Rachel Meade, Boston University

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the new administration. The idea of Trump, a Republican, appointing Kennedy to his cabinet would have been surprising just a few months ago.

After all, Kennedy began his presidential run last year as a Democrat and is the scion of a Democratic dynasty. Nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy spent most of his career as a lawyer representing environmental groups that sued polluting corporations and municipalities.

Yet Kennedy, 70, has long held positions that put him at odds with the Democratic mainstream. He pushes public health misinformation around vaccines and HIV/AIDS, opposes U.S. military involvement in foreign wars, including in Ukraine, and claims that the CIA assassinated his uncle.

Kennedy’s ideologically mixed politics are hard to categorize in traditional left-right terms.

My political science research finds that Kennedy’s journey from left-aligned skepticism into Trumpism is part of a broader trend of contemporary left-to-right populist transformations happening across the United States.

Rise of the populist alternative media

Populism is a political story that presents the good “people” of a nation as in a struggle against its “elites,” who have corrupted democratic institutions to further their own selfish interests. It cuts across the ideological spectrum, often combining left-wing economic critiques with right-wing cultural ones.

Based on my research, I find that Kennedy uses a populist style of speech that matches the rhetoric of today’s online alternative media, also known as the “alternative influence network.”

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If populism cuts across the ideological spectrum, so does the alternative media.

This network of politically diverse independent podcasters, YouTube hosts and other creators connects with young, politically disaffected audiences by mixing politics with comedy and pop culture, and presenting themselves as embattled defenders of free thinking – in opposition to mainstream media and mainstream parties.

Top-rated shows include “Breaking Points,” “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” “The Joe Rogan Experience,” The Culture War with Tim Pool“ and ”This Past Weekend w/Theo Von.“

While many of these shows have been around since the 2010s, the network expanded throughout the Trump era. Their popularity skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public distrust in government, anger over pandemic restrictions and vaccine skepticism surged.

These shows hosted Kennedy frequently throughout his presidential run in 2023 and 2024. He was particularly focused on a class of male-dominated alternative shows sometimes called the ”manosphere.“

Kennedy finds his audience

I analyzed a set of Kennedy’s appearances for this story. Both Kennedy and alternative media hosts claim to care about “the real issues” facing Americans such as war, corporate and political malfeasance and economic troubles. They condemn the “mainstream” for promoting frivolous “culture war” topics related to race and identity politics.

Kennedy and the alternative media hosts also combine left and right arguments in a typically populist way. They claim that corporations control the government and that liberals and corporations censor free speech.

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For example, on a May 2024 episode of “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” Brand asserted that corrupt institutions are backed by the “deep state.” He asked Kennedy how he would fight these powerful interests.

“The major agencies of government have all been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate and act as sock puppets serving the mercantile interests of these big corporations,” responded Kennedy. “I have a particular ability to unravel that because I’ve litigated against so many of these agencies.”

My research found that Kennedy often bonded with his alternative media hosts over his perception that liberal media sources – allegedly controlled by the Democratic National Committee or the CIA – were censoring his campaign.

Like Kennedy, alternative media hosts often identify as former or disaffected Democrats. Many used to work at mainstream left news sites, where they say they experienced censorship.

‘This little island of free speech’

In a June 2023 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan explained that he no longer identifies as a liberal because of the “orthodoxy it preaches” around issues like vaccines. He then cited YouTube’s removal of some of Kennedy’s vaccine-related videos for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy.

Kennedy had just spent 90 minutes outlining his journey toward vaccine skepticism, which started with meeting a mother who believed vaccines caused her son’s autism.

“If a woman tells you something about her child, you should listen,” he said.

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Kennedy also described being convinced by a set of studies that public health officials had ignored.

“Trust the experts is not a function of science, it’s a function of religion,” he said. “I’ve been litigating 40 years; there’s experts on both sides.”

Afterward, he thanked Rogan for maintaining “this little island of free speech in a desert of suppression and of critical thinking.”

Kennedy reiterated this point in the Aug. 23, 2024, speech that ended his presidential campaign. The “alternative media” had kept his ideas alive, he said, while the mainstream networks had shut him out despite his historically high third-party poll numbers of 15% to 20%.

“The DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintained a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me,” Kennedy said.

Speaking directly to the reporters in the room, he added, “Your institutions and media made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”

Kennedy ended that speech by endorsing Trump for president, a move that reportedly prompted Trump to promise his former rival a role overseeing health policy in his administration.

