The Tollywood blockbuster is a hit on Netflix, but it’s casteist politics aren’t so simple.
S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR (Rise, Roar, Revolt) has taken the world by storm. It’s one of the most expensive Indian films ever made, and one of the most successful, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing Indian film of all time. Even Netflix, which has been streaming the movie since May, declared it to be the most watched Indian film on its service, viewed over 45 million times globally. Critics love it, and its GIFs and scenes have swept social media. It’s an undeniable slam-dunk of global success. Coming out of the Telugu-language film industry of Tollywood in South India, as opposed to the more popular Hindi-language industry of Bollywood, this period drama from India’s biggest filmmaker is a cinematic event.
Centered on Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, two very real Indian freedom fighters from the Telugu regions of Andhra and Telangana respectively, the film is a fantasy of the past. RRR imagines a fictitious, impossible friendship between these two figures of history as they come together and team up to fight the forces of British colonialism in 1920s pre-independence India. And it boasts two superstars of South Indian film — Ram Charan (who plays Alluri Sitarama Raju, also known as Rama Raju) and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. (who plays Komaram Bheem) as the two leads, both heirs to powerful film dynasties in Tollywood.
Rama Raju was an upper-caste man who helped lead the rebellions and resistance of Adivasis, the Indigenous people, against the British, while Komaram Bheem was an Adivasi icon and a revolutionary from the marginalized Gond people. They’re both key figures in Telugu history, albeit unequally. While Komaram Bheem, as an Indigenous protector of his people, has a lasting legacy, he’s hardly received the same level of sustained adoration as an upper-caste hero like Rama Raju, who was the subject of a classic ’70s film.
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RRR director Rajamouli’s film is part of that legacy, bringing the two heroes together, playing like the apotheosis of his work. His films are full of big emotions, enthralling action set pieces, sweeping gestures, and memorably epic soundtracks. They’re the kind of movies you watch at a theater with a big audience, as people cheer and wolf-whistle. Coming off the Baahubali duology of sword-and-sorcery epics, which were some of the biggest Indian films of the past decade, RRR is a level-up. It’s a maximalist blockbuster that feels like an ode to much of what we love about the theatrical experience.
To a global audience inundated with an endless slurry of corporate superhero content, facing a landscape more and more bound to franchises, shared universes, and IP, the film is an increasingly rare gem of blockbuster filmmaking. It’s devoid of the trademark self-aware, winking irony of most American blockbusters, instead going all-in on sincerity. But most importantly? It’s new. RRR’s influences are not familiar ground for most global audiences. It emerges from a wildly different cultural landscape and filmmaking tradition. Where else can you find a three-hour musical epic with an electrifying and rip-roaring dance battle in defiance of a colonizer’s cruelty?
Where else do you get a ridiculously thrilling title-drop 40 minutes into the film, as though you were watching Drive My Car, for an action epic that feels like an event?
It’s the kind of big movie that reminds you of the sheer power of movies. It’s why so many of the responses to the film tend to be in the realm of hyperbole, as the film almost invites such a reaction. It’s a film that embodies the history and strength of Telugu cinema when it comes to myth-making.
But for all its thrills, RRR also comes with a set of issues that need scrutiny.
The film is, certainly, admirably anti-colonialist with its searing hatred for the British Empire and the white man’s burden. Its contempt for the colonizers, with action scenes showcasing tigers and leopards devouring them, is delightful and resonant.
But it is also emblematic of a larger current trend in Indian film — movies that stoke the flames of nationalism in the current India and its troubling political climate. And it is the most successful film of them all to date, reaching a far wider viewership, which is why it matters.
In RRR’s case, the problem is that it is very much a fantasy of the upper-caste Hindu gaze, and all those willing to go along with its hegemony.
Now, what do I mean by that? To unpack that, let’s dig into that which has long ruled the fate of India: the caste system.
