The Bias in Our Media Diet, Praying against Voter Suppression, Our Anti-Democratic Campaign Financing

Plus, Encouraging Polls, humorous distractions, and a new podcast

Hi all,

Thanks so much to those of you who joined us on Tuesday for our subscriber call! It was a really engaging and fun conversation. And if you want to join in future, plus get access to our bonus podcasts and commenting here on Substack, sign up as a paid subscriber!

Our highlights this week include:

-        Encouraging trends in the polls

-        Praying against voter suppression

-        How our campaign financing system privileges rich voters

-        The bias in our media diets

-        Sy keeps us grounded with some distracting humor

-        And a preview of tomorrow’s Shake the Dust

Sy’s Recommendations

A Significant Turn-Around in Polling for Harris and Walz

Polling across the country is trending in a very encouraging direction for the Harris/Walz campaign. Just today, a series of polls are showing Harris slightly ahead or tied in key battleground states in which Trump was comfortably ahead just a month or so ago. The difference is mostly due to recent changes among Black, Latine, and younger voters. Harris is now beating Trump by 5 points in national polls, an 8-or-so point swing from Biden’s position in June. And she is actually showing up within the margin of error in some polls in solidly red states like North Carolina, Florida, and even Texas. Of course, the caveats: there is still a long way to go in the campaign and polls can fluctuate a lot; Harris has natural momentum coming off of the convention that will fade; and polls have limited value in predicting actual voting. As critical of Harris as I can be (see tomorrow’s podcast), this is all incredibly welcome news particularly given where things were not so long ago.

-            Take a look at some of the polls

Pray for Election Integrity

A few stories of Trump supporters attacking voting rights or mechanisms of the electoral system have made me start praying for election integrity this year. Trump loyalists on Georgia’s State Election Board just adopted rules allowing local election officials to delay and challenge the certification of voting results, a move that a law suit by the Democrats says was far outside the boards jurisdiction. Meanwhile, in Texas, Alabama, and other red states, officials have adopted a strategy of removing voters with non-citizen identification numbers from voter rolls and referring their cases to prosecutors, claiming to be fighting the pervasive problem of illegal voting by non-citizens. What they’re actually doing is de-registering and harassing thousands of recently-naturalized citizen voters, who vote more often for Democrats than the average person in their states. Texas has removed over a million people from its voter registry in the past few years under a controversial law that also limits how long polls can be open and the methods by which people can vote. Finally, several states Trump won or lost by very narrow margins have restricted mail-in voting, limited the use of ballot drop boxes, increased the strictness of voter ID requirements, and more, all measures designed to limit Democratic voting. So please do keep all of this in your prayers. There’s not a lot to do here advocacy-wise because the legality of these measures will be decided in court, though you could of course donate to local voter protection organizations, especially if you’re in a swing state. And pay attention to any ballot measures that might be coming up in your state about voting!

Jonathan’s Recommendations

How Our Campaign Financing System Privileges Rich Voices

Citizens United was the 2010 Supreme Court case that ruled many of our country’s restrictions on campaign spending by for-profit corporations were unconstitutional because they violated free speech rights. It was one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions ever. It unleashed a flood of funds into our political system that grows every election cycle. And it set the stage for the consequent ruling that allowed unlimited individual contributions into super PACs, organizations that can advocate on behalf of candidates with only the most toothless of regulations preventing coordination with campaigns. This year, the Washington Post reports just 50 people have thrown $1.5 billion behind their chosen candidates using superPACs. In Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive, I wrote extensively about the voter suppression that exists in the United States and our anti-democratic reality. Our campaign financing system silences the voices of those who are unable to allocate vast sums of wealth towards their self-interests. We pray and work for equity and justice and ask for God to give us strength and wisdom to call for reforms.

-            Read about the top 50 donors this election

Find Out the Ideologies Behind Your News Media

An organization called Ad Fontes Media produces a media bias chart, and it should be a tool in the belt of anyone serious about political discipleship and faithful civic engagement. It’s an essential resource for navigating our exceptionally polarized media landscape. Sixty analysts at Ad Fontes rate tons of news sources, day in and day out, for their political leanings. Overall, they have rated over 3,400 news sources. Find out where your media diet comes from ideologically and what worldviews may be shaping your thinking. From there, you can make more conscious decisions about who you follow, where you learn, and how you want to grow.

-            Check out the interactive or static media bias charts

Staying Grounded with Sy

Since I spend a lot of time writing, podcasting, and thinking about serious and often tragic subjects, one way I keep myself grounded is through humor. Just nonsense comedy that has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, the Church, or anything else we usually talk about here. It helps me escape a bit. But I also find it’s a helpful emotional guard against taking myself or the world overly seriously. I have a wide range of sources I go to for this fix, so I’ll just share one thing I ran into recently that I really enjoyed. It’s a short story by Simon Rich about a supervillain struggling to make meaningful male friendships when the only men his age he encounters are his sycophantic henchmen and his superhero nemeses. It’s great, and I hope you enjoy it (or at least I hope you don’t judge me for being much goofier than you thought).

Shake the Dust Preview

Tomorrow, we’re talking all about political discipleship. People were made to live in the kingdom of God, not this broken world, and that has significant implications for our political engagement. We talk about Christians living in constant dissatisfaction with political outcomes, how we shouldn’t overemphasize political victories and losses, how we avoid the subtle nationalism and idolatry on the left, what God’s good news about politics is, and a lot more! This conversation is central to everything we do at KTF, and we know you don’t want to miss it!

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Jonathan and Sy