Deseret Magazine Nov 2023

Faith in Your Future

He wanted badly to vote to acquit the president — it would be so much easier.

THE MAKING OF MITT ROMNEY

HOW MITT ROMNEY’S FAITH DEFINED HIS POLITICAL CAREER — AND BROUGHT IT TO AN END. by m c kay coppins

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“This is not an Oregon problem. It’s occurring throughout the country.”

Born and raised in Mexico, Escamilla is the first Latina elected to the Utah Senate, where she is minority leader. She was the first director of Utah’s State Office of Ethnic Affairs in 2005. A past vice president of Zions Bank, she is co-founder and managing partner of ESCATEC Solutions. Her commentary on the importance of civic engagement is on page 13.

Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He’s the author of “The Wilderness,” a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek. An excerpt from his latest book, “Romney: A Reckoning,” a political biography of Sen. Mitt Romney, is on page 34.

Nibbelink is a CanadianAmerican freelance illustrator based in California. She works with editorial, publishing and advertising clients around the world. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, NPR, The Boston Globe, Scientific American and Christianity Today. Her work appears on page 14.

Sadi is a former art director turned illustrator based in France. His digital creations explore the world of infographics, flat design, line works and digital lettering. Also known as blindSalida, his work has been published in Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, The National Law Journal, AdWeek and the Daily Telegraph. His illustration appears on page 42.

Kofoed is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics. His work has been published in the American Economic Review: Insights and the Journal of Public Economics, among other journals. His essay on controlling government spending is on page 68.

Gale is a photographer based in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic and New York Magazine, and has been recognized by organizations such as The VII Foundation and The Alexia Foundation. His photographs exploring the impact of failed drug policies in Portland can be found on page 22.

YANN SADI

M C KAY COPPINS

CHANELLE NIBBELINK

MICHAEL KOFOED

JORDAN GALE

LUZ ESCAMILLA

TAKING A STAND

Imet Mitt Romney for the first time last year in his Senate office in Washington. I had come to D.C. to meet with Utah’s congressional delegation, partly to introduce our new magazine, and partly to hear directly from them on the issues that concerned them most, both in the West and nationally.

After some small talk, Romney pointed to a map that hung on his wall, from floor to ceiling, as I recall. The map charted the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful civilizations. What was most remarkable about the map, Romney told me, is how for most of human history we have been ruled by tyrants. Democracy barely makes a blip.

I didn’t realize Romney often gave visitors to his office a version of this same speech until I read McKay Coppins’ new biography, “Romney: A Reckoning.” That’s how I learned that Romney became obsessed with the map after January 6. “More than once, he found himself staring at it alone in his office at night,” Coppins writes. “The Egyptian empire had reigned for some 900 years before it was overtaken by the Assyrians. Then the Persians, the Romans, the Mongolians, the Turks — each civilization had its turn, and eventually collapsed in on itself.” Democracy, in some ways, “is fighting against human nature,” Romney said.

When Romney voted to impeach President Donald Trump, he knew it would make him a pariah in his own party. As detailed in an exclusive excerpt from Coppins’ book (“The Making of Mitt Romney,” page 34) Romney wrote in his journal that not only would his party turn on him, but he would lose friends and find it hard to go anywhere without facing verbal abuse. He even worried about his family’s physical safety, eventually spending $5,000 a day to protect them — and himself.

And yet, Romney felt like he had to take a stand. It’s what his conscience demanded of him, Coppins writes, and what he felt his faith demanded. At the time, I hoped that even those who disagreed with

his vote would at the least admire someone for standing for their beliefs and principles, even if it cost him votes. But it seems to have cost him more, including his office. In September, he announced that he will not seek a second term. He has considered another presidential run as an independent or even creating a third party, but for now, those ambitions seem to be shelved. His future in politics, if there is one, is unclear.

This month marks one year until we elect our next president. At the magazine, we discussed what we could bring to the national conversation. With that in mind, staff writers Ethan Bauer and Natalia Galicza explore the ways faith animates the lives of the candidates, and how it might factor into policy decisions they would make in office (“Faith of the Candidates,” page 50). Luz Escamilla, Utah’s Senate minority leader, writes about how to improve civic engagement among minority voters (“Terms of Engagement,” page 13) and Chris Cillizza openly wonders why this will likely be yet another race between two candidates who don’t excite most voters (“Race to the Bottom,” page 72). We will of course continue to cover the presidential race in 2024, but consider this a primer.

I’ve thought often of that visit to Romney’s office, and his warning that America’s experiment in self-rule is an historical anomaly. I admire his stand and wish more politicians would act accordingly. But I’ve also come to understand that his vote was seen as a betrayal by party faithful. Many of my family members no longer see him as a real Republican and would have gleefully voted him out of office had he sought reelection.

What I hope we can agree on, however, is that democracy and the freedoms associated with it are both fragile and what has made America so special since its founding. And I hope the principles that undergird it — liberalism, pluralism, and an ability to respectfully disagree — will survive and even flourish.

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The SEPTEMBER issue examined the costs, quality, graduation rates and benefits of a higher education, revealing the challenges and solutions for an opportunity that has become out of reach for many (“Restoring the Promise of American Education”). Several essays explained what religious colleges and universities bring to the table in providing incentives for students to complete an affordable education that opens doors to the future. “It is important for other universities to understand the efforts of religious universities, not only because there are so many important innovations happening, but also because it validates religious mission as a recognized organization structure in higher education,” tweeted the American Council on Education, whose scholars contributed several pieces to the issue. Readers took a particular interest in how to cover the cost of a college education and who should pay for it. Dan Creamer argued for a free education. “There are some things that a progressive, fair and just society should never monetize and that includes education, justice and health care. To make profit centers of any of these basic needs is to invite the discord the profit motive causes when it becomes the priority.” But Jack Beckman responded that a no-cost education also invites trouble. “Your claim that a ‘progressive, fair and just society’ shouldn’t monetize education, but do we want a progressive, fair and just society? Who defines what that is? Such are not clearly defined, and therefore dangerously changeable at the whim of whoever has the levers of power at the time.” Writer Tad Walch and photographer Spenser Heaps traveled to Kenya to report on the impact of a program that brings education to remote areas of the world (“The Pathway”). Readers who have been involved in the BYU Pathways program praised the story for reminding them of their experiences as Pathways teachers and students. “It has given hope of higher education to many intelligent students barred from achieving their potential due to financial instability,” Nicholas Sadaka, now enrolled in BYU-Idaho, shared on Facebook. Alexandra Rain wrote about the mentorship and personal care secondary schools provide students living in poverty (“The Safety Net of School”). Salt Lake City school board member Bryan Jensen said it is important to make communities aware of “successes experienced by ‘doing something.’ Our public schools are faced with incredible challenges, and it is wonderful to recognize what students, teachers, parents, volunteers, administrators and community leaders are accomplishing.” Lois Collins’ interview with Galena Rhoades, director of the University of Denver’s Family Research Center, found common ground with reader Robert Goodrich on the idea that the key to a successful relationship is commitment. Reflecting on his courtship, marriage and the little money he and his wife had to live on, he wrote, “but the real secret to happiness is I was with her. After 55 years she still amazes me.”

“There are some things that a progressive, fair and just society should never monetize and that includes education, justice and health care.”

COUNTRY ROADS BAPTIST CHURCH, STATE ROUTE 233, MONTELLO, NEVADA.

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TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

A VIBRANT DEMOCRACY MEANS BUILDING TRUST WITH MINORITY COMMUNITIES

BY LUZ ESCAMILLA

As we approach Election Day this November and another presidential election year, let’s take a moment to think about civic engagement and the profound impact it has on our nation’s economy, social fabric and future position in the world.

The definitions of civic engagement are many, but we can all agree that a healthy democracy needs all individuals to have a basic understanding of how government works and how to access information on policy and other issues that affect them, their loved ones and their neighborhoods. We have an obligation to ensure our democratic processes and necessary resources and information are fully accessible for all to participate in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.

Civic engagement is the fundamental machine that facilitates healthy, two-way communication between citizens and their elected leaders who oversee our government. The reciprocal dialogue grown out of civic engagement allows for inclusive and indispensable public discourse on policy issues across the board.

Civic engagement during an electoral process may look different at an individual level versus a group level. For example, casting a vote, placing a bumper sticker on your car, planting a yard sign or volunteering on a campaign are some of the different ways individuals engage during elections. At the group-level, engagement takes a different shape as forces assemble for “collective action” on a particular issue or candidate. All these forms of participation encourage a healthy electoral system, democracy and a nationwide exchange of goals, concepts and dreams for the future.

But what happens when a portion of the electorate doesn’t engage, and what can we do to change that? Talking about civic engagement at a basic level requires a short trip through time to remember the evolution of voter participation in our nation’s history,

including the disenfranchisement of Black Americans and other minority groups and intentional decisions to suppress the vote.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This amendment complemented the 13th and 14th amendments, which abolished slavery and guaranteed citizenship to Black Americans, respectively. Women finally received the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 historically expanded voter registration and voter participation. The fight is not over. Many are the battles to get us closer to true representation; one of those battles was won this summer with the Supreme Court decision in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case in Alabama.

When minority communities engage and participate in electoral politics, the bones of our democracy get stronger through more comprehensive representation in government. Diverse input helps us better confront our unique challenges through policies that embrace inclusion and our shared ideals of prosperity. Who better to advance policy decisions on issues rooted in systemic inequality than people who have been disproportionately impacted by them? As our demographics continue to shift, civic engagement fosters representation for our children by leadership they can identify with and who make them feel like it’s possible to dream.

A fully engaged community is a fully vested community. Empowering people to participate in the processes that decide who represents them gives them a sense of belonging and hope. Minority voices and communities have developed an incredible resilience but currently struggle to find optimism amid a divided nation that, in many instances, attacks the very sense of who they are. Carrying the disproportionate weight of poverty, homelessness, negative physical and mental health outcomes, environmental hazards and other social determinants of health are structural burdens that do not encourage confidence and trust in the value of civic engagement.

More and more of our population identifies as a racial and ethnic minority community. They will be the future workforce and leaders of our nation. It is in the best interest of ALL to create a space where they can fully participate in our democratic system. Let’s address the issues that matter to them, include them culturally and linguistically in healthy two-way communication of civic engagement and remove barriers for them to participate, which will strengthen our democracy with true representation.

As stated by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Our democracy awaits ALL to participate, and it is up to us to speak up when barriers are constructed to prevent that.

SEN. LUZ ESCAMILLA IS MINORITY LEADER IN THE UTAH SENATE AND PAST DIRECTOR OF THE STATE OFFICE OF ETHNIC AFFAIRS.

MULTIPLE CHOICE

CAN AMERICA REMEDY WHAT THE FOUNDERS CALLED THE GREATEST POLITICAL EVIL?

MORE THAN HALF a century has passed since a candidate from outside the Republican or Democratic parties has won a single state in a presidential election (George Wallace in 1968). And yet, according to recent Gallup polling, dissatisfaction with America’s two-party system is at an all-time high. Could an alternative be the answer to our gridlocked and hyperpartisan era? Political scientist Lee Drutman thinks so. In his book “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop,” Drutman argues that for most of our history the two parties had significant ideological overlap, which worked well in “our compromise oriented political institutions.” Over time, however, the two parties have come to represent distinct and warring visions of American identity, with each claiming to represent the majority. How did we get here? And would an alternative to the two-party system be better for democracy?

—Jesse Hyde

The founders were suspicious of political parties, favoring instead a government run by elites. In fact, George Washington was so alarmed by the rise of parties during his second term (Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans) that he dedicated part of his

farewell address to condemning them as a path to despotism. John Adams went even further, arguing that “a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil.” Today, Washington’s warning of factions seeking to dominate the other seems prophetic.

PARTY TIME

By 1824, this view had shifted and political parties were seen as vital to giving voice to the people. The rise of political parties resulted in a far higher level of engagement in politics: In 1824, only 26 percent of eligible voters (property-owning white men) voted. By 1840, the turnout was 80 percent (owning property was eliminated as a requirement to vote in

1828). And yet it wasn’t until the 20th century that the parties began to resemble what we know them as today.

WHY PARTIES MATTER

While the founders may have been suspicious of political parties, the general consensus today is that they are essential institutions of democracy. As former Brigham Young University political science professor David

Magleby has argued, political parties organize democracy in that they recruit and nominate candidates and stand for a particular view of the role of government. Research has also shown that those most involved in political parties are also best informed on issues affecting their communities and nations.

THE

The most successful third-party nominee was Theodore Roosevelt. Disillusioned with his successor, Howard Taft, he ran against him for the Republican nomination in 1912. While Roosevelt won more votes in the primary, Taft already secured enough delegates in the South to win the nomination. Roosevelt formed the breakaway Progressive Party, and eventually carried six states and nearly 30 percent of the popular vote, becoming the only third-party candidate to finish second in a presidential election. Ross Perot got almost one-fifth of the popular vote in 1992, preventing Bill Clinton and George Bush from winning a majority in any state except Arkansas.

RANKED CHOICE VOTING

One solution, even in a two-party system, is ranked choice voting. Countries like Ireland and Australia have used it for years and it’s recently gained popularity in the U.S., where it has been adopted for some elections in 18 states, including Utah. Unlike the winner-take-all method of our current system, ranked choice voting allows voters to select candidates in order of preference. Proponents of ranked choice voting say it can reduce polarization: Rather than promoting extremes and ideologues as our current primary system often does, it favors consensus candidates. This, in turn, could lead to more civil elections because candidates are encouraged to form coalitions.

“THE ALTERNATE DOMINATION OF ONE FACTION OVER ANOTHER, SHARPENED BY THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE NATURAL TO PARTY DISSENSION … IS ITSELF A FRIGHTFUL DESPOTISM.”

GEORGE WASHINGTON, FAREWELL ADDRESS, 1796

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

With just two main parties and a “firstpast-the-post” (single winner plurality), the United States is a global outlier. Most of the world’s democracies are multiparty, and most hold elections using proportional representation. Advocates of the multiparty system say it’s more likely to result in higher voter

turnout and better representation of political and ethnic minorities. “In multiparty democracies, parties do not claim to represent true majorities,” Drutman writes. “They promise to represent and bargain on behalf of the different voters and issues they represent.”

BALANCED COMPROMISE

Denmark has over a dozen political parties in the Danish Parliament — from The New Right to the Green Left. Brazil has over 30 parties in its National Congress. The Netherlands has a party called 50Plus, which caters to pensioners. Proponents of a multiparty system say that because no two parties are likely to win an election with so many choices, elected representatives must rely on coalitions to gain a majority. This encourages parties to work together and typically brings them closer to the center.

The biggest strength of a multiparty system — diversity of representation — is also one of its greatest weaknesses because it gives small factions disproportionate influence and a path to enter the mainstream. In France, the far-right National Rally went from six to 89 seats in the most recent parliamentary election, making it the most unified opposition to President Emmanuel Macron. For every party that caters to environmentalists or libertarianism, there’s a party with extremists who want to put an end to democracy in favor of fascism.

MAN IN THE ARENA

FRINGE BELIEFS

FRENEMY OF THE STATE

JOURNALISM AND BIAS IN THE AGE OF ‘FAKE NEWS’

AMERICA HAS ALWAYS had a tortuous relationship with the media. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,” Thomas Jefferson observed. But later, he also wrote that “nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” In 2020, a Gallup/Knight Foundation poll found that 81 percent of Americans believe the media is “critical” or “very important” to democracy. That doesn’t mean they trust the reporting. Skepticism is especially pronounced among conservatives: Pew Research Center found that Republicans’ trust in national news organizations collapsed from 70 percent in 2016 to just 35 percent in 2021. Many cite a liberal bias, echoing certain campaign slogans. Are their suspicions well founded? Or is something else going on here? —Ethan Bauer

AXES TO GRIND KNOW THE GAME

The media’s liberal bias is self-evident to conservative observers. They coddle Democrats and endorse liberal ideas but target Republican politicians and conservative values with unfair and unbalanced scrutiny. Driven by both personal beliefs and profit motive, the media seems to be taking one side and vilifying the other.

Consider the industry’s political makeup. Journalists are four times more likely to be registered Democrats than Republicans, and multiple studies have found them more likely to donate to Democrats. “Even reporters and editors who imagine themselves to be fair,” columnist Mike Rosen of Colorado wrote in February, “see the world through their subjective lens.”

But news is a business, and nothing sells online like outrage. So mainstream outlets lean into reliable tropes like “wicked right-wingers getting their just desserts or the plights of innocents suffering because of right-wingers’ behavior,” wrote former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt in Deseret Magazine last November. Examples include vaccine critics catching Covid-19 and ending up on ventilators or immigrant children separated from their families under the Trump administration. “The path to profitability and survival for much of the news business now relies on products that are mostly either superficial fluff or distortions that exploit and deepen our country’s worsening political alienation.”

Many conservatives cite the research of economists Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo — now at George Mason University and the Cato Institute, respectively — who in 2003 found evidence of liberal bias by tracking media citations of left and right-leaning think tanks. Even moderates like Sen. Mitt Romney have had verbal missteps taken out of context and pilloried, especially during his 2012 presidential campaign. “It just shows the level of amplification, of blowing certain things out of proportion,” says conservative commentator Evan Siegfried.

One study published in 2022 focused on 25 conservatives and found that while the group was generally hostile toward the press, “they were not primarily upset that the media get facts wrong, nor even that journalists push a liberal policy agenda,” the study’s co-authors observed in The Conversation. “Their anger was about their deeper belief that the American press blames, shames and ostracizes conservatives.”

Liberal bias in the news is a myth. But reporters face very real hostility that arises from misunderstandings about the industry and misguided expectations, used as levers by political operators and even some media outlets.

Reporters aren’t autonomous actors, but part of a system populated with editors, publishers, lawyers, shareholders and advertisers. Their work is scrutinized for factual accuracy, legal liability and reach. Each story represents an investment, expected to yield certain results. A story is deemed “newsworthy” based on its relevance to society, human interest or draw for readers. Editors and producers manage the overall mix, while corporate owners determine an outlet’s market position.

That leaves little room for journalists to plant flags. A 2020 study co-authored by BYU-Idaho political science professor Matt Miles found that “journalists’ individual ideological leanings have unexpectedly little effect on the … early stage of political news generation,” where story subjects are selected. Instead, he concluded, the perception of partiality arises from readers’ own biases and disappointment when their beliefs are not confirmed. “They’re calling (stories) liberal and conservative, when really, it’s just that this story isn’t talking about the people I like in the way that I like.”

Perhaps Americans have grown accustomed to a new kind of news. Deregulation allowed outlets like MSNBC to take up partisan positions — a strategy pioneered by Fox News, a standard-bearer for claiming “liberal bias.” This may be a brand strategy, but it also shapes the audience. According to Lehigh University political science professor Anthony DiMaggio, a combination of national surveys showed that “the strongest evidence of indoctrination was observed among consumers of conservative media,” with Fox News watchers hewing to the party line more than the audiences of CNN or MSNBC

Politicians can find such claims useful. “If you can get people to believe that your side is not biased, only the other side is biased, because they’re the ones who are wrong,” DiMaggio writes, “then you’ve won the rhetorical game.” What’s clear is that Americans need to boost their media literacy to navigate an increasingly complex landscape, perhaps by starting with a walk on the other side.

INSIDE THE FIGHT TO SAVE AMERICA’S MOTHERS

CAN THE MATERNAL MORTALITY RATE AMONG BLACK WOMEN BE REVERSED?

BY NATALIA GALICZA

Shalon Irving tried to do everything right. She didn’t miss a single doctor’s appointment during her pregnancy. She ruminated for days on a birthing plan to account for every conceivable variable: the music that’d play during childbirth, the guests allowed in the delivery room, the conversations they could and could not have in that space. She’d even tasked her mother with preemptively sterilizing the already sterile hospital room — just to err on the side of caution.

Irving understood that even the smallest of details could drastically alter health outcomes. She served as an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, prior to that role, as lieutenant commander for the U.S. Public Health Service. Her work focused on invisible dangers, like structural inequality and trauma, and their impact on patients’ well-being. So holding her daughter Soleil in her arms on January 3, 2017, against all odds, perceptible and otherwise, became what she considered her greatest accomplishment.

But exactly three weeks after she gave birth, Irving suffered a cardiac arrest. She’d been experiencing high blood pressure, weight gain, swelling and other symptoms — all of which she relayed to her health care providers over numerous appointments. Her last doctor’s visit took place hours before her heart attack. Irving tested negative

for blood clots and preeclampsia, so she was sent home with blood pressure medication despite her insistence that something remained wrong. She turned out to be right. Emergency responders brought her to a local hospital after Irving collapsed to place her on life support. She died four days later.

Despite her caution, education and excellent insurance, Irving fell victim to a statistical pitfall that has long plagued the American health care system. More mothers die of complications related to pregnancy in the United States than any other high-income

“WE KNOW EXACTLY HOW THIS COULD HAPPEN, BECAUSE IT’S BEEN HAPPENING TO SO MANY FAMILIES AROUND THE COUNTRY FOR DECADES, AND IT’S UNACCEPTABLE.”

country in the world. Most of those deaths occur anywhere from a week to a year after birth. And they’re growing more frequent. The CDC published a report earlier this year with data that places the maternal mortality rate — the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births — at 32.9 as of 2021. The number is up from 23.8 the year

before and 20.1 two years prior. For Black women like Irving, the current rate more than doubles at 69.9 deaths.

