Conservatives

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.

Reporting from Washington — With the campaign in its final week, well-funded conservative groups have shifted their focus from the airwaves to voters’ phone lines, front doors and mailboxes — part of a get-out-the-vote effort that could tip the scales in tight races across the country.

But the push to get the nation’s conservative voters to the polls is fractured and untested, with some “tea party” activists refusing to cooperate with more mainstream Republicans, in contrast to the unified and well-organized parallel effort by unions and Democrats, according to key players on both sides.

Up to now, the emphasis on the right has been on television ads, and conservative groups — including American Crossroads, founded in part by GOP strategist Karl Rove — have dominated with the help of undisclosed donors willing to pour millions of dollars into key races.

For the final stretch, Crossroads is dedicating $10 million to the “ground game.” The conservative Americans for Prosperity expects to spend $17 million, opening field offices in 12 states. Tea party organizers, state parties, antiabortion groups and business associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also begun their own get-out-the-vote efforts.

The state parties in Illinois and California, in particular, are well funded and sophisticated, and may surpass voter outreach those states have seen in the past.

With money and momentum on their side, Republicans are considered competitive in dozens of districts once thought to be out of reach. But races are tightening, and the voter mobilization program could determine whether the election provides better than average midterm gains for the GOP.

“There is a sense now that Republicans may not be able to capitalize on the backlash against [President] Obama and the Democrats because they lack the well-organized voter ID and get-out-the-vote effort that they have had in the past,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who has been comparing the ground game of both parties. There is enormous variation now state to state, he said.

Democrats and allied groups are spending most of their $200-million political budgets in the largely invisible effort to turn out sympathetic voters.

The party was shocked to lose control of the House in 1994 in the so-called Gingrich Revolution. Since then, Democrats and labor have emphasized personal voter contact to win close races. In Pennsylvania last week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said his organization planned to “touch” every union member in the state 25 times with mail, phone calls and personal visits in the campaign’s final weeks.

For the GOP, this year’s patchwork approach is a dramatic departure from the last decade, when a single well-organized entity — the Republican National Committee — ran sophisticated voter mobilization programs that were years in the making. But the RNC has faltered in funding and organization recently, and outside groups have stepped up efforts, many of them starting only recently.

“I think the biggest difference in this year is generally this is not a party-driven year, this is not a personality-driven year,” said Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, whose group has launched its first voter mobilization effort. Phillips said the effort reflected a shift to movement politics organized around issues, not politicians.

American Crossroads, a tax-exempt group receiving contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals, is putting its ground-game resources to use in nine battleground states. It plans to send more than 100 volunteers to Colorado and Nevada, said Steven Law, the organization’s president.

Crossroads will generate 9 million phone calls and 5 million pieces of mail before election day, Law said.

More important, Crossroads has encouraged other conservative groups to share voter contact lists, polling information and geographic priorities, as Democrats have in recent years.

“We wanted to be a resource for exchanging lists of names and voter targeting information,” Law said.

Although some conservative groups — such as the Republican Governors Assn. and Americans for Tax Reform — have cooperated with Crossroads, others resist being too closely associated with establishment figures.

FreedomWorks, a Washington-based group that has supported tea party activists across the country, expects to spend $500,000 on its own program that taps into the network of tea party supporters.

Brendan Steinhauser, director of state and federal campaigns at FreedomWorks, said the distance from the party was an advantage in recruiting new activists.

“A lot of people don’t want to work with the Republican Party, for the most part,” he said. “They like the candidate, but they don’t want to go to GOP headquarters. They’ll work with us.”

In addition to getting out the vote, many conservative organizations continue to buy advertising even though little air time is available. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would spend $1 million on Washington’s Senate race in the final week, using much of it for Web-based advertising on behalf of Dino Rossi, the Republican hoping to unseat Sen. Patty Murray.

The chamber is also sending funds to newly competitive House races in Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania. All told, the chamber expects to be active in 50 House races and 12 Senate campaigns this cycle, said Political Director Bill Miller.

For tea party groups, the final days of the campaign represent the culmination of months of training and organizing political newcomers.

In West Virginia, where the Senate race is close, a handful of groups are coordinating efforts on weekly phone calls. As they canvass neighborhoods, FreedomWorks arms them with maps pinpointing independent, unreliable voters who are likely to lean conservative.

FreedomWorks, led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, says it aims to reach 50,000 voters in West Virginia with both a knock on the door and a phone call.

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Oct. 18 (UPI) — Bolivia’s presidential runoff election on Sunday is the nation’s first and excludes a socialist candidate after voters narrowed the field to two conservative candidates on Friday.

Christian Democratic Party candidate Sen. Rodrigo Paz Pereira secured 32% of the popular vote to lead all candidates, while former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga secured the second-most with 27% of votes to set up Sunday’s runoff, according to Americas Quarterly.

Paz is a centrist candidate and the son of former Bolivian President Jaime Paz Zamora, who led the nation from 1989 to 1993.

Quiroga, 67, was serving as Bolivia’s vice president when he ascended to the presidency for one year, from Aug. 7, 2001, to Aug. 6, 2002, following the resignation of President Hugo Banzer due to a cancer diagnosis.

He was elected vice president in 1997 at age 37, which made him the nation’s youngest person to hold that office.

Quiroga was defeated in three prior campaigns to be elected president, but many now view him as the favorite.

His platform includes establishing a free market economic system rooted in capitalism and that supports private property rights for citizens.

He also wants to transfer government ownership of the nation’s ample natural resources, especially natural gas, iron and lithium, to private citizens and entities.

Paz, 58, also wants to establish a market-based economy and made “Capitalism for All” his campaign’s motto.

The lack of a socialist candidate in the presidential runoff is viewed as a public rebuke of the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism) Party, which has controlled Bolivia’s politics over the past two decades.

Bolivia has been one of South America’s leading socialist states over the past 20 years, but the nation is mired in an economic collapse that many attribute to government mismanagement of natural resources, according to The Telegraph.

MAS presidential candidate Eduardo del Castillo received only 3% of the vote during the first round of voting.

The MAS party also is about to lose its majorities in both houses of the Bolivian Legislature amid recent controversies.

They include an arrest warrant for former MAS Party member and former President Evo Morales being issued due to an alleged statutory rape.