(Ronda Churchill/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

As SEIU Local 1107 begins contract negotiations this week for its 7,000 county employees, the union has said Clark County has withheld “vital documents” to aid in bargaining, including information on the number of people of color who have been disciplined. 

President Michelle Maese, the president of the union, asked the county on Oct. 13 for the number of full time employees and vacancies, a breakdown of union members who received discipline by race and ethnicity as well as documents pertaining to financial information such as cost of living increases. 

They haven’t received any of the requested information. 

“It’s time for Clark County to start listening to its workforce, address its staffing shortfalls and take action to ensure that we can deliver the quality public services that our community needs,” Maese said.

Maese told county commissioners the union would file a complaint with the Employee Management Relations Board, but as of Thursday nothing had been filed. 

Jennifer Cooper, a spokeswoman with Clark County, declined to comment, saying “we are in active negotiations.” 

SEIU, which represents 20,000 public sectors and health care workers in Nevada including county workers, held its first bargaining session with Clark County on Tuesday. 

Ahead of the session, several members of the union, including Maese, told Clark County Commissioners during its Tuesday meeting that the county had failed to provide any requested information or acknowledge months-long requests. 

Among the many issues union officials cited included “a pattern in Clark County where people of color have faced excessive discipline relative to their peers.”

Union members said they were looking into at least seven cases where workers of color were wrongfully terminated or received excessive discipline in comparison to nonunion peers. 

“We need a fair process for everyone – not a system that punishes people of color more severely than others,” Maese said.

Union representatives wouldn’t say what wage increases are being sought in bargaining, adding that the union needs to see financial data asked for in October to better determine those numbers. 

SEIU is hoping to address staffing shortages and employment recruitment and retention. 

Those who spoke on Tuesday said recent events, including the Super Bowl and Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, were successful because of union workers. 

Sara Evans, an employee with the Clark County Department of Family Services, added those same workers helped the county make it through the pandemic. 

“When our community needed us most, we stepped up,” Evans said. “Now, it’s management’s turn to step up. We didn’t need a parade then, and we don’t need one now, but we do need real fixes to the problems this community faces.” 

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(Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Nevada LGBTQ+ students say they don’t feel safe talking with school staff and face discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, according to new findings from Silver State Equality. 

The LGBTQ+ advocacy group recently released the results of its “2023 Nevada LGBTQ+ Student Survey and Listening Campaign” report, which collected stories from Nevada youth statewide to learn about the struggles youth are experiencing.

Nearly 80% of students who identify as LGBTQ+ reported discrimination, with transgender and gender-nonconforming students, in particular those in rural schools, saying they faced higher levels than cisgender students. 

Another 56% of students don’t feel safe talking with school counselors while 42% don’t feel comfortable going to the school nurse. More than three-fifths of those surveyed reported being bullied in the last six months. 

André Wade, state director for Silver State Equality, called the results from the report “heartbreaking.”

He hoped policymakers would use the findings to “develop programs and campaigns that empower the LGBTQ+ community and its allies to combat discrimination, blatant lies, hate and other divisive tactics that negatively impact our schools and LGBTQ+ students.” 

“If we as adults are going to effectively advocate for LGBTQ+ youth, it is essential to learn and understand from LGBTQ+ students, themselves, what they experience every day in their school environments,” Wade said. 

The call for greater resources and protections for youth come as more extremists groups are pushing school districts and state legislatures to implement harsh anti-LGBTQ+ agendas.  

Wade specifically pointed to Moms for Liberty, which the Southern Poverty Law Centers identifies as a far-right, anti-government organization. 

The national group has advocated against gay and trans rights, supported book bans and opposed efforts to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in schools in recent years. 

It launched a chapter in Clark County last year. 

Members of the group have shown up at Clark County School District board meetings to oppose protections for gender-diverse students mandated by state law.  

Silver State Equality’s report also noted that nearly 40% of students indicated they didn’t have access to curriculum that was LGBTQ+ inclusive. 

Lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 261 in 2021, which requires school districts to expand age-appropriate curriculum to include people from typically marginalized groups who’ve made “contributions to science, the arts and humanities.”

In addition to including the LGBTQ+ community, the bill also includes those from various racial backgrounds, immigrants or refugees, people with disabilities and those from various religious backgrounds. 

The report released Tuesday also included several policy recommendations, such as investing in mental health resources for youth, especially LGBTQ+ youth, and training school staff on specifically working with LGBTQ+ youth. 

As more Republican-led state legislatures have proposed and adopted anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ measures, Nevada has trended in the opposite direction in recent years. 

The ACLU said it tracked 508 bills attacking LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. in 2023, with 84 of them enacted into law, including bills prohibiting gender-affirming care for trans youth and restricting LGBTQ materials in schools. 

By contrast, Nevada advanced protections last year, including legislation mandating that

the Nevada Department of Corrections to adopt regulations for protecting and housing transgender inmates, and a measure requiring health insurers to provide coverage for medically necessary treatments for trans and gender-nonconforming people.. 

Both bills were signed into law by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. 

Lombardo also vetoed a bill that would have prevented the governor from surrendering a person charged with a criminal violation in another state for receiving gender-affirming services in Nevada. The bill would have prohibited health care licensing boards from disqualifying or disciplining a provider for offering gender-affirming care. Lawmakers recently said they plan to reintroduce the legislation again when the legislature is next scheduled to meet in February 2025.