A confluence of ailments is behind the lapse in maternal care for Black women. An estimated 36 percent of all counties in the U.S. are areas with little to no access to maternal care — two-thirds of which comprise rural counties. Higher rates of predisposition to conditions like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity also account for some of the disparity. Though more prevalent and nebulous are the social issues at play. New research points to how chronic stress caused by exposure to discrimination or racism, generational inequities that lead to a lack of health care access and implicit bias imposed by health care practitioners can widen the gap for Black mothers. A version of that disparity had already been documented at the time of Irving’s death six years ago, though with far less public understanding. “Shalon’s death was devastating. I remember going to her funeral, and the director of the CDC came and said, ‘We don’t know how this could happen,’” says Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, a Democrat from Illinois and a friend of Irving’s from graduate school. “We know exactly how this could happen, because it’s been happening to so many families around the country for decades, and it’s unacceptable.”

Two years after the funeral encounter, Underwood co-founded the Black Maternal Health Caucus with North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams and then-Sen. Kamala Harris, both Democrats. It’s since grown into one of the largest bipartisan caucuses in Congress and has led to the introduction of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, a package of 13 bills proposed in both the House of Representatives and Senate that aims to end America’s maternal mortality crisis. And while it’s gained little traction since its debut in 2020, a perfect storm of restored national attention, newly dismal data points and the act’s formal reintroduction in May could help prompt a new trajectory for nationwide maternal care. One where invisible dangers, much like what Irving devoted and lost her life to, no longer take hold of health outcomes. “This is not a partisan issue,” Underwood says. “This is about taking action to save moms’ lives.”

MID-19TH CENTURY MEDICAL journals and Southern hospitals where doctors treated enslaved people proved foundational to establishing a sense of otherness between Black and white patients. Deirdre Cooper Owens writes in her book “Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology” that “physicians’ medical writings … modeled how to treat and think about black and white women and their perceived differences based on biology and race.” This included the belief that Black women had heightened fertility and an abnormally heightened pain tolerance, justifications used to exploit enslaved women as so-called “breeders” and subjects for medical experiments without anesthesia.

The men behind those experiments included James Marion Sims, dubbed the father of gynecology. And the same sentiments that propelled them persist even after hundreds of years. A 2016 study from the University of Virginia found a majority of more than 200 surveyed medical students believed Black Americans have thicker skin than whites, and a minority even

believed Black Americans’ nerve endings are less sensitive.

These responses influence the future doctors’ likelihood to offer a patient treatment, which correlates with the 40 percent of Black adults surveyed by Pew Research Center last year who say they’ve had to speak up to receive proper care — the most cited negative experience in the survey. “We’ve got to start listening to folks that tell you that something is not right,” says Kay Matthews, founder of Shades of Blue, a nonprofit focused on providing mental health resources for Black mothers. Matthews began her work after she experienced a lack of medical support as she suffered postpartum depression after losing her daughter to a stillbirth. “I went way too long without being able to get assistance and care because it was something that people were unfamiliar with,” she says. “We deserve to deliver our babies and go home and continue our lives and it’s just not happening.” Matthews’ organization co-sponsored the Moms Matter bill in the Momnibus act, focused on mental health equity.

They also illustrate why the Momnibus act places emphasis on addressing social determinants of health through research of disparities and tailored training for incoming health practitioners. Certain biases that may be embedded into the origins of present health care systems can appear innocuous or outdated while still posing centuries worth of harm. “When we think about the workforce and who is entering the health care sector, these are the people that are delivering the care for women that are having babies,” says Anuli Njoku, lead author of the academic paper “Listen to the Whispers before They Become Screams: Addressing Black Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in the United States,” published in February. “Having more curriculum about these issues of implicit bias and how to improve cultural humility could be one way to address unconscious bias.”

Medical programs that offer students specialized training to understand social determinants of health for minority groups and how to respond with equitable care

already exist and show progress. But there’s a demand for more. A joint effort by the American Public Health Association and the Council on Education for Public Health in 2021 echoes the need for increased research on not just quantifying disparity but reducing its harm, as outlined in the Momnibus bills. The study concluded “more research is needed to document how to educate public health students on the roots of the health issues they will address in their careers.” Especially when so much can compound to produce said harm in the first place. “There are nonmedical factors that are ingrained in society,” Njoku says. “Structural racism is a driver of those factors that affect one’s access to education, to housing, income, and how those factors really play a role in where these women may be.”

Which speaks to why the bulk of the Momnibus package includes pieces of legislation to not only fund training and data, but community-based organizations, a diversified maternal care workforce, mental health resources, accessible telehealth models for all appointments, promoting vaccination awareness, and more. One bill that previously comprised that package, the Protecting Moms Who Served Act, was signed into law by President Joe Biden two years ago. The act ensures the Department of Veteran Affairs maintains a coordination program to connect veterans seeking external pregnancy or postpartum care with providers. “Whether we’re talking about challenges and gaps in rural health care, disparities that are seen in a variety of racial and ethnic groups, there’s resources in the Momnibus that help all moms have better pregnancy outcomes,” Underwood says. States like California have also passed Momnibus legislation in recent years, but the goal of enacting the entire framework on a federal level remains unmet. At least for the time being. And as more high-profile athletes, celebrities and public figures come forward about their close calls, as more years inch by since Irving’s fatal collapse, all the more light is shed on solutions. A steady burn, almost as if to rival her daughter Soleil’s namesake.

In the mind of a child with autism, conversation can be overwhelming. But at Brigham Young University, students use an animated social skills coach to help kids, like Scout, find their strengths and have meaningful interactions that build their confidence.

Learning by study, by faith, and by experience, we strive to be among the exceptional universities in the world and an essential university for the world.

A HUMAN CONDITION

DOCUMENTING THE FALLOUT OF A DRUG POLICY GONE WRONG IN LIBERAL PORTLAND

BY ETHAN BAUER

Wherever he goes, Jordan Gale sees photographs. It’s his life’s work, after all, to capture compelling moments through the lens of a camera. So as the blue city bus rolls across Portland, Oregon, his eye catches details that tell stories. The yoga studios and hipster markets of his neighborhood embody the local stereotype. Stretches of blocky apartments and neon-sign restaurants reflect growth and prosperity. But when the bus turns, the scenes get a little more bleak. Broken-down RVs, off-brand motels and clusters of tents along 82nd Avenue speak of a city in crisis.

Portland is not alone, particularly in the West. An epidemic is raging from Seattle to Los Angeles, Las Vegas to Denver. Cities are overwhelmed with homelessness and addiction, which can overlap visibly on the streets. When authorities take down one colony in Salt Lake, another pops up nearby, in a public park or on a hillside. Nobody has found the answer, but Portland’s troubles are particularly complex, and seem to be getting worse. While Oregon ranks fourth in the nation in homelessness, overdose deaths have spiked in the City of Roses, from 90 in 2020 to 159 in 2022 and forecasts of 300 by the end of this year.

Gale moved here in 2021 from New York, where he’d grown tired of covering bike theft and mayoral campaigns for local metro sections. Maybe he could take on heftier

issues out west, in a city with less competition. He’d grown up in Iowa but wasn’t what you’d call sheltered. Still, what he saw here outstripped anything he’d ever seen. “It was shocking,” he says. He has thick brown hair, a stubbly mustache and a smattering of tattoos. “You could walk down any street and there’s tents and encampments and people smoking fentanyl off tin foil. You can’t ignore that.”

So he shouldered a camera bag and headed across town. Soon he was making this

TODAY, OREGON TREATS LOW-LEVEL DRUG POSSESSION AS A VIOLATION THAT CARRIES A $100 FINE, NOT UNLIKE A TRAFFIC TICKET. FINES CAN BE WAIVED WITH A PHONE CALL.

20-minute bus ride several times a week, spending upward of 15 hours a day along 82nd Avenue. It was grueling, emotional work, building relationships with people living on the streets and the organizations trying to help them. He built up a striking body of work, black-and-white photographs of homeless folks and their neighbors, police, EMTs and drug users. Today, that work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic and The New York Times, drawing national

attention to an intractable problem and the legal change that seems to be making matters worse. Now the bus hisses to a stop, and he steps back into the fray.

AS GALE WRESTLED with tragic scenes of overdoses and desperate people, he also tried to understand what was behind it. His research led him to Ballot Measure 110, passed in 2020 by 58 percent of Oregon voters. The measure decriminalized possession of small amounts of illicit drugs and directed $100 million per year in tax revenue from the cannabis industry to addiction recovery programs. Supporters hoped this would get more users into treatment, curtailing crimes of desperation and reducing the burdensome costs of incarceration. Instead, the streets are overwhelmed.

Oregon was not the first to try a similar approach. The Biden administration has adopted a philosophy of harm reduction, treating drug addiction as a public health problem rather than a criminal issue. Even conservative Utah passed HB348 in 2015 to try funneling convicted drug users into rehabilitation rather than jail. Internationally, Portugal pioneered the idea, decriminalizing heroin amid a severe wave of abuse in 2000, part of a broader effort. Measure 110 followed that model, but went further than any similar American law.

Today, Oregon treats low-level drug

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JORDAN GALE

FRIENDS EMBRACE OVER THE DEATH OF A MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE ON NE 82ND AVE. IN PORTLAND, OREGON.

FIRST RESPONDERS CHECK THE VITALS OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO RECEIVED NARCAN TO COUNTERACT A SUSPECTED FENTANYL OVERDOSE.

CORRY JOHNSON WAITS AS FIRST RESPONDERS TEND TO HER FRIEND SUFFERING FROM A SUSPECTED FENTANYL OVERDOSE.

MEMBERS OF THE CENTRAL CITY CONCERN OUTREACH TEAM PASS OUT NARCAN WHILE MAKING THEIR MORNING ROUNDS IN THE OLD TOWN DISTRICT.

“THE BASIC IMPULSE TO TRY TO FIND WAYS OTHER THAN INCARCERATION TO MOTIVATE CHANGE, I THINK IS A GOOD ONE. BUT LIKE ANYTHING ELSE, YOU CAN GO TOO FAR.”

possession as a violation that carries a $100 fine, not unlike a traffic ticket. Fines can be waived with a call to the state’s treatment referral hotline. This hard left turn highlights a confusing trend across the country, as more states legalize marijuana and other substances or soften their stances. Meanwhile, the federal war on drugs continues and the minimum mandatory prison sentences introduced in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 remain largely intact. With three times more drug arrests in 2019 than 1980, it’s hard to say that problem is going away.

The opioid crisis, specifically, is still getting worse, six years after the federal government declared it a public health emergency. The news cycle has moved on to lawsuits and settlements with opioid manufacturers, distributors and drug store chains, more typical of an issue reaching its resolution. Netflix has released a series called “Painkiller,” inspired by the Sackler family, whose company created OxyContin. But drug overdose deaths increased by 14 percent from 2020 to 2021. Three-fourths of those deaths involved opioids, 88 percent of which were synthetic, like fentanyl.

No photographer could change any of that, so Gale set out to put a human face on a dire situation, to inspire empathy and perhaps command attention as the problem kept getting worse.

THE BUS RUMBLES away, leaving Gale on a sidewalk near a kaleidoscope of tents. A crowd is gathering outside the Saints Peter and Paul Episcopal Church, in a parking lot tucked between two modest structures with slate blue siding and triangular rooflines, across 82nd Avenue from a strip mall and a used car lot. Every Sunday, the Rev. Sara Fischer hosts a dinner for the community, hoping to make the parish “a dynamic bridge between two parts of Portland”

— presumably the part that lives on the street, and the part that doesn’t.

Gale knew he had to earn the trust of the streets. Vulnerable as their lives are, homeless folks tend to be wary. Some had felt burned by others with cameras, social media types looking for salacious stories that could go viral. Some feared he would shoot without their permission and invade their privacy — a sticky question when one lives in a public place. He even had to get vetted by drug traffickers who work in the area. But many others welcomed him warmly. Some of them frequent this dinner, a rare social gathering for this particular demographic.

On a balmy night in August, fare consists of pizza, soda and bottled water. People come and go, but more appear to be homeless than typical congregants. Gale had come up against addiction before, on a yearslong project documenting his own roots. In Iowa, towns are more spread out, the crisis hidden in homes, basements and cars. So he learned to develop relationships with potential subjects.

That means people like “Coach,” a 52-year-old man in a well-worn track suit, homeless since a “bad divorce” six years ago. He could no longer make rent on his wages at the Montavilla Community Center, where he’d worked for 20 years, so he stays out here with a white terrier mix named Uno. The trouble with living among addicts, he says, is their desperation leads to fights and muggings. He’s lost his motorcycle, his bicycle and his Chevy Silverado — bought with the last of his savings — all stolen or confiscated. “People will steal from you, even if they’ve known you your whole life,” he says. “Fentanyl made it even worse.”

THROUGH THE VIEWFINDER of Gale’s Fujifilm DSLR, a slender man named Noah, with

shaggy black hair and a gray-flecked beard, presses the flame of a handheld torch up against a thin, straw-like tube — a fentanyl pipe undergoing a cleaning. Gale snaps a photo. The man tells him he wanted to be an English teacher, until an adolescent addiction to OxyContin spun him off into years of struggles with heroin and trauma. He relapsed during the pandemic and turned to fentanyl when he couldn’t find heroin. Now he lives in fear of that drug’s gut-wrenching withdrawals. “Someone is going to do whatever it takes to make that (feeling) go away,” he says.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, similar to OxyContin, but exponentially more potent — 100 times more than morphine and 50 times more than heroin. Developed as an anesthetic in 1959, it’s still used in clinical settings, including some epidurals administered to mothers in labor. But around 2011, amid measures intended to combat opioid abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration tracked an uptick in illicit fentanyl. First it was stolen or manufactured in small labs that law enforcement quickly shut down. Later it surfaced for sale on the dark web, shipped in small packages

CONTRACTORS BOARD UP A VACANT OFFICE BUILDING THAT WAS USED AS AN OPEN AIR DRUG MARKET.

directly from Chinese factories. That was before Mexican cartels moved in as highly efficient bulk intermediaries.

By 2020, Portland was flooded with familiar pills at cut-rate prices. “And what turned out was they no longer contained oxycodone,” says Joe Bazeghi, director of engagement at Recovery Works NW “These were just fentanyl with binding agents pressed to look like oxycodone.”

At first, users didn’t know what they were getting, but by the time Measure 110 rolled out, fentanyl had obliterated the competition. Suddenly, it was the only opioid on the street. Its supercharged high wears off sooner and creates a stronger dependency so users typically need another dose every two hours just to avoid withdrawals, which are harder to treat.

“Our old tools are significantly less effective, and people are dying at rates that we’ve never seen before,” Bazeghi says.

Funded by Measure 110, Recovery Works

NW is the first facility in Oregon to specialize in treating fentanyl withdrawals. With room to treat up to 1,200 cases per year, it represents an 18 percent increase in the city’s capacity. Time will tell whether that is enough, in Portland or elsewhere, because fentanyl “is not an Oregon problem,” Bazeghi says. “It’s occurring throughout the country.”

Nationwide, the number of overdose deaths each year has risen by 40,000 since 2019, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, driven largely by fentanyl. Its lethal concentration in small packages has also made it harder for law enforcement to detect. “All the illicit fentanyl Americans consume in a year,” says Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford, “would fit on one truck.”

AFTER POLICE SWEEP his encampment,

Noah gathers what he can carry and walks. Gale finds him on a residential street and lines up a perfect shot. But as he adjusts the camera settings, a woman opens a nearby door. “You’d better not be setting up your camp right there,” she says. “We paid too much money for these houses for you to ruin the value.” This is the kind of attitude Gale hopes to change with his work. Policy is another world.

Critics say Measure 110 lacks sufficient incentives or deterrents to push people into treatment. Law enforcement leaders call the citation system useless. Even rehab professionals who value the increased funding (Oregon ranks last in the nation in access to drug treatment) say something is missing. “Instead of harm reduction, it should be health promotion,” says Jerrod Murray, executive director of Painted Horse Recovery. Saying “we’re just gonna give you some bubble pipes, and we’re gonna give

PORTLAND POLICE OFFICER DAVID BAER RESPONDS TO THE SCENE INSIDE A SAFEWAY GROCERY STORE, WHERE NARCAN WAS USED TO TREAT A SUSPECTED OVERDOSE.

you clean needles, and everything’s gonna be just fine,” he says, makes recovery even more difficult.

Humphreys agrees. “The basic impulse to try to find ways other than incarceration to motivate change, and to try to not make the punishments for drug abuse worse than drug use, I think is a good one,” he says. “But like anything else, you can go too far.” Measure 110 lacks an enforcement mechanism analogous to Portugal’s dissuasion commissions, which can push people into treatment using creative discipline, like suspending their license to practice a trade. Oregon “left that out,” Humphreys adds, “so it’s not surprising they got the results that they did.”

In these debates, Gale worries that frustration can spiral into cruelty, while addiction and homelessness devolve into abstract concepts. But on 82nd Avenue, they’re concrete realities, alongside the

scourge of mental illness and the cycle of rehab and relapse. But life here is also more complex than that, and human. “There’s so many layers to it,” Noah says. “There’s still people falling in love. There’s still people trying to survive.”

It’s dark when the photographer steps back on the bus, his memory cards loaded with images to process and edit, faces he wants you to see. Gale calls this “the hardest part,” trudging past the galleries and cafes of his neighborhood, “going back to my comfortable living situation.” Some nights, unable to rest, he sits on his stoop and thinks about some incident he’s witnessed, some burden he cannot share. Sometimes he feels guilty, as if he were taking advantage. Sometimes he thinks about the law and the inhumanity of public discourse. “I think we naturally just choose to simplify things,” he says. “And you’ve gotta tell yourself that that’s not the case.”

“THIS IS NOT AN OREGON PROBLEM. IT’S OCCURRING THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.”

DESMOND SHE LOOKS THROUGH HIS TENT, IN A LOCAL UNHOUSED ENCAMPMENT NEAR THE CITY’S DOWNTOWN WATERFRONT, COMMONLY REFERRED TO AS “THE PIT.”

A SEASON OF SALVATION

WAS THIS YEAR’S HISTORIC SNOWPACK ENOUGH?

BY LAUREN STEELE

When missionaries, settlers and pioneers pushed West, the mountains, valleys, rivers and peaks became subject to their sentiments. Names given by Native American tribes were forgotten or never learned, and trying experiences were distilled into lamenting designations. Such was Disappointment Creek.

The creek has promising beginnings atop the peak of Lone Cone in the San Juan Mountains, an extinct volcano that soars over 12,000 feet into the Colorado sky. Its headwaters chase the sun westward for 40 miles. Along the way, the arid ground siphons it, and what’s left is spoiled with alkali and other contaminants, according to author Wilma Crisp Bankston. “In summer and fall, before the water reaches the lower valley, it is often bitter and yellow,” she wrote in the 1987 book, “Where the Eagles Winter.” That is, if it reaches the lower valley. Bankston’s research into the oral folklore of the area found that the creek’s name is said to have come from a party of early surveyors who were tasked with mapping that lower valley. The day was hot — late summer in the high desert — and the crew had run out of water. Following the wisdom of aspen and spruce trees to the banks, they expected to find a long, cool drink. But they found the creek as dry as a bone.

Most years, Disappointment Creek doesn’t make it very far. But when it does,

it intersects with a river, one once called El Rio de Nuestra Señora de Dolores by Spanish friars in the 1700s. That Spanish name translates to The River of Our Lady of Sorrows. But today, we simply know it as the Dolores. “The Dolores River is much beloved in this area, but it’s also kind of a tragic story because in times of drought,

THE WASATCH RANGE IN UTAH RECEIVED OVER 900 INCHES THIS WINTER. THE SIERRAS WELCOMED BACK LONG-LOST LAKES. NEVADA’S BASIN AND RANGE REGION SAW RECORD SNOWPACK. EVEN AREAS OF ARIZONA REACHED ABOVE-AVERAGE FOR THE YEAR.

it frequently runs virtually dry,” says Teal Lehto, a river guide and the water rights activist behind the Western Water Girl platform. “It only runs once every two or three years. Sometimes it’s up to a decade between runs.”

The Disappointment Valley and the Dolores River’s annual ritual of scarcity have served as a visible barometer for the

West’s water shortages in recent years. It has exemplified the shriveling of natural resources, the suffocation of agricultural livelihoods and rural communities, the overextension of demands and the breaking point of supply. But this summer, as a historic snowpack melted across the West and water roared 6,000 feet down from Lone Cone into the Dolores River Canyon and flooded forgotten banks, it became an emblem of deliverance from drought; of a season that could save.

“Parts of the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado saw record snowpack — most notably the Dolores River Basin. The San Juan Mountains in the Four Corners region has been the epicenter of the megadrought since 2000, and the Dolores River Basin is one of the rivers that’s seen the most significant impacts from drought over the last 23 years,” says Seth Arens, research scientist at Western Water Assessment, the University of Colorado-CIRES and the University of Utah-GCSC. “We had this really impressive line of atmospheric rivers coming onto the coast of California, and they were strong enough that they pushed inland and dumped tremendous amounts of snow.”

Those storms delivered relief nearly everywhere in the West. The Wasatch range in Utah received over 900 inches this winter, and the state reached a snowpack

that clocked in at 201 percent of normal, according to the Department of Natural Resources. The Sierras welcomed back long-lost lakes, and California’s statewide snowpack peaked close to 300 percent of the average level. Pockets of Nevada’s Basin and Range region also saw record levels. Idaho, Wyoming and even areas of Arizona reached above-average snowpack for the year. For the first time in decades, snow piled up to six feet and above at lower elevations around 6,000 feet, allowing the ground to be adequately quenched by the time spring runoff began flowing toward the valleys.