Hindutva and the casteist monster
The caste system has oppressed, and continues to oppress, legions across history. It’s a mechanism by which theological justifications are provided for a horrific hierarchy and inequality, raising up the upper castes and helping them shore up their power, while keeping down all they deem as “lower” than them. It has been historically used to dehumanize people, with evils such as the infamous “untouchability,” denial of access to public services, and prohibitions against inter-caste marriages. Issues such as land ownership and prosecution of crimes are key struggles informed by the realities of caste. While there has been progress over the past century, the grim prejudices persist.
At the top of the order are Brahmins (the priestly class), followed by Kshatriyas (the warrior/ruling class), then Vaishyas (the merchant class), and Shudras (the labor class). Below all of them are the Dalits, whom the system views as “the untouchables.” This hierarchical view of reality is a troubling one. And it extends to how the ruling elite view the Adivasis (the Indigenous people) who exist outside the caste system. They see them as below them and their Brahmanical supremacy.
During the early 20th century, this monster met another horrific monster: European fascism. Specifically, the Italian fascism of Mussolini and the Nazism of Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Forged in the flames of vile hatred, this would give birth to a political ideology that now rules over the current modern India: Hindutva, a belief system envisioned by extremist right-wing Hindu political figures and enforced by militant groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Its goal is to see India transformed from a secular nation into a Hindu Rashtra/Hindu state. It views the Muslim as the ultimate enemy, a foreign invader and serious threat to their way of life. It conflates conspiracy with history, mythology with reality, and hopes to replace the constitution with something far more regressive and oppressive. This is especially relevant given that India is currently ruled over by the Hindutva RSS political party in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Led by Narendra Modi, the modern face of Hindutva, the group won big and came into power in 2014. It represents a terrifying new India.
Hindutva is a project that aspires to flatten and reduce myriad diverse groups and people into a generic abstract of the Hindu. It’s useful to ask who benefits here; what is the purpose of this fascist flattening and uniting? Many of the chief architects of this ideology — founders, key influencers, or the architects and leaders of its militant enforcers — were, unsurprisingly, of the highest caste, Brahmins.
One of the central texts to Hindutva and its history, We, Or Our Nationhood Defined, makes the ideology’s ties to Nazism explicit. It suggests that India could learn from Nazi Germany and its attempts to “keep up the purity of the race and its culture.” Thus, the construction of the Muslim as the enemy, the invader, and the foreign threat, which serves to create a demonized Other against which a “unity” of the abstracted “Hindu” can be built.
When you give the people who might rise up against you a common constructed enemy who you outline as below them, you are saying, “Oppress them with us and you too can be part of our glorious hegemony.” Certainly, individuals from marginalized caste backgrounds can be granted power, but only as symbols to inspire other oppressed people into serving the system of oppression itself, which must forever be in place.
In the modern age, caste privilege is not gone, and neither is casteist discrimination. Hindutva being a hybrid of casteism and fascism means it is fundamentally an ideology of inequality. Its agents might tokenistically attempt to appeal to marginalized people, and attempt to co-opt radical icons, but the reality of it is systemic oppression, just masked a bit differently. Even in America, casteism runs wild, though communities attempt to keep the pretense of being post-caste, painting it as an ancient relic. It’s hard to escape upper-caste thinking, no matter where you are.
All of which brings us to the current moment in India. Since the ascent of Modi and the BJP, the country has descended into a nightmarish climate of fear and oppression, wherein religious minorities are under threat, Islamophobia is at an all-time high, bigotry runs free, the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer, and Adivasi lands and rights are violated. History itself is under threat and is in the process of being rewritten, from disinformation in the media to alterations to education in schools.
And those who speak up are punished or made examples of. Even the arts have come under siege, as an endless parade of period pieces display the Muslim invader, the foreign Muslim, the evil Muslim, and other such variants that terrorize the valiant Hindu heroes. Such clear Hindu-washed historicals serving Hindutva talking points are all over Bollywood (consider this year’s biggest Bollywood film, Kashmir Files, a conspiracy-theory spin on history). All this has only fomented and fanned more hatred and calls for violence against the oppressed.
This is the context in which RRR was released. And while it might be an exciting romp, the film doesn’t offer any reprieve from the upper-caste vision that brought us here.
