Matteen Mokalla | Vox

Want to save animal lives without going veg? Eat beef, not chicken.

2017-05-27T11:30:05-04:00

“Go vegan!” and “It’s not food, it’s violence!” are two rallying cries that animal welfare activists have been chanting for years. But for activist and vegan Matt Ball, the purist ideologies espoused in those mantras might actually work against the goal of reducing and ultimately ending animal slaughter.

Despite the animal advocacy from vegan and animal welfare groups, consumption of meat has grown in the United States from 183 pounds of red meat and poultry per capita in 1975 — the year Peter Singer’s seminal Animal Liberation was published — to an estimated 217.8 pounds this year.

Making matters worse, more than 80 percent of people who adopt a vegetarian (let alone vegan) diet ultimately go back to eating meat. According to Ball, vegetarians go back to their meat-eating ways in part because “they can’t stand the pressure to maintain a pure diet.”

Although he is sympathetic to vegan and traditional animal welfare activism, Ball believes the time has come for activists to reconsider their tactics. That’s why in early 2014, he co-founded a new organization called One Step for Animals. Their goal is not to get individuals to take on any given lifestyle or diet, but rather to convince as many people as possible to simply stop eating chicken.

Watch the video above, the latest in our Vox Voices series, to see Ball’s take on the failures of the animal welfare community and why eliminating chicken from your diet could have a profound impact on reducing animal suffering.

Cory Booker: why Trump should try being nice on Twitter

2017-05-04T10:10:04-04:00

President Donald Trump courted controversy throughout his unorthodox presidential campaign not only for his outrageous statements, but also for his social media habits that critics dubbed as bullying.

Today, Trump’s personal account is the 41st most followed on Twitter. But even though he has amassed a large following, his off-the-cuff tweeting approach hasn’t changed. Since winning the presidential election, Trump has used Twitter to insult Meryl Streep, opine on foreign policy, and complain about the reporting of media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times.

But there are some policymakers, such as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, that use the platform differently. While serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Booker made a name for himself on Twitter by personally responding to constituent requests made through the platform. He even delivered diapers to a Newark denizen stuck at home with her child during a snowstorm after he had heard about the situation on Twitter.

Like many with a large following, Booker is often the subject of insults and trolls online. But unlike the president, he often responds to his online critics with kindness.

For more, watch this video, the latest from our Vox Voices series, and see how the former “Mayor of Twitter” and current New Jersey senator uses social media to take on critics (including friendly jabs from Mindy Kaling) and why he thinks President Trump should use Twitter to help unite a divided America.

I’m a Tea Party conservative. Here’s how to win over Republicans on renewable energy.

2017-04-18T11:30:06-04:00

Activist Debbie Dooley has some choice words for individuals who believe that fossil fuels have no impact on the environment. “If you think fossil fuel is not damaging the environment,” she says, “pull your car in a garage, start up your engine, and inhale the exhaust fumes for a few minutes and see what happens.”

You could be forgiven for suspecting that Dooley might be a Democrat. According to a Gallup poll conducted last year, 85 percent of Democrats believe humans are contributing to increases in global temperature. But she’s not. Dooley is a conservative, gun-owning Trump supporter who also happens to be a co-founder of the Tea Party.

Dooley runs Conservatives for Energy Freedom, where she advocates for the expansion of renewable energy and for cuts to government regulations she believes hinder that growth. Through her efforts, she has even won over unlikely allies such as Al Gore.

According to Dooley, the problem with her fellow conservatives is that “they’ve been brainwashed for decades into believing we’re not damaging the environment.” As a result, Dooley speaks with them about renewable energy in a political language conservatives respect, using phrases like energy freedom, energy choice, and national security.

When speaking to conservatives in these terms, “you have a receptive audience and they will listen to you,” Dooley says. “If you lead off with climate change, they’re not going to pay a bit of attention to anything else you say.”

Watch this episode of Vox Voices to learn more about how Dooley’s discusses the environment with fellow conservatives and why she thinks caring for the environment is not necessarily anti-Republican.

I’m a Syrian-American journalist. Syria is more than the headlines.

2017-04-12T10:30:06-04:00

When Syrian-American author and civil rights lawyer Alia Malek woke up to the images of Syrians dying from a chemical weapons attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun last week, her immediate response was pain, anger, and frustration.

“But at the same time,” Malek told me, “there have been so many mornings like that in the last six years.”