There is still more the state could do to advance LGBTQ+ rights, Wade said. 

“While it’s true Nevada leads the nation in providing legal protections for its LGBTQ+ citizens, especially transgender youth, there are groups right here in Nevada whose goal is to drive LGBTQ+ Americans back into the closet and erase transgender people from all aspects of daily life,” he said.

The post ‘Heartbreaking’ findings in survey of Nevada LGBTQ+ students appeared first on Nevada Current.

(Photo: Ronda Churchill/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

A lawsuit accuses Clark County School District of being “deliberately indifferent” to a Las Vegas High School student who was beaten in her geometry class in February 2022.

Law firms Bertoldo Carter Smith & Cullen and Robert L. Langford & Associates filed the case, Lainez Lemus v. CCSD, in Clark County District Court. They allege the school district violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of a student, identified by her initials in court documents. ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Athar Haseebullah is serving as an advisor. 

Cell phone footage of the attack was widely shared on social media and made national headlines. It shows the student being punched by another student more than a dozen times in the back of her head without intervention. The attacker, who had a history of violence, returned to school after being removed for disciplinary problems before the attack against the plaintiff, according to the lawsuit.

The student suffered serious injuries to her body and nervous system that continued to cause her pain, suffering, and disability, which was a result of the “negligence by school and district leaders.”

“CCSD’s actions here have destroyed a young girl’s life,” attorney Robert Langford said in a statement announcing the suit.

Langford told the Current he hopes the lawsuit sheds light on CCSD’s policy for reintegrating back into classrooms students with histories of violence, and how the district plans to protect students and teachers in the future.

“Our position is that there needs to be a process where the violent student shouldn’t be placed in a classroom,” Langford said. 

While CCSD has a responsibility for educating students with violent tendencies, they must do so while ensuring the safety of other students and staff, he added. 

Langford said the state law is clear that every student has a right to a safe and respectful learning environment and this lawsuit begs the question of what CCSD could have done to prevent this attack from happening. 

CCSD through its communications office said the district does not comment on pending litigation.

The case was filed two years after the incident to allow the student who was attacked to receive treatment, Langford told the Current. In addition to the student’s physical injuries, Langford said, she has also suffered mental trauma, has not returned to school, and struggles within the “simplest of social settings.”

“You go to school and get beaten down and then can’t walk back through those doors and trust that everything will be just fine,” Langford said. “The sad thing is what is done is done, and you pick up the pieces as best you can…but this will always be a part of her and her family.”

The post Lawsuit filed against CCSD in 2022 Las Vegas High School beating appeared first on Nevada Current.

In 1959, when King was 30, 55 percent of African Americans lived in income poverty. By what would have been his 40th birthday in 1969 (a year after his assassination), that poverty rate had dropped to 32 percent. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

This January marks what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 95th birthday. Nearly a century after the late civil rights leader’s birth, it’s a good time to reflect on the work still to be done.

Just over 60 years ago, in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King declared: “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

Sixty years on, as our report “Still A Dream” highlighted late last year, there’s been some progress. The African American community is experiencing record low unemployment, record highs in income and educational attainment, and has seen a massive decline in income poverty since the 1960s.

Despite all that, the check for racial economic equality is still bouncing. Without intervention, we found it will take centuries for Black wealth to catch up with white wealth in this country.

The 1960s were years of crucial economic progress for African Americans, even as the Black Freedom struggle faced assassinations and government suppression. In 1959, when King was 30, 55 percent of African Americans lived in income poverty. By what would have been his 40th birthday in 1969 (a year after his assassination), that poverty rate had dropped to 32 percent.

Yet this substantial progress still wasn’t enough to bridge the radical and ongoing racial economic divide between Blacks and whites. And since then, progress has slowed.

Compared to the political and economic progress of the 1960s, the 21st century has been much less fruitful — even as the country saw its first African American president and a national recognition of police brutality through the Black Lives Matter protests. From 2000 to 2021, there was only a 3 percentage point decline in Black poverty (22.5 percent to 19.5 percent).

One modest area of progress: the unemployment rate for African Americans is no longer twice that of whites. Since 2018, Black unemployment has reached record lows of 5 and 6 percent, except during the 18-month recession caused by COVID-19. But as of 2021, Black unemployment was still about 1.8 times that of white unemployment.

The racial wealth divide was created by federal policies and national practices like segregation, discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and more. So it will require federal policy and national practices to close the divide.

And just as massive federal investment was necessary to develop the white American middle class, so too is it essential for a massive federal investment to bridge racial economic inequality.

Investing in affordable housing and programs designed to strengthen homeownership for African Americans will be essential. Other important policies include investments like a national baby bond program targeted at African Americans, national health care, and breaking up the dynastic concentration of wealth that’s made our country more unequal for all Americans.

Going 60 years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth and income divide is a policy failure. In this election year, policies that can finally bridge the Black-white divide should be at the forefront of our national debate.

Making a dream into a reality is challenging work, but it’s something our country has the resources to attain. The national celebration of Dr. King’s 95th birthday should be a time to rededicate ourselves to this work.