The way the caste system operates in the Telugu regions is crucial in this case. It’s slightly different from the conventional setup — divided into Brahmins, followed by a smattering of middle-caste non-Brahmins, and below them, Dalits. Certain non-Brahmins like the land-owning Kamma and Kapu castes, who dominate the region, are effectively upper-caste. And they’ve long held power over the arts.
The Brahmanical Hindu fantasy of reality
RRR, in the end, is unable to escape the shackles of this troubling system. S.S. Rajamouli comes from an upper-caste background, a fact that’s evident in his films but is important to note. So does N.T. Rama Rao (NTR). Rajamouli and NTR are of the Kamma caste, while Ram Charan is of the Kapu caste, both of which hold a strong sway in the Telugu states.
Rajamouli’s influences are very much the Hindu epics such as The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, as well as the Indian Amar Chitra Katha comics — largely retellings of classic Hindu epics or stories. The epics, and the comics drawing upon them, largely center on upper-caste heroes, whether the divine Ram in Ramayana or the mighty Pandavas in Mahabharata. These upper-caste champions inhabit Hindu worlds and mythologies that have caste built into them, and as such have very clear political implications and material impact. It is why there has been a long history of critique aimed at these epics. The interpretations, readings, and ideologies drawn from these stories have very real repercussions.
In the Ramayana, Lord Ram is the avatar of Vishnu, the divine protector who descends to the mortal realm to restore balance to the world. Ram is the ideal man, born into an upper-caste dynasty of kings in Ayodhya, and his reign is seen as the ultimate utopian period of existence. The idea of “Ram Rajya” (Ram’s reign/rule/kingdom), which emerges from the text, is the mythic idealized (Brahmanical) past that Hindutva agents view as their righteous duty to restore. It is the idea of the golden age of the past that has material consequences. It is why the Ramayana and Ram are invoked in many hate crimes committed by Hindutva assailants, with “Jai Shree Ram!” (All Hail Lord Ram!) being uttered amid many cruelties. It is why there’s been a decades-long conflict like the Ayodhya dispute, wherein Hindutva agents have sought to tear down a mosque to build a temple for Ram in its place. Given that these epics have been manipulated and shaped to serve pernicious ideas like the caste system and Hindu nationalism, invoking them requires care, consideration, and serious thought.
In that film, the Kalakeyas are dark-skinned, casteless, uncultured, and murderous savages who must be taken down by the “civilized” and fairer-skinned noble Kshatriya heroes of the caste system. Even the language of this obvious racist, colorist caricature is inspired by the southern language of Tamil. And the films are steeped in and reinforce casteist frameworks even in their imaginary fantasy visions. As Rajamouli himself posted on social media:
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It’s every bit as visible in RRR, too. It may not trade in the “demonizing” creed of casteism, but it trades that for the more “benign” and “liberal” vision of the casteist lens. It is why you have Ram uplifted as the “well-educated upper-caste savior with a vision” and Bheem reduced to “uneducated noble savage who must be taught the ‘civilized’ ways.” For all that it claims to be a tribute to two legends, it is one that is deeply unequal.
Rajamouli’s work merely reproduces all the worst aspects of his influences and upbringing without ever critically questioning them. It’s an upper-caste boy’s privileged roller-coaster ride, which comes easily to someone who hasn’t had to experience the oppressive realities and horrors of the system. His work’s deep casteism reinforces a Brahmanical vision of the universe.
It is why Komaram Bheem, a well-educated man who could read and write, is reduced to an illiterate simpleton, playing to historic Adivasi stereotypes. It is why you have a scene wherein he exclaims he is but a simple tribal person who did not and could not understand the greater vision of the upper-caste savior Ram. It’s also why the Gonds are framed as a “simple” people, compared to sheep, with Bheem having to ask Ram for the gift of education.
