Latest news with #Explained
Vox
2 days ago
- Politics
- Vox
The spin master in charge of feeding Gaza
The desperate plight of starving Gazans has captured the world's attention. Children are dying of malnutrition. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to receive aid. The United Nations World Food Program has found that one-third of Gaza's roughly 2.1 million residents are not eating for multiple days in a row. More than 100 international aid organizations — including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and Oxfam — signed a letter last week saying that 'restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under [Israel's] total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.' And more than 30 countries, including Israel's allies, issued a joint statement earlier this month condemning 'the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.' So who is overseeing this disaster? A public relations professional, the Rev. Johnnie Moore, with little experience in humanitarian aid. Moore is the executive chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private group backed by Israel and the US. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been controversial since it took over aid distribution in Gaza in May. Its first executive director, Jake Wood, resigned after a few weeks and complained of Israeli interference in their operations. The UN had set up 400 distribution sites in Gaza, but the GHF reduced that to four. The shortage of distribution sites has meant that Gazans walk long distances for food, and often leave empty-handed. Violence has also been prevalent at the aid distribution sites. American contractors armed with live ammunition and stun grenades guard the food alongside Israeli forces, who have opened fire on crowds awaiting aid. Israel denies responsibility and blames Hamas for the violence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that there is 'no starvation' in Gaza. Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with Arno Rosenfeld, enterprise reporter at The Forward, the largest Jewish news outlet in the United States, about Moore's background and how he's navigating the crisis. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. Tell us more about the guy who's in charge of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Johnnie Moore. Johnnie Moore is an evangelical leader with a long history in Republican politics. He graduated from Liberty University and then worked in communications for them for a number of years. That's the university founded by Jerry Falwell, a big evangelical mecca in the country. And then he went from that into PR. He was running a boutique PR firm that got acquired recently by a larger firm, and they do work for both Marriott Hotels and also Focus on the Family. It's not exclusively conservative religious causes, but it includes that. And then he's had various roles in the government. So he was an evangelical adviser to President Trump during his first campaign. He prayed with Trump in the White House… Prayed with Trump! Didn't know Trump was a big prayer. Well, he's surrounded himself with these leaders. And Liberty was a big part of burnishing his conservative evangelical bona fides during that first race. So he has a long history there. And Moore held various posts in the government. He was on the committee that the US has to promote religious freedom around the world. So he's traveled around the world to defend the religious liberty of Muslims in China and different groups in different countries in the Middle East. He was involved in some of the diplomatic work with Saudi Arabia with Trump. He met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a number of years ago. So Moore has had long ties to the Trump administration, and now he is in this new role as a humanitarian. Everything makes sense up until '... and now he's in this new role as a humanitarian.' Because, as you're saying here, he's basically a PR guy. How does he go from PR flack in the Trump administration to in charge of maybe one of the most consequential humanitarian missions on the planet? The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a very strange entity, but the most direct answer to your question is that Moore has a long history of supporting Israel, of traveling to Israel. He's deep into the world of Christian Zionism. Of course, a lot of Israel's strongest supporters in the United States are evangelical Christians. And so he comes out of that world and has these ties. And I think for a variety of reasons, when they were looking for someone to take over this organization after the executive director stepped down in May after only a few weeks on the job, they brought Moore in to burnish its reputation. He's been on a big media tour. So he's leaning into his PR expertise in this new role. What's he saying on his big media tour? His argument is basically that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the victim of conspiracy theories promoted by the United Nations, which wants to hoard all of the aid and the glory for delivering food for themselves. He's also claiming that Hamas is on their own PR tour and has snookered all of these reporters around the world into repeating lies about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. So, basically, GHF is doing great work. They're doing the most Christian thing possible, in his words, feeding people. And unfortunately, the entire international aid community at the behest of the UN and perhaps also Hamas just has it in for them. It's very unfair, but they're not going to let that stop them from doing the Lord's work. What does he have to say about all the dead Palestinians? The dead Palestinians as a result of starvation or as a result of being shot while trying to get food from his organization? The second one. His argument is, again: It's very tragic. They never want anyone to lose their lives. He said that they complain often to the IDF when the IDF shoots at people queuing