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, more than 5 million Syrians have become refugees. Moreover, at least 470,000 Syrians have died, the vast majority by methods other than chemical weapons. Yet it was the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun and the Trump administration’s retaliatory decision to launch 59 cruise missiles against a Syrian air base that resulted in heaps of media coverage.

This all led Malek, who has chronicled the story of her family and her time in Syria in her new book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, to question why “we object to the methods of slaughter, but not the overall slaughter of the Syrian people.”

Watch the video above, the latest from our Vox Voices series, to see why Malek feels the non-Syrian public has become desensitized to Syrian death and how the dehumanizing of Arabs, Muslims, and Syrians has contributed to the problem.

We’re the only daily news source in our part of rural Alaska. Trump’s budget would devastate us.

2017-03-24T13:40:04-04:00

The idea of defunding public media in the United States, as President Trump’s new budget proposes, is nothing new according to Shane Iverson, “but it’s serious every time it happens.”

Iverson is the general manager of a small public broadcast station in Bethel, Alaska — one of the only reliable news sources in the Bethel Census Area. And if the Trump budget were to pass, it would cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which would in turn mean that his station might not get the money it needs to stay open.

Iverson’s station, KYUK, is one of the hundreds of public media outlets to receive support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 2015, the CPB spent $129 million — or nearly 30 percent of its entire budget — on direct grants to support more than 500 public broadcasters across the United States.

Among those broadcasters were some 162 radio stations that serve rural communities with the mandate “to provide all Americans with free, over-the-air access to public broadcasting’s programming and services.”

In the 49 years since its founding, the CPB has been successful in meeting that mandate. Today, 95 percent of all Americans can freely watch or listen to public media, including programming from NPR and PBS.

But if President Trump has it his way, that might change. If his new federal budget proposal were to pass as is, the entire budget of the CPB would be cut.

National broadcasters NPR and PBS could most likely survive the elimination of the CPB. But small-market public broadcasters, most often found in rural American towns, often rely heavily on federal funding. And they might find themselves unable to continue operations. Disappearing with them would be the local news and programming that many rural communities depend on.

It’s that scenario that Iverson hopes does not come to pass.

More than half of KYUK’s budget, which Iverson manages, comes from the federal government. Without it, Iverson says his station would be “a hollow shell of the station that it is today.”

I recently spoke to Iverson for the latest episode of Vox Voices, where he talked to me about the unique stories his local broadcaster commissions and some of the special challenges they face in times of economic uncertainty in his small corner of Alaska.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Matteen Mokalla

There is the criticism from policymakers who want to defund CPB that Americans have lots of choices of media these days, thanks to the internet and cable. Why couldn’t your listeners just switch to those options for news?

Shane Iverson

Internet does exist out here, but it’s slower than [in] a lot of other places. It could be a luxury item, not something that everyone could afford. But even if everyone could afford to have cable or dish or internet, what they would be lacking without KYUK is any sort of daily local journalism and information.

Just like everywhere else, the United States’ local newspapers have really taken a hit. And out here, where there is really no economy to speak of, they’ve all but folded.

We live in a census area where Yupik is spoken. It’s an Eskimo language called Eskimo Yupik and it’s spoken in over 65 percent of the households in the census area we serve.

So it’s really important for us and other rural stations to make sure we are providing information in a language that people understand and hear. We translate our newscasts in Yupik. Our daily announcements are translated in Yupik, and important worldwide news is all translated into Yupik, so that everyone can understand in a language that they understand best what’s going on in the world.

Matteen Mokalla

Can you tell me about some of the other types of stories you run that you couldn’t get from national news services?

Shane Iverson

There are stories we cover every day on KYUK that you won’t see on any other media outlet. The opioid epidemic, for one — it’s a problem nationwide, but here in the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, we realized there was just a basic lack of understanding about what heroin and other opium problems were because of a language barrier.

So we produced a huge series on opioid addiction, resources, and ways that people in the community can fight against this epidemic. And we produced this all in English, and we produced it all in Yupik, so people could actually understand it.

While many organizations are covering global warming, none of them are putting that in terms of what that means for a local subsistence fisherman, or a local hunter, and how that’s going to affect what they can … provide for their family or how they provide for their family.

One of the things we cover is public safety. When a hole opens up in a river we’re driving on to get from point A to point B, if a hole opens up that can swallow your vehicle whole, you need to know that. KYUK makes sure you know where that hole is and what danger that presents. [Editor’s note: In Iverson’s community, locals often drive their cars and trucks over frozen rivers to travel around the region.]

I mean, it’s simple, it’s not complicated stuff, but without a public broadcaster that’s local that cares, people are going to be left in the blank.