The snow kept falling, and hopes for drought relief rose with the stacking snow. In the spring, the National Integrated Drought Information System’s Special Edition Drought Status Update for the Western United States declared a 50 percent

reduction in drought coverage since the start of the water year.

“This wasn’t the kind of year that was anticipated,” says Arens.

LOOKING AT THE West’s most recent annual water reports is like looking at a rap sheet. The redundant bad years string together — 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022. The summer of 2020 was especially bad. “We had near average snowpack but it ended up getting a 35 percent average runoff” that translated to streamflow, Arens says. Watersheds and reservoirs were depleted, wildfires raged, and the West’s lack was on full display as the “foreseeable future.”

This season’s precipitation snuck in under many scientists’ radars. At the end of 2022, the Western Hemisphere was still considered to be in a moderate La Niña climate pattern, which typically

brings drier and warmer conditions to the Southwest and wetter and cooler conditions to the Northwest in the U.S. But that’s not what played out over the course of the winter. Instead, there was widespread above-average precipitation from southern Oregon and Idaho, all the way to the Mexican border. The season stayed cold, so there was little water lost to midseason melts, and the precipitation piled up. A spring monsoon season brought cooler temperatures and enough moisture to rehydrate soils and accommodate more efficient runoff. Water, for the first time in a long time, became abundant. “The thing that makes this year truly remarkable for me is that it’s so widespread in terms of how much water came in throughout the western U.S.,” says Arens.

When the reservoirs filled and allocations were guaranteed, the memory that just one

THE DOLORES RIVER IN COLORADO HAS LONG BEEN A BAROMETER FOR DROUGHT IN THE WEST.

year ago, Utah — one of the states with the largest snowpacks in recorded American history — was 80 percent covered in extreme or significant drought, faded. At the time of publishing, just 6.9 percent of the state is considered to be in a condition of drought. “It is undeniably a good thing that we had such a big winter,” he adds. “These are some of the lowest levels of drought we’ve seen in quite a few years.”

California has been engulfed in the intense repercussions of severe drought for years — towns like Mendocino Village running out of water, historic deadly wildfires like the Camp Fire in 2018, and bodies of water like Tulare Lake and the Salton Sea drying up into toxic dust beds and taking local economies with them. But this year, the state experienced a turnaround, most notably for the southern area of the state, which, in the spring, actually had to release freshwater into the ocean because there was simply too much. “When we peaked with our snowpack, it was close to 300 percent of average, which is absolutely insane. And a lot of that came from southern parts of the state where we’ve been really needing that water,” says Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist and manager of the University of California, Berkeley, Central Sierra Snow Lab. “For the first time since 2006, California has met 100 percent of its water allocations. That’s how big this year is.”

This year was even bigger than other big years, like 1983. That year, the snow water equivalent from the snowpack was recorded around 26 inches in Utah. This year was an extraordinary 29 inches. But somehow, this season didn’t bring widely destructive flooding in states like Utah, as was anticipated. “This year was the perfect scenario for not causing damage,” says Arens. “We didn’t flood because it would warm up and then it would storm or cool down. That cycle of warming up and cooling down makes for a less efficient runoff but in the case of having so much snow it makes it safer from a hazard viewpoint.” Melt cycles, temperature variability, water loss to ground absorption and evaporation, dust on snow events,

and snow sublimation (the vaporization of snow) all contribute to how one historic year can look wildly different from the next when you start crunching numbers. As conditions and climate qualities change, so will our water cycle and weather patterns. And so will our averages.

A common misunderstanding about what “100 percent snowpack” means is that it translates to 100 percent of that area’s historic average. But, it doesn’t. In fact, “100 percent snowpack” is a measurement that changes every few decades, adjusting to the average of the most recent 30-year period. According to the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, April snowpack declined at 93 percent of the snow telemetry network sites

AS THE RESERVOIRS FILLED AND ALLOCATIONS WERE GUARANTEED, THE MEMORY THAT JUST ONE YEAR AGO, MOST OF THE WEST WAS COVERED IN EXTREME OR SIGNIFICANT DROUGHT, FADED.

that were measured, with the average decline across all sites amounting to nearly 23 percent between 1955 and 2022. Although we are meeting “100 percent snowpack” measurements and beyond some winters, what actually measures as 100 percent is declining. As our target numbers for averages shrink and our water demands and populations grow, operating at an annual deficit becomes the norm. “We use so much water every year that an above-average snowpack is really just like the amount of water that we need to actually fulfill the allocations that we’ve made within the basin,” says Lehto. “Because that’s how big of a deficit we’re running on.”

When you set that stage, it becomes more sobering to understand how California and

other states met their water allocations this year. Meeting 100 percent of a state’s annual water allocations now requires Biblical winters that settle in with a historic 200-300 percent of a region’s annual snowpack.

“If we had ‘average’ years before this, we might’ve gotten away with 100 percent or 150 or 200 percent — it just depends,” says Schwartz. “But because our reservoirs were so low, 300 percent of average snowpack means that we’re fulfilling 100 percent of our allocations for water statewide for the first time since 2006. So it’s taken us (nearly) two decades. But this doesn’t put us ahead for the future. … And probably because of the big winter we had people have lessened their conservation efforts.”

These “new normals” not feeling abnormal is a matter of shifting baselines — defined in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment as “a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment” due to lack of information or lack of experience. As our seasons change, it can be difficult to discern what is “average” and what is ideal for our needs. “This summer it felt cooler, but if you actually look at the numbers, it’s still running a couple of degrees above the 30-year average,” says Arens. “By looking at historical numbers, it’s still been a hot summer. But because of our recollection as humans, we’re thinking more of the last couple, five, maybe 10 years … our perspective is skewed.” Even record-breaking snowpacks can’t stop our winter average snow from declining and our summer heat from rising.

ONE OF THE lessons of old cowboy wisdom is that you can’t find the holes unless you check the fence line. A water year like this makes the gaps obvious — if we have any after record-breaking abundance, it’s up to us to fix them, not Mother Nature.

We’ve been here before. Both 2017 and 2019 were above-average for snowpack and snow water equivalent content, and yet we still wound up in the deepest drought on human record; with the Great Salt Lake at risk of drying up, Glen Canyon Dam

A COMMON MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT WHAT “100 PERCENT SNOWPACK” MEANS IS THAT IT TRANSLATES TO 100 PERCENT OF THAT AREA’S HISTORIC AVERAGE. BUT, IT DOESN’T.

nearly falling below power pool levels, and entire communities — namely on Native American reservations — without water. Any lack of action on developing further water solutions serves as two steps back instead of three steps forward when we do have above-average water years. “When we have many dry years, like will eventually happen, we’re gonna go back to that same deficit,” says Schwartz. “We still need to really focus on solutions to our water crisis because, though we’ve had one good year, it’s just delaying the further troubles that we’re going to have when we don’t have that precipitation.”

Experts are skeptical of solutions that haven’t proven to be environmentally or economically beneficial in the past, like building more dams and reservoirs across the West, which aren’t necessarily feasible. Even with additional storage, spreading out the water that you’re getting between more dams means less water in each, causing issues similar to what’s playing out on a large scale in Glen Canyon/Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

As of August, total storage for both Lake Powell and Lake Mead was under 35 percent. If you were to combine both reservoirs’ storage into Lake Mead, that reservoir wouldn’t have reached 70 percent. “Even I was surprised that it wasn’t more,” says Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. “Clearly, even after decade-high runoff, if we can’t get close to half-full, that should be an eye-opener for everybody in the basin.”

Water retention is one challenge, but allocation is another. In many Western states, the idea of watersheds and ecosystems themselves having a right to water is a relatively new political idea. In Utah, a water banking statute — 73-31-101 — was adopted during the 2020 general session to help protect the Great Salt Lake’s elevation and HB130 was passed, allowing appropriated water returned to its watershed to finally be considered a “beneficial use” of that water. Since, private water donations have been made to set an example for legislation to make significant impacts for watersheds.

Earlier this year, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated over 5,700 water shares in the North Point Consolidated Irrigation Company to the state of Utah for the Great Salt Lake. Following that, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall also formally submitted a request to the City Council to authorize the Public Utilities Department to file the necessary water right documentation amounting to an annual contribution of nearly 13 billion gallons.

Nevada, a notoriously progressive state when it comes to legislation around water conservation, is able to pass water conservation measures with relative ease because of the lack of a large and powerful agricultural lobbying group. Earlier this summer, the state passed a $63 billion initiative to fund 13 water conservation projects and became the first state in the country to give a local water agency the power to limit individual home water use and protect Lake Mead.

“In Colorado, we really don’t prioritize ecosystem needs at all,” says Lehto. “We didn’t legislate the ability to assign water rights to ecosystem needs until the 1970s. Considering water rights have a chronological priority dating, a lot of those rights really don’t materialize when the ecosystem needs them most. … The legal infrastructure that (reservoir managers are) operating under requires them to prioritize the senior water rights holders that they provide water to.”

The politics of senior water rights have gotten thornier in recent years, but they reached a new level this summer. Even when there’s enough water to go around, many communities are still coming up empty-handed. Additional roadblocks for tribes trying to settle their water rights have reared up, such as the 1908 Winters Doctrine. The Supreme Court ruling requires that the United States provide enough water on every treaty for the entire population of a reservation to survive, but these particular rights were not considered during the creation of the Colorado River Compact in 1922. Now, many tribal communities of the Colorado River Basin have to settle for water from the allocation that’s already been

given to that state through the compact, without any access to their own independent rights.

AROUND 100 MILES from the Disappointment Valley, Lake Nighthorse sits full to the brim, its glassy surface reflecting the broad ridgelines of nearby Basin Mountain. Built by the Bureau of Reclamation in 2003 as part of the Animas-La Plata Project, the reservoir is filled by pumps carrying water two miles uphill from the shallow Animas River. Built to the tune of $500 million, Lake Nighthorse’s water is allocated to members of the Southern Ute tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute tribe and the Navajo Nation. However, it’s currently jointly managed by the Bureau of Reclamation and the City of Durango, and none of the tribes have accessed the water. During planning and upon completion, the federal government didn’t provide infrastructure for the delivery of the water. Because of that lack of framework, as soon as any tribe accesses the Nighthorse water they have to start paying back the federal government for the maintenance and operation costs of building the reservoir. So the reservoir sits, mostly untapped, right outside the city of Durango, using nearly as much power as the city itself uses just to pump the water. “I think it’s a good example of the boondoggle of complicated water rights we’ve created for Native Americans in this area,” says Lehto. “How many of them have water rights on paper that they are not actually able to access? Tribes legally could be entitled to (nearly) a third of the water in the Colorado River Basin. In my opinion, any plan going forward needs to acknowledge the very real possibility of the tribes actually using all of their water rights.”

Instead, stand-up paddleboarders float across the surface of Nighthorse, and an inflatable water park bobbles near the shoreline. The reservoir remains full, while the last drops of this season’s version of the Dolores River trickle westward toward Utah, determined to make it to the confluence of the Colorado River.

This year, for the first time in many, this

beneficiary of Disappointment Creek had 55 days of boatable flows. Normally, the Dolores runs between 100-500 cubic feet per second (cfs) when reservoir managers release annual flows. But this year, it roared at 5,000 cfs. The waters flooded beaches and washed away invasive plants. It watered thousands of acres, offering full allotments for farmers. People from the nooks and crannies of the West came to witness the Dolores in this kind of glory. And to enjoy it. Rowing on through this rarely-seen canyon on waters that no one’s ran in over a decade, spirits were high. But for Lehto, being on her boat was bittersweet. “One year of solid snowpack does not negate the consistent deficit we have and how we allocate water in this area,” she says. “I am really happy that this winter provided some relief and some leeway for negotiations, but I’m also a little wary that it gives a false sense of security.”

This season was one of deliverance, even if that simply means having a chance to save ourselves by leveraging this leeway to look ahead and create a better future. “We as humans have short-term memory — especially with things that are a little bit positive,” says Schwartz. “We’ve got some time, but we need to focus on long-term solutions. You can’t just hope water into existence.”

ARTIST BILLY FEFER PAINTED A MURAL ON THE SIDE OF A ROADSIDE STAND WHERE LOCALS SELL ITEMS ON THE NAVAJO RESERVATION NEAR CAMERON, ARIZONA. IN THE MURAL, A YOUNG CHILD REACHES OUT TO TOUCH A FALLING RAIN DROP. MOST OF NAVAJO NATION HAS LIVED WITH DROUGHT FOR THE PAST FEW DECADES.

THE MAKING OF

MITT ROMNEY

AS MUCH AS ANY POLITICAL FIGURE IN RECENT MEMORY, MITT ROMNEY ’S FAITH HAS DEFINED HIM IN AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM A NEW BIOGRAPHY, Mc KAY COPPINS REVEALS HOW ROMNEY ’S ADHERENCE TO HIS FAITH DEFINED HIS POLITICAL CAREER — AND MAY HAVE BROUGHT IT TO AN END

BY McK AY COPPINS

E

AS A KID, MITT ROMNEY GLIDED THROUGH GRADE SCHOOL WITH AN IMPISH SENSE OF HUMOR THAT BOTH CHARMED AND EXASPERATED HIS TEACHERS.

VERY FAMILY HAS ITS OWN MYTHOLOGY, THE STORIES THEY CHOOSE TO TELL ABOUT THEMSELVES. THE ROMNEYS’ STORIES TEND TO BE ABOUT STUBBORNNESS.

There was George, who delivered a belligerent speech at the 1964 Republican convention opposing his party’s nomination of Barry Goldwater. There was Gaskell, who sued the Mexican government — and won — after losing his home during the revolution, and Rey, who flouted laws against foreign proselytizing and turned up in Chihuahua passing out Spanish copies of the Book of Mormon.

the Atlantic and walked across the American Plains to join his fellow Saints in building their desert Zion.

EDITOR’S NOTE: THE HOUSE STYLE OF DESERET MAGAZINE IS TO REFER TO MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS BY THE NAME OF THE CHURCH. THE BOOK, AS EXCERPTED HERE, REFERS TO MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH AS MORMONS.

This story began with Miles Romney, a 19th-century British carpenter who, upon hearing Mormon missionaries preach in a town square, renounced the Church of England, converted to Mormonism, crossed

Charged with designing a tabernacle in the southern Utah settlement of St. George, Miles became fixated on erecting a grand spiral staircase that would lead up to the second-story dais. When the Mormon prophet, Brigham Young, saw the plans, he concluded that the podium would be too high and instructed Miles to cut down the staircase. Miles balked. The prophet insisted. A standoff ensued, and nearly 200 years later the St. George Tabernacle — with its grand spiral staircase that

rises majestically to the building’s second story before awkwardly descending 10 feet to the dais — stands as a testament to the lengths a Romney man will go when he believes he is right about something.

Romneys were not descended like other humans, the family saying goes. We descended from the mule

and Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.” But the calls to greatness fell flat. Mitt loved his parents, but he felt little drive to rise to their expectations.

When he was 12, he entered Cranbrook, the private boarding school to which Michigan’s ruling class sent its children, and quickly learned that he wouldn’t make it as a jock. The football team cut him at tryouts, and he spent his brief wrestling career getting his limbs bent in ways they were not meant to bend by boys much stronger than he was. Even track, that last refuge of the unathletic teenager, was ruled out after he discovered by way of the presidential fitness exam that he ran the slowest 50-yard dash in his class. He spent time in the yearbook office and the glee club, and one year his mother even urged him — as a kind of Mormon rumspringa — to join the “smoking club.”

“If he wants to smoke,” she insisted, “he can smoke.” Mitt did not want to smoke, but he enrolled in the club anyway to appease his mom and never attended a meeting.

followed, as well as regular nightly phone calls between dorms, but as Mitt became more infatuated she remained standoffish.

Shortly after they began dating, Mitt had to spend a few days in the hospital with appendicitis, during which time, he learned, Ann went on a date with another boy. When Mitt confronted her, expecting a sheepish apology, Ann was defiant. “Do you think you own me or something?” she demanded. “I’ve gone out with you a few times, that means I can’t go out with someone else? I’m supposed to clear that with you?” Mitt was in love.

Ann eventually fell in love, too, but she had other things on her mind. One night, after a date, Mitt parked on a quiet hill near his family’s house and leaned in to kiss her. She stopped him with a decidedly unsexy question: “What do Mormons believe?”

This was not a subject he was interested in discussing right at that moment, but he dutifully searched his mind for an answer. He recited the church’s first Article of Faith: “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and

IT WAS NOT at first clear that Mitt Romney had inherited his forefathers’ stubbornness. As a kid, he didn’t seem to hold many strong convictions at all. Skinny and good-looking, with an impish sense of humor, he glided through grade school charming and exasperating his teachers.

His parents had high hopes for their precocious youngest son. They saw his potential, and in some ways, they saw themselves in him. His father George delighted in arguing with Mitt, their debates often dominating the family dinner table until both were laughing and gasping for breath. On road trips, his mother Lenore read aloud from the poetry of Sam Walter Foss — “Bring me men to match my mountains”

His true extracurricular passion was pranks. At Cranbrook, he was the kid who filled dorm rooms with shaving cream and blared obnoxious ooga horns during slow dances. He liked to dress up as a firefighter and run into stores pulling a hose and shouting, “This place is gonna blow!” After acquiring a siren and some blue lighting gels from the campus auditorium, he drove around town posing as a police officer and “pulling over” his friends. He carried himself with a rich-kid carelessness — the untroubled air of someone who knew he could get away with anything.

Then he met Ann Davies. He saw her for the first time at a party. She was beautiful and wholesome and slightly reserved in a way that intrigued him, not bubbly and loud like other girls. She was also 15, a sophomore at Cranbrook’s sister school, which suggested to Mitt that she’d be easy to impress. For their first date, he took her out to dinner at the Detroit Athletic Club, where his dad was a member, and then to a screening of “The Sound of Music.” More dates

GEORGE ROMNEY, SEEN HERE IN 1957, HAD HIGH HOPES FOR HIS PRECOCIOUS YOUNGEST SON.

HIS MORMON FAITH NO LONGER FELT TO HIM LIKE JUST A PART OF HIS HERITAGE, AN INTERESTING HEIRLOOM PASSED DOWN BY HIS FATHERS. IT WAS EXPANDING, GAINING TEXTURE, ATTACHING ITSELF TO EVERY PART OF HIM.

in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” To Mitt’s alarm, this led to a theological conversation about the nature of God. The subject had been bothering Ann ever since her Episcopal priest suggested to her that he didn’t believe in a divine being so much as a general presence of good in the world — an abstract notion that had left Ann cold and searching. Now, as she listened to Mitt describe his church’s teaching that God is a person, a literal heavenly father who knows and cares about each of his children, she was overwhelmed with emotion and began to cry. With the prospect of romance now fully evaporated, Mitt spent the rest of the evening reciting other passages of Mormon scripture to his intensely fascinated girlfriend.

Mitt took Ann to prom later that year and told her that he wanted to marry her one day. She said she felt the same way. But when he suggested that he might skip his Mormon mission so that they could start their lives together sooner, she balked. Somehow, she knew better than he did how important his faith would become to him.

“You’ll resent me for the rest of your life,” she told him. “You have to go.”

he stopped at Romney’s name and said, “That’s the wrong mission. He’s supposed to go to France.”

Mitt arrived in the country a few months later, and was assigned to serve in Le Havre, a working-class port city in Normandy that was still recovering from its decimation during the war two decades earlier. The city had a haunted quality to it; according to mission lore, the last missionaries sent to Le Havre were never heard from again.

Romney and three other missionaries took rooms in a hotel across the street from the train station that they would only later learn to be a brothel and went to work. Rising early each morning and mounting their Mobylettes, they scoured the city for people who were willing to listen to young American men share a message about Jesus Christ in broken French. It was a tough sell. Le Havre was predominantly communist, and the residents’ default skepticism of religion was compounded by their dislike of Americans, whom they blamed for the bombardment that leveled their city in World War II.

WHEN THE TIME came, he submitted his papers and prayed for a mission assignment to Great Britain, where his father and great-grandfather had served. George even called in a favor with a friend on the church’s missionary committee, who said he would do his best. But when Elder Thomas S. Monson, an apostle in the church, reviewed the list of missionary assignments,

Every day, Romney and his fellow missionaries would pick one of the brutalist concrete towers in town, climb the stairs to the top, and spend hours trudging through the halls, knocking on doors one by one and getting them slammed in their faces: “I don’t want any” — BANG — “Get out of Vietnam” — BANG — “No, no, no” — BANG Entire months would pass like this, without a single person inviting them in to talk. Their shoes wore out; their feet blistered. The Sabbath offered little respite from the rejection — because there were no Mormons in Le Havre, there was no church to attend on Sundays and their meager budgets meant that they could usually afford to eat just two meals a day.

