American Politics Commons^™

In Trump We Trust: Epistemic Isolation, Conflict Narratives, And Climate Change Denial In Significant Portion Of Trump’S 2016 Election Base, Alec Chapa

The Macksey Journal

American political polarization around climate change is largely fueled by science denialism, and although much research investigates the impacts of ideology, little has been done on the impacts of epistemology, and more specifically, the role of conflict-conditioned narratives (CCN) in shaping epistemology. This study investigates the epistemic function of Fox News in the 2016 U.S. Election, potentially escalating conflict around climate change due to the nature of delivered narratives. Existing conflict resolution research is used as a theoretical grounding and for identifying the use of conflict narrative construction methods (CM) in online articles. This research uses a purposive approach ...

Propaganda And Media Portrayal: U.S. Imperialism And Cuban Independence From Spain And The United States, 1896-1903, Amarilys Sánchez

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

Cuba has been an object of U.S. fascination since the early nineteenth century and the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase. When Cuba rose up in revolution against Spain, the United States purposefully portrayed the struggle to the American public as a situation necessitating a U.S. intervention. This involved the making of political cartoons and emotional appeals of war accounts from the perspective of an American journalist, Richard Harding Davis. Once the United States and Spain entered a war in 1898, the manipulation of the image of Cuba shifted to portray the question of U.S. acquisition and the ...

Rancière’S Equality And James’S Pragmatism: Renewing Our Democratic Republic Through A Revised View Of Intelligence, Matthew Schmitz

Educational Studies Summer Fellows

The prevailing theory of intelligence in American society encourages restrictive treatment of others and endorses a dull impression of human capabilities. In the process of poking at their domestic opponents, modern Democrats and Republicans combine to expose our collective shortcomings on this front. Our discourse too often focuses on jockeying for position and too rarely focuses on the rich intellectual community we inhabit. Through an analysis of William James’s Pragmatism and Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster, I look to recapture a liberating view of intelligence that enables us to revise our interpretation of citizenship in an American democratic ...

‘True Champions And Incredible Patriots’: The Transformation Of The Ceremonial White House Visit Under President Trump, Brett Siegel

Journal of Emerging Sport Studies

In the United States, a championship-winning sports team’s ceremonial visit to the White House has become a familiar tradition. Beginning nearly a century ago when Calvin Coolidge invited the Washington Senators to celebrate their second American League Pennant in 1924, the White House visit has evolved into such a common occurrence that we tend to take it for granted as a public relations ploy for the political elites and sports darlings of the moment, ultimately bearing little consequence for either. Yet the rhetorical strategies involved in these events reveal shifting understandings of sports’ role in American culture along with ...

‘The Highest Form Of Patriotism:’ Toward An Understanding Of First Amendment Precedents And Nfl Protests, Ryan Murtha

Journal of Emerging Sport Studies

No abstract provided.

Kofifi/Covfefe: How The Costumes Of "Sophiatown" Bring 1950s South Africa To Western Massachusetts In 2020, Emma Hollows

Masters Theses

This thesis paper reflects upon the costume design process taken by Emma Hollows to produce a realist production of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company’s musical Sophiatown at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts in May 2020. Sophiatown follows a household forcibly removed from their homes by the Native Resettlement Act of 1954 amid apartheid in South Africa. The paper discusses her attempts as a costume designer to strike a balance between replicating history and making artistic changes for theatre, while always striving to create believable characters.

Profiteering Off Public Health Crises: The Viable Cure For Congressional Insider Trading, Charles L. Slamowitz

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This article takes an approachable, forward-thinking, and academic dive into congressional insider trading in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. After a confidential briefing by the Senate Health Committee warned of COVID-19, massive stock sell-offs by members of Congress and their spouses suddenly ensued. Some senators even publicly disparaged COVID-19’s viral effects while their own shares were being offloaded. By the time the American people were made aware of its dangers, vast investment holdings by congressional insiders had already been sold. Shockingly, it is unclear if congressional insiders trading on confidential coronavirus information are actually breaking the law ...

The Rise Of The Ideological Left? Testing The Asymmetrical Party Theory Through Case Studies Of 2018 Primary Elections, Wyatt Anderson

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

During the mid-term elections of 2018, primary challenges against Democratic incumbents in Congress captured the attention of national media. One of the most prominent cases of this was the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th Congressional District against the ten-time incumbent and Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley on June 26. While her successful primary challenge could be attributed to many different factors, of interest is the way in which she campaigned – bringing into question how primary campaigns have changed in recent years and the rhetoric that hopeful-nominees adopt to secure their party’s nomination. The central question ...

The Personality Profile And Leadership Style Of U.S. President Donald J. Trump In Office, Aubrey Immelman, Anne Marie Griebie

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon, of the personality of Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, based solely on personality dynamics revealed by his political behavior in office.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data were collected from biographical sources and media reports of Trump’s postinaugural political behavior from January 20, 2017 until July 2020 and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.

The personality profile yielded by the ...

Latinx Political Leadership In Massachusetts, Center For Women In Politics And Public Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Gaston Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Bianca Ortiz-Wythe, Christa Kelleher, Fabián Torres-Ardila

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Fact Sheet provides an overview of Latinx political leadership and representation in Massachusetts, including a historical timeline and data about electoral politics and gender.