for aid. He said the IDF has taken responsibility for those incidents. He said Hamas has also attacked GHF employees and Palestinians trying to get aid from GHF, and that Hamas has not taken responsibility for that. He said that more people are being killed trying to get UN and World Food Programme aid than have been killed trying to get his organization's aid. It depends a little bit how you parse the statistics. I don't think that's true, but that's what he's been saying in these public appearances. Is he convincing anyone? One of the things that's important to understand about his role and what the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is intended to do is that there is a segment of Israel supporters in the United States that live in a little bit of an alternate reality. And I think his job is to convince those people that Israel and the United States are not responsible for Palestinian civilians starving in Gaza. So, for example, the piece that I wrote was about him addressing the American Jewish Congress. And his argument to them was basically: Yes, there is a humanitarian crisis. We are doing everything in our power. The United States and Israel are doing the right thing. Unfortunately, all these other aid groups are just letting food rot. He's a charismatic guy. He's good at talking to these audiences. So I do think it's a convincing message for that audience. It's just a very specific audience. Does it tell us something, though, that this is the kind of person that was put at the top of this operation, that it wasn't someone with deep experience in aid, but instead someone who would fight the PR war around the effort? It's another good question because Cindy McCain, John McCain's widow, runs the World Food Programme. So it's not totally unprecedented to have people who have a public profile and political connections in these figurehead roles atop humanitarian organizations. But Cindy McCain, after a lot of pressure, has become increasingly critical of the Israeli government. That's what people thought might happen with GHF. It's not just that Moore has these political connections or that he doesn't have deep expertise in humanitarian aid, but his job is to defend the United States and Israel, which is incredibly unusual. It's not anything that I've seen an aid organization do in the past. Certainly sometimes they speak out politically here or there, but they're not typically primarily promoting what almost seems like a political agenda. And that's a lot of what we've seen Johnnie Moore do, even as he insists the politics are the worst possible thing for humanitarian aid and he doesn't want anything to do with them. A lot of Israel supporters in the United States are liberal. They do care about civilians in Gaza, and they're very alarmed by what they're seeing in the news about starvation in Gaza. And so I think those people desperately want to be reassured that Israel, the Jewish state that they support, is not responsible for mass starvation and civilian suffering in Gaza. And he's presented a very compelling narrative to them. That's a lot of the role that he's playing right now. And I think that he's playing it well.
Vox
3 days ago
- Politics
- Vox
How Republicans are trying to redistrict their way to a majority
We're more than a year out from the 2026 midterm elections, but the Republican Party is already starting to position itself for what will likely be a difficult election cycle. Texas lawmakers have an unusual plan to redraw their maps early and eke out as many as five more likely Republican seats in the House of Representatives — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom is promising to respond by doing the same thing in California. To find out more, I asked my colleague Christian Paz, who wrote about these efforts last week. We sat down to chat about his reporting for Vox's daily newsletter, Today, Explained, and our conversation is below. You can also sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this. What are Republicans trying to do ahead of the 2026 midterms? Ahead of the 2026 midterms, when parties in power tend to lose seats in Congress, there is an expectation that Trump, who has a tiny two-seat majority in the House, could lose that majority, which would effectively render him a lame duck for the second half of his second term. In response, Trump has been pushing for Texas state Republicans to take advantage of the fact that the legislature in Texas controls redistricting and to redraw the maps in Texas in the middle of the decade, when it is not usually the norm. Republicans could gain about five seats that are less competitive than the current map makes it out to be — essentially dividing up Democratic districts, mixing them with some Republican-leaning voters, and carving out five more seats that presumably Republicans would then win and be able to keep their majority in the House. Are there other states looking to do this, too? There are a handful of other states. At the moment, there is redistricting happening in Ohio as a result of court challenges in the past, and the new maps that are being redrawn would render about three more Republican seats out of Ohio. The other state is Missouri, which would render one more Republican seat. In response, the question has been, Can Democrats do this, too? The reason this is happening is because these are states where 1) Republicans have total control of government, and 2) the legislature still has power over drawing maps, or there are legal quirks requiring redistricting. Democrats are much more limited on this front because of the states that have Democratic trifectas, the majority of them don't give the power to redraw districts to the legislature. They give it to independent commissions or to bipartisan commissions, or their constitutions have stricter bans on redistricting early. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer, plus the most compelling stories of the day. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. With that being said, Gavin Newsom is threatening to add more Democratic seats in California. How does he want to make that happen? His plan is a little vague. A lot of the Democratic response seems to be a form of mutually assured destruction — the main idea here is to say that you're going to do the same thing and hope to scare Republicans out of doing this. And the idea Gavin Newsom has proposed is putting a measure on the ballot in an upcoming election, having a statewide referendum to either approve new maps or permanently change the way that the state does its redistricting. The idea there is to create five to seven more Democratic seats in California, which seems like a pretty tall order. It's possible that the state is already pretty maxed out. Can Democrats conceivably wring enough seats out of their redistrictable states to match the GOP? The other obvious seats that are out there are states like Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, which conceivably could all produce one to two more Democratic seats. There's always New York, too, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who met with Democratic state lawmakers from Texas last week, has said that he's open to the idea as well. Republicans seem to be all in for this plan. Democrats aren't so sure. Tell me about that. The issue here is that Democrats, because they have tended to be the folks who argued against gerrymandering and this kind of politically motivated redistricting, acknowledge that it's not normal to do this. They acknowledge that maybe the rules are changing, but redistricting opens them up to charges of hypocrisy or descending to the same level as Republicans. But many Democrats are saying, you know, We're running out of options. Democratic voters want us to do something. That's been the rallying cry from the party base to party leadership over the last year, and this is a pretty substantive plan to do that. But then what happens in the next five years? What happens in 10 years? Is this just going to become something that states do whenever they notice that their national party is in danger of losing a majority or losing a political advantage? Does that then diminish trust in the political system as a whole? Does that raise even more questions about accountability and transparency that were the point of trying to have independent redistricting to begin with? In previous midterms, you've seen much bigger swings than five or even 10 seats, so it's very possible that this shaves the margins for Republicans, but doesn't end up swinging control of the House in 2026, right? Yes. This could either be another 2018 'blue wave' situation, where even if Republicans redistrict, they would lose the majority anyway. Or it could be a 2022-style midterm, where you have mixed results — Democrats are able to flip some Senate seats, but Republicans are actually able to uphold or expand their House majority by small margins. And the reason I bring that last point up is because this is another point that some critics on both sides are making. By trying to gerrymander things even more, you're making assumptions about what voters you have in your column, and given how much various parts of the electorate have swung…Black and Latino voters have swung toward the Republicans. Could they be swinging away from them this time around? Are you making an assumption as a Republican that you have a lot of a certain kind of voter, and then making a district slightly less safe because you're trying to shovel voters into a new district that you're creating? It creates questions about same effect in California: If you try to max out even more districts, are you accidentally making some of your other districts more competitive than they have to be, and in that case, will you end up having to spend even more money and resources on races that weren't competitive before, but now are because you're trying to marginally make another seat less competitive? There's a lot of inherent assumptions being made about what the electorate will look like next year. And again, one thing that's really easy to forget — and this is true for the parties, too, and I haven't really seen this discussed — is that in the Trump era, you have two different electorates. You have different electorates that turn out in midterms versus general elections. Sometimes it can be drastically different and much more Democratically aligned than you expect, and that ends up leading to overperformance, like in 2018 or 2022.
Vox
22-07-2025
- Business
- Vox
How Trump is making America hungrier
The Congressional Budget Office estimates more than 3 million people in the United States will likely be dropped from the accessing SNAP the next few years, states will have to decide how much of the SNAP costs to absorb, which totaled over $100 billion in 2024. The CBOe predicts that some states will scale back or drop SNAP benefits altogether. Food banks throughout the country are already raising the alarm that they won't be able to meet the food demands created by cuts to the program. In addition to shifting the cost to states, the legislation will change the enrollment requirements for SNAP, such as raising the working age to 64, and requiring able-bodied parents with children over 14 to work in order to receive benefits. Some critics of the bill argue the provision prevents SNAP from serving its purpose of feeding low-income Americans. On the Today, Explained podcast, co-host Sean Rameswaram dove into the history of SNAP, the program's controversies since its inception, and how the legislative bill will prevent the program from being able to deliver on its original goals with Tracy Roof, an associate professor of political science the University of Richmond who focuses on domestic policy who is writing a book about the history of food assistance in the United States. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. What's the history of food assistance in the United States of SNAP? Whose idea was this and why did we want to do it? In the 1950s, you got more attention to certain pockets of poverty in the United States. One of the areas that got the most attention was Appalachia with coal miners who were losing their jobs. You were starting to see more mechanization of coal mines, as well as competition from things like oil. And all of these coal miners were losing their jobs in the middle of areas that didn't have other economic opportunities. And because you had able-bodied workers in the household, a lot of these families didn't qualify for cash assistance. John F. Kennedy, when he was running for president in 1960, toured some of these areas and saw how widespread the problem of starvation was. At the same time, members of Congress made the argument that we were spending all of this money to store surplus grain, and we could not find enough places to sell that grain. So we started sending some of it abroad to starving people in other countries, but we had starving people in the United States who were not getting access to that food. And so the idea came about of trying to get some of these surplus commodities to people. When Kennedy came into office, his very first executive order was to create a pilot program. People were given coupons that looked like Monopoly money that they could take into grocery stores and use to buy any food within the grocery store. You couldn't get alcohol, you couldn't get cigarettes, but pretty much any consumable food you were able to purchase with it. Then during the mid- to late 1960s, you started to see more and more attention to the plight of tenant farmers in the South. A documentary from CBS called Hunger in America came out, and it showed starving children. When Nixon came in, there was a very famous speech where he pledged to end hunger. That ultimately led to the creation of a permanent program in 1964 that was expanded over the course of the late 1960s, and ultimately every jurisdiction was required to have it by 1974. It was set up such that the federal government would cover all the cost of the benefits, and the states would still be responsible for administering it, but a lot of the cost would be borne by the federal government. So that's the origins of the program. Epic. Yeah. This isn't the first time that people have wanted to cut or curtail or prevent certain people from accessing this program. That's been a long-established history as well. Pretty much from the beginning, there've been critics of the program. I mean, there were people in Congress that just didn't think it was necessary, or they thought that it should be treated as a welfare program and not as a nutrition or agricultural program because it was always put into the Farm Bill. But as inflation grew in the 1970s, enrollment really started to take off. And you saw people like Ronald Reagan in his run for the presidency become very critical of people becoming overly dependent on it. The argument was very similar to what we've just heard, that we needed to protect the program for the truly needy and get people that can fend for themselves off of it. Is this most recent cut to SNAP the most drastic cut we've ever seen? Yes, it's likely to be the biggest cut we've seen. But it isn't an elimination. It's saying, 'States, you gotta figure this out, your move.' Exactly. Is it going to affect Democrats, Republicans, white people, Black people, Asian people, poor people, tall people? A lot of that is gonna be up to the states. So rather than Congress coming in and saying, 'We're going to eliminate eligibility for these categories of people,' it's telling the states, 'You're going to have to bear a larger share of the benefits. And if you can't cover that, you're going to have to figure out how you reduce enrollment in the program or come up with ways to cover the additional cost.' You know, some of the bluer states are probably going to try to make up those differences and maintain assistance to people. Some of the poorer states are probably going to cut back. People will be hungry. Why let people go hungry? We're the richest country on Earth. Why do people want to cut food aid for the poor? You always have a number of people that could be getting something like SNAP, but they don't apply, either because of the stigma associated with it, or because they don't want to go through all the paperwork, or for whatever reason they don't know they're eligible. Back in the 1990s in the midst of welfare reform, the participation rate fell such that only 57 percent of eligible participants participated in SNAP. And then over the course of the George W. Bush administration, that number came up into the 70s. As they tried to make the program more accessible — and that took off during the Great Recession — what you saw was a steep increase in the percentage of people that were on SNAP. It went up to 15 percent of the population at the peak in 2013. But it remained pretty high, even as the economy started to recover. That was largely because it took a long time for the economic recovery to hit low-income workers, and partly because of the decline in stigma. And so that criticism became really loud in Congress once Republicans took control of Congress during the Obama years, and it carried over into the Trump administration. This isn't the first time that the Trump administration has tried to cut benefits. They tried to do it in the wake of the 2016 election as well, they just weren't successful. How much of a shakeup do you think this is of food aid in the United States ultimately? Most states have to have balanced budgets either because of their constitutions or because of state laws. They can't just sell more Treasury bonds the way the federal government does. That means that when we slip into a recession, states face really tough choices because they need to fund education, they need to fund Medicaid, and they need to fund all the other services that states provide. They're going to face some really tough choices about where they allocate their resources.