For Romney, the governor’s son, the prep school prankster, this was something altogether new. The day-in-day-out grind, the punishing schedule — it was worse than difficult; it felt pointless. “Why are we doing this?” he repeatedly asked the other missionaries. “We’re accomplishing nothing.” Back home, he had friends and school and a future and a girlfriend with whom he was madly in love. Here, he just had those concrete towers with their endless flights of stairs and their ever-slamming doors. Making matters worse, Romney had developed a persistent case of diarrhea shortly after arriving in Le Havre. The condition left him weak and dehydrated, when he wasn’t scrambling for a toilet, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to find a cure. The low point came one day when he and his companion were talking to a family they’d

ROMNEY’S LATTER-DAY SAINT MISSION PROFOUNDLY CHANGED HIM. HIS FAITH BECAME HIS GUIDING FORCE.

just met in a courtyard. Suddenly feeling as though he might faint, Romney hobbled out to the street, collapsed into a gutter, and soiled himself.

It was around this time that Elder Romney received a book from his parents in the mail, “The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt.” A distant ancestor on his father’s side, Pratt was one of Mormonism’s legendary early missionaries, having baptized hundreds of people as he preached the gospel throughout North America. Reading the book one night in his run-down room in Le Havre, Romney came across a story about Pratt’s own early struggles as a missionary. Pratt had spent months laboring in New York City without converting a single soul. Then, one day, he kneeled to pray with his companions and received a miraculous vision. “The Lord said that he had heard our prayers, beheld our labors, diligence, and long suffering towards that city and that he had seen our tears,” Pratt wrote. “Our prayers were heard, and our labors and sacrifices were accepted.”

Romney’s room did not fill with light when he read the passage; he did not receive a vision. But it struck him with the force of something divine. Our sacrifices were accepted. This was the point of his mission, he now realized — doing the hard thing, making the sacrifice. Maybe it would yield fruit, maybe it wouldn’t. But the difficulty and deprivation would have their own sanctifying effect, and that was reason enough to keep trying.

Romney’s mission didn’t necessarily get easier after that. In Nantes, a group of drunk rugby players dragged him into a brawl and he wound up in a police station; in Villemomble, he was arrested again for “impersonating a military official” after he made the mistake of wearing an old army PT jacket he’d picked up at a flea market. He lived in a procession of barely livable apartments — one with fleas, one with contaminated water, one with a hole in the floor for a toilet — and discovered a new appreciation for the amenities of home. In Versailles, he spent a winter in a tenement whose only source of heat was a coal boiler that needed to be stoked through the night. One night, a bleary-eyed missionary accidentally set a

can of gasoline on fire and flames engulfed the living room. That Elder Romney experienced these things as character-building misadventures was a sign of his growing fondness for missionary life.

There was, it turned out, something liberating about struggling for a purpose greater than himself. Romney was glimpsing the peace of mind that came from setting aside personal striving for the sake of service. In a letter to his parents, he wrote, “Getting up at 6:00 — cold, tired, allergic, broke, but without a worry in the world; living for others, dependent only upon God; joy when you hear of others’ successes — where would I have ever known these things if it weren’t for a mission?” He was beginning to see his time in France as the beginning of a grand future: “If I keep in the same stream, my joy will double, triple, and be multiplied eternally. Eternal wedlock, service to the church, children, service to the world and my country! The Lord must have loved us to give us all this joy.”

As his faith deepened and his French improved, Elder Romney got better at finding new converts. But the most meaningful conversion of his mission took place back in Michigan, where Ann had been attending church every Sunday with his parents. He was surprised by the relief he felt when he received the letter from his girlfriend informing him that she’d decided to join his church. Romney had never especially cared about this before — he would have happily married an Episcopalian as long as it was Ann Davies. But his Mormon faith no longer felt to him like just a part of his heritage, an interesting heirloom passed down by his fathers. It was expanding, gaining texture, attaching itself to every part of him.

in the southern city of Pau, where France’s mission president, H. Duane Anderson, had been summoned to mediate a feud between two elderly women that was dividing the congregation. After a day of meetings, they’d returned to their car to find it trapped in the middle of an outdoor market, surrounded by vendors’ stalls. Anderson feared they were stuck for the day, but Romney took initiative. “Il nous faut partir!” he announced to the market — “We must go!” — before forging into the crowd and doling out five-franc coins until the vendors cleared a path. It was an impressive display of initiative, the kind of thing that had gotten Romney assigned in these final months of his mission to serve as an assistant to the mission president, the highest post available to a young Mormon elder. After 21 years of hearing endlessly about his “potential,” Romney felt like he was starting to live up to it.

Later, he would try to remember those last details of the drive as he wound along the narrow, northbound roads that passed through the village of Bernos-Beaulac. President Anderson and his wife, Leola, sitting next to him; Elder Wood and the Mormon couple from Bordeaux in the back. The contours of the silver Citroën, with its long, animal hood. The viridescent landscape out the window all rolling hills and vineyards. The black Mercedes swerving so fast into his lane that he didn’t have time to honk. The crunch of metal. The shattering of glass. The screams. Were there screams?

But Romney’s only clear memory, the only thing he could be certain wasn’t reconstructed from others’ accounts, was waking up on the ground and peering up at the gray sky as a light rain fell. Then Elder Wood’s hands on his head, and the hurried recitation of a blessing, and the ambulance and the hospital and finally the news: Leola Anderson was dead.

ON AN OVERCAST June morning near the end of his mission, Romney climbed into the driver’s seat of a church-owned sedan and headed north toward Bordeaux with a gaggle of mission leaders in tow. He felt good. They’d just completed an eventful visit to a small Mormon branch

Romney spent several days at a hospital in Bazas after the accident. He’d been in such bad shape when police arrived on the scene that, in their report, they initially wrote he was dead. In fact, Romney was merely unconscious, with a broken arm, a head injury, and some nasty gashes and bruises. While he recovered over the

following days, he learned more about what had happened. The driver of the Mercedes was a priest, possibly drunk, and was going about 75 miles per hour when he collided with the Citroën at an angle that had pinned Romney’s body against the door and sent the steering column into Leola’s chest, puncturing her lung. She’d survived for a couple of hours, but the doctors were unable to keep her alive.

Leola was a beloved matriarchal figure in the mission and her death devastated Romney. He’d gotten to know her well while serving as her husband’s assistant. She teased him about Ann, offered relationship advice, served him home-cooked meals. Everybody assured him that the accident wasn’t his fault. The other car was moving too fast. There were no brake marks on the road. There was nothing you could have done. Some even suggested that he should be grateful, that perhaps he’d been saved by divine intervention, but the thought made him uncomfortable.

No one would have blamed Elder Romney for cutting his mission short, but he refused to go home. When President Anderson returned to the States to bury his wife and heal, Romney effectively ran the mission with his companion — setting ambitious new goals, offering solace to mourning missionaries, and generally staying busy enough to keep the grief and guilt at bay. But he could already feel his brush

ROMNEY ANNOUNCED IN SEPTEMBER HE WOULDN’T SEEK REELECTION TO THE SENATE. HE HAS MULLED RUNNING AS AN INDEPENDENT FOR PRESIDENT AND EVEN STARTING A THIRD PARTY.

with death changing him. “Being at a point where the person next to you in an automobile dies,” he’d later recall, “and you’re in a position where you could have died — it says, ‘OK, this means something.’” Romney had become violently acquainted with the fact of his own mortality.

It was time to start taking his life more seriously.



FEW WOULD ACCUSE Romney of leading an unserious life over the next four decades. He married Ann and raised five sons while volunteering extensively in his church. He made hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity, ran the Salt Lake City Olympics, and served as governor of Massachusetts. He even won his party’s nomination for president. But as 2012 came to an end, Romney was restless and adrift.

There is a special kind of indignity in losing a presidential race — you are at least momentarily one of the most famous people in America, but half the country hates you, and the rest see you as an object of pity. For Romney, who retreated to La Jolla after folding up his campaign operation in Boston, the months following his loss were a miserable slog. Venturing into public was a nightmare, of course. Photos of him looking cranky and washed-up spread across the internet in a blur of giddy schadenfreude: Mitt pumping gas in a wrinkled shirt, his hair uncharacteristically mussed; Mitt at the McDonald’s counter alone; Mitt looking resigned at Disneyland while gawkers snapped photos from a distance. Even at church, the one place where he expected relief, he was mobbed by admirers requesting selfies and offering condolences. He wasn’t “angry” or “despondent,” he wrote in his journal. Just “numb.”

He was proud of the campaign he’d built, the team he’d assembled, and especially the primary he’d won, protecting the nomination from other, less qualified and more extreme candidates. He believed in the economic message at the core of his candidacy, and thought he’d articulated it reasonably

well. He was also proud of how he’d represented his faith. In a meeting after the election with the top leaders of the church, Mitt and Ann saw a presentation that showed a significant surge of interest in their religion thanks to his campaign, including referrals to missionaries and an uptick in baptisms. One apostle said that Ann had redefined the public perception of what it means to be a modern Mormon woman. Another told Romney that the campaign had helped bring the church out of obscurity. This was not why Romney had run for president, but the fact that he and Ann had improved the standing of their faith did bring some consolation. “That’s good enough for us,” Ann would reflect years later.

Still, Romney wasn’t sure what to do next. A few weeks after the election, he and Ann met again with Elder Boyd K. Packer, a Mormon apostle and an old family friend. After visiting for a while, Elder Packer offered to give Romney a priesthood blessing. Laying his hands on the ex-candidate’s head, the apostle offered a sacred prayer of comfort and counsel — assuring Romney that generations would be blessed by his service, that his family would benefit from their sacrifice, and that the Lord’s will had been done in the election.

One line stuck out in the blessing, because Elder Packer said it twice: “This is just the beginning.”

When the blessing was over, Elder Packer told the Romneys that he had a strong impression that Mitt’s work was not finished in government.

“I guess you don’t know much about politics,” Ann joked.

Elder Packer was adamant: Maybe you don’t know much about prophecy.

ON FEB. 6, 2020, Mitt Romney walked onto the Senate floor and did something no senator had done before in history: He voted to convict a president who belonged to his own party.

Romney had not come to the decision lightly. For weeks he’d parsed and agonized over the evidence against Donald Trump,

“I SWORE AN OATH BEFORE GOD TO EXERCISE IMPARTIAL JUSTICE. MY FAITH IS AT THE HEART OF WHO I AM.”

praying for wisdom. He wanted badly to go along with his Republican colleagues and vote to acquit the president — it would be so much easier. But by the end of the Senate trial, he’d arrived at the conclusion that Trump was indeed guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

This conclusion had come with a stomach-twisting awareness of the potential repercussions. In his journal, Romney listed the consequences he and his family might face if he followed his conscience:

The Utah Republicans that had nominated me would go crazy with anger. My colleagues in the Senate would have nothing to do with me. It would affect my ability to get any legislation passed. I’d get nothing done through the administration, of course. The president would attack me mercilessly in his rallies, incentivizing some nut job to shoot me. Fox too would eviscerate me, stoking up the crazies. The president might seek revenge, perhaps by using government in some way to hurt my sons. I would lose some friends who were Trump supporters, though not my few close friends. For the rest of my life, I would be accosted by people who hate what I had done — if I just vote with party, my vote would be expected and people who dislike Trump would just dismiss me as a callous Republican, but voting against party would engender true enmity and vitriol. It would be hard to go anywhere, especially in Utah, without the possibility of encountering some vocally hostile abuse. This would be true to a lesser degree for my sons, particularly Josh … I might need to move from Utah.

But even as Romney fretted over worst-case scenarios, the lyrics to an old hymn kept coming back to him: Do what is

right; let the consequence follow. He knew what he had to do.

“As a senator-juror,” Romney said in his brief speech on the Senate floor, “I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am —” His voice broke and he had to pause as emotion overwhelmed him. “I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. … With my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me.”

The backlash to his vote was swift and savage. “Romney is going to be associated with Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold forever,” Lou Dobbs raged on Fox. “He’s now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled from the GOP,” Donald Trump Jr. declared on Twitter.

Some Republicans reserved special scorn for Romney’s invocation of his faith when explaining his vote. Ed Rollins, a high-profile GOP strategist who ran Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign, snickered that Romney had been led astray by “whoever he is talking to in the Mormon Tabernacle Temple.” In fact, Romney hadn’t consulted

any Mormon leaders on the impeachment, but church employees would later report that phone lines at the faith’s Salt Lake City headquarters lit up with angry calls from Trump supporters immediately after the senator’s speech.

In the coming days, as death threats poured in and friends cut him off and the president’s allies sought to excommunicate him from their party, Romney would think about his sons, and how they’d remember him when he was gone. He would think about his dad, the one object of little-boy hero worship he still found deserving. He would think again about his ancestors — Gaskell and Miles and Rey — and he would think of that missionary, Parley P. Pratt, kneeling on the floor of a grimy New York tenement after months of grueling, fruitless labor, receiving heavenly assurance that it had not all been in vain — your sacrifice is accepted.

ROMNEY AND HIS WIFE ANN, SEEN HERE AT A WHITE HOUSE STATE DINNER IN APRIL, HAVE HELPED SHAPE THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.

Pete Buttigieg was hailed as America’s ideal transportation boss.

But the infrastructure he oversees has rarely been under more scrutiny.

BY Natalia Galicza

ILLUSTRATION BY blindSalida

eranda Cope could never hear the thrum of an approaching freight train. She could see railroad tracks from her kitchen window, could even feel her home vibrate when engines drew near, yet the sound always managed to escape her. She’d learned to tune it out after decades of living in a town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, where she swears locomotives roll through in what feel like five-minute increments. So on the first Friday night of February 2023, as a Norfolk Southern train inched its way into East Palestine, Cope didn’t hear it coming. But she did hear it crash.

One big, mysterious boom after another. Cope, 30, heard them as she sat beside her husband in their living room, sewing

a new batch of bibs for their son-to-be as they watched “Point Break” on TV. She sought answers through a nearby window and noticed a faint glow hovering above the tracks. In a matter of seconds, the glow metastasized to a wall of flames two stories tall. The inferno backlit the silhouettes of wintering trees, it bleached the otherwise inky night an ominous shade of ochre, it pumped plumes of smoke skyward. The train had derailed and its tank cars lay burning. Eleven contained hazardous chemicals that, once ignited, released an acrid metallic odor. Cope, who was seven months pregnant and a brain cancer survivor, chose to flee that night with her husband. “If I remember correctly, these chemicals can cause cancers,” she says. “I’ve already been through it once, I really didn’t want to go through it again.” They sought temporary refuge with family who lived further from the railroad. Though they’d later learn of the disaster’s formidable reach and staying power.

What made the Norfolk Southern train derailment truly unprecedented was not the release of toxic chemicals nor the dramatic blaze. It was the national attention. The spectacle resulted in visits from former President Donald Trump and Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. It became the impetus for proposed bipartisan legislation, labor union demands, even the subject of culture wars as politicians reduced the event to an opportunity for optics. (President Joe Biden, in particular, received flack for not visiting the site.) Even before the crash, transportation infrastructure was becoming an issue fewer and fewer Americans could ignore. Last year, the number of canceled flights around the country reached its highest rate in nearly a decade, barring

THE FEBRUARY 2023 TRAIN DERAILMENT IN EAST PALESTINE, OHIO, RESULTED IN CHEMICAL FIRES THAT BURNED FOR HOURS AND KILLED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. RESIDENTS WERE STILL REPORTING RASHES, HEADACHES AND NAUSEA MONTHS LATER.

peak pandemic 2020; supply chain crises — worsened by stalled ships and trucks — had made finding anything from baby formula to fertilizer arduous over the last couple of years. The American Road and Transportation Builders Association recently reported that some 80,000 bridges are in need of replacement, alongside the hundreds of thousands in need of repair. Problems which have existed for decades but are now placed under a microscope for all to see.

The derailment served as just one reminder that frailties in our transportation system can prompt more than detours or inconvenience. They can prompt toxic mushroom clouds, uproot families and, at a minimum, induce fear. The fire in East Palestine lasted several hours and its fumes posed risk of skin burns, serious lung damage and even a “grave danger of death” to anyone who lingered within a mile of the site. Some 43,000 aquatic animals in nearby streams are estimated to have perished in the aftermath. Residents were still reporting rashes, headaches and nausea months later. Many remain traumatized. Including Cope. Once blissfully impervious to the roar of incoming trains, she now not

only hears them, she dreads their constant sound. “It’s hard to stay sane when all you hear is a train go by all the time,” she says. “It’s just a continuous feeling over and over again. It’s literally PTSD.”

While there were no direct deaths or injuries, policymakers across political aisles continue to spew a flurry of blame in the disaster’s wake. Most of which falls on Pete Buttigieg’s desk. Prior to his tenure, the role of transportation secretary could have been characterized as low-profile. The department appeared as a sort of governmental phantom limb that operated outside of view. Most Americans didn’t seem to feel one way or another about the agency. Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2015 to gauge public perception of federal bureaus and branches — the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Education, and so forth — and the Department of Transportation wasn’t even deemed worth mentioning in the poll.

But Buttigieg, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former Midwestern mayor, has brought with him an unfamiliar limelight to the secretary’s office, one that elucidates matters in even the smallest, most overlooked corners of rural America.

TRANSPORTATION

SECRETARY BUTTIGIEG HAS BROUGHT AN UNFAMILIAR LIMELIGHT TO THE AGENCY HE OVERSEES. AND WHEN THINGS GO AWRY — WHETHER TRAIN DISASTERS OR MASS AIRPORT DELAYS — THE BLAME FALLS SQUARELY ON HIS DESK.

Though his high profile also means it’s plainly obvious when transportation infrastructure falls short. And with all of the department’s many weaknesses — some new, some decades old — it raises the question: Can a former small-town mayor, in his first job on the national stage, mend a system this broken?

A sleek wooden podium sat on the side of a road in rural Illinois on the last day of July. Behind it, amid power lines stretched overhead and freshly mowed grass, stood a dark-suited Buttigieg, leaning into a microphone and squinting in the sun. He had arrived in the town of Savoy to announce the creation of an overpass that promised to eliminate a railroad crossing and to decongest local traffic.

When Buttigieg wrapped up his prepared statement and motioned for questions — train tracks looming behind him — the first query came as no surprise. Someone asked about the derailment in East Palestine and how railroad companies have since responded. After all, the same train that put East Palestine in the news six months earlier

A recent report includes examples of some $1 billion in unsupported or improper payments across several of the transportation department’s operational agencies in just the last few years.

presidential primary, that knack for public speaking had helped him transcend, however briefly, the label of longshot candidate and enter the upper echelon of Dem hopefuls, and fueled comparisons between Buttigieg and former President Barack Obama, especially given their talk of unity. And it now contributes to his status as perhaps the most well-known and visible secretary of transportation to ever possess the title. But with that unparalleled visibility comes decades worth of postponed blame and baggage.

BUTTIGIEG CROSSES PARTISAN LINES THAT TYPICALLY DETER OTHER DEMOCRATS, INCLUDING FREQUENT APPEARANCES ON FOX NEWS.

had passed through central Illinois just the day before its ruin in Ohio. The residents in Savoy felt wary of that coincidence, of its implication. So the secretary offered a classic, middle-of-the-road Buttigieg response. “Look, there needs to be a deep overhaul in terms of safety culture across this country,” he said. “They’ve taken some steps, but we can’t say mission accomplished.”

It was emblematic of the way Buttigieg navigates most of his public appearances. Of which there are many. Within a month of the Illinois trip, he traveled to Texas to cut the ribbon on a port terminal expansion project; he visited his home state of Indiana to sit on an airport shuttle and discuss cargo; he boarded a ferry in Alaska to meet with tribal and government leaders about a new route on the state’s marine highway. Prior to his cabinet confirmation, Buttigieg could be found on talk shows like “The View” and “The Tonight Show” — putting his Midwestern charm on display as often as possible. He’s been a repeated talking head on Fox News, crossing partisan lines that typically deter other Democrats in the Biden administration. He’s even fired back on live TV against calls for his resignation that were sounded by Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio following the Ohio derailment. Back in 2020, during the last

When I talked to Buttigieg this summer — amid his harried schedule — he told me that most of the department’s impediments are legacies of deregulation efforts by both Democratic and Republican administrations. “We’ve inherited the consequences of 40 plus years of disinvestment in American infrastructure,” he said.

The Department of Transportation formed in 1967 when then-President Lyndon B. Johnson called for an agency “to untangle, to coordinate, and to build the national transportation system … that America is deserving of.” And though Johnson tasked the department to rid the nation’s corridors of prevalent safety abuses, traffic imbroglios and archaic equipment, he stressed that free enterprise should remain a central goal. The Staggers Rail Act and Airline Deregulation Act of the ’70s and ’80s are examples of that foundational emphasis on enterprise in practice. The laws allowed railroad and airline companies to determine their own rates and terms of service, which in turn produced meteoric industry growth and more affordable services for consumers. “This is a legacy of deregulation, which has resulted in hugely positive benefits for the … public,” says one of Buttigieg’s predecessors, Steven Bradbury, acting secretary of transportation during the Trump administration. “I mean, air service is much more efficient, it’s a much lower cost now than it was in the past under regulation.”

But a residual effect of that growth, as Buttigieg has pointed out, is the genesis of

PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON CALLED FOR THE CREATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION IN 1967.

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consolidated power in the clutches of the few. A small handful of companies swell, Buttigieg maintains, and dominate their sectors, quashing competition by cutting corners. “You see that everywhere from the railroad industry’s approach to radically reducing the number of people working on railroads, to the airline industry using early retirements to shed pilots during Covid,” he told me. These devolutions are symptoms brought on by a long-standing ethos, but they appear as fresh wounds on the present administration. Especially when the figure in charge of steering relevant policy is, for the first time, a household name.