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Left-to-right pipeline

Trust in a range of U.S. institutions is at historical lows. Americans on both the right and the left are skeptical of power. As the 2024 election results showed, they crave radical change.

Alternative media hosts tapped into this desire, helping to push some disaffected listeners rightward. The same left-to-right pipeline landed Kennedy in Trump’s orbit.

Trump and his allies were adept at harnessing the power of the alternative media ecosystem. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump appeared on male-centric shows like “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and “This Past Weekend w/Theo Von,” and many media critics see this as a big factor in Trump’s success winning over young, male voters. Both Rogan and Von were personally thanked by name at Trump’s victory celebration.

Trump and his inner circle even form part of the alternative media themselves. Trump founded the alternative social media platform Truth Social and his adviser Steve Bannon hosts an influential podcast called the “War Room” on another MAGA alternative media platform, Rumble. Known for its fiery populist rhetoric, the “War Room” broadcasts live for an astonishing 22 hours a week.

Bannon, who was briefly jailed for contempt of Congress in mid-2024 and now faces trial in New York for financial fraud, used his show as a soapbox to promote Trump’s candidacy. He also praised Kennedy on the air, boosting the Democrat’s profile among his far-right listeners.

For Kennedy, aisle-crossing is part of the solution to partisan polarization.

“Step outside the culture war!” he tweeted in July 2024. “Step outside the politics of hating the other side!”

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This story has been updated to reflect the outcome of the 2024 election and Kennedy’s likely nomination to Trump’s cabinet. It was originally published on Oct. 29, 2024.

Rachel Meade, Lecturer of Political Science, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Yii-Jan Lin, Yale University

During a campaign speech in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 19, 2024, Donald Trump promised to save the country from immigrants: “I will rescue every town across America that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in a jail or kick them out of our country.”

Depicting immigrants as a threat has been a pillar of Trump’s message since 2015. And the types of terms he uses aren’t just disparaging. It might not seem like it, but Trump is continuing a long tradition in American politics: using language shaped by the Bible.

When the former president says those at the border are “poisoning the blood of our country,” “animals” and “rapists,” his vocabulary mirrors verses from the New Testament. The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, says those kept out of the city of God are “filthy”; they are “dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”

In fact, Americans have been using the Bible for centuries to talk about immigrants, especially those they want to keep out. As a scholar of the Bible and politics, I’ve studied how language from Revelation shaped American ideas about who belongs in the United States – the focus of my book, “Immigration and Apocalypse.”

The shining city

The Book of Revelation describes a vision of the end of the world, when the wicked are punished and the good rewarded. It tells the story of God’s enemies, who worship the evil Beast of the Sea, bear his mark on their body and threaten God’s people. Because of their wickedness, they suffer diseases, catastrophes and war until they are finally destroyed in the lake of fire.

God’s followers, however, enter through the gates of the walls surrounding the New Jerusalem, a holy city that comes down from heaven. God’s chosen people enter through the gates and live in the shining city for eternity.

Throughout American history, many of its Christian citizens have imagined themselves as God’s saints in the New Jerusalem. Puritan colonists believed they were establishing God’s kingdom, both metaphorically and literally. Ronald Reagan likened the nation to the New Jerusalem by describing America as a “shining city … built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” but with city walls and doors.

Reagan was specifically quoting Puritan John Winthrop, one of the founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose use of the “city on a hill” phrase quotes Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But Reagan’s detailed description closely matches that of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Like God’s heavenly city, Reagan’s picture of America also has strong foundations, walls and gates, and people from every nation bringing in tribute.

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Barring the gates

If people imagine the U.S. as God’s city, then it’s easy also to imagine enemies who want to invade that city. And this is how unwanted immigrants have been depicted through American history: as enemies of God.

In the 19th century, when virtually all politicians were Protestant, anti-Catholic politicians accused Irish immigrants of bearing the “mark of the Beast” and being loyal to the “Antichrist”: the pope. They claimed that Irish immigrants could form an unholy army against the nation.

At the turn of the century, “yellow peril” novels against Chinese immigration imagined a heathen horde taking over the U.S. At the end of one such book, China itself is depicted as a satanic “Black Dragon,” forcing its way through “the Golden Gate” of America.