Vox
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Superman is a socialist
In a recent interview with The Times, Superman director James Gunn said that his new blockbuster tells the story of 'an immigrant.' He also explained it was a story about 'basic human kindness.' But that first comment — about Superman's foreign origins — is the one that set off some pundits on the right. Fox News commentator Jesse Watters joked on air: 'You know what it says on his cape? MS-13.' Ben Shapiro blasted Gunn and the Hollywood left for being out of touch with everyday American audiences: 'The reality [is] that Hollywood is so far to the left that they cannot take a core piece of Americana and just say it's about America.' But, Grant Morrison — author of the seminal comic book series All-Star Superman — said the conservative backlash ignores the leftist origins of the world's most famous superhero. Not only was Superman created by the sons of Jewish immigrants, but those very first comics portrayed their character as a 'socialist figure.' Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer, plus the most compelling stories of the day. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. In one comic published in 1939, Superman is seen shielding young thieves from police because he figured the kids were victims of poverty, then tearing down slums and forcing authorities to build low-rent housing. Before becoming the 'Man of Steel,' Superman was 'The Champion of the Oppressed.' Gunn has said that All-Star Superman was a big influence on his new film. Morrison sat down with Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram to talk about where Superman came from, how the character has evolved, and why he will endure. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. How did you get into Superman? What did this character mean to you? I grew up on the west coast of Scotland next to an American naval and nuclear base. My parents were anti-nuclear activists. My father was a World War II soldier who became a peacenik. So, my big fear in the world was the atom bomb, and I associated it with the Americans, but the Americans also brought the comics. Then I discovered Superman. And although I knew no real Superman was coming to save me from an actual atom bomb, metaphorically he really solved a lot of problems for my head when I was a little kid. Those are the primal roots for me, and they're quite deep. So yeah, getting a chance to do that character, sitting here overlooking that same stretch of water where we did the protests…To write All-Star Superman kind of defies the forces of entropy. If anything survives in my career, it will be that one book. Who was the Superman that you created in that series? We went for an older Superman. The basic idea was: What if Superman was dying and he had a year to live? Basically, it's a part of Lex Luthor's scheme to send Superman to the sun, and the solar radiation overcharges Superman's cells, so they begin to decay and die. Basically, Superman's dying of cancer. What would this man do in the last 12 months of his life to leave the Earth a better place than he found it? Were you surprised to find out that James Gunn wanted to relaunch this character and relaunch an entire cinematic universe with your story about a dying Superman? James didn't necessarily take the dying part. His is a younger Superman. But I think he certainly took the character as we decided to define it, and he saw something that he could work with. Instead of Superman having flaws, let's present a fictional character who doesn't have flaws. You know, he has problems of his own. He still can't get the girl. He still works for a boss in an office, but he's Superman. He's a kind of everyman whose life happens at a much higher scale. He's got an unruly dog, but his unruly dog can laser his own dinner and cook a steak. His unruly dog can fly through buildings, but he's still dealing with an unruly dog. In previous attempts people have asked: What would Superman be like if he was in the real world? Which to me is an absurd question. The only existence Superman has in the real world is as a comic book or movie character, and that's where he is most useful and most functional, as far as I'm concerned. He's a metaphor. He is an allegory. He stands for everything that is good in us. It sounds like there have been at least some iterations of this character throughout his near-century of existence — from your dying version to this ideal version, to this all-powerful version. But I believe Superman even started as a bit of a tough guy, a headbasher, and maybe even a left-wing revolutionary. Can you tell us about the non-Kryptonian origins of this character, and how he came to be on Earth? Well, he arrived in Cleveland, Ohio. He was created by two teenagers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who'd met at school. Jerry was the writer and Joe was the artist. They wanted to work for newspapers. Newspaper syndication was the place to go for cartoons back then. They were working on this notion called 'The Superman.' The original version was an evil bald guy who eventually became Lex Luthor in the Superman story. But after a few tries, they hit on this fabulous notion of: Let's give him a wrestling costume with a cape so that we can track his movement across the panels, and make him very colorful so that he's memorable. The greatest addition to the design was to put his monogram on his chest so that the character's entire identity was summed up in this very simple advertising motif that people can remember and people can also wear and partake in being Superman. It was created by two young kids who were the sons of immigrants — European immigrants, Jewish boys — and this was their vision. Superman was a do-gooder. He was here to help people. He'd come from a distant world, but thought the only use for power and strength was to help the downtrodden and the oppressed. Early issues of Action Comics depict a Superman who's very much an outlaw. He