And it is also why, in the end, Bheem’s real revolutionary slogan of “Jal, Jangal, Jameen,” his iconic contribution, which is vital to Adivasi activism to this day, is altered to be written and inscribed instead by the upper-caste Kshatriya hero Ram. It is, as Gond journalist and critic Akash Poyam described in depth, deeply dehumanizing and appropriative.
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DVV Entertainment/Netflix
RRR manages to depict Adivasis as compatriots instead of enemies, and seems to think that’s generous enough. But the movie still presents Adivasis as, at best, simpletons who aid the journeys of the central, all-important upper-caste heroes. They are people who must be taught, civilized, and guided along by the vision of the upper-caste Hindu hand. All that they are or ever will be is because the upper-caste hero was there to help them along. Perhaps crystallizing that best is the fact that NTR, the upper-caste Hindu (and from the same Kamma caste as Rajamouli), is cast as Bheem, rather than any actual Adivasi performer. This is a fact made all the more bitter given the history of Gond resistance to the land-owning Kamma-Kapu dominance, and Komaram Bheem’s own anti-landlord politics.
Every choice made in the film is deeply steeped in and informed by a privileged upper-caste lens and framework that brutally reinforces the invisible Brahmanical hierarchy. That is precisely why its two leads, Ram and Bheem, are reduced to little more than the names and aesthetics of the real historical figures.
At every turn, Rajamouli de-specifies and decontextualizes, only to wrap everything up in his casteist status-quo-affirming lens. His work here is a casteist Hindu wash of history and the independence struggle.
This is a lens that is in line with Hindutva and very much appealing to it. It’s exactly this kind of convenient upper-caste Hindu viewpoint that helps sustain Hindutva ideology and its material harm. The film may not see Muslims as the demonic enemy to be slain, but it does see them as subservient (much like Bheem and the Adivasis are subservient) to a “Hindu unity” of heroism and fight for freedom. It’s effectively “You can exist so long as it’s within this invisible hierarchy, assimilated, wherein we’re still at the top and all-important.”
The end credits, which valorize historic heroes of the nation, put a fine, final point on this troubling upper-caste Hindu lens. Nowhere in this lineup of luminaries will you find icons of a secular India such as Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, the founders of the nation, whom Hindutva agents are not terribly fond of. And what of Muslim kings like Hyder Ali or Tipu Sultan, who also stood against the British and were part of key battles against them? And the presence of Muslim freedom fighters like Saifuddin Kitchlew? Not a chance. Do not even expect to see progressive and radical Dalit revolutionaries like B.R. Ambedkar, who stood firmly for the annihilation of caste. You will, however, find the Hindu king Chhatrapathi Shivaji in it, who never even fought the British, but has been co-opted to be a Hindutva favorite. The credits certainly feel like they’re peddling a curated vision of history and the freedom fight right in line with it.
RRR’s global success is a thrilling leap for Indian cinema. Its spectacle and stand against the British Empire is deserving of celebration. But it’s important to look at the Indian people not just in relation to their white oppressors. Instead, the complex inner dynamics must be considered and examined, for that is the way to see the Indian people in the film in all their humanity.
And by the time the credits have finished rolling, it’s hard not to see RRR as a product of careless upper-caste Hindu imagination. Its disservice and rewriting toward Bheem and the Gonds cannot go ignored. Its evident hierarchical view and minimization of Muslims in favor of a constructed Hindu “unity” must be noted. Its ideological positioning must be taken into account. And it must be considered for the troublingly casteist fantasy it is.
RRR has been described by some as revolutionary, and the title itself evokes revolutionary words. But that feels off-mark. Being revolutionary requires a willingness to tear down the oppressive hierarchies and systems that stand in the way of progress. RRR is all too content to blindly uphold them.
Ritesh Babu is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in Polygon, Panel x Panel, and many more outlets. He likes to spend his time reading postcolonial theory, genre fiction, and far too many sports manga. When not writing about capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism, he can be found talking about food, football, and formalism. He survives off a magical resource known as biryani.
State attorneys general may decide the future of abortion rights and elections policies.
Acrimonious debates over the future of abortion and US elections are playing out up and down the ballot in 2022, including in races for state attorneys general.
