Conservatives

MIAMI — Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton appealed to his fellow Southerners’ sense of pride Tuesday, telling an assembly of the region’s state legislators that GOP entreaties to “traditional values” placed President Bush in the White House but produced little benefit to their states.

“We never got anywhere, anywhere, anywhere in our part of the country by being sucker-punched (with) appeals to our traditional values,” Clinton said in a speech to the Southern Legislative Conference meeting in Miami.

“Let us vote on our traditional values,” he said. “Let us live our traditional values. Let us lift up our whole country by starting in the South and saying, ‘Give us a new direction for our country.’ ”

Clinton’s remarks were intended to pry the region’s voters away from the GOP and to recapture the ballots of conservative Southerners. That strategy has been the linchpin of Clinton’s campaign because Democrats have won neither the region nor the White House since 1976–when Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter did so. Like Carter, who beat President Gerald R. Ford, Clinton is the governor of a Southern state: Arkansas.

Although Clinton seemed to play up his audience’s Southern pride, his comments also hinted at the sense of inferiority frequently directed at the region.

He acknowledged that education gaps, racial discord and economic production have held back advancement in states located below the Mason-Dixon line, but suggested the region has dealt with those problems with more candor and openness than other parts of the country.

“Don’t you think the South has come a long way in the last few years?” Clinton said, citing foreign investments, lessened racial tensions and improved student academic achievement. “It’s something I think most of us are pretty proud of. I know our region still has a higher percentage of poor folks than other regions of the country, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

Appearing before the bipartisan organization of lawmakers and their staffs, Clinton rarely mentioned Bush by name. But he criticized the record of his Administration and his party–which has controlled the White House for the last 12 years–saying the GOP had failed to improve health care in the South and across the nation.

“You ask the people you represent not to throw their vote away on the kind of rhetoric the people have gotten those of us in the South to be a sucker for for decades,” he told the legislators. “Let’s show them there is a New South and we’re a lot smarter than they think we are, and that whoever gets our votes this time will have to respond to our hopes for our children.”

Clinton also discussed his health care proposals, including a so-called “play-or-pay” plan that aims to insure every American. Firms would either have to “play” by providing health insurance to their employees, or pay into a federal fund that would cover those without insurance.

His plan would also require insurance-company reforms and cuts in unnecessary paperwork that boost medical costs without improving benefits.

“Otherwise, you’re going to have more and more and these (insurance firms) dividing up the health insurance markets to where the very ideal thing (they) can do is to insure a group of 15- to 25-year-old women, who spend two hours a day in the gym, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat hamburgers, (and are) going to live forever. It’s their only way to save money.”

Clinton also attacked Bush’s proposal to give vouchers to the poor and tax breaks to the middle class to help buy health insurance. “The (President’s) benefits are completely consumed by cost increases in a year,” Clinton contended.

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan also spoke to the group, defending Bush’s health care proposal. Sullivan, who preceded Clinton to the podium, gave the Democrat an opportunity to criticize White House policy without heaping abuse on the Cabinet’s only black.

“He’s a good fellow,” Clinton said of Sullivan. “He’s just got a heavy load to carry.”

Clinton elicited his only standing ovation when he described how Bush would try to link him to the Democrats’ past during the Republican Convention next week.

“You know as well as I do what’s about to happen,” he said, grinning broadly. “The other side is going to go down there to Houston and tell you (vice presidential nominee) Al Gore and I may have been born in Arkansas and Tennessee, but we’re just a bunch of crazy, wild-eyed liberals. They’re going to tell you that (Democrats) took us to New York City in a safe . . . and incubated us there for 20 years. We got their crazy ideas, came home and hid them for 20 years waiting for the opportunity to spring them on the rest of the country.”

As the audience roared with laughter and applause, Clinton continued mocking his opponents’ strategy:

“They’re going to say every speech I gave on the Fourth of July in northeast Arkansas was a deliberate attempt to conceal my radical impulses. And we just can’t wait to get into power in Washington, where we can take your guns away and trample family values and raise taxes on every poor, working person in America.

“I can hear them now.”

