conservatives

New research shows high-IQ men reject conservative politics: report

PsyPost reports a new study is revealing that average-intelligence men have a more conservative mentality, while gifted men and women tend to be more varied.

The study, “Exploring exceptional minds: Political orientations of gifted adults,” authored by Maximilian Krolo, Jörn R. Sparfeldt, and Detlef H. Rost, sought to discover if distinct political patterns emerge when comparing gifted adults to a control group of average intelligence.

The exhaustive multi-decade study began by administering more than 7,000 third-grade students standardized intelligence tests to measure reasoning abilities and the speed at which students processed information. Administrators then identified a group of gifted students with an IQ of 130 or higher and a control group of non-gifted students.

Six years later, when the students were in the ninth grade, the team tested them again to confirm their IQ and rule out a fluke test or lucky streak. Then, roughly 35 years after they were first identified, researchers sent them surveys to assess their political orientations.

“Specifically, non-gifted men scored higher on conservatism than gifted men,” reports PsyPost. “The non-gifted men were more likely to endorse values related to tradition and strict social order. Gifted men were less likely to hold these traditional conservative views.”

Researchers noted the difference among the women in the study was not so obvious, however, with gifted and non-gifted women both showing similar levels of comparatively lower conservatism. The divergence, reports researchers, was unique to the male participants.

“The team interpreted the findings through the lens of cognitive flexibility,” reports PsyPost. “They suggest that non-gifted men might rely more on traditional perspectives when processing complex social issues. This reliance could lead to higher conservatism scores.”

On the other hand, researchers believe gifted men may possess greater cognitive flexibility, which allows them to more easily process diverse perspectives. Consequently, they may be less inclined to adhere to rigid traditional norms.

Gifted adults appear to be as politically diverse and moderate as the rest of the population, but researchers say the “one notable exception” regarding non-gifted men’s preference for conservatism warrants further investigation.

The study relied on self-reported beliefs retrieved through surveys, however. And while honest reporting is assumed, researchers say it is possible that respondents sometimes describe themselves “differently than their actions might suggest.”

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'Runs so counter to everything': Conservatives 'appalled' by Trump's deal with tech giant

In an analysis for the Washington Post published Wednesday, reporter David J. Lynch argued that President Donald Trump’s recent maneuver to acquire a 10 percent government stake in Intel is a seismic break from decades of Republican economic orthodoxy (commonly known as "Reaganomics").

Lynch wrote that this intervention represents a radical departure from the free‑market creed that defined the GOP for "generations."

He noted that former President Ronald Reagan’s signature economic framework favored minimal government, deregulation, and empowered private enterprise. By contrast, Trump's dealings mark a turn toward centralized control, most notably by converting billions in Chips Act grants into a controlling stake in Intel.

Lynch emphasized how Trump’s embrace of direct equity ownership clashes with Reagan’s belief that the private sector, unfettered by government, drives efficiency and innovation.

In addition to the Intel deal, the writer highlighted Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, efforts to pressure the Federal Reserve, and expanding executive influence over corporate decisions such as naming rights and headquarters relocations. Together, these actions illustrate a broader ideological shift away from traditional conservative principles of limited government and market autonomy, he argued.

The journalist included in the piece the visceral reaction from conservative commentators, who view the Intel stake as an affront to free‑market capitalism. One senior Republican economist told him, “I am appalled,” warning that such interventionism could undermine market functions and future economic growth by blurring the lines between public and private spheres.

Geoffrey Kabaservice, vice president of political studies at the Niskanen Center, told the reporter: “Much of what Trump is saying and doing are explicitly rejections of Reaganism."

He added: “Honestly, Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave at this, because it just runs so counter to everything that generations of conservatives had believed about capitalism.”

Lynch also underscored the potential dangers of government ownership in private enterprise: distorting investment decisions, politicizing business strategy, and dampening innovation.

Observers warned of broader implications for industrial policy: the precedent set by the Intel equity deal may open the door to similar state interventions in defense contractors and agriculture, fundamentally altering the relationship between government and the private sector.

