Mike Braun is from Jasper, IN. I conducted a teacher-training workshop there in 2004 or 2005. There was a weird vibe in that it was a very clean town once you got in (the surrounding county was just southern Indiana). They told me that Jasper was started by by German immigrant families, and that the identity is still quite strong. One person told me the social issues they faced were mostly the result of Mexican and Central American immigrants. There are virtually no Black people there. There were rumors that high school basketball and football games where teams from Evansville—which does have a large Black population—were scheduled for daytime so that teams wouldn’t have to be in town after dark. That may just be rumor based on Jasper, like most Indiana towns, was a sundown town.

Braun went to Harvard Business school, but he’s basically the gentry class of insular Jasper. These are the people who have the ear of the majority on the Supreme Court.