The Democratic campaign also swept through New England on Tuesday as Gore toured a leading computer firm in Cambridge, Mass., saying that high technology will create jobs and keep America competitive into the 21st Century.

“It translates into real jobs for real people,” Gore said, surrounded by colorful supercomputers capable of making computations at unprecedented speeds. “It sounds a little high-tech. And it is high-tech. . . . But in the competition we now face in the world marketplace, we’ve got to be willing to move ahead and create the jobs of the future.”

Gore delivered his remarks during a visit to Thinking Machines Corp., a nine-year-old firm that makes the most powerful computers in use today.

Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.

South Asians have played a prominent role in President Trump’s universe, especially in his second term.

Second Lady Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants who came to California to study and never went back. Harmeet Dhillon, born in India and a devout Sikh, is currently his U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. And the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, is (like potential New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,) of Indian descent by way of Uganda.

Some Republicans have taken pride in this kind of diversity, citing it for the gains Trump made in 2024 with Black and Latino voters.

But these days, the MAGA big tent seems to be collapsing fast.

Last week, MAGA had a total anti-Indian meltdown on social media, revealing a deep, ugly racism toward South Asians.

It comes amid the first real rebellion about rampant and increasingly open antisemitism within the MAGAverse, creating a massive rift between traditional conservatives and a younger, rabidly anti-Jewish contingent called groypers whose leader, Nick Fuentes, recently posted that he is “team Hitler.”

Turns out, when you cultivate a political movement based on hate, at some point the hate is uncontrollable. In fact, that hate needs to be fed to maintain power — even if it means feasting on its own.

This monster of white-might ugliness is going to dominate policy and politics for the next election, and these now-public fights within the Republican party represent a new dynamic that will either force it to do some sort of soul searching, or purge it of anything but white Christian nationalism. My bet is on the latter. But if conservatives ever truly believed in their inclusive talk, then it’s time for Republicans to stand up and demand the big Trump tent they were hailing just a few months ago.

Ultra-conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who opposes much of Fuentes’ worldview, summed up this Republican split succinctly.

Fuentes’ followers “are white supremacists, hate women, Jews, Hindus, many types of Christians, brown people of a wide variety of backgrounds, Blacks, America’s foreign policy and America’s constitution,” Shapiro explained. “They admire Hitler and Stalin and that splinter faction is now being facilitated and normalized within the mainstream Republican Party.”

MAGA’s anti-Indian sentiment had an explosive moment a few days ago when a South Asian woman asked Vice President JD Vance a series of questions during a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi. The young immigrant wanted to know how Vance could preach for the removal of nearly 18 million immigrants? And how could he claim that the United States was a Christian nation, rather than one that valued pluralism?

“How can you stop us and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?” the woman asked. “Why do I have to be a Christian?”

Vance’s answer went viral, in part because he claimed his wife, although from a Hindu family, was “agnostic or atheist,” and that he hoped she would convert to Christianity.

“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” he said.

Vance later tried to do some damage control on social media, calling Usha Vance a “blessing” and promising to continue to “support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife.”

But many South Asians felt Vance was dissing his wife’s heritage and attempting to downplay her non-whiteness. They vented on social media, and got a lot of MAGA feelings back.

“How can you pretend to be a white nativist politician who will ‘bring america back to it’s golden age’ … when your wife is an indian immigrant?” wrote one poster.

Dhillon received similar feedback recently for urging calm and fairness after a Sikh truck driver allegedly caused a fatal crash.

“[N]o ma’am, it is CRYSTAL CLEAR that sihks and hindus need to get the hell out of my country,” one reply stated. “You and your kind are no longer welcome here. Go the [expletive] home.”

Patel too, got it, after posting a message on Diwali, a religious holiday that celebrates the victory of light over darkness. He was dubbed a demon worshipper, a favorite anti-Indian trope.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Duh, of course MAGA is racist.” But here’s the thing. The military has been scrubbed of many Black officers. The federal workforce, long a bastion for middle-class people of color, has been decimated. Minority cabinet members or top officials are few. Aside from another South Asian, Tulsi Gabbard, there’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez‑DeRemer and HUD head Scott Turner.