Matteen Mokalla

What are some of the funding challenges that a smaller station like yours faces versus larger-market public broadcasters like WNYC?

Shane Iverson

If I’m WNYC or another station that’s working in a big market, I’m going to be looking at lots of businesses and organizations working right in my metropolitan area that want to be a part of public radio and want to brand with public radio and public television. So I’d be asking them for money.

I’m going to be surrounded by millionaires and maybe some billionaires too. So there’s some people that you can ask for money to help out. Doctors, lawyers, professionals. We have a few of them here, but I can count on my hands the [number] of those types of people we have to ask for funding. So when you’re in a big city, there’s just piles of money all over the place, and if you’re doing a good job and you’re asking the right people, you can access those people.

But here, we’ll ask all of those people. We’ll ask all of our doctors, all of our lawyers, everyone that has money, we’ll ask our local businesses, and they provide, but when you pile it up, it’s just still just not enough to be able to provide the kinds of services our region needs.

Matteen Mokalla

If President Trump’s budget goes through and CPB is defunded, would stations like yours shut down? Would they ever be able to reopen?

Shane Iverson

If funding was cut for CPB completely, there would be stations in Alaska that would be shut down. And I don’t know if all of them would be able to come back. Some of them might be able to have a signal up, but they would maybe only have one person running things.

So would they be able to serve the public? Probably not. Would they be able to be engaged in journalism? Probably not. So the nature of what would constitute [a] public radio station would be severely diminished. And who would suffer would be the people who want information. You know, everyday people who simply want to know what’s going on in the world. They wouldn’t know what’s going on in the world because there wouldn’t be the funding there to provide those services.

A zero funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be devastating for rural Alaska. Absolutely devastating.

A former inmate on the perils of life after prison

2017-03-16T12:44:19-04:00

Every year, more than 600,000 individuals are freed from America’s jails and prisons.

But many of America’s formerly incarcerated people face numerous obstacles when integrating back into public life once free, according to Wes Caines and his former colleagues Scott Hechinger and Hannah McCrea at Brooklyn Defender Services, a public defender service in New York City.

Former prisoners are routinely denied employment, housing, education, and other benefits that would help ease their integration into life on the outside, Caines says.

Caines understands the value of these benefits better than most people. He finished both his undergraduate and graduate education while serving 24 years in prison for his role in a shootout that left one man dead.

The rare educational opportunities that Caines was afforded in prison changed his life.

“I didn’t have to worry … when I looked for a job and the minimum requirement was a bachelor’s degree,” Caines told me. “I was going to be able to convince an employer to give me an opportunity.”

After he was released in 2014, Caines got a job with the Brooklyn Defenders Services, working as a reentry coordinator helping individuals cope with life outside of prison.

While with BDS, Caines helped produce the above video, illustrated by artist Molly Crabapple, about the everyday obstacles former inmates face. It’s a concept that Caines calls “perpetual punishment.”

Caines considers himself lucky. Unlike many other former inmates, he found meaningful work after prison. He is quick to remind me that stories like his are rare.

“I never want my experience … to be the story that is used as the rule,” he told me. “The fact of the matter is that it’s exceptional.”

I recently spoke to Caines, who is 51 years old and now working with the Bronx Defenders as a reentry coordinator, about his prison experience and his work helping to reintegrate former prisoners into society.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Matteen Mokalla

You were able to obtain your education while in prison, but many of these programs have disappeared. Why is that?

Wes Caines

Initially, the [Bill] Clinton–era anti-death penalty legislation that was signed in 1994 removed Pell Grant accessibility to people who were incarcerated. Then in New York state under the [George] Pataki governorship, a similar legislation was signed which removed the tuition assistance program from access to people who are incarcerated. So those two funding mechanisms, once legislation passed, removed their accessibility to people in prison. There was no way for men and women who were incarcerated making 12 cents per hour to legitimately pay for college education.

And of course the ability to get a loan and to get to school is a nonstarter. Most people who are incarcerated for a long term in New York state are considered civilly dead. A civilly dead person cannot qualify for a loan.

Matteen Mokalla

I can imagine you come across critics who are not sympathetic to the plight of people in prison. They might reasonably argue that it’s hard enough to find funding to pay for services for people who have not committed crimes. How do you respond to those critics?

Wes Caines

On an emotional and even on a very superficial level, I think comments like that are somewhat legitimate. I think, however, whether it’s in the community or in the correctional setting, we have to expand the conversation around policies and policymakers who oftentimes are not very deep thinkers.