As their states’ top lawyer, attorneys general can prosecute crimes, issue legal guidance or formal opinions to state agencies, and challenge federal laws and policies in court, among other powers. Their roles have been increasingly weaponized in recent years, with both Republicans and Democrats using them to block national policies set by the opposite party. But they’ve taken on an even greater role since former President Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and since the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last month.
Democratic candidates for state attorneys general have vowed not to enforce their states’ anti-abortion laws and protect access, while their Republican opponents want to see maximum enforcement (including, in some cases, prosecution of pregnant people who seek abortions). There’s also a bevy of ultra-right-wing candidates embracing Trump’s 2020 election lies, despite no evidence of widespread fraud, who would have the power to prosecute voters for election crimes if elected and have vowed to use it.
The following contests are largely in battleground states where voter demographics have historically meant competitive races for statewide offices.
Here are the races to watch:
Arizona (Republican advantage +2, according to the 2022 Cook Partisan Voting Index)
Incumbent Republican Mark Brnovich is term-limited and running for US Senate, and several GOP and Democratic candidates are vying to replace him in a major 2022 battleground state.
Six Republicans are competing in the August 2 primaries, but Trump’s endorsement might give the edge to Abraham “Abe” Hamadeh, a far-right former Maricopa County prosecutor. Hamadeh has made the former president’s 2020 election lies central to his campaign, saying that he would not have certified the results in Arizona despite no evidence of significant fraud.
It’s not clear how that might play with the Arizona electorate. While Hamadeh’s focus on the 2020 election might energize GOP primary voters, likely voters in Arizona ranked elections below health care, jobs and the economy, education, infrastructure, and immigration in terms of importance in an April Clean Elections/Predictive Insights poll.
Hamadeh has made immigration a key focus as well, saying that there is an “invasion” at the southern border and that he would use the State War Powers Act to defend against it.
When it comes to reproductive rights, Hamadeh has promised to enforce Arizona’s existing anti-abortion laws: legislation passed earlier this year that banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest, and a 121-year-old total abortion ban, which only has an exception for when the life of the pregnant person is in jeopardy.
His opponents are former border security section chief for the US attorney’s office Lacy Cooper, attorney Rodney Glassman, former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Andrew Gould, Karsten Manufacturing corporate counsel Dawn Grove, and attorney Tiffany Shedd.
Whoever wins the Republican nomination will face Democrat Kris Mayes, a former member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, who is running unopposed. She has vowed not to enforce the state’s anti-abortion laws and that no patient or medical professional will be prosecuted for receiving or providing an abortion on her watch.
The vast majority of Arizona voters appear to support abortion rights. A Predictive Insights poll conducted in May found that 87 percent of Arizonans wanted abortion to remain legal in all or some cases, and three in five said their vote would be very or somewhat impacted by a candidate’s stance on abortion. Another February poll by Change Research found that almost 60 percent of respondents were more likely to vote for a candidate who would repeal Arizona’s pre-Roe ban.
Those polls were conducted before the Supreme Court’s decision, and it’s possible those numbers have since shifted. But if they stay the same, that’s a good sign for Democrats.
Georgia (Republican advantage +3)
Republican incumbent Chris Carr, who has attracted Trump’s ire for refusing to help overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, defeated the former president’s handpicked challenger John Gordon in the May primary. But he still faces an uphill battle to reelection given that his Democratic opponent Jen Jordan, a state senator representing parts of Cobb and Fulton counties, has recently outraised him. Democrats are also hoping that having a well-known and funded gubernatorial nominee, Stacey Abrams, at the top of the ticket will have a positive effect down the ballot.
Abortion rights in Georgia are on the line in the race. Carr has gone to court to defend a 2019 state law that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant. The law’s only exceptions are in cases involving rape and incest when a police report has been filed, where the pregnant person’s life is at risk, and where the fetus has a “profound and irremediable congenital or chromosomal anomaly that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth.” It would allow prosecutors to file criminal charges against people who get abortions and target people who miscarry. A federal court blocked the law from going into effect, but that injunction could be lifted now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe.