South Asians are largely the last visible sign of pluralism in Republican power, an erstwhile proof that the charges of racism from the left are unfair. But now, like Latinos, they are increasingly targets of the base.

At the same time anti-Indian hate was surfacing last week, a whole load of MAGA antisemitism hit the fan. It started when Tucker Carlson, who in his post-network life has re-created himself as a hugely popular podcaster with more than 16 million followers on X, invited Fuentes on his show.

In addition to calling for the death of American Jews, Fuentes has also said women want him to rape them and should be burned alive, Black people belong in prison and LGBTQ+ people are an abomination.

Anyone who is not his kind of Christian “must be absolutely annihilated when we take power,” he said.

Turns out far-right Charlie Kirk was a bulwark against this straight-up American Nazi. Kirk’s popularity kept Fuentes — who often trolled Kirk — from achieving dominance as the spirit guide of young MAGA. Now, with Kirk slain, nothing appears to be stopping Fuentes from taking up that mantle.

After the Fuentes interview, sane conservatives (there are some left) were apoplectic that Carlson would support someone who so openly admits to being anti-Israel and seemingly pro-Nazi. They demanded the Heritage Foundation, historical backbone of the conservative movement, creators of Project 2025 and close allies of Tucker, do something. The head of Heritage, Kevin Roberts, offered what many considered a sorry-not-sorry. He condemned Fuentes, saying he was “fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence.”

But also counseled that Fuentes shouldn’t be banished from the party.

“Join us — not to cancel — but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation,” Roberts said.

Are Nazis really all bad? Discuss!

The response from ethical conservatives — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — has been that you don’t politely hear Nazis out, and if the Republican Party can’t clearly say that Nazis aren’t welcome, it’s got a problem.

Yes, the Republican Party has a problem.

The right rode to power by attacking what it denigrates at “wokeism” on the left. MAGA declared that to confront fascism or racism or misogyny — to tell its purveyors to sit down and shut up — was wrong. That “canceling,” or banishment from common discourse for spewing hate, was somehow an infringement on 1st Amendment rights or even terrorism.

They screamed loud and clear that speaking out against intolerance was the worst, most unacceptable form of intolerance itself — and would not be tolerated.

You know who heard them loud and clear? Fuentes. He has checkmated establishment Republicans with their own cowardice and hypocrisy.

So now his young Christian white supremacists are empowered, and intent on taking over as the leaders of the party. Fuentes is saying what old guard Republicans don’t want to hear, but secretly fear: He already is dangerously close to being the mainstream; just read the comments.

Roberts, the Heritage president, said it himself: “Diversity will never be our strength. Unity is our strength, and a lack of unity is a sign of weakness.”

Trying to shut Fuentes up or kick him out will likely anger that vocal and powerful part of the base that enjoys the freedom to be openly hateful, and really wouldn’t mind a male-dominated white Christian autocracy.

The far right has free-speeched their way into fascism, and Fuentes is loving every minute of it.

So now this remaining vestige of traditional conservatives — including senators such as Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell — is faced with a painful reckoning. Many mainstream Republicans for years ignored the racism and antisemitism creeping into the party. They can’t anymore. It has grown into a beast ready to consume its maker.

Will they let this takeover happen, call for conversation over condemnation to the glee of Fuentes and his followers?

Or will they find the courage to be not just true Republicans, but true Americans, and declare non-negotiable for their party that most basic of American ideals: We do not tolerate hate?

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservatives face a test of their own making this week as they decide whether President Trump had the legal authority to impose tariffs on imports from nations across the globe.

At issue are import taxes that are paid by American businesses and consumers.

Small-business owners had sued, including a maker of “learning toys” in Illinois and a New York importer of wines and spirits. They said Trump’s ever-changing tariffs had severely disrupted their businesses, and they won rulings declaring the president had exceeded his authority.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear their first major challenge to Trump’s claims of unilateral executive power. And the outcome is likely to turn on three doctrines that have been championed by the court’s conservatives.

First, they say the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original meaning. Its opening words say: “All legislative powers … shall be vested” in Congress, and the elected representatives “shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposes and excises.”