Buttigieg has publicly pushed for solutions since the East Palestine derailment, namely in voicing his support for the bipartisan Railway Safety Act. The bill, presented weeks after the train disaster, would require railroads to provide emergency responders notice of any approaching freight trains in possession of hazardous materials. It would also impose requirements like train length and weight specifications, as well as a two-person minimum crew. That latter point has been debated for ages, including last year when a proposition pushed for the same rule. Collective bargaining agreements with railroad companies have shrunk crew staffing requirements for freight trains from five to three to two people over the years, then down to the current rule that allows trains — sometimes miles long with tens of thousands of tons of weight in tow — to be controlled by a single person.

Federal Rail Administration data reveals an average of three trains derail every day in the United States, as many as half of which may carry hazardous materials. It’s estimated that the longer and heavier the train, the more it could risk derailment; and the fewer people around, the less hands to assist in the event of disaster. For context, the train that crumbled near Meranda Cope’s home in East Palestine had three crew members on board — by most measures, enough to operate the train safely — and still succumbed to its fiery fate. With

bipartisan demand for safety reforms at a peak, something as seemingly minute and immediately actionable as increasing the number of onboard employees by a single person appeared surefire. Even Rubio, the same Rubio who argued for Buttigieg’s resignation, was on board with the idea. But the bill began losing support in Congress just as railroad lobbyists spent millions of dollars in Washington. “You can’t overlook the power of the railroad lobby, that’s just an unfortunate truth. They spend a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy influencing

people that have the ability to enforce rules and regulations,” says Jared Cassity, a national legislative director and chief of safety for SMART-Transportation Division, the largest rail union in the country. “The fact is, the railroads don’t want to be regulated. … They want to self-regulate. And unfortunately, that got us to where we are today.”

Of all sectors in the United States, transportation ranks sixth for funneling the most funds through lobbyists to control regulatory outcomes. It’s a familiar method of asserting control in Washington, one

that is not new nor surprising. But if even a secretary with notable visibility and a record of communicating across political chasms is unable to assert control over bipartisan policy — policy that materializes just as nationwide demand for regulation reaches an unusual crest — it paints a feeble portrait of the department as a whole. I asked Buttigieg about this, about his forecast for proposed action in the fading media blitz of East Palestine. He lamented the resistance to the Railway Safety Act, to harsher fines for safety violations and mandating that railroads implement a confidential whistleblower program for employees to report safety concerns. “I think the jury’s still out,” he said, “on whether (the railroad companies are) going to deliver.”

Back when he was known simply as “Mayor Pete,” leading South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg pushed for an initiative dubbed “Smart Streets” practically on his first day in office in 2012. The measure entailed a $25 million overhaul of the city’s downtown. His vision included eight miles of roads converted from one- to two-way traffic, added bike lanes, street parking, greenery — a litany of embellishments to prompt a metamorphosis. He’d been convinced, even amid incessant doubt and criticism, that refurbished transportation corridors could breathe life back into an area that had largely withered to a ghost town. He cut the ceremonial red ribbon to celebrate the project’s groundbreaking five years later.

This early foray into infrastructure and the project’s resulting success followed Buttigieg. It even influenced Biden’s decision to tap him as a candidate for transportation secretary. But working within municipal government and leading a federal department are not quite the same. Especially when the federal department in question operates through 11 individual administrations, each with their own managerial tiers. Among those administrations and bureaus are the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Railroad Administration and Federal Transit Administration. It’s a bureaucracy of behemoth proportions, one with some 55,000 employees under its umbrella, and one man at its helm.

As the smoke began to clear in East Palestine, the actions Buttigieg could complete on his own from the top rung of the departmental ladder were limited. He met with union leaders, implemented biannual safety training for Federal Railroad Administration employees, issued ceaseless advisories and bulletins focused on operational safety. But the task with the most heft, and likely the most chance of ensuring reform, had already been set in motion two years earlier, when Biden announced the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Passed in 2021, the act introduces $1.2 trillion for transportation and infrastructure. It’s the

single largest investment in public transit and one of the most substantial pieces of news for American transportation since President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System. Much of the finances, though, are still in the process of being parceled out. And even with its size and ample dollars, the department doesn’t operate as efficiently as it’s perceived to. In fact, if anything, its breadth means there’s plenty of space for resources to fall through the cracks.

Ironically, the funding itself poses an issue due to staffing shortages. More than 1,000 employees will need to be hired in order to implement the investment bill and roll out funding, according to the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, which released a report last November on the department’s top management challenges for 2023. Insufficient staffing heightens the risk of mishandled funds, a recurring problem, per the report. Some $1 billion in unsupported or improper payments occurred throughout the department in just the last few years.

Staff shortages also endanger operational safety and competency. “These dollars, these positions, these jobs really matter,” Buttigieg told me. “We’re talking about impacting things from the training of air traffic controllers to the work done by consumer protection personnel.” Another audit from June revealed more than three-quarters of the administration’s most critical facilities are understaffed, posing “a risk to the continuity of air traffic operations.” The lack of personnel has become a direct source of fault for airline delays and cancellations. It’s indicative of a pandemic era problem that lingers even after $54 billion in taxpayer dollars went toward sustaining the airline industry through Covid.

“The delay rate stayed largely the same pre- and post-pandemic, but what you really see is an increase in cancellations, specifically airline caused cancellations,” says Heather Krause, director of the Government Accountability Office’s physical infrastructure team. She’s one of the

BEFORE HIS SECRETARY APPOINTMENT, BUTTIGIEG WAS KNOWN AS, SIMPLY, “MAYOR PETE,” THE ERSTWHILE TOP OFFICIAL OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, WHO BROUGHT HIS RHODES SCHOLAR INTELLECT TO THE LIKES OF SXSW AUDIENCES.

organization’s experts on civil aviation issues. Added operational strain caused by a lack of pilots and crew members, Krause says, delays the administration’s ability to hire and train new staff members, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

But the gridlock doesn’t stop there. Permitting processes, too, impede efficiency.

“The U.S. is actually the hardest country in the world to build infrastructure because it has a more cumbersome permitting process, even if compared to other developed countries,” says Loren Smith, who served as the Department of Transportation’s deputy assistant secretary of policy during the Trump administration. Merely obtaining the federal permits necessary to pursue infrastructure projects takes four and a half years on average — more than five years for public transit improvements and more than seven for roads or bridges. These averages don’t include the construction time thereafter. So even with a historic level of funding available, even if staffing shortages could be solved overnight, that money can’t move. At least not fast enough.

Yet all these factors — as key as they are in diagnosing what ails the Department of Transportation — get overshadowed in the eyes of the public. At least while the fallout

in East Palestine continues to burn bright.

The National Transportation Safety Board launched a special investigation to uncover the derailment’s direct cause. Thousands of pages of documents purport a single wheel bearing on the 149-car train overheated, fell off and ostensibly caused the domino effect.

The investigation has yet to conclude, but chairwoman Jennifer Homendy has already announced the fiasco was “100% preventable.” But as some of Buttigieg’s attempts at regulation have proven, the steps necessary for prevention face roadblocks.

No other transportation secretary has proven as distinguishable as Buttigieg. While it’s possible that a less high-profile successor might evade this level of recognizability and scrutiny, the lasting legacy of Buttigieg’s tenure seems likely to be that people will remain more acutely aware of the massive dysfunction within our transportation infrastructure. There’s almost certain to be an influx of Americans with newfound interest and skepticism into how government agencies should and do operate. Meranda Cope might be one of them. Neither Cope nor her family ever returned to their home within view of the railroad. Her doctor advised her against it. She and her husband now live in her mother’s home

THE NORFOLK SOUTHERN’S DERAILMENT IN EAST PALESTINE, WHICH FORCED THE EVACUATION OF THOUSANDS OF RESIDENTS, SPURRED PROPOSED BIPARTISAN LEGISLATION THAT HAS SINCE DISAPPEARED AND PARTISAN RANCOR AND FINGER POINTING THAT HASN’T.

An average of three trains derail every day in the United States, as many as half of which carry hazardous materials.

until they can afford to put down roots of their own, ideally roots more permanent than before. And with a healthy new infant she calls her miracle baby, she’ll gladly wait as long as it takes to find what she’s looking for. She’s not taking any chances.

Just how religious are the men and women vying for the presidency?

BY ETHAN BAUER & NATALIA GALICZA ILLUSTRATION BY GREG MABLY

Every u.s. president in modern memory has expressed, on the campaign trail and in office, his faith in God.

“IF WE EVER FORGET that we are one nation under God, then we are a nation gone under,” said Ronald Reagan, with characteristic wit. “Freedom is not our gift to the world,” explained George W. Bush, “it is God’s gift to humanity.” And Barack Obama reminded us, “Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth. Our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.”

Yet there are signs that religious faith is waning in the very nation those presidents once led. According to Gallup, 81 percent of adults in the U.S. now believe in God; that’s a drop of six percentage points from just six years ago. In fact, it’s the lowest recorded percentage since Gallup first offered the survey nearly 80 years ago. Other data reaches a similar conclusion.

What do these numbers mean for those vying for the Oval Office right now? If the country is turning less religious, are the candidates too? Or does devoutness still equal votes? We looked at all the major candidates who’ve announced their run for the office and measured their past

statements and publicly known religious practices, and consulted scholars on the topic of piety and the quest for presidential power. All to provide a glimpse of the ways faith factors into the contenders’ campaigns — and how it might factor into their would-be term or terms in office.

Why every candidate? After all, some may say that the primary is practically over, that when Americans vote in the general election on November 5 next year they’ll be choosing between the current president and his immediate predecessor. Though polling in the primary for the GOP nomination favors former President Donald Trump, there are some candidates eating away at his lead, even if others don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Florida of beating him. (The candidate gunning for the Democratic nomination against President Joe Biden is an even longer shot.) But taken together, they all represent a snapshot of what faith looks like on the campaign trail in 2024 — and what it may take to hold the highest office in the land.

donald trump

Republican Party

OF THE DOZEN presidential candidates scheduled to speak at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s policy conference in June 2023, none elicited the raucous fanfare the evangelical activists in the room afforded Trump. After walking onstage to a standing ovation that lasted more than three minutes, with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blaring over the cheers, Trump demonstrated why.

“As we gather today, our beloved nation is teetering on the edge of tyranny,” the former president said. “Our enemies are waging war on faith and freedom, on science and religion, on history and tradition, on law and democracy, on God almighty himself.” He asserted his stance as the “most pro-life president in American history” by referencing his conservative Supreme Court appointments, which made the overturn of Roe v. Wade possible and stripped constitutional protection for abortion. “No president has ever fought for Christians as hard as I have,” he added.

Trump’s deviation from the archetype of a polished politician has garnered him substantial support since he first ran for president in 2016 — his initial calls to “drain the swamp” even became a popular GOP rallying cry. But he also deviates from the partisan norm when it comes to faith. While he was raised and confirmed as Presbyterian, Trump announced in 2020 that

HE CEMENTED A LOYALTY WITH WHITE EVANGELICALS, NOT ON THE BASIS OF A SHARED RELIGIOUS IDENTITY … BUT INSTEAD, BY EMPHASIZING CULTURAL GRIEVANCES.

he now identifies as a nondenominational Christian, which makes him one of only four presidents to do so, including Barack Obama, Rutherford B. Hayes and Andrew Johnson. Data from Pew Research Center that same year reveals half of American adults reported either feeling unsure of Trump’s religion or convinced he had none. Yet he amassed avid evangelical Protestant support that remains present today.

“Donald Trump demonstrated that white evangelicals as a voting bloc are more concerned about their issues than they are about the candidate’s identity,” says David Campbell, professor of American democracy at the University of Notre Dame. “He cemented a loyalty with white evangelicals, not on the basis of a shared religious identity, which is what previous Republicans like George W. Bush had done, but instead by emphasizing the cultural grievances that many white evangelicals have and

promising to defend those positions.”

Despite facing multiple indictments and credible accusations of sexual assault, Trump is polling leaps and bounds above any other Republican candidate by at least 30 percentage points. And that may be due in part to his citation of God in public appearances, though it’s more likely because of a proven ability to push for policies evangelicals love. The overturn of Roe v. Wade, which evangelical activists had hoped for since its enactment five decades ago, being the most high-profile and lauded example.

“He’s shown a willingness to wrap himself in the flag and faith in many ways,” says Melissa Deckman, chief executive officer of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit that researches the intersection of religion, culture and public policy. “At the end of the day, the political calculus of what the policies look like is going to matter more.”

—Natalia Galicza

IN OFFICE, FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP PUSHED POLICIES BELOVED BY EVANGELICALS, WHOSE SUPPORT FOR HIM REMAINS AVID TODAY.

A MAJORITY OF REPUBLICANS

BELIEVE PRESIDENT BIDEN IS NOT TOO RELIGIOUS, OR NOT RELIGIOUS AT ALL.

ONE CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCER CLAIMS BIDEN HAS FALLEN UNDER THE SWAY OF A “GODLESS AGENDA.”

joe biden

Democratic Party

THE 46TH PRESIDENT started his inauguration day, January 20, 2021, attending mass at Washington’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. Throughout his campaign against Trump, he’d made his Catholic faith central, quoting Catholic hymns, paraphrasing the Book of Ecclesiastes, calling his upcoming presidency a “time to heal.” And he’d attended mass regularly for decades, whether in D.C. or Delaware. The New York Times even called Biden “perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century.” Yet when the subject of Biden’s faith surfaces, it inevitably leads to conflict.

Biden has said that because of his Catholicism, he is “not big on abortion.” However, he also believes that Roe v. Wade and the trimester-based regulatory framework it established was the best way to balance the interests of a growing fetus with a woman’s autonomy. But refusal to condemn all abortions placed him at odds with church leaders. Particularly the notoriously conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which in 2021 threatened to block Biden and other pro-choice Catholics from receiving Holy Communion — the fundamental sacrament of Catholic worship.

Despite explicit warnings from the Vatican to drop the cause, including Pope Francis himself preaching that communion “is not the reward of saints, but the

BIDEN’S REFUSAL TO CONDEMN ALL ABORTIONS HAS PLACED HIM AT ODDS WITH CATHOLIC LEADERS.

bread of sinners” and telling Biden personally to continue receiving communion, the American Bishops pushed forward and in November 2021 released a statement called “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church.” The document stops short of universally banning communion for Biden and similarly “liberal” Catholics, but it does affirm the authority of individual bishops to do so. Biden had already been denied at least once before, at a South Carolina parish in 2019, and the archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia said in 2022 that Biden’s abortion views had placed him “not in communion with the Catholic faith.”

In part resulting from the controversy, 63 percent of Republicans believe Biden is not too religious, or not religious at all.

Conservative influencer Franklin Graham has claimed that Biden has fallen under the sway of a “Godless agenda.” American Family Radio has labeled him “the Godless Joe Biden.” But for all the pushback, Biden regularly places his Catholicism at the forefront of his presidency. After finishing up mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, Biden delivered an inauguration speech that referenced St. Augustine (a distinctly Catholic, rather than Christian, figure) to define what it means to be American — a reference that could just as easily describe Biden’s relationship with his lifelong denomination: “(Augustine) wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.”

—Ethan Bauer

FOR ALL THE PUSHBACK, PRESIDENT BIDEN REGULARLY PLACES HIS CATHOLICISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF HIS PRESIDENCY.

ron desantis

Republican Party

THE FLORIDA GOVERNOR’S faith has been a source of intrigue and mystery on the campaign trail. He is Catholic from birth, and in June, the Tampa Bay Times confirmed that DeSantis is still Catholic, and attends mass at various parishes around Florida’s capital city. However, he’s still not saying much about it — perhaps with good reason.

DeSantis has made no secret of trying to appeal to Evangelical voters, viewing them as key to securing the nomination. As a result, his faith talking points are often vague.

“Our household is a Christ-centered household,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network in June. “We’re raising our kids with those values.” He also told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about leaning on faith when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021. “We immediately turned to prayer,” he said. “I got faith in the big guy upstairs.”

DeSantis is similar to Biden in that he’s proven willing to go against church teachings to suit his politics. Biden, famously, does so on abortion; likewise, DeSantis’ views on the death penalty and migrants are not shared by the mainstream Catholic Church. Nevertheless, DeSantis insists that his faith guides his politics. “My fighting faith is faith in God,” he said during a July speech to supporters in Salt Lake City. “Politics has a role, but I don’t think it should be the number-one divide in our country.” —EB

tim scott

Republican Party

THE SOUTH CAROLINA SENATOR once said he would only run for president if he felt called by God. Finally, a few hours before his announcement, he says, he got the sign he was hoping for. “I heard the Lord speak to my heart and say, ‘This is not about you, don’t confuse it,’” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “‘You’re my vessel for this journey but it’s not about you. It’s about the American people.’” When he did announce, he made that vision central: His campaign would be all about faith — “Faith in God, faith in each other, and faith in America.” That last phrase forms his campaign’s slogan.

Scott views his sincere Baptist faith as a major selling point compared to many rivals; he can quote scripture with the best ministers and preachers, and he does so often. His campaign’s announcement video promotes his first priority as defending “the Judeo-Christian tradition our nation is built on.” Scott has experience doing that already; in the late 1990s, as a member of the Charleston City Council, he fought to display the Ten Commandments in the legislative building. He’s also at ease talking about the finer points of his faith, like distinguishing between Jesus as Savior and Jesus as Lord. “A Lord is how you live your life,” he said in a 2020 interview. “A Savior is where you go when it is over.” —EB

mike pence

Republican Party

THE FORMER VICE PRESIDENT calls himself a Christian, a conservative and a Republican. In that order. Mike Pence has introduced himself as such for decades. His evangelical convictions have remained markedly clear through his tenure as a member of the House of Representatives, governor of Indiana and vice president. Now they are present at the forefront of his presidential campaign.

“God is not done with America yet,” Pence said at the first Republican presidential debate in August, “and if we will renew our faith in him who has ever guided this nation since we arrived on these wilderness shores, I know the best days for the greatest nation on Earth are yet to come.” The remark is on brand for Pence, who refers to America as a “nation of faith” and contends his piety is present in all facets of his life, including his politics. While on the campaign trail, he’s suggested that “nation of faith” ought to include federal bans on transgender health care for minors and abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy — two issues Pew Research Center reports are opposed more by white evangelicals than any other religious group.

And even while Pence trails far behind, his poll numbers in the single digits, University of Notre Dame professor of American Democracy David Campbell

“WHATEVER YOU MIGHT THINK OF MIKE PENCE, HE DEFINITELY DOES HAVE A LONG TRACK RECORD AS A DEVOUT EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN.”

calls evangelical support “the base of the Republican Party.” So if anything can give Pence a competitive edge, it’d be his ability to appeal to the voter base on core issues. “Whatever you might think of Mike Pence, he definitely does have a long track record as a devout evangelical Christian,” Campbell says. Though whether that record alone can secure Pence a slot on the presidential ticket is uncertain. —NG

IN OFFICE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT PENCE BROUGHT EVANGELICAL BONA FIDES TO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

nikki

haley

Republican Party

THE FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR and ambassador to the United Nations has something to prove. Her policies and posture as a presidential candidate, sure. But also her faith. More than any of her GOP counterparts, Haley has faced ridicule and skepticism about the authenticity of her religious background. That skepticism has not reared its head much throughout the course of the current campaign, but its shadow nevertheless trails behind her.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley was raised Sikh before she converted to Christianity. That conversion has been headline fodder (“Nikki Haley says she’s Christian, but it’s complicated,” “Is Nikki Haley a Christian?” and “Why I Don’t Believe In Nikki Haley’s ‘Conversion,’” to name but a few headlines) and a contentious topic among politicians. “Everybody knew she wasn’t a real Christian. Everyone knew she converted for political purposes,” Jake Knotts, a former South Carolina senator, told Politico two years ago. “Her whole career has been stair-climbing, and becoming a Methodist was just one of those stairs.”

Though she doesn’t brandish her Christianity as much as some of her running mates, Haley still leans into her creed often. She announced her presidential candidacy with a prayer led by prominent televangelist John Hagee in February, then praised the

Christian Zionist, saying, “I wanna be you when I grow up.” Haley stresses her belief that America should return to a national purpose of faith, family and country. So while her roots differ, Haley’s Judeo-Christian view of the future appears to mirror that of other party members. —NG

“IT’S NOT THAT IMPORTANT ANYMORE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL CANDIDATES TO BE BELIEVERS. WHAT SEEMS TO BE MORE IMPORTANT IS THAT THEY’RE PLAYING A POLITICAL ROLE THAT WOULD BE SUPPORTIVE OF THE CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN IN-GROUP.”

the varied religiosity of the remaining gop field

IF THERE EXISTS a litmus test that can gauge a Republican candidate’s success, that test would be one of faith. Pew Research Center reports more than 80 percent of Republicans identify under the umbrella of Christianity and almost 70 percent count the state of moral values among their primary concerns for the upcoming election. Religion is a hallmark for the party. Though its application changes with the landscape of religion in America in flux.

“There’s been a steady erosion of the influence of religion, the dominance of religion in American society,” says Paul Djupe, a political scientist at Denison University who specializes in religion and politics. For the GOP, that means consolidating religious voters under the banner of partisanship. So much so, the Republican nominee’s faith may not matter. “It’s not that important anymore for the individual candidates to be believers,” Djupe says. “What seems to be more important is that they’re playing a political role that would be supportive of the conservative Christian in-group.”