The vast majority, if not more, of the people who are incarcerated eventually return to society. Whether or not they deserve a second chance, the fact of the matter is they will return. Every crime doesn’t lead to life imprisonment without parole. Every crime is not a death penalty crime. So people are going to return.

The question we should start with is how do we want that person who entered into our incarcerated space to return to our community space?

Matteen Mokalla

In 2014, you came out of prison. What was that experience like for you? Was it intimidating coming out after 24 years?

Wes Caines

I always like to preface my reentry experience by stating that I never want my experience and my story to be the story that is used as the rule. The fact of the matter is that it’s exceptional. And when we make the exception to the rule that, we allow policymakers off the hook. We allow those who would do nothing about fixing a very broken punishment system to not address real systemic inequalities in our system.

While incarcerated, I had good fortune on my side. Whether or not people who are incarcerated get access to true rehabilitative opportunities should never be dependent on good fortune. If it weren’t for me being at a particular prison at a particular time when the Bard college program came in, my reentry experience likely would have been a lot different. Maybe even closer to what I see everyday with my clients.

Matteen Mokalla

So how specifically was your experience different from some of your clients?

Wes Caines

I didn’t have to worry about where I was going to sleep; I knew that I had a home. I didn’t have the desperate need for financial support. I didn’t have to worry about whether I was going to be able to get myself food everyday because I had family support. I didn’t have to worry about … when I looked for a job and the minimum requirement was a bachelor’s degree whether or not I was going to be able to convince an employer to give me an opportunity.

Matteen Mokalla

In the video you talk about how even low-level crimes can ripple throughout a community and family. So let’s say someone gets in a fight and punches someone in the face — how does that punch ripple out to families and neighborhoods?

Wes Caines

Let’s take that individual who punched somebody in the face and gets arrested. That individual, regardless of what caused that encounter, that individual might possibly be the primary breadwinner. Or maybe a caregiver, maybe the only caregiver for minor children. If it’s in public housing in New York City, they could possibly lose their housing because of the arrest. If you live in a New York City housing authority complex, it can result in you being excluded from you returning to your family setting. So that impacts directly the family that that individual belongs to.

Matteen Mokalla

One of the things you say in the video is that even being arrested can lead to complications for individuals later in life. What exactly do you mean?

Wes Caines

I am now working on a project with the Bronx Defenders where we review our clients’ criminal justice involvement records, what’s called a rap sheet. And rap sheets have error records of over 60 percent.

So it may be that someone is simply arrested and the arrest is voided. That should not be on a person’s rap sheet. I’ve had several clients who’ve had had those experiences, who thought when they walked out of the precinct the matter was behind them.

Then months later, or sometimes years and years later, they go on a job interview and there is, in the interest of hiring them, a background check. The employer [later] contacts them saying, “Hey, we’re going to rescind this offer because we see that you have an open criminal matter.”

So we do a record check where we get the rap sheet, and sure enough, there is this arrest information on the rap sheet, by itself. John Doe, arrested on this date, charged with this crime, and it says no court information available.

And this person lost a job opportunity for a criminal matter that doesn’t exist, that’s not there.

But then the kicker is, in order to access your own record that the government has of you, you’re required to pay, in New York, $65. That’s unless you can provide documents or proof of indigency, where they will then waive the fee.

Matteen Mokalla

What doesn’t the public understand about formerly incarcerated people and the attitudes they bring to opportunities like schools, jobs, and housing?

Wes Caines

If you have a conversation with employers or housing providers who have as their employees formerly incarcerated people or have as their residents formerly incarcerated people, you will get a sense that we are people that are passionate about our work and we are grateful for our work and we will go above and beyond.

We are grateful for a place to live, so we want to make sure that the conditions, that which we live [in], are sound. So we will clean up what is not our duty to clean up. We will work late when we’re not required to. We will do the things that I think most people who haven’t had our experience take for granted. I have yet to speak with or to hear an employer who employs a formerly incarcerated people complain about the quality and the passion of the work that they have received.

Robert Reich: Jeff Sessions needs to resign for the sake of the country

2017-03-09T15:50:04-05:00

Robert Reich isn’t an adviser to Donald Trump, but his advice for the president on dealing with the four Russia scandals that continue to hobble his administration is quite simple.

“The most important thing to do right now,” the former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton and current professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, told Vox, “is to regain the trust of the public.”

To achieve this, Reich argues, Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions must resign. He went on to say that Congress should then appoint a special prosecutor “who has no axe to grind” to oversee an independent investigation into Trump’s Russia connections.