Jordan would take over that case if she wins, and has stated that she would not defend the ban, arguing that it violates privacy rights outlined in Georgia’s constitution.
Abortion is expected to be a motivating factor for many Georgia voters: An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll in January showed over two-thirds of Georgia voters opposed overturning Roe, including nearly half of Republican voters. Other surveys conducted over the past decade have found that a narrow plurality of voters in the state supported abortion being mostly legal.
Michigan (Republican advantage +1)
Trump-backed Matt DePerno is expected to be formally nominated to challenge incumbent Democrat Dana Nessel at a party convention in August. Their race is expected to be close; Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is also facing a tough reelection campaign.
DePerno is a divisive figure, even within the Michigan GOP. He has called for a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election results in Antrim County, though a Republican-led state Senate panel already found no evidence of widespread fraud after months of investigation. He’s tied himself to Trump — a strategy that could be risky in Michigan, where only about 20 percent of independents viewed Trump favorably, according to a January survey by the Glengariff Group.
He also opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or for a medical emergency, and has said he would enforce Michigan’s pre-Roe abortion ban, which was first enacted in 1931 and has no exceptions for rape or incest. Though it’s tied up in the courts for now, depending on how judges rule, it could be allowed to go into effect.
DePerno’s positions are not in sync with most Michigan voters: According to a Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted earlier this month, about 58 percent opposed the Supreme Court’s decision. That same poll found abortion rights are a big motivating issue in Michigan, with 86 percent of respondents saying a candidate’s position on Roe would be important in deciding their vote. Other polls dating back to 2018 (conducted by pollster Bernie Porn and EPIC-MRA) have shown that the majority of Michiganders consistently support abortion rights.
Nessel has said that, so long as she remains in office, she will not prosecute people who perform or obtain an abortion. But she has said that she would let county prosecutors enforce the law. “I don’t believe that I have or that I should have the authority to tell the 83 county prosecutors what they can and cannot charge,” she told MLive.
Nessel has held a consistent but not insurmountable lead over DePerno. A WDIV/Detroit News poll conducted earlier this month found that Nessel held a nearly 7 percent lead over DePerno, but that could change in the months ahead, given that almost 17 percent of surveyed voters were still undecided. The January Glengariff Group survey found that Nessel was 10 points ahead.
Nevada (Republican advantage +1)
Incumbent Democrat Aaron Ford, the state’s first Black attorney general, is facing a challenge from Sigal Chattah, a far-right Republican. She rose to prominence for suing Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, over masking and vaccination requirements and restrictions on church attendance.
Since Roe fell, she has vowed to imprison people who get abortions, saying that she believes life begins at the moment a fetal heartbeat can be detected. There are limits to how far she could go, given that a 1990 referendum protects abortions up until 24 weeks of pregnancy in Nevada. But she has proposed pursuing sentencing enhancements to allow for incarceration after that point.
Ford has said that he would continue to protect abortion access if reelected, but worries that Republicans in the state could still try to “whittle away at it” and “put restrictions on certain activities leading up to it,” he told KTNV.
Chattah’s extreme positions on abortion could alienate socially liberal Nevadans. Some 90 percent of Nevada voters (including 73 percent of Nevada voters identifying as “pro-life”) believe abortion should be legal under some or all circumstances, according to an October Predictive Insights poll. A Pew survey from 2014 found similar results, with 96 percent of adults saying they thought it should be legal in some or all circumstances.
Her candidacy has also been plagued by scandal: She wrote in a leaked private text exchange that Ford should be hanged from a crane, a comment that she later said was “tongue-in-cheek” and not meant to be racist.
Wisconsin (Republican advantage +2)
The primary in the race for Wisconsin attorney general isn’t until August 9, but abortion has already emerged as a key issue. Incumbent Democrat Josh Kaul has made reproductive rights central to his campaign, saying he won’t direct state Justice Department resources toward enforcing a 173-year-old state abortion ban. He’s also directly challenged the ban in court.