This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

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(Photo: Ronda Churchill/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Nevada Congressional members are calling for an investigation into Navy Federal Credit Union, the nation’s largest credit union for service members, after reports found it rejected nearly half of its Black and Hispanic mortgage applications. 

The Congressional Black Caucus, which is chaired by U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, sent a letter to the credit union Friday asking why it “approved a higher percentage of applications from white borrowers making less than $62,000 a year than it did of Black borrowers making $140,000 or more.” 

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto joined several Democratic senate colleagues on Thursday in asking the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to investigate the racial gaps between white, Black and Hispanic applicants.  

“When denial rates for Black and Hispanic applicants at one institution appear to be drastically higher than the national average and higher than their rates for similarly situated white borrowers, it raises questions about whether its mortgage lending practices comply with federal fair housing and fair lending laws and regulations,” the group of senators wrote.

A recent CNN investigation found the Navy Federal Credit Union approved more than 75% of white applicants who applied for home mortgages in 2022. 

Around 49% of Black borrowers were approved for the same type of loan while nearly 56% of Latino applicants were approved. 

An estimated 27,000 Nevada service members are part of Navy Federal. 

Lawmakers requested the credit union to explain what steps it is taking to get to the root cause leading to its discrimination and to what extent it evaluates underwriting policies to reduce racial lending disparities. 

“Navy Federal should explain its increasingly widening racial lending gap and how more than half of the Black service members, veterans, and their families who applied for a conventional mortgage in 2022 were rejected and denied homeownership and wealth building opportunities,” according to the letter from the Congressional Black Caucus. 

In a statement, Navy Federal said it has “initiated a review to assess our mortgage lending policies and practices.”

This article was updated to include a response from Navy Federal Credit Union.

The post Horsford, Cortez Masto call for investigation into credit union rejecting Black, Hispanic mortgage applicants appeared first on Nevada Current.

From left to right: April Gorbin Girnus, Hugh Jackson, MIchael Lyle, Jeniffer Solis, Dana Genry, Camalot Todd

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Note: As we do near the end of every year, each writer on the Nevada Current staff took a little time to highlight some of their work from the year, and say whatever they wanted to say about it.

Dana Gentry

An embarrassment of riches. That’s how I’d sum up 2023 for its news value. In case you had trouble keeping up, or just care to revisit, here’s a look at some of the highlights.  

Federal probe of casino companies, executives, said to be widening

A source close to the multi-agency California-based federal investigation of Las Vegas casino companies, particularly Resorts World and MGM Resorts International, revealed in our exclusive story in August and in a  federal subpoena issued weeks later, says the probe has expanded beyond its original confines. The feds are now said to be inquiring about Gov. Joe Lombardo’s relationship with former RW president and COO Scott Sibella. The governor’s office has declined to comment. More on that in the coming year. 

Feds investigating Las Vegas casinos, say sources

Nevada gaming regulators questioned Sibella last year about his relationship with gamblers banned from other casinos. A year later, Lombardo’s newly appointed gaming control board member, George Assad, in an uncharacteristic move for regulators, announced the agency had cleared Sibella of wrongdoing.  

While politically-related federal investigations rarely go anywhere in Nevada, the fact that this probe is being conducted from outside the state adds an interesting twist. 

The A’s have it

When the Oakland A’s went shopping for new digs, they hired a consultant with really close ties to the tourism officials yearning to make the move happen. Only problem is the Nevadans who watched the consultant, Jeremy Aguero, make the case before lawmakers for publicly funding a stadium for the A’s were not advised Aguero was working for the team, not the government-funded tourism agency he also works for in his capacity with the Stadium Authority.    

“No worries,” or words to that effect, said the legislative counsel bureau chief.   

Nonetheless, Aguero, in a position to negotiate the A’s contract with himself in his job with the Stadium Authority, eventually gave up that gig. 

Feeling hot, hot, hot over NV Energy sports team sponsorships

The dreaded arrival of summer electricity bills was preceded by a projection from the state’s consumer advocate that the average power bill for July would more closely resemble a car payment.

Then came the Current’s exclusive report on the costly ads NV Energy purchases (and you pay for) as part of the company’s sports sponsorships, in an effort to apprise sports fans of the savings available via a vague energy conservation campaign called PowerShift. Because sports fans who pretend to be preoccupied with the live action on the field (hockey rink or court) are really pondering how they can cut their power bills.  

NV Energy fought back but eventually canned the customer-subsidized ads after regulators ordered the utility to be more transparent about its sponsorships. 

The Animal Foundation caught fudging the numbers 

Critics of Southern Nevada’s primary government-funded shelter, the Animal Foundation (TAF) contend the non-profit running the shelter is less than transparent about its operation. Our reporting on a government audit of the shelter revealed it was exaggerating its occupancy count to discourage animal control officers and the public from bringing in more dogs and cats. 

By year’s end, local governments were taking steps to increase demands on the shelter as well as the governments’  presence in exchange for an infusion of more public money. 

Jeniffer Solis

A friend of mine recently joked that the parents of El Niño and La Niña need to get these kids under control.

For scientists carefully observing these oceanic and atmospheric weather patterns, there’s a sneaking suspicion that the adults left the room long ago.

November 2023 was the second-warmest November in recorded history for North America, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And global carbon emissions from fossil fuels reached record levels in 2023, according to climate researchers. 