“The investigation must be the entire ball of wax,” Reich says. “It’s not just Sessions. It is not just Flynn. It is not just any individual around Trump. It is the whole Russian connection.”

For more on why Reich insists on an independent prosecutor — not to mention which parallels Reich sees between Richard Nixon’s time in office and President Trump’s — watch this installment of Vox Voices, a new video series featuring the opinions and ideas of individuals from outside our newsroom.

I’m a former neo-Nazi. Don’t ignore the threat of white extremism.

2017-02-27T09:30:07-05:00

Bomb threats against Jewish community centers across the country. The desecration of headstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

For Christian Picciolini, these recent incidents are not necessarily surprising. He’s at the forefront of warning Americans against the growing threat from white nationalists.

What makes Picciolini’s insight into these individuals so compelling is that he used to be one.

When he was only 14, Picciolini was recruited by Clark Martell, a prominent neo-Nazi skinhead leader. By age 18, Picciolini was leading America’s first neo-Nazi skinhead gang and helping to recruit and organize cells across the country.

Picciolini worked to soften the neo-Nazis’ external image and political language to attract individuals who would otherwise not have been willing to join the movement.

“We hear terms like ‘liberal media,’ when in fact what they are talking about is Jewish media,” Picciolini told me. “We used to say that the Jews controlled the media. And now they’ve just massaged the phrase to call it ‘liberal media.’”

Picciolini began his transformation from neo-Nazi to anti-hate advocate in his late teens.

“Having my child when I was 19 years old and being married was a powerful catalyst for me because I finally had something to love,” he said.

In 2010 he co-founded Life After Hate, a not-for-profit organization dedicating to fighting racism and violent extremism. Five years later he published his memoirs of his time in the neo-Nazi movement, Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead.

“I’m still pulling up the weeds from all those seeds of hate that I planted,” he said, “which is why I have dedicated the last 20 years of my life to help eradicate racism.”

He recently sat down with me to talk about how he joined and left the neo-Nazi movement. In our conversation, Picciolini also explained why the American public should be as alarmed about white extremism as they are about Islamic radicals.

Matteen Mokalla

What was it about your early life that made you so susceptible to white supremacist views?

Christian Picciolini

I wasn’t raised a racist. My parents were often victims of prejudice because they were Italian immigrants. So it wasn’t a foundation of who I was. But what I was searching for, just like every young person who is vulnerable searches for, identity and community and a sense of purpose. [Clark Martell] gave that to me when I felt very powerless. And the racism actually came later.

My neighborhood was changing, and he was able to use those instances of crime to focus my purpose. He made me learn how to hate people — people that I didn’t even know, people that I never communicated with. I was taught to go against them because it was an us-against-them mentality, and if I didn’t protect myself, my race would die.

Matteen Mokalla

The Trump administration has made it clear that it will focus on countering Islamist terrorism. Reports indicate it will put far less resources into monitoring white extremism. Is this a mistake in your view?

Christian Picciolini

In prior administrations, the government has supported the fight against white extremism. They’ve recognized the threat in our own borders. But some of those policies might change — I think that’s a mistake.

Not only is that denying that we have a problem with our own borders, but it’s also marginalizing other people, Muslims specifically, telling them that they’re the problem. That we need to infiltrate their communities. And that’s not what countering violent extremism is about. It’s about being community-led and having the communities really work with the people they know the best to help understand and provide the services that they need. And if you remove white extremism from the focus of terrorism and counterterrorism, we’re only setting ourselves up for failure because we’ll only embolden that side. And it will only marginalize the others.

Matteen Mokalla

There is a sense among some that white nationalist violence is underreported in this country. Do you share this feeling too?

Christian Picciolini

White violence and white extremism often goes underreported. One incident in particular was in Las Vegas, where two police officers were executed and then draped with the flag that represented their militia group.

Sometimes we blame it on mental illness or the work of a lone wolf. But this is an ideological threat that runs deep within these groups in our country. And if we don’t start calling it terrorism like it is, it won’t get the attention that it needs to be combated.

Matteen Mokalla

There has been a shift in the imagery and language of white nationalists over the years. What are some of the messaging tactics these groups are using these days?

Christian Picciolini

The imagery of white supremacy has changed over the last three decades. It’s gone from what you would consider your normal racist, who might be a skinhead with tattoos or a Klansman wearing a robe and a hood, to something that’s more mainstream: suits and ties, fashionable haircuts, and clothes that would never identify them as neo-Nazis until they open their mouths.

