This analysis utilizes political discourse analysis and deixis to examine how presidential remarks at the National Prayer Breakfasts have entrenched faith in American national identity.

This paper examines variables that may have contributed to Republican Assembly members’ 2017 support for the extension of California's cap-and-trade program. It focuses on district party demographics and voting history, the suspension of the Fire Protection Fee and the level of GHG emissions per district.

While the United States was founded upon the premise of religious freedom, religious rhetoric has pervaded presidential addresses since the Founding. While such addresses were rare at the Founding because constitutional interpretation restricted presidents’ ability to campaign and communicate directly with the American people, the inaugural address is one speech that has existed since George Washington’s inauguration in 1789. During presidential inaugurations, presidents introduce themselves as presidents and establish their policy directions for their presidencies. In this context, according to the role of the rhetorical presidency, early presidents used religious rhetoric in order to unite the nation under a unitary God, connecting the nation under common values and orienting the democracy as pre-destined by God for success. As distance increased from the American Revolution, presidents began to use religion in more personal ways, using religious rhetoric and even Scripture to support their policies, while continuing to use religion in unifying ways. By the beginning of the twentieth century, presidents began to appeal to the people more publicly, actively campaigning for their policies. In this context, religion began to be used as a tool of persuasion to advance presidents’ policies. This trend continued into the Cold War, when presidents invoked religion in order to establish America’s identity in a religious framework against an anti-religious, anti-democratic enemy, while simultaneously using specific religious allusions on the domestic front to further their policies in sometimes divisive ways. As the Cold War concluded, presidents continued to use religion to advance their own policies, appealing to certain audiences through religious rhetoric and making pleas for their policies through religious allegory.

Opioid addiction has reached an all-time high in America, partially because there is no federally approved, affordable, available alternative for chronic pain. This paper examines the role of medical cannabis in the opioid crisis by exploring the effect of medical cannabis laws on opioid prescription rates in an OLS regression. I found that medical cannabis laws produce a statistically significant decrease in opioid prescription rates. I discuss the specific policy components that would allow medical cannabis policy to be most effective nationwide.

What does current campus carry policy in the south look like and how has it developed though the state legislatures? Eleven out of fifty states now allow some form of campus carry and the amount of legislation introduced in states across the country is growing each year. This thesis examines the language of attempts to pass campus carry legislation at the state level throughout the south. I examine the evolution of policy language in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas and what current campus carry policy in each state looks like. The conclusions of this examination point to a moderation in policy as it passes through the legislative process, even in Republican dominated state legislatures.

The following study is comprised of three essays, each examining a different manner by which race and party impact political participation. Through the analysis of both intra-party primary and inter-party general elections, I find that candidates are more likely to run, and voters are more likely to turn out, when the social groups they belong to comprise a larger portion of the electorate. While race often serves as the key social identity in determining rates of participation, these effects are contingent on partisan forces governing the broader electoral process.

Throughout the 20th century, Illinois supported winning candidates in twenty-three out of twenty-five presidential elections. However, in the 21st century, Illinois supported winning candidates in two out of five presidential elections. The state’s divergence from national trends followed three partisan shifts that occurred in the mid-to-late 20th and early-21st centuries. These shifts altered the state’s partisan preferences. While the causes of each shift varies, Illinois’s changing demographics, the concentration of its population in the Chicago Metropolitan area, and the rise of the post-industrial economy, caused the state to depart national trends as Illinois increasingly supported Democrats.

This dissertation is an exploration of the religious movements within Christianity in the United States. After discussing the common strategies used in the social science literature to classify religious belonging, I develop an alternative method that leverages associational ties between religious groups and people who are not active despite their identity. I develop theory-driven classifications for people whose religious identity cannot be determined solely on their identification. The remainder of the dissertation tests whether religious movements correspond to differences in the social and political behavior of those in these religious categories. I find significant differences on demographics, religious beliefs and behaviors, and political partisanship. Significant differences are also found when the analysis is narrowed down to a specific electoral context, the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Throughout the dissertation I will compare the explanatory power of my new scheme, RELMOVE, to existing classification schemes like RELTRAD. The dissertation concludes with some final thoughts for future researchers on the usefulness of the scheme moving forward.

Democracy in the United States operates under two contradictory norms: that it is a civic duty to vote, and that it is irresponsible to cast an uninformed vote. Do these contrasting norms suppress voter turnout? Why do some uninformed Americans turn out to vote while others do not? This study seeks to understand the information barriers that Americans perceive to be in the way of voting by studying how voters and nonvoters differ in their perceptions of the importance of various heuristics. By analyzing a 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study survey question that measures respondents’ prioritization of these information shortcuts, this study is able to understand how the prioritization of certain heuristics is associated with turnout rates. I find that high prioritization of the partisan identification heuristic and the heuristic based on the candidate a respondent’s friend supports is associated with higher turnout rates. I argue that this is because of the density of information offered by each heuristic and their usefulness in aiding in the decision-making process for potential voters. I conclude that perception of the usefulness of heuristics matters to turnout, and that this is a start to understanding how information costs may hinder turnout where it would otherwise exist.

Of all the States in the Union, certainly no other underwent the trials and tribulations that Utah expertenced in her quest for admission. Faced with controversy dealing with geopolitical and theological problems, the struggle occupied the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Utah's initial quest for statehood suffered from that dilemma of almost all the Western territories, insufficient population. When Utah numbers increased sufficiently, the official pronouncment of "polygamy" as a basic tenet of the Mormon Church, the dominant religion in the Territory, alienated many, the East especially, as being contrary to our western Anglo-Saxon heritage. Utah, looked upon with suspicion by the rest of the nation, was doomed in the early seeking of admission. The problem of entering the Union was further complicated by the tug-of-war that each new area experienced as the North and the South struggled over the "free or slave" issue. From the middle 1850's, Utah's denial of recognition centered around the problem of "polygamy," the refusal of the leaders of the predominantly Mormon population to consider at any great length any revision of their theological beliefs, which they coupled to Constitutional protection, together with the firm insistence of the Federal legislators that the practice be abolished made the struggle bitter and drawn out, as each refused to yield. The territorial constitutional conventions were of "rubber-stamp" nature until the 1870's, when the general influx of non-Mormons forced a small but continuing change of attitude. The sentiment of the 1850's and 1860's was such as to refuse to even voice the issue of "polygamy," seeming to mask the problem with the air that it is our own personal business, and no concern of theirs. The refusal to face the political actualities of the times extended over innumerable memorials, and five statehood conventions, concluding in a surrender to the ever-rising trend of Federal supremacy over local issues with the final achievement of Statehood in 1896. Utah's first steps towards civil government, the organization of the "State of Deseret," have been examined by Mr. Dale Morgan in his thorough "History of the Stat of Deseret," as well as in several Master's theses and Ph.D. dissertations. The history of Utah's territorial statehood conventions have just been mentioned in passing. It is my purpose to examine each territorial convention beginning with a summary of the initial stage in 1849 and to examine in detail the territorial stages starting in 1856 nd nding in 1895, to compare the resultant constitutions that emerged from each, and to show the influence that forced the gradual surrender of a people to Federal supremacy and "popular" insistence.