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'Testing the limits': Conservatives unite with Dems in 'fighting a Republican president'

In the Democratic Party, critics of President Donald Trump have found that many conservatives and libertarians they fought and argued with in the past are now joining them in their opposition to Trump and the MAGA movement.

Those unlikely allies include, among many others, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), attorney George Conway, retired Republican-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig, GOP strategist Rick Wilson and The Bulwark's Bill Kristol. And some of the hosts on liberal-leaning MSNBC were prominent figures in the Republican Party of the past, including former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele and Nicolle Wallace (former White House communications director in the George W. Bush administration).

Now, in a Friday article published by the conservative Washington Examiner, journalist Kaelan Deese is taking a closer look at right-wing attorneys who are suing the Trump administration.

"Some of the most prominent minds behind the conservative legal movement are fighting a Republican president and his administration in court, and it's putting these elite attorneys, many champions of the right for their past efforts to combat the administrative state, on President Donald Trump's bad side," Deese explains. "In a series of lawsuits spanning trade, higher education, and legal ethics, historically conservative-leaning lawyers and libertarian public-interest groups are testing the limits of Trump's executive authority during his second term. They argue that constitutional guardrails must apply regardless of who holds power."

Deese adds, "This spring, former Solicitor General Paul Clement joined one of the highest-profile challenges: defending WilmerHale, a major law firm blacklisted by the Trump administration under an executive order targeting firms that represented disfavored clients. The administration accused WilmerHale of undermining national interests due to its past legal work and personnel ties to Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation."

Trump reflexively attacks his critics on the right as RINOs: Republicans In Name Only. But Deese notes that Clement's "conservative credentials are impeccable": Clement spent four years as solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, and he has fought against gun control in court.

"However, Clement is a vocal advocate of the principle that all legal clients, even those who are unpopular, deserve representation," Deese explains. "Now, representing multiple clients who are challenging Trump administration actions, Clement is not alone."

Deese continues, "A growing list of conservative and libertarian-aligned attorneys are arguing that fidelity to the Constitution doesn't evaporate when a Republican sits in the White House…. One of the sharpest legal rebukes to Trump's claimed authority comes from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which has received donations from organizations tied to Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard Leo and Koch-affiliated networks…. Now, NCLA is fighting the Trump administration over what it sees as stretching the bounds of what Congress wrote under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The group also has sued in Pensacola, Florida, against Trump's imposition of new tariffs on Chinese imports."

Read the full Washington Examiner article at this link (subscription required).

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'Frustration': Conservative callers vent about Trump on right-wing talk radio

Even conservatives are angry about President Donald Trump’s second time in office.

This according to Angelo Carusone, President of Media Matters, who identified instances where listeners have called into right-wing talk radio to voice their frustrations with the presidency, particularly about mass firings of federal workers by the Department of Government Efficiency. He outlined the findings with Tim Miller, host of the Bulwark Podcast.

“Usually the right wing is an echo chamber… especially with Trump. But that’s not entirely the case — not from the hosts on right wing talk radio, but from the callers,” Carusone said.

“Basically what you’re saying is listening to the callers… you’ve got a couple examples of listeners who are calling in and b----ing about DOGE who are obviously conservative listeners,” Miller said.

Carusone said many of the callers are people who lost their jobs or know people who lost their jobs. “They are appealing to these media figures to advocate in some way,” he said. “They’re giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, but they’re expressing frustration and they’re hoping that people like [Sean] Hannity, or Clay Travis, can set the record straight.”

For example, one listener called into Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show: “One of our tenants,” they said, “just recently got laid off from the USDA, and he's a stable vet, multiple deployments overseas. And yeah, the guy is without a job now, and I'm just afraid that, you know, stuff like this is going to get out there.” They added that it’s “just a little concerning that we don't let these guys, you know, fall off the wagon here and get neglected, because they've done so much for our country.”

“There’s this moment where the callers are sort of putting things out there especially about the job losses and they’re either saying it’s overly broad, it’s inconsiderate, that they’re not part of the deep state and they are hoping that these figures will appeal to them,” Carusone said.