And all immigrant groups who were unwanted at one time or another have been accused of being “filthy” and diseased, like the enemies of God in Revelation. Italians, Jews, Irish, Chinese and Mexicans were all, at some point, targeted as unhealthy and carrying illness.

In political cartoons from the turn of the 20th century, Eastern European and Jewish immigrants were depicted as rats, while Chinese immigrants were portrayed as a horde of grasshoppers – echoing imagery from Revelation, where locusts with human faces swarm the Earth. During COVID-19, an event itself considered apocalyptic, xenophobic fear has focused on Asian Americans and migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

This constellation of labels from Revelation – plague-bearing, bestial, invading, sexually corrupt, murderous – has been reused and recycled throughout American history.

‘Heaven has a wall’

Trump himself has described immigrants as diseased, “not human,” sexual assaulters, violent and those “who don’t like our religion.”

Others have more explicitly used images from Revelation to talk about immigration. Pastor Robert Jeffress, who preached at Trump’s 2017 inauguration church service, told viewers on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” “God is not against walls, walls are not ‘un-Christian,’ the Bible says even heaven is going to have a wall around it.” The Conservative Political Action Conference held a panel in 2017 titled “If Heaven Has a Gate, A Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?” There are even bumper stickers that say, “Heaven Has A Wall and Strict Immigration Policy / Hell Has Open Borders.”

Revelation 21 indeed describes the heavenly New Jerusalem with a massive shining wall, “clear as crystal,” with pearls for gates. Trump, similarly, talks about his “big, beautiful door,” set in a “beautiful,” massive wall that also has to be “see-through.”

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The city of God metaphor has long been a tool for American leaders – both to idealize the nation and to warn against immigration. But the concept of a walled-in city seems increasingly outdated in a digitally connected, global world.

As migration continues to rise around the world due to climate change and conflict, I’d argue that these metaphors and the attitudes they drive are not just obsolete, but exacerbating crisis.

Yii-Jan Lin, Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Voices Fellow, Yale University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

he Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.

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Big news for Los Angeles commuters and shipping operations: the iconic Vincent Thomas Bridge is set to undergo a major construction project that will lead to its complete closure for over a year. According to Caltrans, the bridge will shut down for a 16-month deck replacement, starting in late 2025 or early 2026.

Why Close the Bridge?

The Vincent Thomas Bridge, which connects San Pedro and Long Beach as part of Highway 47, has served as a vital traffic artery for 60 years. However, time has taken its toll, and the bridge’s concrete deck is quickly deteriorating due to the heavy vehicles that cross it daily and the marine environment it spans.

Caltrans officials have deemed the deck replacement necessary to ensure the structure’s safety and longevity. They describe the bridge as Los Angeles’ “welcoming monument,” emphasizing its importance to the community and regional connectivity.

The Decision Process

Earlier this year, Caltrans sought public feedback on how to approach the impending closure. Options included keeping some lanes open or implementing partial closures. However, after a 90-day comment period, it was determined that complete closure would be the most effective approach. This decision was guided by technical and environmental studies that showed a full closure would allow for uninterrupted work and ultimately shorten the construction timeline.

Caltrans emphasized that the single-stage option not only minimizes construction time but is also the safest, most cost-efficient, and allows for greater construction efficiency.

What to Expect During the Closure

When the construction begins, the bridge will be entirely shut down. This means rerouting will become essential for those who rely on this crucial structure for daily travel. Caltrans is currently working on a detailed closure and detour plan that will incorporate public input.

The preliminary detour routes likely include:

• Sepulveda Boulevard
• West Harry Bridges Boulevard
• Alameda Street
• Pacific Coast Highway
• Henry Ford Avenue
• Terminal Island Freeway/Highway 103

Commuters should brace for adjustments in their routes, as traffic patterns may shift considerably during the bridge’s closure.

Final Thoughts

While the announcement of the Vincent Thomas Bridge’s closure may send ripples of concern through the community, it’s essential to remember that this critical project is being implemented to preserve the bridge’s structural integrity for the future. The construction of a new deck will not only enhance safety but will also support the ever-increasing demands of traffic between Los Angeles and its bustling shipping centers.

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As the scheduled start date approaches, be sure to stay informed about closure updates and planned detours to facilitate a smoother transition during this necessary project.

Related links:

CalTrans: https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-7/district-7-news/vtb-final-environmental

KTLA: https://ktla.com/news/california/vincent-thomas-bridge-in-los-angeles-harbor-to-close-for-16-months

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