Optimists say the tide is turning. Earlier this month, nations struck a deal at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a non-enforceable agreement, but it’s a solid house rule. Good job adults.

In the meantime, more destructive natural disasters are harming rural communities in Nevada year after year. Wildfires, drought, extreme heat waves, floods, etc. 

Confronting climate change impacts, tribes prepare and persist

From not enough water to too much, flooding in Nevada brought destruction and drought relief this year. In a series made possible by a field reporting grant, we covered some of those dynamics. 

From infrastructure to the environment, the effects of summer flooding on rural and tribal communities in Nevada were formidable.  But so were the solutions. Nevadans are battle born after all. 

Development of lithium mines and renewable energy on Nevada’s open public lands is the only and best solution to these disasters, say important state and federal officials. 

Only time will tell how it all pans out, but we’re committed to reporting on every aspect of that transition. From Nevadans concerns about lithium mining in the least populated county in the state, to the effects of geothermal development on the smallest toads. 

Thank you for reading.

Camalot Todd

Some good things this year: I bought my very first home… well condo, but still. My beloved dog Kush now has a feline sister named Penicillin. And my Fiat finally has four hubcaps. I also had the opportunity to be a grantee of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund, which led to stories about how jurisdictional ambiguities make prosecuting non-Natives who commit domestic abuse hard, the shortage of nurses in the state to provide free strangulation exams outlined in state law, and how the state’s narrow domestic abuse law doesn’t include financial abuse.  

This year,  I also did some legislative coverage tackling stories like Nevada criminalizing fentanyl possession at lower quantities than the federal government, and a bill that would’ve given the many substitute teachers who are stepping up during Nevada’s ongoing teacher shortage a small health care stipend. That was one of many health care bills that met the governor’s veto pen.  

Under the category of most interesting policy that wasn’t, lawmakers decided not to address the health care provider shortage. State Sen. Roberta Lange (D-Las Vegas) tested the waters for a bill that would mandate insurance companies to accept any provider who meets their qualifications and applies to be in their network, known as an “Any Willing Provider” law. It’s popular with health care providers, and 35 other states have enacted it, but Lange abandoned it in favor of a far narrower scope, saying she “tested the temperature,” and “it’s not going to pass in Nevada.”

Lawmaker, providers agree reform would ease access to care, but ‘it’s not going to pass in Nevada’

I had the displeasure of being the messenger on some bad things this year (this is my public plea into the void to please please give everyone a much-needed break in 2024): Car insurance in Nevada is going up and up and there’s no relief in sight, and we had the highest Medicaid disenrollment rate in the country for paperwork and procedural causes until the feds stepped in and paused it. The state will resume disenrolling people on procedural grounds in January. Happy New Year, I guess? 

The state tops a long list of bad bad things, including but not limited to: children without health insurance, ambulance deserts, and low lung cancer screening rates. And ER visits for depression and anxiety skyrocketed in the last decade.

We also had our second mass shooting in Las Vegas earlier this month where three UNLV faculty members died.  Within hours, there were resources set up for students, faculty, and those impacted, including mental health resources. If the Oct. 1 mass shooting taught us anything, it was that in these darker moments, Nevadans do truly and deeply care about each other, and I hope that the depth of tenderness continues into 2024. Goodness knows we need it. 

Michael Lyle

I still think about Jada Kirkwood, a woman who was evicted in June after the state’s eviction protection expired. Since 2021, a state law paused an eviction case while rental assistance applications were being processed. The policy was put in place as a sort of exit ramp to a more robust eviction moratorium established during the pandemic to ensure if rental assistance was available, landlords could be paid anything owed to them in lieu of an eviction. Because why evict someone for nonpayment of rent if their rent could easily be paid with rental assistance dollars?

But the law sunset and legislation to extend it was left in limbo for a couple weeks. I wrote about that brief period of time. Kirkwood, who cared for her ailing mother, was among the first tenants to receive an eviction after the law expired.

I haven’t been able to get in touch with Kirkwood to learn what happened next. 

The legislation to extend the protection was vetoed. There were a few articles, in our outlet and others, immediately following that veto. However, I knew there was more to the story. 

For the next several months, I put in data records requests, talked with officials from the county, social services and legal aid groups, and sat in numerous eviction proceedings over several months to fully understand the aftermath of that veto. It is by far one of the most in-depth reporting packages I’ve produced as a reporter.  

For a while, a series of measures protected renters from NV’s harsh eviction laws. Not anymore.

Aside from reporting on the housing crisis, I have to say reporting on a legal clinic for trans and gender nonconforming people was one of my favorites. 

Nevada Legal Services and The LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada partnered together to offer a free legal clinic to help trans people go through the legal process to change their names and gender markers on documents. 

The trans and gender nonconforming community is experiencing such vitriol and hate. It’s not a new thing, but has intensified in a way that is frightening for that community. At the center of these nationwide attacks are just people trying to live their lives. That includes Emily, who received assistance from the legal clinic. 

I will let Emily speak for herself on what this assistance meant to her: “When I was born, I was given the wrong name and the wrong gender marker. It’s an inconsistency I had to live with my entire life. It’s an error that’s been forced on me that I had to live with my whole life. To be able to easily, efficiently and frankly quickly finally fix that error, it’s amazing.” 

