Scholarship increasingly recognizes citizenship as a key axis of inequality in the criminal justice system, yet the intersection of geographic origin with noncitizen punishment remains underexplored. The current study addresses this gap by examining the role of region and country of citizenship in criminal case processing using data on all arrests in Texas from 2006 to 2018. Region-level analyses reveal that harsher outcomes experienced by noncitizens in Texas courts are attributable to Mexican and Central American citizenship, even after accounting for legal status. Novel, granular analyses by country of citizenship uncover additional within-region heterogeneity, demonstrate punitive outcomes for defendants from Southeast Asian countries, and suggest legal status operates differently across national origin in Texas courts. Results highlight the importance of the crimmigration-geographic origin nexus in shaping the case processing of noncitizens, underscoring the need for more nuanced analyses of noncitizen inequality in the criminal legal system and beyond.
Despite the growing attention to Christian nationalism's influence on Americans' views regarding politics and science, its influence on environmental attitudes in particular remains under-examined. This gap is surprising given Christian nationalism's documented associations with anti-science attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, "end times" theology, and right-wing partisanship, each of which track closely with environmental attitudes. Building on research showing the contingent relationship between conservative Christianity and views on the environment, we theorize the link between Christian nationalism and beliefs about protecting the environment will be contingent on framing the issue in secular or religious terms. Drawing on data from a large, nationally representative sample, initial analyses show Christian nationalism is among the strongest predictors of minimizing environmental protection and greater climate skepticism. However, leveraging a question-wording experiment in the survey, we find that when environmental protection is phrased as "our God given role as stewards to take care of the earth" rather than in secular terms, Christian nationalism strongly corresponds to viewing environmental protection as more important. Findings affirm that issue framing matters greatly in helping Americans with even the most right-wing Christian views (who for numerous ideological, theological, and partisan reasons tend to deprioritize the environment) see the importance of environmental protection.