He added that these callers did not seem to be an “astroturf” scenario where people were faking their identities. “You can kind of tell the authenticity,” he said. “They’re genuinely not trying to mess with their host. They’re really hoping that they will exercise some leadership or maybe clarify for the administration.”

“I’m very surprised by how many calls there are,” he said later, “because, just to take a step back, these call-in shows… have millions of listeners. People are getting call-ins all the time. They’re screened. So if you’re letting some of these calls through… it’s like when somebody calls a member of Congress, they always assume that there’s a certain number that are just like that that didn’t actually call. It’s the same thing here. If you’re a radio host, if you’re a show, you’re letting some of these calls through, which means you’re getting a lot of that topic.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

The Backlash Is Here: Trump Supporters Beg Right-Wing Hosts To Stop DOGE Firings by The Bulwark

Read on Substack

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The right comes for one of its own on the issue of 'family values'

After a conservative influencer alleged that she was the mother of Elon Musk’s 13th child, conservatives took to X — Musk's own social media platform — to deride him. Musk, who is leading an effort to make dramatic cuts of the federal government, is father to at least 12 children with at least three — or apparently four — women. He has been parading some of them around the White House recently.

Last week, conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair posted on X that she has a 5-month-old baby whose father is Elon Musk. “I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child’s privacy and safety,” she wrote, but she learned that the tabloids were planning on revealing the birth.

“Perhaps more surprising than her claim (which Musk hasn’t directly commented on), however, was the opprobrium it generated — not from Musk’s sworn enemies among Democrats, but from his newfound allies on the right,” Derek Robertson writes at Politico.

“I strongly recommend having a baby daddy who lives in your house, so that you don’t have to tweet him,” conservative commentator Bethany Mandel posted on X. St. Clair had replied to Musk that she had been trying to contact him.

“Much of conservatism is filled with godless, hypocrites who couldn’t care less about conserving traditional family values. It way past time we come to grips with that fact & do our part to not platform, promote and celebrate those that just use conservative values for their own gain,” Jon Root, sports announcer and former Turning Point USA employee, posted on X. “Pray for Ashley St. Clair & Elon Musk’s child. Pray for his parent’s repentance.”

“The 8 billion people alive today simply don’t matter — genocide and wars are mere ripples, as long as some survive, and Musk is the one that needs to survive,” Alexander Thomas, researcher at the University of East London, explained. “He’s the one that needs to pass on the baton of civilization and create this superior future.”

Compact Magazine editor Matthew Schmitz, a conservative, posted on X that “Elon embodies the values of a genetic-determinist right that celebrates people with ‘good genes’ having children under any circumstances. This vision of reproduction is sharply opposed to that of a more culturist right that insists on the importance of marriage and monogamy.”

“Interestingly,” he continued, “the quasi-eugenic ideas you find on parts of the right are now being used to justify behaviors once associated exclusively with lower-class social pathology. According to this view, when Elon Musk impregnates woman after woman with no intention of giving the children a stable family, that’s an expression of his great genetics. But when a lower-class man does the exact same thing, it’s a patent sign of his bad genes.”

“When it comes to Washington politics and the Republican Party,” Robertson writes, “less important here are the internecine (and often deeply bizarre) arguments over the transhumanist future than how it differs from that imagined by the rest of the conservative coalition.”

In 2020, Musk announced his new baby in the replies to an article about Tesla.

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Conservatism is dead. Conspiracism is dancing on its grave

Conspiracist ideology has consumed the Republican Party. At his rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump pledged to demolish the deep state, drive out the globalists, and rout the fake news media. Speaker after speaker referenced the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, a dogma that was once confined to the manifestos of mass shooters, but which is now the Trump campaign’s closing argument for the presidency.

Former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who promoted the Great Replacement over 400 times on his now-defunct show, told the crowd at Madison Square Garden that the political class “despises [the people] and their values and their history and their culture and their customs really hates them to the point that it’s trying to replace them.”

The former president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr, was even more explicit.

“The Democrat[sic] Party has forgotten about Americans. Rather than cater to Americans, they decided, “You know what? It would just be easier to replace them with people who will be reliable voters.”

"Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote," Trump Sr., said last month.