April Corbin Girnus

Remember when Nevada approved hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives for a billionaire?

Actually. That happened twice this year!

In June, the Nevada State Legislature approved $380 million in tax incentives for the Oakland Athletics to become the Unincorporated Clark County Athletics and build a baseball park on the famed Unincorporated Clark County Strip. But let us not forget that several months before that, in March of this year, the Governor’s Office Of Economic Development, without any input from legislators, approved $412 million in tax incentives for Tesla, an electric car company whose CEO and biggest shareholder is Elon Musk, a man whose net worth is equivalent to 85 John Fishers, according to the internet.

The outcomes of both of those initial requests for corporate welfare may have been inevitable, but covering it as we did — with a heavy dose of skepticism and a focus on the impact to all Nevadans — was important.

But enough about rich people. Let’s talk about teachers.

Another of my favorite stories from this year was about how Clark County teachers inspired Nevada’s anti-strike law and how they might also upend it. For much of this year, the narrative began and ended at “teachers aren’t allowed to strike.” But in the fall, the teachers union filed a lawsuit attempting to overturn the law, a move that would upend power dynamics in the state.

Clark County teachers inspired Nevada’s anti-strike law. They might also upend it.

Was it a ruse to pressure the district into settling a contract? Perhaps. Do I expect it to go anywhere in the upcoming year, especially since the teachers union secured most of what it wanted? No, not really. But was it a seed worth planting in the minds of state lawmakers and the public? Absolutely.

My favorite stories from this year, and my favorite stories of all time from the Current, are those that look at the bigger picture, that question previously unchallenged narratives. I think our coverage of the A’s, Tesla and the strike law largely did just that, and I’m so proud of it.

Here are three other personal favorites from the year:

Tracking the state’s attempt to give charter schools money to launch transportation programs. Turns out transportation is super complicated!

State lawmakers approved the use of natural organic reduction of human remains — aka, human composting, or my favorite bill of this year’s legislative session.

Lawmakers also outlawed a predatory title scheme that I suspect a lot of people had no clue was even a thing.

Hugh Jackson

Nevada’s upside-down tax structure means the less you make, the higher the percentage of your income you pay in taxes. And no, being a tourist economy doesn’t make it ok.

‘The tourists pay it’ is a lousy excuse for punishing Nevadans with a regressive tax system

Continuing to disproportionately burden those on the bottom to please those on the top doesn’t bother Nevada governors and lawmakers; if it did they would do something about it.  They never do.

Democrats have a strong chance of winning two-thirds majorities in both houses of the state legislature in the 2024 election. I remain convinced that they’ll blow it, deliberately, because if they had supermajorities they would no longer have an excuse for continuing to ignore a tax structure that punishes working people – a policy choice that the vast majority of lawmakers of both parties refuse to even acknowledge.

So Nevada’s blithe acceptance of an abusive tax structure that makes poor people poorer – that’s one of my main takeaways (a perennial) from 2023.

Another is the state’s ongoing willingness to normalize Trumpism.

To be fair, that doesn’t make Nevada special. Alarmingly large portions of the electorate across the U.S. are showing a disregard of or even hostility to democracy. Nevada movers and shakers and deal makers proclaim Nevada is unique. But when it comes to sucking up to Trump and Trumpism, Nevada Republicans are pretty much the same as Republicans everywhere anymore.

For Republican “leaders” in Nevada and the nation, moral bankruptcy is the new norm, and they’re giving every indication that they’ll burrow even further down the filthy rathole in the new year. 

Good luck

The post Looking back (and a little forward): 2023 selections & reflections from the Nevada Current staff appeared first on Nevada Current.

Russian riot police detain gay rights activists during World Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia in St. Petersburg in 2019. (Photo: Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

With LGBTQ+ rights continuing to expand across much of the world, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has doubled down on restricting them – and a new ruling has made the future even more uncertain for Russian LGBTQ+ groups and individuals.

The LGBTQ+ “movement” is “extremist,” and its activities will be banned beginning in 2024, according to a ruling a justice of the Russian Supreme Court handed down at the close of November 2023.

This newest decision builds on 10 years of legislation pushed forward by President Vladimir Putin’s government in the name of “family values,” largely focused on limiting LGBTQ+ activism and same-sex unions. With theological support from the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin and his supporters portray Russia as a bulwark of “traditional values.” This trend is poised to only increase in 2024, with Putin’s decree that it is the “year of the family.”

That vision appeals deeply to many conservative Christians outside Russia, as well. As an anthropologist, I have spent years studying Russia’s family values rhetoric and its appeal to allies abroad – particularly Russian Orthodox converts in Appalachia.

Traditional values have become a fixture in far-right movements around the world, some of which see Russia as a model of the future they desire. In Russia and beyond, many conservative Christians in these movements have focused on LGBTQ+ populations, whom they portray as threats to their vision for society – and are not deterred by antidemocratic politics, if its figures voice support for their social goals.

Church and state

In Russia, traditional family values have historically been linked to patriotism, Russian ethnic identity and service to country. These ideas were supported from the 1970s onward by writings from a young priest-monk named Kirill Gundyaev, who became head of the Russian Orthodox Church, or ROC, in 2009.