What Do We Know About Health Insurance Choice?, Megan Mccarthy-Alfano

Issue Briefs

No abstract provided.

The Challenge Of Regulatory Excellence, Cary Coglianese

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Regulation is a high-stakes enterprise marked by tremendous challenges and relentless public pressure. Regulators are expected to protect the public from harms associated with economic activity and technological change without unduly impeding economic growth or efficiency. Regulators today also face new demands, such as adapting to rapidly changing and complex financial instruments, the emergence of the sharing economy, and the potential hazards of synthetic biology and other innovations. Faced with these challenges, regulators need a lodestar for what constitutes high-quality regulation and guidance on how to improve their organizations’ performance. In the book Achieving Regulatory Excellence, leading regulatory experts across ...

Crafting Credibility: The Confirmation Hearings Of Justices Thomas And Kavanaugh, Joseph Sery

The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research

This essay investigates the ways in which credibility is created, maintained, and undermined throughout two similarly controversial Supreme Court confirmation hearings: Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. The two case studies provide insight into the ways in which the Senate Judiciary Committee’s process and procedure have changed in some ways and remained the same in others. Drawing from scholarship on the rhetorical situation and image construction/repair, I argue that while the socio-political context has shifted since the Thomas hearing, most notably with the advent of the #MeToo movement, systemic issues remain concerning the obtuse standards required for the ...

For The People Act Of 2019: A Framing Analysis Of Legislators’ Videos On Twitter, Katelyn E. Brooks

The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research

Constituent communication is a prominent area of research in political communication, including communication of policies more specifically. Recent scholarship has focused on exploring how a digitally mediated context affects the previously held assumptions of constituent communication, such as Richard Fenno’s (1978) home styles. Multimodal argumentation is a relatively underutilized perspective within constituent communication of policy; it suggests that the visual and verbal dimensions of an argument function together. This perspective is particularly productive when examining types of media apart from images, such as videos, and is congruent with a rhetorical orientation. The present study employs a rhetorical framing analysis ...

Literature Review: How U.S. Government Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article emphasizes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and national security policy making. It seeks to inform interested individuals about the proliferation of publicly accessible U.S. government and military literature on this multifaceted topic. An additional objective of this endeavor is encouraging greater public awareness of and participation in emerging public policy debate on AI's moral and national security implications..

Setting Standards For Affordable Health Care, Janet Weiner

Issue Briefs

In the run-up to the presidential election, the affordability of health care remains a top concern of the American voting public. But how do we know when health care is affordable? On a policy level, how do we set a standard for affordability that can be implemented in a reformed system? Sometimes policy debates about affordability focus only on whether insurance premiums are affordable, although consumers tend to be concerned about both premiums and out-of-pocket costs. At Penn LDI’s Medicare for All and Beyond conference, a panel of researchers, policy experts, and consumer advocates discussed and debated affordability ...

Racial Stereotypes, Respectability Politics, And Running For President: Examining Andrew Yang's And Barack Obama's Presidential Bids, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the pandemic, Andrew Yang’s response to anti-Asian American violence was criticized for placing responsibility on Asian Americans rather than those perpetrating the hate crimes. This article explores how "warring ideals for people of color can cause a lot of internal dissonance about what to say and how to act in certain situations.

See Original Blog Post on Internet.

Confronting An Unprincipled America: Lessons In Leadership From Barack Obama, Chloe Harper

VA Engage Journal

Ethical leadership is a concept valued, and even inherently understood, by most Americans, but today, we are seeing fewer individuals committed to making ethical decisions in leadership roles. Moreover, we are often unable to recognize when an ethical decision-maker is before us. Drawing on the works of such scholars as Edgar Schein, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Jonathan Haidt, I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States and the first African American to hold executive office, in order to determine what factors distinguish ethical leaders from simply respectable leaders. I focus on the role leaders ...

Safety Or Morality? How Moral Framing Influenced Fosta-Sesta's Bipartisan Success, Raven Mann

Major Papers

FOSTA-SESTA is an anti-trafficking bill that was passed in April 2018. The bill which amends the Communications Decency Act redefined the discussion of anti-trafficking in the United States due to the controversy surrounding this bill. Concerns from sex workers and feminist activists highlighted that FOSTA-SESTA would endanger sex workers by eliminating the commercial sex websites they used and force them back onto the streets. Despite these critiques drawing attention to the lack of consideration for sex workers’ safety in this bill, FOSTA-SESTA received bipartisan support and passed with a vote of 97-2.

Bipartisan support for legislation is an uncommon sight ...

Contemporary High-Skilled Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurs In Texas, Elizabeth Salamanca, Jorge Alcaraz

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

The number of Mexican entrepreneurs relocating to the United States has significantly increased during the last decade and their profile, as well as that of their businesses, have changed. This study develops a typology of Mexican migrant entrepreneurs living in the U.S., particularly in Texas, and of the business ventures that they undertake, and it determines the association between the entrepreneurs' profile and the kind of businesses they create. Through the analysis of migrant entrepreneurs' profiles, this paper identifies in what kind of transnational activities these entrepreneurs participate. The research follows both a qualitative approach based on the Gioia ...