The Republican National Committee under Lara Trump is claiming that millions of undocumented migrants could vote next week. A vast body of research, including recent audits by Republican-controlled states like Georgia, has found that voting by non-citizens is essentially non-existent.

By hyping this fake threat, Republicans are creating a pretext to challenge the election if Trump loses, putting a racist spin on their perennial allegations of voter fraud, and creating excuses for Republican governors to purge their voter rolls.

However, this obsession with non-citizen voting goes deeper than that. The lie of mass voting by undocumented migrants is the conceptual glue that binds the three major components of their conspiracist ideology: The Deep State, the Big Lie, and the Great Replacement.

Let’s review their delusional belief system:

The Deep State is a shadowy network of elites inside and outside of government who supposedly direct the course of history. This cabal is responsible for everything from Trump’s impeachments and prosecutions to voting laws and immigration policy. Some say it controls the weather.

The Big Lie is the debunked claim that voter fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 election. Trump kicked off his Madison Square Garden rally by vowing to “totally obliterate the Deep State.”

The Great Replacement is the charge that the Deep State is deliberately importing migrants in order to replace white Americans, a process sometimes known as “white genocide.” The lie of massive noncitizen voting explains why the Deep State is supposedly importing all these migrants to commit election fraud.

These beliefs meld seamlessly into a paranoid whole. Trump told rally-goers in Atlanta that the only reason Democratic immigration policy must be the result of evil or stupidity. “Well, they’re not stupid because anybody that can cheat on elections that good is not stupid,” Trump told rally-goers in Atlanta. “But I never really talked about the third reason because it’s so sinister, but they want to sign these people up to vote, and if they do that, this country is destroyed.”

Trump has been blaming migrants for his political failures for years. In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote and blamed it on millions of illegal voters. Incredibly, Trump claimed that he would have won deep blue California – a state he lost by 30 points and 4 million votes – if not for those improbably civic-minded migrants. Trump convened a special commission to investigate voter fraud, which fizzled without finding evidence of the conspiracy.

Conservative ideology as we knew it is dead.

Conspiracism is all.

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'Quickly falling apart': Conservatives are turning against 'click-chaser' Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson was once the most-watched primetime host on the most conservative cable news network. But after a recent interview he conducted on his new X/Twitter show, more conservatives are abandoning him.

The Daily Beast reported that following Carlson's interview with the Rev. Munther Isaac, pro-Israel conservatives have lost patience with the far-right pundit. Like his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Carlson gave a soft, lengthy interview to Isaac — an Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, which is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — and lent him a platform to repeatedly attack the Netanyahu regime in Israel while Carlson agreed with him.

"It would be pretty easy for Republicans in the US Congress to say we support the government of Israel. But if you touch a single Christian, harm a single church, prevent any Christian from practicing his religion, you’re done. Not a single dollar will come from the US Congress for you," Carlson said. "If you wake up in the morning and decide that your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government, blowing up churches and killing Christians. I think you’ve lost the thread."

Carlson's remarks angered prominent conservative Christians who back Israel, including Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who declared: "This is who Tucker is: a click-chaser."

"Tucker’s MO is simple: defend America’s enemies and attack America’s allies. There isn’t an objective bone left in that washed up news host’s body," he tweeted. "Tucker will eventually fade into nothingness, because his veneer of faux intellectualism is quickly falling apart and revealing who he truly is: a cowardly, know-nothing elitist who is full of s—."

X influencer AG Hamilton — a pseudonym for an attorney who writes for the conservative National Review — had similar thoughts in a lengthy post to the platform. He suggested that Carlson's concern about Christians under attack was hollow given that he didn't "have a word to say" about the oppression of Christians in other countries. He added that Tucker's "whole shtick" was feeding his audience a pre-conceived narrative and presenting it as an objective interview.

"He presents a question then suggests an implied answer using dishonest or partial facts, then insists he’s selling his audience a truth instead of feeding them obvious BS," Hamilton tweeted.