Second, they believe the laws passed by Congress should be interpreted based on their words. They call this “textualism,” which rejects a more liberal and open-ended approach that included the general purpose of the law.

Trump and his lawyers say his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs were authorized by the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA.

That 1977 law says the president may declare a national emergency to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat” involving national security, foreign policy or the economy of the United States. Faced with such an emergency, he may “investigate, block … or regulate” the “importation or exportation” of any property.

Trump said the nation’s “persistent” balance of payments deficit over five decades was such an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

In the past, the law has been used to impose sanctions or freeze the assets of Iran, Syria and North Korea or groups of terrorists. It does not use the words “tariffs” or “duties,” and it had not been used for tariffs prior to this year.

The third doctrine arose with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and is called the “major questions” doctrine.

He and the five other conservatives said they were skeptical of far-reaching and costly regulations issued by the Obama and Biden administrations involving matters such as climate change, student loan forgiveness or mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for 84 million Americans.

Congress makes the laws, not federal regulators, they said in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022.

And unless there is a “clear congressional authorization,” Roberts said the court will not uphold assertions of “extravagant statutory power over the national economy.”

Now all three doctrines are before the justices, since the lower courts relied on them in ruling against Trump.

No one disputes that the president could impose sweeping worldwide tariffs if he had sought and won approval from the Republican-controlled Congress. However, he insisted the power was his alone.

In a social media post, Trump called the case on tariffs “one of the most important in the History of the Country. If a President is not allowed to use Tariffs, we will be at a major disadvantage against all other Countries throughout the World, especially the ‘Majors.’ In a true sense, we would be defenseless! Tariffs have brought us Great Wealth and National Security in the nine months that I have had the Honor to serve as President.”

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, his top courtroom attorney, argues that tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security. And if so, the court should defer to the president.

“IEEPA authorizes the imposition of regulatory tariffs on foreign imports to deal with foreign threats — which crucially differ from domestic taxation,” he wrote last month.

For the same reason, “the major questions doctrine … does not apply here,” he said. It is limited to domestic matters, not foreign affairs, he argued.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has sounded the same note in the past.

Sauer will also seek to persuade the court that the word “regulate” imports includes imposing tariffs.

The challengers are supported by prominent conservatives, including Stanford law professor Michael McConnell.

In 2001, he and John Roberts were nominated for a federal appeals court at the same time by President George W. Bush, and he later served with now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

He is the lead counsel for one group of small-business owners.

“This case is what the American Revolution was all about. A tax wasn’t legitimate unless it was imposed by the people’s representatives,” McConnell said. “The president has no power to impose taxes on American citizens without Congress.”

His brief argues that Trump is claiming a power unlike any in American history.

“Until the 1900s, Congress exercised its tariff power directly, and every delegation since has been explicit and strictly limited,” he wrote in Trump vs. V.O.S. Selections. “Here, the government contends that the President may impose tariffs on the American people whenever he wants, at any rate he wants, for any countries and products he wants, for as long as he wants — simply by declaring longstanding U.S. trade deficits a national ‘emergency’ and an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ declarations the government tells us are unreviewable. The president can even change his mind tomorrow and back again the day after that.”

He said the “major questions” doctrine fully applies here.

Two years ago, he noted the court called Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness “staggering by any measure” because it could cost more than $430 billion. By comparison, he said, the Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs will impose $1.7 trillion in new taxes on Americans by 2035.

The case figures to be a major test of whether the Roberts court will put any legal limits on Trump’s powers as president.

But the outcome will not be the final word on tariffs. Administration officials have said that if they lose, they will seek to impose them under other federal laws that involve national security.

Still pending before the court is an emergency appeal testing the president’s power to send National Guard troops to American cities over the objection of the governor and local officials.

Last week, the court asked for further briefs on the Militia Act of 1908, which says the president may call up the National Guard if he cannot “with the regular forces … execute the laws of the United States.”

The government had assumed the regular forces were the police and federal agents, but a law professor said the regular forces in the original law referred to the military.

The justices asked for a clarification from both sides by Nov. 17.