Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 22

How the Christian right is driving people left-of-center people away from religion

An article from 1 and a half years ago about how conservatism and Christianity teaming togehter has driven off people that are left of center away from religion. As someone who largely sees religion in the context of justifying being anti-abortion (aka forcing women to give birth if inseminated regardless of the context) and homophobic, I agree with this, even if many (most?) catholics and many other people who see themselves as 'religious' don't fit in that image.

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee formally acknowledged what has been evident for quite some time: Nonreligious voters are a critical part of the party’s base. In a one-page resolution passed at its annual summer meeting, the DNC called on Democratic politicians to recognize and celebrate the contributions of nonreligious Americans, who make up one-third of Democrats. In response, Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to Trump, appeared on Fox News, saying the Democrats were finally admitting they are a “godless party.”

[...] Conservative Christian leaders have been repeating some version of this claim for years, and have often called on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against a growing wave of liberal secularism. And it’s true that liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades. But blaming the Democrats, as Jeffress and others are wont to do, doesn’t capture the profound role that conservative Christian activists have played in transforming the country’s religious landscape, and the role they appear to have played in liberals’ rejection of organized religion.

Politics is shaping how some liberals think about religion

At first, it wasn’t clear why so many Americans were losing their faith — and of the available explanations, politics wasn’t high on the list. After all, there are lots of reasons why any individual person would stop attending church that have nothing to do with politics. A church scandal might spark a crisis of faith. You might begin to view a religion’s hierarchies or rules as antiquated, restrictive or irrelevant to your life. You might not have been that religious to begin with.

[...] two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular, those conventional reasons couldn’t explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldn’t fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives. In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian right’s involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

Redistricting timeline alert map

An informative (albeit terribly designed imo) website about how state legislative deadlines are affected by the census data delay to September this year.

Bessemer, Alabama's union battle against Amazon is a David and Goliath tale

More than 45,000 bridges are rated in poor condition in the US, but President Joe Biden's attempt to make his party's infrastructure bill bipartisan enough to pass will be a large challenge

Not many issues unite Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill like crumbling roads, airports and transit systems back home – and the Biden administration is hoping an effort to modernize America’s neglected infrastructure might fuel a rare moment of bipartisanship.

With Congress' recent passage of the COVID-19 stimulus bill known as the American Rescue Plan, President Joe Biden met with Republican and Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks to discuss how to move forward on an infrastructure plan. He's expected to unveil his infrastructure proposal in the coming weeks.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is scheduled to appear before the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee on Thursday to lay out the administration’s priorities in what will be a first step in a monthslong negotiation with Congress to reshape how Americans travel around the country.

An opportunity to combat climate change

This isn't just a moment to help the trains run on time. For Biden and congressional Democrats, it's also about confronting one of the largest sources of climate change.

Transportation, mainly gas-powered vehicles and planes, accounts for about 28% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest sector contributing to climate change, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Progressives in Congress and environmental groups are pushing the administration to include a strong climate component in whatever proposal the Biden administration delivers. Those components are still being discussed so it's not clear exactly what the final proposal will look like.

But Republicans, many of whom represent fossil fuel-producing states, are wary of adding progressive climate policies to a bill they generally believe should focus on increasing transportation capacity.