Which could point to why the Republican candidates are so diverse in their relationship to faith. Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who founded a pharmaceutical company, identifies as Hindu and speaks about his faith candidly. “I’m Hindu. I’m not Christian, and we are a nation founded on

Judeo-Christian values,” he said in August. “But here’s what I can say with confidence: I share those same values in common.” Even former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is Catholic, comprises a faith group that’s a minority in the Republican Party. Only two presidents have ever been Catholic; both were Democrats.

Other candidates like North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum stand out for unusually absent religious transparency. Burgum more than likely leans Christian and certainly leans very conservative — he’s signed eight restrictive bills focused on transgender issues this year, as well as a religious freedom bill and a near-total abortion ban — but does not speak publicly of his faith.

Though there are still those who display a traditionally outward Christian identity. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson was reprimanded by Americans United, an organization focused on the separation of church and state, for posting too many Bible verses to his official social media accounts. Businessman Perry Johnson told the evangelical crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June that he’s “probably too conservative for this group” and Jesus Christ is a huge part of his life. Even Larry Elder, a conservative talk show host who speaks less of his convictions than Johnson or Hutchinson, has said “the Bible

is the greatest piece of literature ever written. All your answers are there. … It’s the foundation of who and what I am.”

“The dominant component these days of the Republican Party,” says Djupe, “is catering to their conservative Christian constituency.” What connects all these candidates is their willingness to cater to an evangelical votership — even when their own faith may vary. —NG

cornel west

NO CANDIDATE in the 2024 field boasts more overt religious credentials than Cornel West. A professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Columbia University’s Union Theological Seminary, West has also taught religion at Princeton, Yale and Harvard, and co-founded the Network of Spiritual Progressives. As a Protestant in the Black Christian tradition, West has frequently criticized Christian nationalism. He’s also expressed reverence for many religious traditions, including the Russian Orthodox Church and Islam, that prioritize a sense of spirituality and shared humanity outside financial gain and personal success, warning of the “commodification of everybody and everything” and offering spirituality as a means to combat it. He defines himself as “a revolutionary Christian,” concerned with Jesus’ teachings on love and justice. “Jesus … does not fit under one particular school of thought, one ideology, one politics,” he told America Magazine in 2019, “because the love that he exemplifies is too rich and too deep to be contained by any human construction.” —EB

WEST CALLS HIMSELF “A REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIAN” AND HAS EXPRESSED DEEP REVERENCE FOR FAITHS THAT ARE NOT HIS OWN. HE IS PICTURED HERE WITH FATHER MICHAEL PFLEGER, LEFT, LOUIS FARRAKHAN, NATION OF ISLAM LEADER, AND TAVIS SMILEY AT SAINT SABINA CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

“JESUS DOES NOT FIT UNDER ONE PARTICULAR SCHOOL OF THOUGHT, ONE IDEOLOGY, ONE POLITICS, BECAUSE THE LOVE THAT HE EXEMPLIFIES IS TOO RICH AND TOO DEEP TO BE CONTAINED BY ANY HUMAN CONSTRUCTION.”

EARL GIBSON

THE TWO CANDIDATES WERE RAISED WITHIN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS, BUT FOUND THEIR OWN WAY TO GOD IN ADULTHOOD.

robert f. kennedy jr. and marianne williamson

THOUGH KENNEDY and Williamson were raised within religious traditions, both found their own way to God in adulthood.

For Kennedy, an independent candidate and nephew of the nation’s first Catholic president, that might sound surprising. His late father, former U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, has been described as the most-Catholic Kennedy.

“My father’s faith was the faith of Dorothy Day, of the Gospels,” his son would later tell Vatican News. “The church should be an instrument of justice and kindness around the world.” Kennedy has said he sometimes attended mass twice a day as a child, but as an adult, he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for 14 years, causing him to stray from his faith. In a July 2023 interview with MIT research scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, he said he was only able to overcome his addiction with God’s help. “I had a spiritual awakening, and my desire for drugs and alcohol was lifted. Miraculously,” he said. “And for me, it was as much of a miracle as if I had walked on water.” Now, he added, every decision he makes has a moral dimension.

Williamson, the best-selling author and spiritual guru challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, grew up in the Jewish tradition but she says she had her

own awakening upon reading the 1976 book “A Course in Miracles.”

Written by a psychology professorwho believed it had been dictated to her by Jesus, the book is not explicitly Christian, but it borrows from the teachings of Jesus and other religious traditions to emphasize the spiritual power of love. Williamson built on this foundation in her own books, and eventually became spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey. In a 2012 interview, she defined God as “an all-encompassing love that is the source of the reality of all, and the being through which I am.” Mother Jones has called her “the high priestess of pop religion,” but whatever one thinks of her beliefs, they’re undeniably the root of her campaign. She once likened her 2020 bid to the Biblical story of David and Goliath, where she would slay the giant of Donald Trump with a slingshot of love. In announcing her 2024 candidacy, she built on that theme. “It’s time,” she said, “for an awakening.” —EB

MR HAPPY FACE MR HAPPY FACE

RYAN HAMILTON WENT FROM RURAL IDAHO TO SURPRISE NEW YORK STAND-UP STAR.

THEN HE GOT HIT BY A BUS.

By Meg Walter

he Ryan Hamilton sitting across the table from me is a subdued version of the Ryan Hamilton I’ve seen on TV. He’s in a nondescript black T-shirt. He speaks softly and smiles sedately. He apologizes for talking too much and for name-dropping his friends Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld. He asks often during the time we spend together if I need water, if I’m hungry and if I’m comfortable.

We’re at the Olive Tree Cafe, the Mediterranean restaurant above the Comedy Cellar in New York, where comedians gather between their sets downstairs and around the corner at Village Underground. After

a few minutes, Hamilton glances at his watch and announces it’s time for him to get onstage.

We make our way to the Village Underground, passing a line of antsy patrons waiting to get into the club for the next show. “Ryan Hamilton!” a few Cellar employees yell, and they embrace Hamilton as we pass. We pause in a hall filled with framed photos of comedians, Hamilton among them, then enter the dark, crowded venue where waiters buzz around tables full of customers laughing as Lynne Koplitz delivers punchlines in front of the iconic brick wall.

When Koplitz finishes, Hamilton leisurely makes his way on stage, and then, in an instant, the Ryan Hamilton I was talking to just seconds before expands into Ryan Hamilton the performer — his smile bigger, eyes wider, voice louder.

He dances, intentionally poorly, as the house band plays and spends the first minute or two joking about his overwhelming whiteness — “I dance like your cousin at a wedding” — before testing some new material about generational differences.

Then Hamilton shares that he was hit by a bus a year ago. A number of people in the audience gasp.

“If someone says, ‘I got hit by a car,’ people go, ‘oof, I’m so sorry,’” he says. “But if someone says, ‘I was hit by a bus,’ people go, ‘oof’” ... then Hamilton imitates someone snorting to keep from laughing.

The crowd, aghast moments before, erupts in laughter. Someone squeals between giggles.

“It’s a strange accident because it feels common, but it’s not common,” he says. “We talk about it as if it happens a lot. We reference it all the time. Once you get hit by a bus, you’ll see,” he adds, which elicits even more, even louder laughter.

“It’s just the most easily accessible hypothetical death. I don’t know why. But I’m here to tell you to live your life because, you know, you might get hit by a bus.”

EARLIER THAT DAY, I met Hamilton for lunch at the cafe at the New York Historical Society on the West Side of Central Park, where he told me he wasn’t an overtly funny child, but that he thought often about what would make people laugh.

Thinking about her son’s childhood, Hamilton’s mother, Suzanne, described him as a serious, observational child. “I always got the impression that he was just thinking about things. The wheels were always turning,” she told me over the phone, adding that she was surprised when his friends’ parents would tell her how funny they thought he was.

“I didn’t say a lot,” Hamilton explained. “But when I said something, I tried to make it funny.”

Hamilton remembers landing his first joke at a family dinner with guests. Hamilton’s sister was struggling to find her words in the middle of a story. He grabbed her arm, pumped it up and down, and said, “You’ve gotta prime her.”

Hamilton’s parents read humorist Dave Barry’s column every Sunday with their three children. As a teen, Hamilton thought Barry had his dream job, and decided he, too, wanted to be a newspaper columnist. So he called the local county newspaper — the Fremont Herald Chronicle — and asked if he could write a column. “In the ’90s, in

rural Idaho, you call the county newspaper and ask them for a column, they just say yes,” Hamilton said.

The Hamiltons lived in Ashton, Idaho, a town with one stoplight and 63 students in Hamilton’s graduating class. “When you’re from a small town there are advantages,” Hamilton said. “You can do whatever you want because nobody else is going to. So there’s room for you.” There was so much room for Hamilton that the small city paper — The Fall River Review — also wanted a column. So he wrote two humor columns a week, one for each paper, for $10 apiece.

Soon, the NBC affiliate in Idaho Falls caught wind of the budding young journalist out of Ashton and called to ask Hamilton if he’d like to help cover sports. So when he was 15, having had an Idaho driver’s license for a full year, he drove around the state filming games, editing the reels, writing copy and slipping in some jokes for the sportscaster to read on air.

Hamilton constantly thought about comedy, and his family encouraged his interests. His parents woke him to watch any time a comedian performed on “The Tonight Show with David Letterman.” They watched “Evening at the Improv” every week, and Hamilton was inspired by the amateur comedians he watched perform on

the program. “There was this small place where you could get on stage and tell jokes, and you didn’t have to be a super famous person. It really put this idea in my head. There was a place where you could just go do this,” he said.

HE CONTINUED TO obsess about comedy through high school and during his time at Ricks College, where he studied before his mission to North Carolina for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After his mission, he spent one more year at Ricks — now BYU-Idaho — then transferred to Brigham Young University, where he studied public relations. “It just never left me. I was always writing jokes, but I just never had time to perform,” he said, explaining that he worked multiple jobs to get through school.

In the spring of 2000, on the day he took his last BYU final, he called Johnny B’s comedy club in Provo and asked if he could get on stage. They told him they had a spot for him that Friday.

He didn’t tell any of his friends or family about his plans to perform. “I just wanted it to be my own little thing,” he said. Though the show went well, Hamilton was not yet seriously considering a career in comedy. His comedic aspirations only went so far as having a fun hobby. But it was all he could think about.

“ There was something very genuine about him. Something very di erent. He was a star. ” “ There something very genuine about him. Something very di erent. He was a star. ” “ It’s strange. I wanted my accident to be a tragedy, you know? But it’s pretty funny. Really, it’s a “ It’s strange. I wanted my accident to be a tragedy, you know? But it’s pretty funny. Really, it’s a

When the comedy club Wiseguys opened in West Valley, he started spending every evening there, then eventually got on stage and performed. “Ryan was really likable onstage,” said Wiseguys owner Keith Stubbs. “There was a certain charm to him. A likability that was very appealing.”

After graduating from BYU, Hamilton took a job at a Salt Lake City PR firm where he thought he would build a career. But he found it difficult to make cold calls from an office all day and was not passionate about the clients or the work.

In the winter of 2002, Hamilton’s parents came to Salt Lake to visit their oldest son. Suzanne remembers walking through the Olympic displays downtown with Hamilton. She asked about his job and he told

her he hated it. Then he told her what he had only just told himself — he wanted to be a comedian.

Within a year at the firm, both Hamilton and his bosses knew PR was not where he belonged. During a conversation with his supervisor, Hamilton expressed his desire to perform comedy. In response, his manager said, “We don’t have that position here.” Hamilton was let go.

He still felt too green to seriously pursue comedy full time and started looking for another job. But the only job available was a part-time position as a parking valet. So he decided to put all his energy into comedy for one year, living off his severance pay and valet income.

Hamilton’s life became one of long drives to perform for 30 minutes in random bars in random cities and make about $100. It was worth it, he said, for the chance to perform. “Performing is the reward,” he told me. “There’s just something about the back and forth with the audience and delivering the laugh.”

Meanwhile, Hamilton rubbed shoulders with the headliners he opened for at Wiseguys, and one night Greg Hahn pulled Hamilton aside and told him that if he was considering doing comedy full time, Hahn believed he had what it takes. “It felt great because you’re just looking for some sort of validation,” Hamilton said. “Anything to keep you going.”

After months of performing one-nighters, Hamilton decided to move to Seattle, where he would have more opportunities. Once there, he entered the Seattle Comedy Competition and made it to the semifinals. The competition included an industry night, judged by network executives and talent managers. Hamilton won the industry night competition and was approached by club managers and network executives, who told him to set up a meeting the next time he was in LA.

So Hamilton made up an excuse to go to LA. He showed up to one meeting in a suit and tie and was horrified to find everyone else dressed casually. “I was very, very green,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t

know how to handle the business at all.” A manager sent him to a couple of auditions for television pilots, one of which went very well and led to a studio test. While he didn’t book the pilot, he found the experience encouraging. So he decided to give comedy his full attention for one more year.

Then one more year turned into several more years. Which meant going into credit card debt, which he considered comedy tuition.

“It put a lot of pressure on me,” Hamilton said, explaining that the debt pushed him to work as hard as he could to book shows. After winning Sierra Mist’s America’s Next Great Comic competition in 2005 and making it to the semifinals of “Last Comic Standing” in 2007, he booked his first performance in New York for “Live at Gotham” which aired on Comedy Central. When he walked offstage, he met the young comedian Amy Schumer, who said to him, “I’m Amy. And you’re going to move here.”

Schumer was correct. Hamilton moved to New York soon after the Gotham performance. “I didn’t realize how high his aspirations were,” his mother confessed. “Then he moved to New York, and I was very worried about him.”

Hamilton also worried. Not for his

physical safety, like his mother, but for his career prospects which, despite his recent successes, he felt were flailing.

“I couldn’t get on stage,” he said, explaining that bookers in the city weren’t interested. Though he had had TV appearances and multiple competition titles, he hadn’t proved himself as a New York comedian. So he spent five years traveling from New York to other cities to perform.

During that time, Hamilton caught the attention of talent manager Peter Rosegarten. “After watching so many artists, you get a certain sense when you see somebody take the stage in how they speak, how their material is written, how they approach a subject matter, and how they’re uniquely different from other comedians,” Rosegarten said. “Watching him on stage, I just knew he had that special something.”

And yet Hamilton was ready to give up on New York. Rosegarten told Hamilton to give him six months. Then Schumer recommended him for an audition at the Comedy Cellar, where he performed for Estee Adoram, the legendary Comedy Cellar booker for the last nearly four decades. “I liked him right away,” Adoram told me. “There was something very genuine about him. Something very different. He stood

AT NEW YORK’S ICONIC COMEDY CELLAR, HAMILTON BECAME A STAR.

out. He was a star.”

Hamilton started performing weekly at the Comedy Cellar. By 2017, he had enough material for an hourlong special that he hoped to produce for Netflix. But executives at the streaming platform declined. Hamilton and Rosegarten shopped the concept around and got a soft commitment from Showtime. Then, out of nowhere, Netflix called and offered a slot, but the show had to be put together quickly. Finding a venue, set designer, director, production company and audience is a process that typically takes six months, Hamilton explained. He had six weeks.

“It was pretty stressful,” he said. “But I was also very grateful to have the thing. I got the thing that everybody wanted.”

They shot the show in May 2017 and Netflix released it in September. Hamilton spent the months in between flying back and forth to the Mayo Clinic, where his father was having multiple surgeries to repair damage caused by esophageal cancer. Hamilton was so preoccupied with his father’s health that he wasn’t thinking much about the special.

But then he started getting calls from friends saying his face was on their Netflix homepage. Suzanne remembers talking

with a customer service representative on the phone. The representative asked for her address, and when Suzanne told her Ashton, Idaho, the representative asked, “Do you know that comedian Ryan Hamilton?” When Suzanne told her he was her son, the woman did not believe her.

More fans started showing up to Hamilton’s shows, which began selling out. He started to book bigger venues, including Carnegie Hall, where he opened for famed French comedian Gad Elmaleh. Before the performance, Elmaleh introduced Hamilton to his friend Jerry Seinfeld, who watched the performance from the green room. A few nights later, Hamilton was leaving the Gotham Comedy Club as Seinfeld was entering. Seinfeld pulled him aside and told him he and his friends had discussed Hamilton’s performance and his talent at dinner that night.

A couple of months later, Hamilton got a call from Seinfeld asking if he’d be interested in opening for him. “It was surreal,” Hamilton said. “I couldn’t believe I had this life.”

2020 WAS SET to be Hamilton’s banner year. He had more shows booked by March than he’d ever booked before. He had lunch with

Seinfeld on March 18 and they talked about what they thought might happen with the coronavirus. The next day, Seinfeld canceled his show. Two days later, Broadway canceled all performances. By the end of the week, the world had shut down and all of Hamilton’s bookings were postponed. He traveled home to Idaho to isolate with his family and spend some time with his father during what turned out to be the final year of Larry’s life.

Suzanne said Larry was grateful for the time he was able to spend with his son. “My husband told me several times, ‘I always knew he was a good comedian, but I didn’t know he was such a good man,’” she said. Larry died in January 2021, and Hamilton remained in Idaho with his family until he was fully vaccinated. At the end of December, he flew to Hawaii for a corporate event, one of his first performances post-COVID Returning home, when he landed in LAX, he received a notification on his phone saying he had been exposed to the virus. He tested positive and isolated for 10 days in a hotel room.

The minute he was cleared to leave the hotel, on January 1, 2022, he walked to LAX at 1:30 a.m. to get a rental car. “I hit a button, I watched the light turn, and I started walking,” he said. “I didn’t see or hear anything. I just felt the impact.”

A shuttle bus had struck Hamilton, breaking 10 of his ribs, puncturing a lung, and pushing an arm bone through his skin.

“It was pretty gruesome,” he remembered. Hamilton hobbled across the street to a patch of grass where he could sit and try not to lose consciousness. Someone called 911 and an ambulance arrived.

When Hamilton’s mother woke up to her daughter telling her Hamilton had been hit by a bus, she thought it was some kind of joke, because, as she told me, “Getting hit by a bus really does sound like a joke.”

But as soon as she realized it wasn’t an early morning prank, she called her son. He was lying on a gurney in the hospital hallway, waiting to have a titanium plate placed in his arm. “Mom, I’m my own punchline,” he told her. Suzanne explained that one of

HAMILTON HAS PERFORMED ON “THE TONIGHT SHOW” AND OPENED FOR JERRY SEINFELD.

“ It’s strange. I wanted my accident to be a tragedy, you know? But it’s pretty funny. Really, it’s a comedy. ” “ It’s strange. I wanted my accident to be a tragedy, you know? But it’s pretty funny. Really, it’s a comedy. ”

Hamilton’s recent jokes had lightly mocked people who claimed they weren’t concerned about getting COVID-19 because they could get hit by a bus at any time. “He had gotten three vaccinations and been hit by a bus,” she said. “He thought that was pretty funny.”

Suzanne drove from Idaho to Los Angeles to be with her son in the hospital. “It was so hard to watch him,” she said. “He was so uncomfortable.”

Hamilton stayed in the hospital for five days and then he and his mother moved into a hotel room, where they spent the next five weeks. They’d take walks and Hamilton was so weak, Suzanne would have to hold his hand to cross the street. “It was a terrifying time for him,” she said “I was so scared,” Hamilton said. “I didn’t think my body would work again.”

BACK UPSTAIRS IN the Olive Tree, while we wait for Hamilton’s next set, he reflects on the moments immediately after the accident. The first thing he felt when the bus

hit, he tells me, was disappointment that he would have to cancel his upcoming show in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake, where Hamilton cut his teeth as a stand-up, is home to one of his largest fan bases, and his performances had already been postponed a number of times during the pandemic. For a while after the accident, Hamilton believed he could still make the performance. “I was just delusional,” he explains. Against the advice of everyone, he waited to cancel. “As much as I tried to hold him back, he just wanted to get back in the saddle,” says Rosegarten. “I just kept pleading with him not to do it.”

Hamilton wasn’t recovered enough to drive, so Suzanne volunteered to chauffeur him to Salt Lake a week before the show to prepare. He was in the car for just a few hours when Rosegarten called. As he spoke with his manager on the phone, he found himself in pain, unable to talk without gasping for air. He knew he had to cancel the show. “I think he finally gave in and realized his body needed to heal,” Rosegarten tells me.

Suzanne drove Hamilton home to Idaho, then back and forth to physical therapy and follow-up doctor appointments in Salt Lake City for months. As he healed, he started getting on stage at Wiseguys again. “He had to rebuild his confidence and his act,” Stubbs explains. “After that much trauma, it’s tough to restart. As dark as it is, you have to find a way to make it work.”

Stubbs watched Hamilton work through the material, threading the impossible needle of turning very real trauma into the very funny jokes Hamilton now tells on stage. “I think they’re amazing jokes,” Stubbs says. “It’s amazing he was able to make it as funny as he has.”

Hamilton says the first few days after the accident he started writing jokes about it without fully understanding what had happened to him, unaware that the worst was yet to come. “As time went on, I realized the severity of the accident. And I couldn’t write jokes about it,” Hamilton says.

But when he got back on stage, he found he couldn’t not talk about it. “I couldn’t go

on stage without acknowledging that this thing had happened. I would have felt so disingenuous,” he says.

“This is what comics do,” Stubbs says. “They talk about their lives and opinions and perspectives. There’s no way he couldn’t address such a substantial change.”

