Research | Political Research Associates

Playing the Long Game

How the Christian Right Built Capacity to Undo Roe State By State

Executive Summary The progressive movement and advocates for reproductive rights, health, and justice have been caught off guard by a movement that has adapted to a changing political, social, and cultural landscape. The Christian Right has…

Report

“All You Have to Do Is Show Up”

How White Nationalists Are Infiltrating the GOP

People carrying Identity Evropa flags march in Charlottesville, August 16, 2017

In recent years, the most adept attempts at entryism have come from those trying to embed in the Republican Party a far-right ideology that calls for a rebirth of a nation’s mythic past in order to create a populist movement founded on…

Article

The National Sheriffs’ Association Alignment with Far-Right Groups Undermines Public Safety

National Sheriffs’ Association’s Winter Education and Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., Feb. 6, 2017.

Technological tools to increase law enforcement’s surveillance capacity will be showcased at this year’s annual National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), Education and Technology Expo from June 14-18, heightening concerns regarding law enforcement’s…

Article

Epicenter: Chicago

Reclaiming a City from Neoliberalism

Introduction In many ways, all eyes are on Chicago. The city increasingly finds itself at the epicenter of multiple discourses of violence and safety – from hubristic Presidential tweets claiming federal intervention is necessary to address Chicago’…

Report

How a Right-Wing Network Mobilized Sheriffs’ Departments

Sheriffs are elected at the county level, and in most cases operate without any direct oversight. This presents an opportunity for White nationalists and other right-wing movements, particularly …

Article

The National Sheriffs’ Association Strengthens the Deportation Machine

U.S President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence look on as Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County Massachusetts delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a new effort in May 2019 to expand the reach of its deportation machine. ICE’s new Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program allows local police officers to effectively become federal immigration…

Article

The Intersectional Right

A Roundtable on Gender and White Supremacy

Blue Mountain Center convening participants

In the early 1990s, when researcher and activist Loretta Ross was monitoring the White supremacist movement for the Center for Democratic Renewal, a national anti-Ku Klux Klan network, she realized that most fight-the-Right organizations were…

Article

Aberration or Reflection? How to Understand Changes on the Political Right

Ronald Reagan gives his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, July 1980.

Trump’s election was less an aberration than a reflection of changes in the New Right coalition, which brought business elites, evangelicals, and neoconservatives together under the Republican umbrella in the late 1970s and has underpinned the party…

Article

The Art of Activism: Danbee Kim

Danbee (Deb) Kim is a Chicago-based artist who supports social justice movements and organizations through visual storytelling and design. Originally on the path to become a social worker, Kim now focuses full-time on centering art in movement…

Article

States Criminalize Abortion with Roe in Reach

In front of SCOTUS during March for Life Rally. January 22, 2016

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday evening signed a bill into law intended to ban nearly all abortions and criminalize physicians who provide abortion care, and hours later the Missouri state senate approved legislation that ban abortions after…

Article

In Search of New Frames

Q&A with the authors of Producers, Parasites, Patriots

Tea Party rally in Plano, TX, April 15, 2009

A new book, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, offers a framework for interpreting and dismantling racist capitalist oppression without getting bogged down in this treacherous narrative of “makers and…

Q&A

New Mexico’s Constitutional Sheriffs Pave the Way for Militias Patrolling the Border

Although these state and federal officials tried to distance themselves from militia organizing, New Mexico’s constitutional sheriffs cumulatively have taken actions that signal that militias are welcome in the state.

Article

The Right’s Decades-Long Fight for A Census Citizenship Question

Supreme Court building, Washington, DC, USA.

The contemporary anti-immigrant movement, which has established influence at various levels of the administration, has promoted and attempted to litigate changing the census to reveal citizenship status for nearly 40 years.

Article

Blitzing to Dominion

The Christian and business Right has been steadily building political, policy and legislative capacity in the states since the 1980s. Since 2016, a Christian Right state legislative campaign called Project Blitz has become part of this …

Article

White House Ties to Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Muslim Leaders

Protesters hold various signs and banners at a DACA rally in San Francisco.

The influence of organized anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim movements is readily apparent in policy changes over the last two years.

Map

Exploiting Equity

How the Pioneer Institute Co-opts the Concept of Social Justice

This report demonstrates how three of the Pioneer Institute’s leading claims that their education reforms create greater equity in schools are not only unfounded but that these reforms disproportionately harm communities of color and immigrant…

Report

The Proud Boys

A Republican Party Street Gang

The Proud Boys became a national focus in October 2018 when independent journalist Sandi Bachom posted video of a violent confrontation in New York City.

Article

The Struggle for LGBTQ Inclusion at Christian Colleges and Universities

A professor offers a prayer during a rally by the LGBTQ Christian community at Azusa Pacific University to show support after the school reinstated a ban on same-sex relationships, October 1, 2018. Credit: Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.

When Gary Campbell enrolled in Baptist Bible College (now Clarks Summit University) in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, in 2001, he knew he was gay. He was among those students who, in an effort to repress their sexual orientation, choose the…

Article

Racism in Anti-Trans “Feminist” Activism

It’s notable that anti-trans feminists are employing similar racist dog-whistles that have been used by the Right for centuries to create out-sized fear and outrage among their constituents and followers to justify the out-sized time and energy…

Article

Losing their Religion

A Roundtable Discussion

In the 1980s, the Moral Majority helped usher in an era of politicized Christianity in the United States. The breadth of Christian Right activity since then, from the evangelical Right, to fundamentalist homeschooling, to cross-denominational…

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