That was a concerted effort because we knew that we were turning people away who we could eventually have on our side. And now we’re seeing the suits and the ties. And we’re seeing people go to universities and spread their messages on campuses. And we’re seeing people join law enforcement and run for office.

They know, if they take away the edge, if they take away the things that turn most people off, even if they’re racist, they can attract more people. Because now they’re appealing to the grievance the people have and they’re using us against them narrative to really spread racism. And most people that fall into this camp don’t even know that.

When they’re being xenophobic and they’re talking about Muslims being the enemy, they don’t really understand because maybe they’ve never really interacted with these people. They’ve never had a dialogue with these people. But they believe the propaganda and lies that are out there. And that’s all fear tactics.

Matteen Mokalla

What about the phrase “Make America great again” — do you see that as coded language?

Christian Picciolini

These days with our political climate, we see a lot of coded language or dog whistles, the use of star of David, when talking about politicians. We hear terms like “liberal media,” when in fact what they are talking about is Jewish media. We used to say that the Jews controlled the media, and now they’ve just massaged the phrase to call it “liberal media.”

“Make America great again?” Well, to them, it means make America white again. And I’m not ready to let that happen, because America is for everybody.

Matteen Mokalla

What exactly is the “white paradise” that white nationalists promise today and that many years ago brought you into the movement?

Christian Picciolini

White nationalists, just like any other extremist groups, promise paradise. They promise that the problems of crime and the problems of white genocide are going to go away. And that you come from a very white noble cause and that your culture is worth protecting.

The problem is that nobody is trying to take that away from you. The promise they make you is false because there is no “us against them.” We’re here on this world together to work together. And in fact, America was based with its greatest import being immigrants. So there is no problem.

The only problems they have are the ones that they inflate with propaganda, with fake news. Where they teach you that blacks commit more crimes against white people or that Jews control the media and the finance system.

These are all conspiracy theories; there’s no basis in truth. I know this because I helped create those lies from the beginning. I helped spread them, and ultimately I believed them myself. And I infected that lie to other people that were innocent, and even 20 years later, after I left the movement, I’m still pulling up the weeds from all those seeds of hate that I planted. That’s why I have dedicated the last 20 years of my life to help eradicate racism.

Trump’s “Muslim ban” won’t help security, but it will marginalize Muslims

2017-01-27T11:40:04-05:00

President Donald Trump is soon expected to sign an executive order temporarily blocking people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US with visas. Many view the move as the first step toward realizing the pledge Trump made on the campaign trail to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

While Trump’s proposal might be cheered among his base, critiques of the executive order have been plentiful.

According to data collected by Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, between 1975 and 2015 there have been zero American deaths on US soil at the hands of foreign terrorists from the seven Muslim countries listed in the leaked draft executive order.

In fact, deaths at the hands of foreign nationals on US soil are exceedingly rare. As my colleague Zack Beauchamp writes:

Virtually all the deaths from immigrant attacks (98.6 percent) came from one event: 9/11. Other than that, fatal immigrant-linked terrorist attacks in the US were vanishingly rare. The average likelihood of an American being killed in a terrorist attack in which an immigrant participated in any given year is one in 3.6 million —even including the 9/11 deaths.

Watch this video featuring Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, who explains why Trump’s proposed executive action should be the cause of concern for more than just the individuals from the seven banned nations list.

A look back at Trump vs. Clinton through the polls

2016-12-06T17:44:39-05:00

It’s official: Donald Trump is now president-elect of the United States. But if the polls and mainstream punditry were to be believed, this was not supposed to happen. After all, there were only a few days last July when the RealClearPolitics polling average had Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton — and only by a percentage point.

In those days, the Trump campaign enjoyed a bump in the polls from the anti-Clinton vitriol of the RNC that proved popular with the party’s base. Around the same time, things on the Democratic side were not going so well. Party Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned shortly after WikiLeaks published hacked DNC emails that suggested the party had actively worked against Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign.

At this point in the campaign, Trump could have very easily sat back and let the media focus on the disarray in the Democratic Party. But that was never Trump’s style. Instead, at a press conference on July 27, he called on a foreign government — Russia — to find and publicize missing emails from the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

Trump’s brief lead in the polls disappeared and didn’t recover.

As the world knows now, it didn’t matter. What Trump didn’t get in the polls he ultimately got in the vote.

Watch this time capsule video to see several of the key moments from the 2016 election, including some of Hillary Clinton’s highs and lows, set against national polls, as the two candidates went head to head.