Hamilton says in those first performances after the accident, talking about it on stage felt heavy. “The jokes were good,” he says. “But you could just tell I was a little traumatized.” That heaviness may have only been apparent to Hamilton, though.

Gulman tells me the jokes were good from the start. “The turnaround time was astonishing,” he says. “When I heard him tell that story, it was perfection. Beautifully told and fleshed out almost immediately.”

In March of 2022, Hamilton flew to Los Angeles to help Schumer write for the Academy Awards. He then traveled back to New York where he started performing at the Comedy Cellar again. By May he was recovered and began working in full force.

All of Hamilton’s shows, which Rosegarten spent months canceling after the accident, were rebooked as soon as Hamilton was back to work. “There wasn’t one appearance Ryan was supposed to do that didn’t come back to us,” Rosegarten says.

Hamilton hit the late-night talk-show circuit, performing on “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon in April, and opening for Seinfeld again at the Beacon Theatre. Now he’s booked through the spring of 2024, including a November show at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, his largest performance venue to date.

“I feel like I’m really back,” Hamilton says. He has a fresh hour of material and is confident in his ability to create and entertain, as are those closest to him. “He’s going to start selling out large venues like the Delta Center,” Stubbs predicts.

“I think he’ll build a bigger and bigger audience and continue to get recognized,” Gulman says. “If he can avoid buses.”

“It’s strange,” Hamilton says from the Comedy Cellar stage. “I wanted my accident to be a tragedy, you know? But it’s pretty funny. Really, it’s a comedy.”

POWER OF THE PURSE

CAN CONGRESS TAME THE DEFICIT?

BY MICHAEL KOFOED

Aclassic economic thought experiment imagines two bank robbers. For argument’s sake, let’s call them Bonnie and Clyde. The local police catch them a few days later and place them into separate interrogation rooms. The police have a problem: The evidence is circumstantial and at best they could possibly get a conviction on a lesser gun charge. So, they devise a plan.

Officers go to each defendant separately and offer them the same deal. If Bonnie will rat out Clyde, they will release her with a slap on the wrist (one year in prison), but if she chooses not to confess then she will take the fall if Clyde pleads guilty (resulting in a longer prison sentence). If both don’t confess, they face only the gun charge (two years). However, if both defendants confess, they will both receive eight years in prison.

The goal of each prisoner as a team should be to minimize the total amount of prison time that both collectively serve. It would be in the best interest of their partnership to have them both refuse to confess and take the gun charge. Working together would produce the best social outcome. However, human nature never works that way. If one person chooses not to confess, then they open themselves up to a weaker position. The other party will take advantage of their goodwill and rat their partner out.

This strategy is in the prisoner’s best interest privately but fractures the public good. Since both criminals know that there is no honor among thieves, they will anticipate their partner will cheat on them and preempt the other’s infidelity by confessing. Both parties go to prison for eight years each; an outcome that collectively is the worst possible outcome in the aggregate, but makes perfect sense for the individual.

WHILE THE GOVERNMENT COULD INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR VIA INCENTIVES, IT COULD NOT ALTER THE TENDENCY FOR POWER TO ACCUMULATE AND BE ABUSED.

This thought experiment, pioneered by John Nash of “A Beautiful Mind” fame, turned economic thought on its head. Adam Smith proposed that the economy would reach its social optimum via each of its individual pieces working in tandem while pursuing their own separate interests. However, the prisoners’ dilemma found that individual incentives could cause stakeholders to deviate from the

public good and end up in situations (called Nash equilibria) where they themselves are also not happy with the outcome.

Clayton Christensen, a former Harvard Business School professor, taught that theories are like a set of eyeglasses that help us understand the world. Once one sees the prisoners’ dilemma, it is hard not to observe it everywhere: climate change, mutually assured destruction via nuclear armament and family disintegration are all stark examples of where trust breaks down when individuals follow private incentives at the cost of their own and others’ welfare.

Political polarization is no different, especially regarding fiscal policy, budget deficits and the national debt. Some deficit spending is helpful in times of recession, national emergency, war, or infrastructure investment. During times of economic boom, government needs to tighten its belt and, if necessary, increase taxes to pay off the accumulated debt. However, the last two administrations have done the opposite: overstimulating the economy with inflationary effects. Given the dramatic spike in interest rates coupled with a booming economy, we need to get our fiscal house in order. Otherwise, we will be saddled with incredibly high interest payments with no remedy when a recession strikes. Congress knows this but political incentives steer lawmakers

away from meaningful action and toward the embarrassing situation that played out after Congress passed its most recent temporary plan to fund the government.

AMERICAN STYLE CONSERVATISM was a unique offshoot from its European

predecessor. Nurtured in the small-L liberal tradition of the Enlightenment, conservatives embraced that idea of natural rights endowed by nature or a creator. Citizens yielded some liberty through consent of elections and constitutional authority to governments to solve vexing public

problems. However, conservatives understood that human nature is fixed and while the government could influence behavior via incentives, it could not alter the tendency for power to accumulate and be abused.

To prevent the abuse of power, conservatives wanted to diffuse political power

across three branches of government that would be equally balanced and can check one another. The legislative branch would be first among equals and the framers of our Constitution chose to divide powers among the Senate and House. The Senate received the power to advise and consent on presidential appointees and the House received the “power of the purse.” The people’s representatives would determine how much revenue to raise and where to spend public funds.

Conservatives should strive to maintain this balance and constitutional order. Sadly, there are many that claim this mantle but have failed to actually live by these principles. Instead of regular budgetary order, chaos has ensued. This dysfunction is apparent in the repeated debt limit crisis, deficit spending and looming government shutdowns.

DEBT AND DEFICIT spending has been part of our nation’s history since the founding. The colonies individually racked up huge amounts of debt to finance the Revolutionary War. The biggest question facing the new republic was whether the federal government would assume the new debt or should all 13 states have to settle individually with their European creditors. Washington delegated this question to his young Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton wanted to create a national bank that would hold this debt and regulate currency. Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, despised this idea. The two cabinet members negotiated the Compromise of 1790 in “the room where it happened.” Jefferson got his financial plan and Jefferson and Madison moved the national capital from New York City to the Potomac; closer to home for the Virginians.

The national debt ebbed and grew throughout history. Each new project required Congress to issue a new type of bond to finance the debt. During WWI, Congress decided to issue only one type of savings bond to the public and set a limit on itself that it would have to raise from time to time.

This compromise made each year’s deficit easier to manage for financial markets, but created poor incentives for would-be appropriators. Congress could authorize deficit spending in one year, and then hit the debt limit during the next cycle. This action is like eating a three-course meal and then refusing to pay for it when the bill is due.

Given the incentives at play, Congress could now avoid making tough trade-offs during the normal budgeting process and then force drastic measures at the last moment before the debt ceiling expires. This type of pseudo-hostage taking is neither conservative (refusing to act in a constitutionally mandated way) nor good governance. Investors consider U.S. Treasury bonds as the most trustworthy, risk-free

GIVEN THE INCENTIVES AT PLAY, CONGRESS COULD NOW AVOID MAKING TOUGH TRADEOFFS DURING THE NORMAL BUDGETING PROCESS AND THEN FORCE DRASTIC MEASURES AT THE LAST MOMENT.

asset because the United States of America promises to pay its interest on time. However, each time that certain members of Congress use tactics outside the normal appropriations process, it threatens this premier creditworthiness.

It may seem counterintuitive that abolishing the debt ceiling may help get spending under control, but it will remove the incentive to threaten fiscal health by a slim minority to get concessions that will only have a minuscule effect on the national deficit. This change would put more emphasis on the appropriations process in the House, where the Constitution intended. No party wants to be the one to raise the debt ceiling, so they return to the prisoner’s dilemma. Collectively, it would be best for the nation to not default, but the party that votes to lift the debt ceiling opens

themselves up to political consequences when the next election rolls around. Eliminating the debt ceiling means that members would have to focus their energies on the budgeting process, as opposed to threatening to “burn it all down” if they don’t get meaningless cable news interviews or social media clicks for their fans. Removing venom from the extremes would give cover for the majorities in both parties to work within the productive middle.

ANOTHER COUNTERINTUITIVE WAY to get the parties to work together again on better fiscal health is the recent move to bring back earmarks — or an allowance for members of Congress to allocate funds for projects specifically in their districts.

Earmarks (or sometimes called pork barrel spending) received a bad reputation in the late 2000s with images of bridges to nowhere or obscure research grants. It made logical sense to get budgets under control to eliminate this wasteful spending. James Madison reminds us in Federalist Papers No. 51 that we are not governed by angels, but human beings who respond to incentives. Earmarks allowed members to trade off various projects to give an incentive to work together. In the prisoner’s dilemma, if the district attorney reduced the punishment for confession, then both players would work together to reach a better solution.

Earmarks were a very small part of the federal budget, but without skin in the game, policymakers have little interest in their main constitutional duty: budget appropriations. In many cases, the members yield the budget process to either House leadership or the executive branch and agencies. Since federal agencies do not have to face voters directly and aim to maximize program size, they have no incentive to rein in spending. Thus, not only are constitutional duties transferred from the legislative to the executive branch, but we, as citizens, no longer have a seat at the table.

GOVERNMENT CAN BE a source of innovation in the public sphere, but everyone’s

ideas sound great at the time. Never underestimate the ability for the good idea fairy to strike, especially in committee hearings. The best way to counteract this tendency is to focus on outcomes as opposed to inputs. It is easy for policymakers to get caught up in the cost of programs, but rarely do they ask if programs are obtaining their required goals.

Social science has made dramatic developments in the field of causal inference. Causal inference is moving policy evaluation beyond correlation and using methods that allow researchers to tease out causal estimates on the effectiveness of policies ranging from Pell Grants to Medicaid expansion to defense spending. However, elected officials can be apprehensive of testing their ideas for fear of failure. We need to cultivate an atmosphere of innovation on all levels of government. University of Chicago economist John List (a pioneer in this field) recently wrote, “When resources are limited, if you’re not getting the most out of every last dollar spent, the opportunity cost includes the additional impact your dollars could have had if allocated more effectively.”

While the Congressional Budget Office scores new government initiatives for cost, Congress should also require that any new idea or program be piloted first using robust methods. While not all ideas scale from a local to federal level, researchers can quickly partner to help tease out good intentions with null results. Researchers are hesitant to publish a zero result because academic journals favor splashy, positive magnitudes. However, Congress should fund and encourage finding out what does and does not work. Conservatives win by eliminating programs shown to have little or no effect for the cost, while liberals can invest in programs that are effective. Fiscal conservatives should shift their mantra from the party of “ NO ” to the party of “ ROI ” — return on investment.

A culture of innovation combined with rigorous evidence-based testing removes stigma and shame, rebuilds trust, and allows warring factions to work together

again. Conservatives can once again tout states as literally the “laboratories of democracy” where state and local officials can try out new ideas.

FINALLY, ALL THESE recommendations simply work around the edges of solving our big budget issues. Congress has a funny way of labeling problems it does not want to solve. It separates discretionary spending (earmarks, foreign aid, agency appropriations) from nondiscretionary spending (Social Security and Medicare). This misnomer gives the illusion that Congress has no ability to change spending levels on the largest sections of the federal budget. Neither side wants to be the one who cuts grandma’s Social Security check or reforms Medicare,

CONSERVATIVES WIN BY ELIMINATING PROGRAMS SHOWN TO HAVE LITTLE OR NO EFFECT FOR THE COST, WHILE LIBERALS CAN INVEST IN PROGRAMS THAT

ARE EFFECTIVE.

but with an aging society, those programs are exactly the areas where Congress needs to explore reforms.

Modern medicine has dramatically extended life expectancy beyond what one could dream of in the 1930s when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress created Social Security. With an aging population and a declining birth rate, we are rapidly approaching a scenario where Social Security will have to support two simultaneously retired generations with a shrinking labor force. Immigration could solve this problem, but neither party seems interested in smartly handling that issue.

In the medium term, interest on the national debt should keep every American up at night. Federal treasury bonds are fixed rate, meaning that for 10 years the interest reflects the market conditions of the

issuance data. However, since the pandemic, the Federal Reserve has rapidly increased interest rates to combat inflation. Any new federal spending bonds will carry that higher fixed rate. Also, without an excess of spending, bonds that did offer a lower interest rate will be “rolled over” to pay off the holder as they mature. Thus, the Treasury will have to refinance parts of the debt at the new higher rates as well.

IN THE 1987 film, “The Princess Bride,” friends of an injured and unconscious hero rush his body to a doubtful and snarky Miracle Max. He declares the patient to be mostly dead and exclaims, “There’s a big difference between all dead and mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. All dead, well there’s only one thing you can do. ... Go through his clothes and look for loose change!”

I don’t think our fiscal situation is even mostly dead, but it doesn’t seem quite alive, either. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt recently wrote, “democracy had an Achilles’ heel because it depended on the collective judgment of the people, and democratic communities are subject to ‘the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions.’”

We are seeing what happens when we drain trust from our democratic systems. To overcome our own prisoners’ dilemma, we need to shift incentives for both sides to work together, otherwise, as William Butler Yeats wrote, our democracy will see that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Deficits and debt are dollars and cents, but they are also an expression of values and judgment. We will be facing real world consequences if we do not shift course. We need to realign incentives (even when counterintuitive), empower evidence-based policymaking, and allow trade-offs on big issues. All these things are still in our power because … we are still “slightly alive!”

IN

RACE TO THE BOTTOM

2024, AMERICA WILL ELECT A PRESIDENT FEW WANT

BY CHRIS CILLIZZA

What if they held an election no one really wanted?

Well, that’s exactly what 2024 is shaping up to be.

Consider a late August Associated Press poll. Voters were asked to name a word or two that came to mind for each of the front-runners for their respective party nominations — President Joe Biden for Democrats and former President Donald Trump for Republicans.

The most common words for Biden? “Old.” “Outdated.” “Slow.” “Confused.”

For Trump, it wasn’t any better. “Corrupt,” “crooked” and “bad” led the way.

And these are the two people with massive leads over their prospective primary opponents! What must people think about the rest of the field?

At the same time, someone has to win this election. And the overwhelming odds are that someone will be named either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, whose victory or loss may be decided by several thousand voters in a quartet of swing states.

So, how did we get here? And where are we going in a race in which one candidate is

facing down four indictments and the other is seen by a majority of the American public as way too old for the job he is running for?

The right place to start is the Republican side of the aisle, where, as recently as a year ago, it appeared as though Trump’s grip on the party was loosening.

A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF VOTERS IN JUST FOUR STATES COULD WELL HOLD THE FATE OF THE 2024 ELECTION IN THEIR HANDS.

Think back to January 2021. Republicans watched as they lost not one but two runoff Senate elections in Georgia, defeats that cost them a chance at the majority.

The blame quickly fell to Trump. “Republicans turn on Trump after Georgia loss,” read a Politico headline that included these lines:

“The immediate recrimination is emblematic of the complicated GOP dynamics

that have emerged after Trump’s loss in the November election. Fissures are forming as Republicans decide whether it’s useful to cling to Trump — even as he tries to subvert an election — or to distance themselves. And if the Georgia races are any indication, it appears Republicans are willing to turn on Trump if he can’t reliably turn out the vote for candidates in the months and years ahead.”

Then came the 2022 midterm election where Republicans were, again, disappointed. The Senate, which the party seemed certain to win back, remained out of reach. Yes, Republicans retook control of the House majority but with a far smaller margin than most people expected. The blame fell in large part on Trump.

In that same election, Gov. Ron DeSantis won the previously swingy state of Florida by almost 20 points. The contrast was clear. DeSantis was the future. Trump just might be the past.

It was actually the second time in as many years that it appeared Republicans were on the precipice of moving on from Trump. The first time came in early 2021,

when the Democratic-controlled House impeached Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Mitch McConnell, leader of Senate Republicans, very publicly let speculation grow that he could vote to convict Trump — a move that could have also banned the former president from running for office again.

Except that, well, he didn’t.

McConnell eventually cited a technical matter — Trump was now out of office and therefore could not be impeached — for his “no” vote. The fact that, after the vote, McConnell blasted Trump as “practically and morally responsible” for the riot has been lost to history.

Late 2022 and early 2023 was another one of those moments. And then, within two months, the moment was gone. In March 2023, Trump was indicted in New York — on charges that he had paid off two women during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep them quiet about alleged affairs he had conducted with them.

And suddenly, the moment to oust Trump from his perch atop the party was gone. Rather than an embattled former president with a load of losses to answer for, Trump was suddenly back in his favorite role: victim.

And he played it to the hilt. This was no longer a presidential candidacy, this was a crusade. Trump wasn’t just fighting Democrats, he was now fighting the whole Deep State. This wasn’t about a case in New York, it was about the future of the country.

The base of the Republican Party — sensing a fight — immediately sided with Trump. His poll numbers soared. And his primary opponents, fearful of ticking off that base, largely sided with him — insisting he was the victim of election interference by Democrats.

Around the same time, it was becoming increasingly clear that DeSantis — the man who was so hyped in January — was actually a would-be emperor with no clothes. His campaign took months to launch. When

he did get into the race, it was via a disastrous (and glitch-filled) event on Twitter, now known as X. On the campaign trail, he seemed wooden and nonhuman. And he and his campaign kept picking dumb fights — like arguing that enslaved people benefited from the skills they were taught during their bondage.

As Trump rose, DeSantis stumbled. And what’s more, no one rose up to take DeSantis’ place as the Trump alternative in the race. Because the party didn’t really want an alternative. Poll after poll suggested that Republicans voters were a) perfectly happy with their choices, and b) flocking to Trump

NO ONE ROSE UP TO TAKE DESANTIS’ PLACE AS THE TRUMP ALTERNATIVE IN THE RACE. BECAUSE THE PARTY DIDN’T REALLY WANT AN ALTERNATIVE.

in droves. And the candidates not named Trump reflected that reality. No one this side of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson — both no-shot candidates running on an anti-Trump message — dared to say a word against the billionaire businessman. And the longer their silence went, the stronger he got.

By the end of the summer, it was clear: Trump was in a historically strong position to be the Republican nominee. He was ahead by 40 points nationally — and by smaller but still wide margins in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

Two numbers — taken from a CBS News national poll — confirmed, for me, the enduring grasp Trump has on the Republican Party. Almost 8 in 10 (77 percent) said that Trump’s indictments were politically motivated. Three quarters said that Trump’s legal problems were a major reason they were supporting him in the race.

Yes, his supporters back him in spite of

the four indictments but, at least in part, because of the four indictments.

BIDEN’S PATH TO the nomination, on the other hand, has always been assured — ever since he made the decision to seek a second term back in April.

But pockets of resistance remain. A majority of Democrats — in poll after poll — say that they would prefer a candidate other than Biden as the party’s nominee. Young people, in particular, are unenthused about the prospect of voting for him again.

The problem? Biden’s age. At 80 — he will be 82 when and if he is sworn in for a second term in early 2025 — he would be the oldest person ever elected to the office.

And there are signs of Biden slowing — a more halting speaking style, a shuffling gait — over the past few years.

Talk to most Democrats and they will tell you that Biden is a nice guy but his time has come and gone — that it’s time for fresh blood in the form of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro.

Most of that talk amounted to whispers — until little-known Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips went public with his doubts about Biden.

“I want him to preserve his legacy, not to compromise it,” Phillips said in August. “And this is exactly why I’m asking — pass the torch, open the stage.”

The Phillips argument, distilled, is this: The threat posed by Trump is so serious that the Democratic Party can’t take a risk on the aged Biden in 2024.

“God forbid the president has a health episode or something happens in the middle of a primary,” Phillips has said — invoking the specter of what would be an absolute nightmare scenario for Democrats.

For all the attention he’s drawn to himself, Phillips’ calls for a contested primary have, largely, fallen on deaf ears.

Not a single elected official (or former elected official) has chosen to primary Biden. Instead, a political gadfly is the only one in the mix: Marianne Williamson.

Robert Kennedy Jr., scion to the most famous Democratic political family in America, dropped out of the Democratic race in early October, announcing he would instead run as an independent for the presidency.

Williamson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2020, is a fringe candidate at best with support in the single digits.

And so, Joe Biden — despite warning signs flashing all around his party — will be the Democratic presidential nominee. And the party will cross its fingers and hope he makes it through the general election without a major health scare — or worse.

ALL OF WHICH brings us to a general election starting — likely — some time next spring or early summer (Trump will have the nomination wrapped up by that point) featuring two candidates with deep weaknesses in the eyes of the general electorate.

The way I have come to think about that race is via a boxing metaphor. Two aging former champs, neither at their best, collide in the ring. Both lack the power to put the other one away — and so they lean and grab and sucker-punch whenever they can as they try to get the narrowest of advantages. It’s not fun to watch nor particularly fun to participate in. And yet, here we are.

While we can’t know exactly how a rematch between Biden and Trump will play out, we already have some clues.

Trump will paint a dark vision of America under Biden — a nearly-failed nation that only he can fix. (If that message sounds similar to how Trump ran in 2016, it’s because it’s the exact same.) He will work to paint Biden as a doddering puppet of a liberal elite, someone who, in Trump’s words, “doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Biden will, in turn, focus on the accomplishments of his first term — from the Inflation Reduction Act to the CHIPS and Science Act — to counteract predictions of doom and gloom over the economy. He will, largely, try to ignore Trump’s antics (and there will be many) and instead focus on the notion that these are serious times

that require serious people — suggesting, by extension, that Trump is not one.