goes after corrupt union bosses. He goes after mine owners. He goes after politicians who are corrupt. Superman later was seen as a messianic figure of hope, which I don't really like, because I think he's a fighter, he's a scrapper. He gets into fights on behalf of the little guy. He gets bloodied up and he gets up again. You shoot him [with] a tank shell, and he gets up again. Through the years, that changed quite radically. The socialist figure of the early years hit 1942 and suddenly it was war, and Superman became incredibly patriotic, and that's where the 'Truth, justice, and the American way' thing first appears. Then, in the 1950s, Superman changes again completely. You're dealing with guys coming home from the war, domestication, and living in suburbia. So Superman becomes a family drama, but on a titanic scale. He has friends from the future who visit and cause trouble. He has a cousin who survived the destruction of Krypton, he has a dog, and he has a monkey. So Superman then, to me, was probably at his peak, but he was representative of post-war masculinity trying to adjust to a world of relatives and not being married. Those stories were obsessed with the relationship with Lois [Lane]. In the 1960s, he becomes a cosmic seeker. He almost goes back to his roots, and we have stories where he is fighting for Native American land rights, he's up against polluters, and very much back to the activist Superman. And so it goes. In the 1980s, he's a yuppie. In the 1990s, they kill him in order to make it interesting, then bring it back as a soap opera set around the fictional newspaper, the Daily Planet. And into the 2000s, you get the work that I did. It's funny to hear you lay out this history in which Superman at one point is something of a socialist warrior, because all of these pundits who are mad about James Gunn saying that Superman's an immigrant, if they really knew the history here, there's so much more they could be mad about. Absolutely. As you say, if anyone had bothered to look at the history of Superman, they'd see that he was always an immigrant created by immigrants. He represented that experience, but he was assimilated. I mean, he was an American. He'd been raised by American parents. So that was very important as well. And I think the combination of these two qualities is what maybe drives people mad, because they want it to be either one thing or another, but Superman's trying to embody everyone. It's funny, a thing that we talk about the first half of the show is that depending on how tuned into the news you are, you can see a lot of what's going on in the world today in this movie. But of course, this movie wasn't made this week. It was made a year ago. Yeah. The meetings about this movie probably started five years ago. Do you think there's something about the nature of Superman that makes him timeless? I definitely believe that. I mean, we are talking about the history of Superman, which goes back to 1938. Superman has outlived his creators. He's also outlived the people who took over from his creators, and the next generation of the people who took over from his creators.
Vox
20-07-2025
- Business
- Vox
What it would take to escape the two-party system
Earlier this month, Elon Musk said he wanted to form a new political party. He'd been teasing the idea ever since clashing with President Donald Trump over his 'big, beautiful bill,' which Musk accused of exploding the deficit. In June, Musk ran a poll on X asking users whether it was 'time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?' More than 5 million people responded, and 80 percent voted yes. Then, on July 5, Musk announced he was forming the American Party in hopes of giving voters their 'back [their] freedom.' Those who follow Musk closely, like Bloomberg Businessweek national correspondent Joshua Green, have said Musk's latest project is in line with his pursuit of political power and attention. 'I think he thought he'd essentially bought that by backing Donald Trump to the tune of $300 million in the last election,' Green said previously on Today, Explained. 'And Trump turned on him, ousted him, took away his EV tax credits, didn't cut the deficit, trashed him on social media. And now I think Elon is humiliated and looking for a way to respond and hit back.' Trump has called Musk's third-party proposal 'ridiculous.' And the billionaire appeared to have moved from his third obsession by mid-July — at least on X — posting instead about Europe's fertility rate and running damage control for the antisemitic rants of his AI platform Grok. But regardless of whether he follows through on the 'America Party,' Musk appears to have hit a chord with an American electorate disillusioned by the two-party system. On Today, Explained, co-host Noel King dove into voters' desires, the history of third parties, and possible solutions to the two-party stranglehold with Lee Drutman, senior fellow at the New America think tank and author of Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. You are not a big fan of the two-party system. You know, I think it's outlived its usefulness. I think America is a pretty big, diverse country these days, you may have noticed. And to fit everybody into just two parties seems like kind of insanity, and it's clearly not working. Also, it has divided this country into two teams — the red and the blue team — that have learned to absolutely hate each other. It's created these artificial divisions around this zero-sum, winner-take-all electoral politics that is just really breaking down the foundations of democracy in this country. So, I think there was a time when it worked reasonably well for certain reasons, but that time is in the past. You will know that Elon Musk agrees with you. He says he wants to start a third party. He ran one of his polls [on X], and the question was: 'Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?' I'm looking at that poll now. Eighty percent of people said yes, 20 percent said no. How