Though three-quarters of Russians say they attend church services once a year or less, the ROC remains culturally influential. During Putin’s nearly 25 years in power, he has often tapped into the church’s rhetoric about traditional values to advance his social and political goals. In particular, Russian leaders often portray much of Europe and the U.S. as threats to the traditional family.

Attempting to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for example, Putin and Kirill have both appealed to conservative ideas about religion and gender, arguing that Russia’s offensive stems from a need to protect itself from liberal values.

The West has “been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature,” Putin said in a February 2022 speech about the war. Kirill, meanwhile, has portrayed the invasion as a spiritual battle.

Beyond borders

Many of Putin’s ideas about tradition resonate with far-right American Christians, including the Appalachian Orthodox converts’ communities I worked with, who think they are being persecuted for their views about gender and sexuality.

While the language of family values resonated with right-wing voters during and since the Trump presidency, values rhetoric has a much longer history among the American Christian right. During the 20th century, anthropologist Sophie Bjork-James has noted, these arguments took off among white Protestants over fears about race, economic instability and feminism.

After World War II, as Americans grappled with the looming threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, family values became a key part of patriotic rhetoric that contrasted the “red threat” of the Soviet Union with a supposedly God-fearing, blessed America. Family values politics inspired the creation of conservative groups like the Moral Majority and the Family Research Council as reproductive rights and fledgling gay rights intensified their concerns.

Though focused on promoting American Christian values, the movement looked abroad for connections and support. Relationships forged between the Roman Catholic Church and the ROC, as well as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the ROC in the early 2010s, helped spur on the types of traditional values movements seen around the world today. Increasingly, these groups have focused on LGBTQ+ populations, portraying them as alien to traditional values.

Russian political figures and the ROC have participated in local and global organizations that promote traditional family values, including the World Congress of Families and some home-schooling networks formed in the U.S. Some far-right figures involved in such groups promote “traditionalism”: an anti-modern philosophy that focuses on social, sexual and racial purity.

From culture to authoritarianism

Cold War-style language that U.S. politicians once used to criticize the Soviet Union has now been inverted: Many right-wing American Christians who believe their country has lost its traditional religious heritage and is headed toward Marxism see the West as the new “red scare.” For some who criticize the West as “woke,” contemporary Russia is a better social model and an arbiter of traditional morality.

Yet anti-LGBTQ+ policies, family values rhetoric and the notion that Russia is “traditional” are not simply part of the new global culture wars. Rather, they are part of what I call reactive world-building: radicalized groups working toward what they see as a Christian, pro-family future with authoritarian politics at the helm.

The language of the Christian right has consistently emphasized obedience to hierarchical authority. In my own work on far-right American converts to Orthodox Christianity, I have met people who support antidemocratic politics if they believe it can deliver the kind of culture they want to see – and even individuals who call themselves fascist. Some express interest in moving to Russia, with American Orthodox convert priest Rev. Joseph Gleason offering a public example.

Under Putin, family values are used as a way to advance post-Soviet Russian power and control globally. That might come as a shock for American allies – although given some far-right compatriots’ interest in moving there, perhaps not.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Kristen Chapman is moving from Tennessee to Virginia so her 15 year-old transgender daughter can continue receiving gender-affirming care. (Photo by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Roberto Che Espinoza had been thinking about leaving Tennessee after the 2024 election, but in June they noticed that the state attorney general was seeking medical records on gender-affirming medical care, which Espinoza, a nonbinary transgender man, said included their own records.

“Being on any kind of list … I knew after the release of those records that this is not good,” Espinoza said.

Espinoza had already been alerted to a threatening anti-LGBTQ social media post featuring their photo that they said was shared by Proud Boys, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group. Their wife, who is queer and has lived in the state for 20 years, became concerned for Espinoza’s safety.

As the political climate in Tennessee continues to worsen for LGBTQ people — and rapidly so — the couple are no longer waiting. Espinoza, an ordained Baptist clergyperson, activist and educator, and wife are leaving Nashville in August for a state on the East Coast.

“We see the toll that it’s taken on our emotional and physical and mental health and we’re terrified,” Espinoza said.

As anti-LGBTQ laws spread across Tennessee and the rest of the country, many LGBTQ people and their families are assessing whether they should move to a state with a more LGBTQ-friendly political climate. These choices can hurt the economic stability of queer people and their loved ones. But research and surveys suggest that the relocations may also harm the state and local economies that lose LGBTQ people — and benefit those that gain them. LGBTQ people and their families shared with States Newsroom that they’re relocating or considering relocating to Colorado, Virginia, California, Michigan, Washington, and Oregon, where they see better legal protections.

Wells Fargo released a report in June on the effect LGBTQ people have on state economies. It found that real state gross product was positively correlated with higher concentrations of LGBTQ people between 2010 and 2019. This suggests state economies with higher concentrations of LGBTQ people grew faster in this period than they would have without greater proportions of LGBTQ people, authors of the report explained. Researchers suggested that this could be because LGBTQ people tend to be younger and more highly educated than the average American and are more entrepreneurial.

The researchers added: “In our view … the diversity that LGBT individuals bring to a community may help it to achieve ‘economic creativity’ and therefore stronger rates of economic growth.”