We also know a few more things about the election to come.

First, it’s likely to be very, very close. Polling has consistently shown Biden and Trump running neck and neck. As of late September, the Real Clear Politics polling average gave Trump a slim, 1.6 point advantage.

Second, it’s going to come down to only a pittance of swing states. Unlike in past elections where we were talking about 8 to 10 states where the campaign was being fought, it’s likely that only half that num-

TALK TO MOST DEMOCRATS AND THEY WILL TELL YOU THAT BIDEN IS A NICE GUY BUT HIS TIME HAS COME AND GONE.

ber are truly competitive come November 2024.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan campaign tipsheet, said in its initial 2024 ratings that only four states — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — should be considered true tossups.

In 2020, Biden won all four of those states. But, the margins were tiny. In Arizona, he won by less than 11,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast. In Michigan, Biden’s margin was 150,000 out of more than 5 million votes cast. In Pennsylvania, Biden won by 80,000 votes. In Wisconsin, his margin was just over 20,000 votes.

Add it up and you see that less than 250,000 votes decided the presidency. (Had Trump won all four states — and there 57 total electoral college votes — he would have been reelected.) Given polling — both nationally and in early states — that suggests a tight race between Trump and Biden, we could well be headed toward a repeat of the 2020 election.

All of which gets us to a simple yet

profound question: Who is going to win? As a journalist, I always shy away from predictions — because they are a) frowned upon by my industry and b) usually wrong. (I will admit I had NO inkling that Trump would win in 2016 and would have bet my mortgage on a President Hillary Clinton.)

But I will make a prediction (and not just because I promised my editors I would!) Before we get to it, let me say that — given the likely closeness of the race as I described above — that BOTH parties seem certain they will win next November.

Is some of that false bravado — a fake-it-until-you-make-it vibe that they have adopted out of necessity given the uncertainty of the race? Maybe! But I am still struck by the confidence they have based — as far as I can tell — on not all that much.

So, without further adieu, it‘s prediction time! (Let me AGAIN caveat all of this by saying that campaigns are defined by big, unpredictable changes. I expect this one to be as well.) I believe that President Joe Biden will be reelected next November thanks to the deep doubts among the swing portion of the electorate about Trump’s character.

A lot of these swing voters have, I believe, already made up their mind that they won’t vote for Trump under any circumstances. Might that mean that they hold their nose and vote for Biden? Sure. But those votes count the same as one made with full adulation and confidence in Biden.

One more prediction while I’m at it: Donald Trump will, again, refuse to accept the results of the election. And a significant chunk of the Republican base will, again, believe him. But, the impact of those conspiracy theories will be lessened because Trump, unlike in 2024, doesn’t have his hands on any of the levers of government power.

And one more prediction (I am feeling it!): If his health remains a nonissue, Donald Trump will run again for president in 2028 — and have a better-than-decent chance of being the nominee. Brace yourselves.

CHRIS

CILLIZZA IS A POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND AUTHOR OF “POWER PLAYERS: SPORTS, POLITICS, AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.”

TRUE IN THEORY

60 YEARS LATER, JFK’S DEATH STILL FUELS A CULTURE OF DOUBT

BY ETHAN BAUER

In the hours after gunshots cracked across Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, Americans found themselves playing a novel role in a fast-paced drama. Within just six minutes, they heard over national radio that the president’s motorcade had come under fire. Four more, and Walter Cronkite told the CBS television audience that President John F. Kennedy Jr. had been hit. Another 58 minutes, and millions gathered around televisions heard Cronkite’s emotional announcement that the president was dead. Stunned viewers still remember that moment, but the search for answers was just beginning.

For four days, the networks suspended regular programming and even ads, so JFK’s death was the only thing on TV. Obsessed viewers followed along as police rounded up suspects, including a former Marine sharpshooter arrested at the Texas Theatre. Lee Harvey Oswald was among those “being grilled,” Cronkite reported sometime after 2 p.m., perhaps as a new president was being sworn in on Air Force One. Less than 12 hours after the shooting, Oswald

was charged and paraded before a pool of cameras. When a reporter asked about his battered eye, the man leaned closer, his face filling the nearest camera. “A cop hit me,” he said, flatly.

Never before had such grand and mysterious events played out at this speed.

“THERE’S A PUZZLE OUT THERE, THERE’S A MYSTERY. THERE’S AN UNSOLVED CRIME. AND YOU THINK, ‘WELL, IF I LOOKED AT ALL OF THE EVIDENCE, I COULD FIGURE IT OUT.’”

Then came a plot twist: A nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot Oswald dead on live television in a crowd of police escorting the suspected assassin to jail. The nation reeled, trying to make sense of this improbable sequence. It was no longer just difficult to process, but hard for many to believe.

That remains the case 60 years later,

when only a third of Americans believe that Oswald shot Kennedy and acted alone, the official conclusion reached by the Warren Commission, the federal investigation into his death. Many are familiar with alternative theories, or at least familiar elements, like the grassy knoll or the Zapruder film. This is largely because the case spawned a new subculture, a cottage industry of self-published skeptics and the audience they encourage to “do your own research.” As their work has expanded to new arenas — like the Apollo moon landing or 9/11 — their stories have moved from photocopied zines to social media, cinema and even mainstream politics. In an age of almost unlimited access to information, why are conspiracy theories such a powerful force?

COLLOQUIALLY, THE TERM conspiracy theory has become a pejorative shorthand for all manner of outlandish beliefs or ideas the speaker wishes to dismiss as zany or off-kilter. “Defining it based on what the words say, a conspiracy theory would seem to be any theory that involves two or more

people working in secret to bring about some ends,” says Brian Keeley, a leading philosopher working in this space, though conspiracists tend to focus on powerful actors like government agencies or even celebrities. Such things can occur, but the broader application of these theories seems to arise from a human need to find meaning in cataclysmic events.

Conspiracy theories have emerged throughout history and all over the world, often in the aftermath of crisis situations. When Rome burned in A.D. 64, some speculated that it was an inside job, ignited so Nero could rebuild the city with a clean slate. Medieval Europeans repeatedly accused Jewish communities of orchestrating epidemics like the plague; this proved a useful out for nobles indebted to Jewish merchants. Similarly, King Philip IV of France leveraged salacious rumors of his own creation in the 14th century to remove the Knights Templar from powerful roles in his own government, spawning theories that persist today.

Like Philip, other state actors have advanced conspiracy theories as a type of disinformation — the deliberate use of false or inaccurate information to undermine foreign governments or political opponents. When Tsar Nicholas II came under fire for mismanaging the Russian empire in the early 1900s, his secret police forged the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” purportedly minutes from the first Zionist congress of 1897, but in reality based on works of fiction. Likely intended to shift blame and conjure up a unifying threat, this document continues to underlie antisemitic theories about the banking system and the “new world order.” Russian intelligence services are still known to use similar methods.

But Americans have a unique relationship with conspiracy theories. Suspicions surrounding the British crown helped to fuel the independence movement, forming a template for subsequent anti-government theories. Americans were not exempt from bigoted beliefs about their neighbors, particularly Catholics, Jews and Latter-day

Saints. But as the country marched west, the nation’s capital became an increasingly distant and misunderstood center of power. Scandals like Teapot Dome and Watergate haven’t exactly bolstered trust. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower weighed in during his farewell address in January 1961, warning against the “military-industrial complex.”

This was the state of affairs when JFK was killed. American society offered fertile soil for conspiracy theories to take root and grow, empowered by technologies like radio and TV, with more innovations coming. This new conspiracist subculture would become an arena for the arts to explore, sometimes with a tinge of romance, but more

“PEOPLE START TO BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING IS AN ILLUSION, THAT EVERYTHING IS A SHAM. YOU CAN’T TRUST ANYONE. YOU CAN’T TRUST GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITIES. YOU CAN’T TRUST EDUCATIONAL AUTHORITIES. YOU CAN’T TRUST SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITIES.”

often with disdain. Either way, film, literature and popular music would help introduce their ideas into mainstream thinking.

JIM GARRISON WAS no amateur. Something of a loose cannon, the New Orleans district attorney had cracked down on the city’s French Quarter vice in 1962 and charged his own supervisors with racketeering. But when he started pursuing tips that a local plot led to JFK’s death, he soon believed he was unraveling a web of relationships and chatter that denoted a grand conspiracy. In 1969, he brought one defendant to trial, the only case ever heard in relation to the president’s murder. Jurors deliberated all of 54 minutes before returning a verdict:

not guilty. Critics gloated, calling Garrison a “total charlatan,” his investigation a reckless and cruel publicity stunt. But he wasn’t finished, and Americans weren’t satisfied. Officially, the case was closed in September 1964. That’s when the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy — the Warren Commission — issued its 888-page report, finding that both Oswald and Ruby acted alone. It was closed again in 1988, even after the House Select Committee on Assassinations argued that unnamed conspirators had probably played a role. The Justice Department responded that “no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy.” But some preferred unofficial answers.

The first published alternative beat the Warren report by four months — at least in Paris, where author Thomas G. Buchanan was based. The New York Times called his book “Who Killed Kennedy?” an “elaborate concoction,” alleging a plot to protect the oil and defense industries, using police and criminals as stooges, with Oswald a CIA agent, all presented without evidence. Still, the reviewer concluded, the hypothesis “can be expected to provide sinew and tissue for the Kennedy legend, which will continue to attract men’s imaginations for decades to come.”

The Times wasn’t wrong. Another book, “Rush to Judgment,” spent over seven months on the bestsellers list in 1966-67, perhaps inspiring would-be authors. Among them, the author of 1975’s “The Umbrella Man” called himself an “assassinologist.” A noted Garrison critic authored 1981’s “Best Evidence”; and Garrison added his own memoir, “On the Trail of Assassins,” in 1988. That same year, novelist Don DeLillo released “Libra,” portraying Oswald as a pawn in a CIA scheme to start a war with Cuba. In 1995, James Ellroy threw the mafia into the mix with “American Tabloid,” while Norman Mailer explored the alleged shooter’s formative period in Russia through newly released KGB materials in “Oswald’s Tale.”

The list goes on, with documentaries and

podcasts for good measure. One reason for so many theories is that Kennedy had many enemies. His initial backing of the Bay of Pigs invasion and subsequent about-face irked Cuba, the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans living stateside. His second thoughts about Vietnam were an affront to the military and defense contractors. His brother Robert’s pursuit of the mafia as attorney general didn’t make him any friends there. So one can pick and choose. “If you’re conservative, you can believe the Soviets or Fidel Castro of Cuba killed Kennedy,” says University of California, Davis, historian Kathryn Olmsted. “If you’re liberal, you can think it was the military industrial complex that killed Kennedy because he wanted to get out of the Vietnam War.”

This has practically become a field of study, embodied by a 2018 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City titled “Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy.” Visitors grappled with decades of “suspicion between the government and its citizens” through 70 works produced between the 1960s through 2016. Some used government reports and statistics to reveal real corruption, while others dove “headlong into the fever dreams of the disaffected.” The museum called it “an archaeology of our troubled times.”

CONTROVERSIAL FILMMAKER OLIVER Stone wasn’t impressed with Garrison’s work. “He trusted a lot of weirdos and followed a lot of fake leads,” he admitted later. But in Garrison’s book, the basis for his 1991 blockbuster, “JFK,” he found a compelling story of a man struggling to piece together his own truth. Unlike Stone’s oeuvre of anti-war films, “JFK” is less a leftist screed than an oddly sympathetic profile of a conspiracy theorist, played by Kevin Costner. Reminiscing later, Stone said that the official story of the assassination was “a great myth,” and that “in order to fight a myth, maybe you have to create another one.”

A hero typically overcomes adversity to achieve an honorable goal, like finding treasure or saving the world. Those elements

are present in conspiracy theories, but the person is not. Or perhaps the hero is implied. The character facing long odds to solve a mystery is the theorist himself. This seems to be one lure of conspiracism. “There’s a puzzle out there, there’s a mystery,” Olmsted says. “There’s an unsolved crime. And you think, ‘Well, if I looked at all of the evidence, I could figure it out.’” This mindset can imbue ordinary life with false drama and significance.

Bad actors can use that to their advantage, and not just spies or heads of state. “We’ve got to not forget the capitalism part of conspiracy thinking,” says University of Utah historian Robert Goldberg. Operating outside of traditional institutions and exper-

ONLINE CHATROOMS AND SOCIAL MEDIA OFFER NEW VECTORS WHERE CONSPIRACISM CAN MOVE FASTER THAN EVER. AND AS PEOPLE LOSE TRUST IN TRADITIONAL NEWS SOURCES, THEY SEEM MORE LIKELY TO FIND ANSWERS SOMEWHERE ELSE.

tise, the “conspiracy entrepreneur” may or may not believe his theories, but he profits from them, through his writings or selling merchandise like T-shirts emblazoned with silly slogans like “Bush did 9/11.” But what he really sells is reassurance in uncertain times: This did happen for a reason. Even if that reason is clearly delusional.

This is where it gets dangerous. If conspiracism seems to borrow the language of religion, it may not be coincidental. For the most obsessed and confused, these theories can become an alternate belief system, driving them to take action. In “Waco: The Aftermath,” now streaming on Showtime, an FBI special agent executing a search warrant on a neo-Nazi safehouse finds

a battery of fax machines, all beeping at once. Each machine is sending a copy of an anti-government conspiracist newsletter, inspired in part by botched and deadly government sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge. In this show’s myth, these electronic devices take resentment viral, contributing to the Oklahoma City bombing.

The internet is like an infinite number of fax machines, selling any number of myths. We know that conspiracy theories operate like a memetic virus: The more people believe them, the more they spread. Online chatrooms and social media offer new vectors where conspiracism can move faster than ever. And as people lose trust in traditional news sources, they seem more likely to find answers somewhere else. Even political candidates on both sides of the aisle have fallen into this trap, or used it to their advantage. The end result is a climate where the line between truth and fiction becomes more difficult to find.

“People start to believe that everything is an illusion, that everything is a sham,” Olmsted says. “You can’t trust anyone. You can’t trust governmental authorities. You can’t trust educational authorities. You can’t trust scientific authorities. You have to ‘do your own research’ and come to your own conclusions. And that means that you’re susceptible to believing any lie that public figures put forward that fit your biases.”

Still, amid the plethora of conspiracy theories circulating today — like flat earth theory, QAnon, or unidentified aerial phenomena — the JFK assassination looms large. Last spring, the federal government began to release a trove of related documents. And in September, a former Secret Service member who was present when Kennedy was shot shared certain details with The New York Times that could rewrite prevailing theories. But perhaps rather than fixate on his death, we could learn something from his life. As he once said, “the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

“Wealth isn’t always measured in dollar signs. We each have time, talent and creativity, all of which can be powerful forces for positive change. Share your blessings in whatever form they come and to whatever level you have been blessed.”

— Jon M. Huntsman Sr.

THE MEDIATOR

ON RETHINKING THE GOOD FIGHT

BY LOIS M. COLLINS

Hélène Biandudi Hofer’s hands were white-knuckle tight on the steering wheel as she drove back to the automotive shop where she intended to berate the crew. She’d just spent a bundle to have the windows tinted and other detail work done. Then she found a scratch that started the furious cascade she was experiencing.

They rushed, she fumed. They were careless and they cheated me.

A day had passed and her anger had only increased.

Then a thought popped into her head, completely unbidden, as she drove: “Imagine if you’re wrong.”

She tried to shove it down, but years later she remembers that moment vividly because it forced her to pause briefly, to take a breath. And as it turned out, she was wrong. Biandudi Hofer has been rethinking her approach to conflict ever since.

These days, Biandudi Hofer, 42, is an award-winning journalist best known for her work melding principles of storytelling, conflict mediation and solutions journalism to foster better conversations and problem-solving around societal

challenges. Her work fits snugly under what’s been called a “good conflict” umbrella. She also founded a media group, HBH Enterprises, that “explores social issues with a focus on solutions and opportunities.” In short, she thinks we could all be arguing better — and a whole lot more constructively.

PRACTICE STAYING CURIOUS ABOUT THOSE WITH WHOM YOU DISAGREE. IN THE NARRATIVES WE TELL OURSELVES AND OTHERS ABOUT A CONFLICT WE’RE INVOLVED IN, WE’RE ALWAYS THE HERO.

Biandudi Hofer is no stranger to conflict and its impact, either personally or professionally. She grew up in a biracial household in Columbus, Ohio. Her dad was a Black man from the Democratic Republic of Congo, her mom a white woman from South Dakota. She describes them as bold, courageous, no-nonsense educators who never backed down from

confrontation, but says they saw discord through the lens of growth and opportunity and passed that on to their two children. She was taught to have pride in who she was even in difficult times and to never ignore things, but to pick and choose what she wants to address with people.

She also was taught she could do anything; her dad, who died in 2010, really hoped she’d be the first Black president, leading her to joke that honor has passed. Instead, she graduated from New York University’s broadcast journalism program in 2003 and launched a storyteller’s journalism career that has changed dramatically over the years, moving away from telling what happened to explaining why, the focus on problem-solving and bridge building.

Deseret asked her how to argue more constructively and solve problems better.

YOU TALK ABOUT THE ‘RIGHT FIGHT.’ WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?

The right fight is having a good, healthy argument that actually goes somewhere and doesn’t end in divorce, outrage, broken friendships — you know, families that

HÉL È NE BIANDUDI HOFER

no longer talk and cousins that you avoid at family reunions.

SOUNDS GREAT, BUT HOW?

Practice getting and staying curious about those with whom you disagree. In the narratives we tell ourselves and others about a conflict we’re involved in, we’re always the hero. The other person is the problem, the perpetrator, the nut job causing all the chaos and disorder. If we can slow down, get a little distance, a little breathing room to step back and reflect on the issue, our role in it and recognize that the person we’re fighting with most likely sees themselves as the hero in their story, too, a shift can start to happen. We slowly move from demonizing to humanizing — and curiosity plays a role in helping us get there, along with a dose of humility and humor.

ARE THERE STRATEGIES TO BOOST ONE’S CURIOSITY?

Start with a low-stakes situation. Go to a new restaurant and order something you’ve heard of but haven’t tried. Visit a neighborhood you’ve never been to and take a stroll. Ask people what they most enjoy about living there or how they think others misunderstand their neighborhood. Watch a documentary or movie about people whose lives appear to be drastically different from yours and look for commonalities. Maybe you and the protagonist both prioritize faith and family above everything. These may seem like silly ideas, but curiosity is not second nature when we’re in high conflict. If we regularly and genuinely exercise curiosity like a muscle, with time it will get stronger. And maybe, just maybe, we can start having healthier fights that leave us understanding more about ourselves, others and the issues that divide us.

WHERE DOES ONE BEGIN?

It takes time and practice. It takes not doing it right many, many times and

recognizing that and thinking, “How could this have gone differently?” You have to do the audit, play the tape back over past conversations, past debates we’ve had with people: Where did this go wrong and where was the opportunity for it to go a different direction? It doesn’t just happen.

ARE YOU SO USED TO IT THAT IT’S AUTOMATIC?

It’s not that it works consistently. But there has to be the will to see the person as human first, rather than demonizing them or seeing them as “the other.” There’s a few questions that I think come from the book “Crucial Conversations.” Why would a rational, well-meaning person respond in this way? Or do this? Or say this? You have got to ask that first. But it takes practice.

HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS OR MEETINGS?

You can ask yourself, how do I want to show up in this gathering? How do I want to interact with this person? Then you can think through and play through how this could go. You know, what are some of the questions that I could ask? How can I put that person first? People are relatively selfish. We think about ourselves first — our wants and our needs. That’s who we are as humans. It’s difficult because sometimes if our wants and our needs are not being met, it’s hard to have a healthy argument, especially if this other person is in some way influencing the needs that we have. But we can slow down and think about how we want to show up and how we can get the best out of a situation without seeing the other person as less than human. That’s a starting point. But it’s not something that everyone will want to do.

DO YOU APPLY THAT TO POLITICAL DISCORD?

I had a former neighbor visit and it was difficult for him to hear me explaining things like how to approach people he

politically disagrees with. He didn’t see how it was possible. He asked, How do I do that to someone who’s operating from a different set of facts and they’re lying? And they want to harm people like me? Well, I understand that. But I guess my question is, What’s the alternative? If you want to live your life seeing half of this country as your enemy, that sounds like a pretty hopeless life.

DO YOU THINK AS A COUNTRY OUR DEMEANOR IS GETTING BETTER OR WORSE?

The answer depends on the day. There are some days when I’m shocked because I’m hearing about how a newsroom brought people together around an intractable conflict and got people to talk and be open and — my gosh — listen to the stories and the personal experiences of others. That’s the day when I just feel so much hope. And then there are days when I turn on the news and I see something or hear something and I wonder how many steps we’ve taken backwards. I don’t believe, though, that we’re as polarized as people think. We’re so much more open about how we’re talking about disagreement and division and conflict in ways that we didn’t always do in the past. And I think people aren’t afraid to say that I disagree or that’s wrong or I feel a different way about this. I think it can be used in unhealthy ways, of course, whether we’re talking about social media, the news, whatever it might be. But I don’t believe that things are worse off. We have to be careful about finding scapegoats. Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost a sense of ownership in terms of our role in creating a healthy democracy and we point fingers at things as opposed to doing the internal work of thinking, OK, where do I stand in all of this and how do I show up?

WHAT IS YOUR LAST WORD ON THIS?

Ask questions, listen and stay curious about others.