The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics

This is excellent news for conservatives. To win elections you have to win the center, so pushing the Democrats further Left is a losing proposition for them

It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump, but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.

The jockeying between groups, donors and operatives for cash and turf is occurring mostly behind the scenes. But it has grown acrimonious at times, with upstarts complaining they are being boxed out by a liberal establishment that they say enables the sort of Democratic timidity that paved the way for the Trump presidency.

The tug of war — more than the lingering squabbles between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — foreshadows a once-in-a-generation reorganization of the American left that could dictate the tactics and ideology of the Democratic Party for years to come. If the newcomers prevail, they could pull the party further to the left, leading it to embrace policy positions like those advocated by Mr. Sanders, including single-payer health care and free tuition at public colleges.

The upending of the left comes amid a broader realignment in American politics, with the Republican Party establishment also contending with a rising rebellion, driven by pro-Trump populists. Just as the new forces on the right are threatening primary challenges to establishment Republicans, some groups on the left have begun talking about targeting Democratic incumbents in the 2018 midterm elections.

Entrenched Democratic groups are facing growing questions about the return on the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent over the years. Groups affiliated with Mrs. Clinton “spent so much money based on a bad strategy in this last cycle that they should step aside and let others lead in this moment,” said Quentin James, a founder of a political committee called the Collective PAC that supports African-American candidates.

Mr. James’s committee is among more than three dozen outfits that have started or reconfigured themselves since the election to try to harness the surge in anti-Trump activism. In addition to political committees, grass-roots mobilization nonprofits and legal watchdog groups, there are for-profit companies providing technological help to the new groups — essentially forming a new liberal ecosystem outside the confines of the Democratic Party.

While the new groups gained early traction mostly on the strength of grass-roots volunteers and small donations — and with relatively meager overall budgets — they are beginning to attract attention from the left’s most generous benefactors.

“We’re in a disruptive period, and when we get through it, the progressive infrastructure landscape may look different,” said Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberals who donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. “There may be groups that have been around that don’t rise to the challenge, and there may be some new groups that do rise to the challenge, while others fade away.”

The Democracy Alliance has helped shape the institutional left, steering more than $600 million since its inception in 2005 to a portfolio of carefully selected groups, including pillars of the Clinton-aligned establishment like the think tank Center for American Progress and the media watchdog Media Matters.

But this year, the Democracy Alliance hired Archana Sahgal, a former Obama White House official, to help the new anti-Trump groups, and it suspended its intensive vetting and approval process to recommend donations to a host of groups created since last fall’s election.

The Democracy Alliance distributed a “resistance map” to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible.

Perhaps no group epitomizes the differences between the legacy left and the grass-roots resistance like Indivisible. Started as a Google document detailing techniques for opposing the Republican agenda under Mr. Trump, the group now has a mostly Washington-based staff of about 40 people, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country. The national Indivisible hub, which consists of a pair of nonprofit groups, has raised nearly $6 million since its start, primarily through small-dollar donations made through its website.

Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.

And an advocacy group funded by the billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, a founding member of the Democracy Alliance and one of the most influential donors on the left, is considering a donation in the low six figures to Indivisible. Mr. Soros has already donated to a host of nonprofit groups playing key roles in the anti-Trump movement, including the Center for Community Change, Color of Change and Local Progress.

Indivisible would “gladly” accept a check from Mr. Soros or his foundation, said an official with the group, Sarah Dohl. But, she added, the group is committed to ensuring that money from major donors does not become a majority of the group’s revenue “because we want to maintain our independence both from the funders and from the party.”

The group may start a political committee that could support primary challenges in 2018 against Democratic incumbents, Ms. Dohl said.

“It’s not a secret that we would like to move the Democratic Party further left,” she said, adding that “the party will only get to where it needs to go if it has groups like ours pushing them to do the right thing.” She cited her group’s aggressive opposition to Republicans’ initial efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act at a time when she said Democratic congressional leaders “didn’t really have a strategy.”

Established liberal groups like the Center for American Progress haven’t always been as forceful, Ms. Dohl said, though she added that the think tank “has gotten better at calling on Democrats to stand up and speak more boldly than they have in the past.