The ban makes no exceptions for cases involving rape or incest, but does allow the procedure when the pregnant person’s life is in danger. Under that ban, doctors who perform an abortion could face up to six years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
The Republicans vying to challenge him — former state Rep. Adam Jarchow, Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, and attorney Karen Mueller — have all said that they would enforce the ban. But most Wisconsinites seem to oppose it: 58 percent say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Marquette University Law School poll conducted just before the Supreme Court’s ruling. Previous Marquette polls conducted over the past decade have consistently shown that about 6 in 10 Wisconsinites support abortion rights in all or most cases.
Toney is also seeking to make election fraud a central issue in his campaign, going as far as prosecuting voters for election fraud over using their UPS addresses to vote. At the Wisconsin GOP convention in May, Toney described himself as “one of the most aggressive prosecutors of election fraud” in the state.
“We’ve earned the right to have an attorney general that will stand up for us, enforce the rule of law, lock up dangerous criminals and protect the integrity of our elections,” he said. “That is my track record as a district attorney.”
Texas (Republican advantage +5)
Texas isn’t really a battleground state this cycle, but there are cracks showing in the reelection campaign for Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump acolyte often at the forefront of legal challenges to national Democrats’ policies.
Paxton is a prolific litigator, challenging Democratic policies ranging from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to the Biden administration’s latest guidance on emergency abortions. He led a lawsuit against four states seeking to throw out millions of votes in the 2020 election, bolstering Trump’s election lies. Now that Roe has been overturned, he’s identified his next target: the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which prevents states from banning intimate same-sex relationships.
Paxton has been indicted on charges of securities fraud and is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation for malfeasance in office. But those allegations have been out in the open for years, and he nevertheless won reelection in 2018, albeit by the slimmest margin of any Republican running in Texas that year.
This time could be different. Nearly 30 percent of likely voters strongly disapproved of Paxton in an April poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. Despite earning an endorsement from Trump, Paxton wasn’t able to avert a runoff against his primary challenger, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. And he was only leading his Democratic opponent, former ACLU lawyer Rochelle Garza, by 5 percent in a University of Houston poll that concluded on July 7. Garza had been running behind him by a slightly larger margin in previous polls.
Texas is a firmly red state, and Republicans have been consistently able to triumph in such close races, with Sen. Ted Cruz eking out a win over Beto O’Rourke and Paxton barely winning reelection in 2018. But Democrats hope a combination of Paxton’s legal troubles and concern about abortion rights will provide just enough momentum for Garza to win.
The world wasn’t built for this heat.
Europe is baking under heat so extreme that it’s causing train tracks to bend and roads to buckle.
The heat wave, which brought record-breaking temperatures to the UK, France, and elsewhere in the past two weeks, is exposing a frightening reality: Much of Europe isn’t built for extreme heat, or for a climate that’s swiftly changing.
While severe heat waves, fueled by climate change, have become the new reality of summer, the extreme temperatures now rolling through Europe seem especially catastrophic. On Tuesday, temperatures in the UK broke the national record, reaching 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit), and the weather agency declared its first-ever “red warning” for exceptional heat — the highest level of weather warning possible. France, meanwhile, saw more than 100 record-breaking temperatures across the country in the last week.
“Even as a climate scientist who studies this stuff, this is scary,” said Hannah Cloke, a professor at the University of Reading who studies natural hazards. “We have had heat waves in the UK before,” she added, but the severity of the forecasted heat “is enough to kill people and animals, damage property, and hobble the economy.”
Part of the problem is that many buildings, highways, and other infrastructure in Europe are old and built with outdated temperature extremes in mind, said Mikhail Chester, an associate professor of engineering at Arizona State University. They simply can’t tolerate the new normal, he said. Hence things like railway fires in London.
Thank you to @NetworkRailSE and the London Fire Brigade for responding promptly to a lineside fire this morning and allowing services to safely resume to Victoria pic.twitter.com/9ZYibliuyF
— Steve White (@SteveWhiteRail) July 11, 2022
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