Todd Sears, CEO and co-founder of Out Leadership, an LGBTQ business advisory, said he spoke to Wells Fargo economists and said the report aligns with a lot of the research OutLeadership has done.

“It’s one, not surprising. Two, obviously having data to prove it makes the conversation a whole lot easier to have and hopefully more impactful,” he said.

Sears said that for years, economists and sociologists, such as Richard Florida, who wrote “The Rise of the Creative Class,” have said that diversity is linked to economic creativity. Sears said it may take time for states to see evidence of how anti-LGBTQ laws have impacted their economies but that the departure of LGBTQ people and their families will have an effect.

“These states are going to see all these economic consequences and start to say, wait, what do we do? Why did we do this? How did this help our state? … The impact that will have on trans youth who are the most vulnerable youth in our country is significant and it’s unfortunate that they are going to be the ones who really suffer,” he said.

Moving out

At least 70 anti-LGBTQ laws were enacted this year, with 15 of those laws targeting gender-affirming care for transgender youth and seven allowing or requiring the misgendering of trans kids at school, according to the Human Rights Campaign’s May analysis of this legislation. States have also passed anti-LGBTQ bills limiting how LGBTQ people can be mentioned in school curricula and criminalizing some drag performances.

The Movement Advancement Project, which keeps record of anti-LGBTQ policies across the U.S., gave a negative policy tally to 13 states for their anti-LGBTQ policies, most of which were concentrated in the southern U.S. Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, South Dakota, and Montana belong to this group and Ohio, West Virginia, and Indiana had low policy tallies.

Anti-LGBTQ discrimination and violence occurs across the country regardless of each state’s policies. Trans people, particularly Black trans women, are also killed in states with less hostile political climates. In July, a Michigan hair salon stated through Facebook that it refuses to serve transgender and nonbinary patrons. The Movement Advancement Project gave Michigan a fair policy tally.

Tennessee, which has a Republican governor and a legislature controlled by Republicans, enacted many anti-LGBTQ bills over the past few years, including bans on trans students playing sports on the team of their gender and on gender-affirming medical care.

A May 2023 Data for Progress survey of more than 1,000 LGBTQ adults in the U.S. showed that 27% of LGBTQ adults have considered leaving their state because of anti-LGBTQ legislation, particularly transgender people at 43%. Eight percent of LGBTQ people aged 18 to 24 said they’d already moved and 9% of LGBTQ people 65 years and older did. In response to Florida’s “Don’t say gay and trans” bill, 56% of LGBTQ parents had considered moving out of the state and 16% already had taken steps to move out of Florida, according to a June 2023 report from the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute.

Kristen Chapman, a queer artist based in Nashville is planning on leaving Nashville at the end of this month to ensure that her 15 year-old transgender daughter can continue receiving gender-affirming care. Chapman is relocating to Virginia. She said she thinks Nashville will be impacted by the loss of creative labor and healthcare industry workers.

“I think that the people that are leaving are leaving a hole in the fabric and I’m not sure it’s going to be quite evident at first,” she said. “But all of the people that I know that are moving are deeply engaged in their chosen communities. They’re not people who isolate and they’re also all creative, particularly here in Nashville where the livelihood of the city depends on creative labor.”

John Cooper, the mayor of Nashville, tweeted in 2021 that he was concerned about the “threat” that anti-LGBTQ bills “pose to the community and economy.”

When it comes to her family’s economic stability, Chapman said there are still many unknowns.

“I’m interviewing for jobs right now. I’m in that you jump off a cliff and you hope the net appears kind of situation,” she said.

Relocating for a future

Zofia Zagalsky, a 25 year-old trans woman, is a student at Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro. She said she’s considering leaving the state after she finishes her graduate program. She’s not sure where she’d go, but said California, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, and Wisconsin are among the possibilities.

“The dead honest truth is I’ve never wanted to leave Tennessee,” she said. “This is my home. This is where I was born. This is where I’ve learned to live my life. That’s where I was raised … I love Tennessee.”

But the discrimination against and harassment of LGBTQ people is stressful, she said.

“I hear constantly people wanting to leave, people wanting to get out, because nobody wants to live like that. Nobody wants to age themselves faster because they have to listen to people screaming at them,” she said.

Katie Laird, whose son Noah is transgender, moved some of the family out of Texas to Colorado a year ago for a less hostile political environment. Her husband still has to live in Texas for work, but she is able to do her work as a consultant for nonprofits and civic organizations from Colorado. Dual city living has caused financial strain but she said Noah is thriving there. Laird said that she’s seen more visible representation of LGBTQ people in the workplace.

“The fact that he can have these very visible examples of trans people, queer people, non-binary people in the workforce, whether it’s at the doctor’s office, at the DMV, like him being able to witness everyday people living their everyday lives…even that has helped boost his hope for his future,” she said.

She said Noah, who is 16, has thought about working in healthcare.

Many LGBTQ people States Newsroom spoke to are confident that states have lost something from their departure. MD Sitzes, communications manager for Equality Ohio, said they and their wife moved to Ohio in 2020 partly to be closer to Sitzes’ mother, whom Sitzes had reconciled with after she forced Sitzes to move out as a teen. Since their mother is a person with paraplegia, it was easier for their young children to see her if they lived nearby, Sitzes said. But the anti-LGBTQ climate in Ohio became too intense for the family to continue living there, they said. Sitzes said that at one point, they were contemplating suicide for the first time since they were in their early 20s. The family moved out of Ohio last year and lived in Portugal for a while before moving to the Bay area. They said that Ohio and other states are losing economically when they encourage homogeneity.