does that match up with reality in the US? Well, there are two parts to that question. One is: How many people want a third party? And then two is: How many people want that party to be somewhere in the middle? Now, the first part: How many people want a third party? That 80 percent is a little bit high. There might be some selection bias there, but it is close to polls that I've seen. Generally, about 60 to 70 percent of Americans say there ought to be more than two parties when polled. So, overwhelmingly, Americans say they want more than two parties. Now, is the party that they want a party in the center? That's less clear. I think people's perception of the political center depends on themselves. [Most] people think that they're more reasonable and they're more moderate. But in reality, when you look at the viewpoints of the American electorate, as I've done repeatedly, you see that the support for a genuine center party is limited to maybe 10 to 15 percent. But there is a lot of interest in parties that are maybe not as traditional. Third-party candidates do run for office all the time in the United States, they very rarely win. If so many voters want more options, why don't we have more people in elected office from third parties? Here you're hitting on the core problem, which is that we have a single-winner system of elections. So in a single-winner election, third parties become spoilers and wasted votes, because one of the two major parties is going to win every election. So, voting for a third party is just basically a protest vote, or maybe it could spoil the election. And as a result, most people don't want to do that because they think, well, I want to vote for somebody who at least has a chance of winning. And, more importantly, people who have ambition in politics say, well, I'm not going to waste my time with one of these fringe parties. I want to actually win. So you get minor parties that are mostly cranks and weirdos and people say, well, I'd like to vote for another party, but not that third party. What's the recent history of third-party candidates? Serious third-party candidates at a national level? I have a vague memory of Ross Perot, but I couldn't give you many details. It was the nineties. How serious have third-party candidates been over time? Well, Ross Perot is the most recent third-party candidate to actually get a pretty decent share of the electorate. He got almost 20 percent of the electorate, although he didn't win a single state. A lot of people remember Ralph Nader in 2000, who only got about 3 percent of the vote, but it was a very well placed 3 percent because his votes were more than the difference between Bush and Gore in Florida and a few other states. Before that, you had George Wallace running in 1968 on the American Independent Party as sort of a 'preserve segregation' platform. And then 1912, you have Teddy Roosevelt running as a Bull Moose third-party candidate. [He] was the most successful third-party candidate. Of course, he had already been president. So you've periodically had third-party challenges at a presidential level. At a House and Senate level, you have a few people who run as independents. But people tend to go right for the presidency because that creates a level of visibility if you're trying to build a party. If one thinks that the two-party system is a problem, let's talk about solutions. You advocate for something called proportional representation. Explain what that is and why you think it might be a solution here. Well, proportional representation is the most common system of voting, and it basically, at its simplest level, it means that parties get shares of seats in proportion to what percent of the vote they get. So if a party gets 30 percent of the vote, it gets 30 percent of the seats in the legislature. If it gets 10 percent, it gets 10 percent. Now, there are varieties of proportional representation that we could spend an hour going in the weeds. Tell me the one you like the best. What would work in the US? What I think would work in the US is probably the most commonly used version, which is called open list proportional representation with multi-member districts — which is this idea that rather than having a single district with a single representative, you have a single district with five representatives. The district is larger, and then the parties put forward lists of candidates. You choose the candidate from the party that you like, all the votes for each party get tallied up, and then the seats get allocated in proportion. So if a party gets 40 percent of the votes in that five member district, its top two candidates go to represent the district. If a party gets 20 percent, its top candidate [goes]. So, in theory, you could have five parties representing the same district. 'We've never had this level of dissatisfaction with the two-party system as far back as we've seen polling.' We talk a lot about gerrymandering as a huge problem, and it is. But [if] you move to five member proportional districts, gerrymandering becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter because votes are going to be allocated proportionally no matter what. So, everybody gets to cast a meaningful vote because every seat matters. Every seat is competitive. Every vote matters. Electoral reform is the most powerful tool we have. So, at the end of the day, has Elon Musk done something admirable here [by] making this a topic of conversation in a kind of real way? Yeah. So, I think by raising the issue of the need for a third party, it certainly opens up a conversation about what it would take. I'm not sure Elon's approach is going to be successful. On the other hand, if he's strategic and wants to spoil a few races that will determine control of the House and the Senate by running a spoiler candidate, then, historically, that's actually what has led to a wider conversation about electoral reform. And that's one of the reasons that a lot of countries moved to electoral reform.