More HERE

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Promise Kept: Trump Administration Protects Americans’ Religious Freedom

The Justice Department fulfilled President Donald Trump’s promise to provide clear guidance on the administration’s commitment to restore robust protection of religious freedom across all federal agencies and executive departments Friday.

This fix was sorely needed in the wake of actions by President Barack Obama’s administration that harmed Americans’ religious liberty.

The May 4 executive order that Trump signed in the Rose Garden and Friday’s guidance from the Justice Department clarified what should have been clear all along: that as Americans, we have the right not only to worship according to our consciences, but to publicly live out our beliefs. This includes the right to think, to speak, and to act in accordance with our beliefs in every sphere of life, including in schools, in federal workplaces, in nonprofit organizations, and in for-profit companies.

A number of Obama-era policies curtailed that right, including by forcing religious employers (both closely held companies and nonprofits) to fund abortion-inducing drugs and contraception under Obamacare, in violation of their consciences.

The Obama administration also winnowed the definition of religious freedom down to the narrow idea of “freedom of worship.” This was rebutted in the first line of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ memorandum where he described religious liberty as “a foundational principle of enduring importance in America” that “is in its nature an unalienable right.”

The attorney general recalled the words of Founding Father James Madison that the duty owed to one’s creator is “precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.” With this strong language, the attorney general has taken a significant step toward restoring a correct understanding of the relationship between people of faith and the government.

The memorandum to the Justice Department’s guidance goes further by outlining 20 principles of religious liberty. Among these are the principles that religious liberty includes both acting and abstaining from acting (Principle 2), that alleged “third-party harms” do not automatically override religious liberty (Principle 15), and that religious organizations can hire according to their beliefs and mission (Principle 19). This is a particularly important point as religious entities like schools must ensure that their employees uphold their codes of conduct in order to be faithful to their missions.

The guidance from the Justice Department also reaffirms the high standard that Congress enacted for federal government actions when it passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—the test of “strict scrutiny.” Under this highest level of judicial review, if a government policy imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion, it must demonstrate that the government has a compelling interest and that it has carried out its policy through the least restrictive means.

The Supreme Court applied this standard in Sherbert v. Verner.  The court held that the state of South Carolina violated the religious freedom of a Seventh-day Adventist when it denied her unemployment benefits even though her religious beliefs compelled her to decline her employer’s request that she work on Saturdays.

Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 in response to the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which had lowered the threshold for government policies that burden religion. Sessions stated: “Except in the narrowest of circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law.”

Now, like then, Congress should act to protect religious freedom from new challenges as a result of government’s redefinition of marriage.

Donald Verrilli, Obama’s surgeon general, acknowledged during the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges that those who simply disagree with the government’s new policy on marriage could be in jeopardy of losing their tax exemption. Verrilli was acknowledging that if the government begins to enact policies that promote same-sex marriage as orthodoxy, it must either provide a way out for religious dissenters or infringe on their religious freedom.

The Trump administration has fulfilled its promise to uphold religious freedom during the president’s time in office. But, Americans need our representatives to provide permanent, robust protections of our first freedom through legislation.

Congress can pass the First Amendment Defense Act to protect individuals and groups from being penalized by the federal government in tax treatment as well as in accrediting, loans, licensing, distribution of grants and contracts, and employment because of their religious beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman.

Congress can also pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act to protect faith-based agencies that find homes for orphans and foster children from hostile legal actions by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union.

All Americans benefit from the services that are provided by an estimated 350,000 religious congregations that serve over 70 million people each year. In addition, faith-based organizations provide services to the U.S. economy that are valued at $1.2 trillion, more than Google, Apple, and Amazon combined. These groups—whether they are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or other—should be able to serve their communities without sacrificing their religious beliefs.

The Trump administration has reversed the wrong direction of the Obama years by unequivocally stating its commitment to protecting religious freedom. Congress should follow suit. Our first freedom is the foundation of our country’s civility and religious diversity. All branches of government should respect it at all times.

SOURCE

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