“[Diversity] brings perspective and the loss of that perspective is so damaging for the economy,” Sitzes said. “When people don’t feel safe, they’re not going to move there and then they’re not going to send their kids there … I know that diversity brings creativity. I know that it builds a stronger economy because I’ve lived in those economies and worked in those economies.”

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"...your celebration is a sham...your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery..."

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Editor’s note: It is a tradition at the Nevada Current that each Fourth of July we publish excerpts from the famous speech delivered by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852. Last year this introductory note cited recent laws passed in several states designed to limit discussion of the role of race while teaching U.S. history in public schools and colleges, and wondered whether speeches and writings of the abolitionist, reformer and sometimes critic, sometimes advisor to Abraham Lincoln would remain among materials allowed to be taught. A year later, whether in state legislatures or on the presidential campaign trail, attempts to muzzle educators in the U.S. pose no less a threat not only to education and independence of thought, but to democracy and freedom.

…Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful.

…But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me… This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…

…My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light?

…At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

***

…the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man…

***

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it…

***

…Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light…

The post ‘What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?’ appeared first on Nevada Current.

Heavily weighted to the right doesn't necessarily mean conservative. (Photo: Hugh Jackson)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Political parties have fundraising arms in Congress which blast out fundraising emails and press releases, the sensationalism of which are matched only by their crude oversimplification. A lot of them end up in my inbox, because every campaign cycle Nevada has a competitive Senate/House race or three.

Friday I opened one from the National Republican Congressional Committee which repeatedly described Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford as “radical” and “extreme” and “far-left.” Hmm, drawing on a couple examples off the top of my head, Horsford is a guy who has vilified Medicare for All and protected multinational mining conglomerates. Yeah, dude’s a real Marxist firebrand.

Horsford is also the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. In that capacity he was on CBS this week condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling to end affirmative action in higher education – a ruling both sweepingly obtuse and eminently worthy of full-throated condemnation.

That’s what the NRCC was taking Horsford to task for in its missive, specifically because he challenged the “legitimacy” of the court (haven’t we all?) and said there are “several of the justices that don’t even deserve to be on the court today.”

Given the walking (seldom) talking ethics scandal that is Clarence Thomas, and the shady Mitch McConnell shenans that account for the presence of Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, that last Horsford quote is not a “radical” or “far-left” accusation as much as an observation Captain Obvious might make.

But something else Horsford said in the CBS interview, something that everyone says all the time, including the media, including myself on occasion, could – and should, I’ll argue – be seen as objectionable: He referred to the “conservative” members of the Supreme Court.

Horsford himself demonstrated why the term “conservative” is inappropriate with the very next words out of his mouth.

“They have rolled back 45 years of precedent…”

How is that conservative?

One of the most prominent exponents of conservatism, a star in his day and, in some circles, still, was 18th century Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke. It’s been years since I’ve spent much time with Burke’s works, but the thing I always remember – and it’s especially appropriate this time of year – was his contrasting (and yet consistent?) positions on the American and French revolutions.

Burke was for the American Revolution, on the grounds that colonists were preserving traditions of society and governance.

He was against the French Revolution, on the grounds that it was overturning traditions of society and governance.

Since Republicans, including and especially those on the U.S. Supreme Court, love to bring out their ouija board and tell everybody what prominent 18th century white guys would do if they were here today, I’ll follow suit and suggest Burke may well have disagreed with the court’s affirmative action ruling. A tradition of society and governance – specifically, the tradition of attempting to reckon with the truth and consequences of the nation’s deep and not so deep past – was established and practiced not just through the 45 years of precedent Horsford cites, but even longer back, to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, to the Civil War and Reconstruction, perhaps even to the arguments over enslavement at the Constitutional Convention.

Reconstruction seems a particularly useful example, because it was deliberately and violently destroyed by groups led by and working on behalf of former enslavers. The Redeemers, as they were called, were not conservatives. They were reactionary extremists.

Whether they’re in Congress or on the Supreme Court, today’s Republicans don’t deserve to be called conservative. They, too, are reactionaries. Many among them – perhaps even a majority in the U.S. House – are radical, extremist, far-right reactionaries.

And yet we call them conservatives.

It’s not that the term is merely imprecise. By calling the likes of Clarence Thomas or Marjorie Taylor Greene conservative, people, politicians, and the press are legitimizing and normalizing radical reactionary extremism by assigning it a legitimate and normal name.

Using “conservative” as shorthand for the right is ingrained in our public sphere nomenclature and won’t be rooted out anytime soon. While writing and editing I try to be cognizant of it, and try not to use it unless it’s in a quote or some other context that isn’t easily worked around. But as I suggested above, it’s ubiquitous and often hard to avoid.

Wishing for a slam dunk solution to this sociopolitical lexiconic conundrum but having none, I’ll just conclude with this: The current U.S. Supreme Court is many things. Conservative is not one of them.

Correction: Earlier versions of this column mistakenly described Burke as Scottish.

This column was published in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free, and which you can subscribe to here.

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