Carlson's decision to interview Munther Isaac also attracted criticism from one of his former Fox News colleagues. After Hamas' October 7 terror attack that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and resulted in hundreds of hostages being taken, Isaac suggested that the Natanyahu regime owned responsibility for the attack, attributing it to the Nakba (the Arabic word for the establishment of the Israeli state and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians). NewsNation host Leland Vittert — a former Fox host — slammed Carlson's interview as irresponsible journalism.

"Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, would be proud," Vittert said after showing Carlson's remarks. "Again, Tucker's a smart guy, yet he's taking the side of terrorists. There's no other explanation than his unabashed hatred of Jews."

Read the Beast's report in full by clicking here (subscription required).

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‘How sick your soul’: Conservatives slammed for suing over program supporting pregnant Black women

Several right-wing groups are suing the City of San Francisco over a program that helps support pregnant Black women, who studies show have statistically higher rates of maternal death. Black families also experience statistically higher rates of premature birth and infant death.

“Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in April. “Multiple factors contribute to these disparities, such as variation in quality healthcare, underlying chronic conditions, structural racism, and implicit bias. Social determinants of health prevent many people from racial and ethnic minority groups from having fair opportunities for economic, physical, and emotional health.

”The University of California San Francisco reports, “In San Francisco, Black infants are almost twice as likely to be born prematurely compared with White infants (13.8% versus 7.3%, from 2012-2016) and Pacific Islander infants have the second-highest preterm birth rate (10.4%).” UCSF also reports, “Black families account for half of the maternal deaths and over 15% of infant deaths, despite representing only 4% of all births. Pacific Islander families face similar disparities.”

Enter the Abundant Birth Project, which began in San Francisco. It says it “provides unconditional cash supplements to communities experiencing disproportionately high rates of adverse outcomes as a strategy to reduce preterm birth and improve economic outcomes.” ABP began as a “fully-funded public-private partnership,” and its success has led it to expand into more counties in California.

But according to The 19th, a nonprofit independent newsroom, “Conservative groups have sued to shut down the Abundant Birth Project, part of a national backlash against affirmative action in health care.” The 19th adds that the “project has provided 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander San Franciscans a $1,000 monthly stipend.”

The “future of the Abundant Birth Project is clouded by a lawsuit alleging that the program, the first of its kind in the nation, illegally discriminates by giving the stipend only to people of a specific race. The lawsuit also targets San Francisco guaranteed-income programs serving artists, transgender people and Black young adults.”

The lawsuit calls the stipends “discriminatory payment schemes,” and seeks to stop the use of “government resources or public funds to support these unlawful programs so long as such they discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender/gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

The 19th lists several “activist nonprofit groups and law firms [that] are leading the charge” against affirmative action in health care. “Do No Harm, a nonprofit formed in 2022, has sued health commissions, pharmaceutical companies and public health journals to try to stop them from choosing applicants based on race. Do No Harm claims more than 6,000 members worldwide and partners with nonprofit legal organizations, most notably the Pacific Legal Foundation, which garnered national attention when it defended California’s same-sex marriage ban.”

Also, Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and the American Civil Rights Project, “filed the lawsuit against the city of San Francisco and the state of California over the Abundant Birth Project, alleging the program violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by granting money exclusively to Black and Pacific Islander women. The 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to give rights to formerly enslaved Black people.”

Mara Gay, a member of The New York Times’ editorial board and an MSNBC contributor responded to news of the lawsuit by saying, “Imagine how sick your soul has to be to spend time and money on this.”

Uché Blackstock, an emergency physician and author also responded to the news, writing on social media: “Today, Black babies are more than 2x as likely to die in their 1st year than white babies, due to racism – a wider disparity now than 15 yrs b4 the end of slavery (white enslavers had a $ interest in keeping Black babies alive!!!).”

“These suits are sick and the intent is clear,” added Dr. Blackstock, who is the author of “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.”

“WHITE LAWYERS V. BLACK BABIES,” wrote attorney and activist Cornell William Brooks, a former president and CEO of the NAACP. “The race specific bias of American medicine means Black babies die 2.4 x the rate of White babies. SO conservative legal groups sue a program for helping Black mothers. Why? It is race specific #AffirmativeAction 4 dying babies. Outrageous.”

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