debt, for example, which is not $50,000, but is a big change from the current approach. That is the dynamic we will see with Biden, pressing against the maximalist version of something, but pushing or endorsing something that is still pretty progressive relative to past Democratic presidents.

Setmayer warned Biden against catering too much to the progressive wing of his party.

Joe Biden was not elected to be a progressive president. He ran as a moderate, she said. I think progressives trying to put too much in a COVID relief package, or pushing favorite policies so soon, are setting themselves up for failure later, because it is not showing goodwill in areas that have to be addressed first [such as COVID relief].

National partisanship is trickling down to state and local politics.

Ramadan, himself a veteran of state politics, remained confident that bipartisanship is possible at the state and local level, though he saw some concerning trends.

We still had real debate in Richmond, to a certain extent, Ramadan recalled, remembering his friendship with Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. They would often criticize each other harshly, he said, but then reunite over a beer, building a relationship despite their differences.

But I did see some partisanship carry over from D.C. to Richmond, said Ramadan, who served in the House of Delegates from 2012 to 2016. Our local politics were infected, I would say, with national partisanship, and that is a problem.

Krebs also pointed out concerns about the politicization of the election process at the state and local level.

I think we need to look carefully at the role of politics in the administration of elections, he said. The majority of our secretaries of state who actually administer elections are independently elected; they are politically affiliated. That, in my view, if left unchecked or without appropriate engagement, can lead to less-than-ideal political outcomes.

One example is currently happening in Georgia, Krebs said, a swing state in the recent election where state lawmakers recently introduced bills that could limit absentee voting, vote by mail and other voter access measures.

To me, we are going down the wrong track, Krebs said. Democracy should be based on access, and it seems to me we are not headed toward more access. We are actually headed the other way.

Structural obstacles in the Senate could inhibit cooperation.

Panelists spent a chunk of the event talking about gridlock and obstructionism in Congress, particularly in the U.S. Senate.

Krebs noted that power seems to have increasingly coalesced at the top of the House and the Senate, leaving many members with little power and little incentive to cooperate.

One thing that has struck me over the last several years is the consolidation of political power, particularly in Congress in the leadership ranks, almost disenfranchising rank-and-file members, he said. If they cant actually contribute to the political process, these members turn into more performative politics players as they speak to the media or rile up constituents.

That creates a less-than-helpful environment, and allowed a lot of the disinformation and misinformation we have seen over the last several years to go mainstream, particularly on some of the networks, Krebs said.

Bouie also spoke about the filibuster rule in the Senate, which allows members to delay a vote on a bill until 60 senators vote to the end the debate. Effectively, it means that major legislation often has to have a 60-vote majority, instead of a simple majority of 51 votes.

I think the biggest obstacle right now to conservative policy being passed into law is the filibuster, Bouie said. If you have to have a supermajority to pass legislation, it is not worth your while to try to build 51- or 52-vote coalitions.

He cited U.S. Sen. Mitt Romneys ideas about child benefits and ending child poverty as an example. Many Democrats like Romneys ideas, Bouie said, but they know that he cannot persuade enough Republicans to join him to reach a 60-vote majority.

If you need 60 votes and Romney cant bring nine Republicans with him, there is no point, Bouie said. But if you only needed 51 votes, there would be some room for [cooperation].

A third-party system would require major structural change.

With questions of identity rising on both sides, it is tempting to consider what would happen if particular wings of the Republican or Democratic parties broke off to form their own party. However, Wednesdays panelists largely agreed that a three-party system would be very difficult to form or sustain.

I do not think a three-party structure would work, Krebs said. If you spend a lot of time in politics or Washington, D.C., he said, you realize that everything is binary it is hard to hold three disparate ideas in discourse at the same time. Its unfortunate, but things break down to yes or no, right or left.

Structurally, Bouie said, it would be hard for a third party to get candidates on the ballot successfully, and pull enough votes from either Democrats or Republicans to actually win an election.

We would need major change to the electoral system to have a viable third party, he said. There are clear divisions where you could imagine a multi-party system developing, but the rules and the structure we have dont really provide incentives for the parties to consciously uncouple their various coalitions.

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What's Next for the Democratic and Republican Parties? - UVA Today

After she helped raise more than three million dollars in assistance across the state for Texas relief organizations, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited the Houston Food Bank that is working to aid those in need. (Feb. 20) AP Domestic

Former President Donald Trump is slated to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which begins next week, marking his first major public appearance since he left the White House.

Trumps speech willfocus on the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. The former president will also take on President Joe Bidens immigrationpolicies during his speech, a source familiar with the planstold USA TODAY.

Trump is the first speaker listed on CPAC's website. Its profile of the former president describes him as the "very definition of the American success story, setting the standards of excellence in his business endeavors, and now, for the United States of America."

CPAC will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Florida, from Feb. 25-28. The conference, which is usually held in the Washington, D.C., area, was moved to Florida due to COVID-19.

A conference of conservative activists from across the country, CPAC has been a launching pad for many Republican presidential candidates. The former president is just one of a lengthy list of speakersthat includesSouth Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Scott of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

The news of Trump speaking at CPAC comes just after the former president broke an uncharacteristicperiod of silence since leaving office, blasting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a press release Tuesday.

"The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,"Trump said. "He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our country."

Trump wouldnt say whether he would run for president again when asked during an interview with Newsmax on Wednesday. Buthe did vow to "back primary rivals who espouse Making American Great Again and our police of America First"in his press release Tuesday, indicating that will remained involved in politics and the Republican Party.

Republicans, highly critical of Trump,were not included in the speaker lineup for the "America uncanceled" themedconference.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a primary organizer of CPAC, worked with the Trump campaign on its election protests in the wake of the loss to Joe Biden.

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Donald Trump to speak at CPAC in first major public appearance since leaving office - USA TODAY

According to Newsweek, QAnon followers are posing a new threat and have marked March 4th as a very significant date in their calendar.

QAnon who gained attention during the Capitol Insurrection on January 6th believes this is the day Donald Trump will return to power as president.

Newsweek is also reporting that the FBI is listing this as a domestic terrorist threat.

Experts say QAnon followers latest theory will cause further humiliation for the radical group when their threat fails.

QAnon believes a secret law that was actually passed back in 1871 changed the United States into an actual corporation.

In essence, to these followers, all presidencies after Ulysses S. Grant have been illegitimate.

This would make former President Donald Trump the 19th president instead of the 45th.

The reason behind the March 4th date is that this is when presidential inauguration ceremonies used to take place before it was moved to January 20th in 1933.

Both Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Departments are continuing to monitor potential threats and are aware of the significance of QAnons March 4th date.

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QAnon Believes Donald Trump Will Be Reinstated As President - WTRF