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Why That Same Old Pundit Is Wrong About Democrats' 2024 Defeat

Why That Same Old Pundit Is Wrong About Democrats' 2024 Defeat

When the primary for the 2020 presidential contest was just beginning, an acquaintance — an intelligent, wealthy, white Democrat — shared her sure-fire prediction as we shared dinner. “It’s going to be Michael Bloomberg,” she said. “He’s the logical choice” to be the party’s nominee for president. She seemed shocked when I told her, “It will never happen.”

My explanation was a simple one, and it had not crossed her mind because, I realized, it had never affected that particular New Yorker nor any member of her family. The most loyal base of the Democratic Party had for some time been Black voters, and for many of them, the former New York City mayor would always be associated with three words: “Stop and frisk.” Stopping mostly Black and brown young men as a means to reduce crime was, after all, his signature.

When the tactic was questioned, when data showed minorities frisked by police were no more likely to possess guns, Bloomberg did not budge, and said: “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” He vetoed city council bills that curbed the practice and railed against a federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional.

For any person of color, especially one with a family member stopped more than once, that was a pretty insulting stand from your mayor — and the feeling never faded away, even after potential candidate Bloomberg embarked on an apology tour in front of Black audiences.

Though it was Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s debate takedown that is credited with the demise of Bloomberg’s presidential hopes, in truth, he had turned off the party’s base long before.

To see all the hot takes, the recriminations, the second-guessing pouring in after the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris at the hands of Donald Trump, is a little infuriating.

Those who would lead the Democratic Party out of the wilderness still don’t get it, not completely, anyway. You’ve seen the pundits across cable TV and the blogosphere, familiar faces — mostly white and male and stuck in the past.

It’s not that Democrats should turn away from trying to woo the white voters of every age and income bracket who would all but guarantee victory, or get better at the messaging game the GOP has mastered, or figure out a way to connect popular and successful policies with their party. But the party also has to be clear-eyed about the complicated reasons those voters have turned away, instead of turning to solutions that lecture Black voters and dismiss their concerns, figuring they have no place else to go.

A majority of white voters in the U.S. have not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee — white or Black, win or lose — since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, at a time when President Johnson was both praised and reviled for his signature on landmark civil rights legislation.

To study that 1964 campaign is to note familiar themes, with the GOP conjuring visions of violent Black Americans breaking laws and stealing “white” jobs. It makes sense, despite progress, that racial unease and fear of change can still be used as a hammer in 2024.

But instead, many are placing blame where it doesn’t belong. There’s the “identity politics” excuse, the opinion that the Democratic Party erred by leaning too much into considerations of minorities, despite the fact that Vice President Harris did not. In fact, she avoided mentioning race or gender, even her own.

Her proposed policies — and yes, she had plenty — were focused on all Americans on issues from health care to housing, ones critics insisted she ignored.

Could the campaign have done a better job of countering a tsunami of misinformation and misleading ads? Of course. Would it have solved that problem if the Harris team had thrown diverse members of the party’s coalition under the bus? Probably not.

So, why this particular attack against Harris, who talked about pride in her country and values like patriotism? Apparently being a woman of color was enough to get many opponents, and some who were supposed to be on her side, to use her identity to define her.

It was Trump who used identity politics with gusto. He actually talked about his “white, beautiful white skin” at a Michigan campaign rally and raised fear in speeches and ads about criminal Black and brown immigrants and pet-eating Haitians.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are not fair to whites, according to the wealthy son of wealth, though loyalty, not qualifications, marks many of his Cabinet picks so far.

Yet, in America, where white is the default, the identity politics label did not stick to him.

Many Democrats, with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont leading the choir, fault the party for forgetting the working class, though he seems to always forget that Black Americans make up a big chunk of that constituency. The economic concerns cited by Americans historically have hit them harder than most. Yet a majority of African Americans who voted did not see Donald Trump as their savior.

When narratives of what went wrong for Democrats in 2024 overlook the constituency that has stuck with it, it’s not hard to understand why many don’t see the use of voting at all. Getting them off the couch and into the voting booth, enthusiastically, won’t happen if the Democratic Party’s only move is to pine after voters who deserted them long ago.

I shook my head when I heard former Democratic consultant David Axelrod and others float the name Rahm Emanuel as the perfect choice to chair the Democratic National Committee. Thankfully, Emanuel seemed to remove himself from the mix, though in a recent interview, he didn’t rule out a future run for office.

My mind immediately went back to that Bloomberg conversation with my clueless friend.

Former Chicago mayor Emanuel, who closed schools in mostly minority areas and withheld information about the police killing of Black teen Laquan McDonald, is exactly the wrong person to convince skeptical Black voters that the Democratic Party cares about them. In fact, there was resentment when he slid into a gig as ambassador to Japan in the Biden administration.

The enthusiasm in some quarters for Emanuel to head the DNC did prove one thing — that too many Democratic leaders still have a lot to learn about motivating the voters they have taken for granted, voters who have started to have their doubts.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

In Battleground North Carolina, Harris Brings A Sense Of Joy -- And Urgency

In Battleground North Carolina, Harris Brings A Sense Of Joy -- And Urgency

One rule for politicians and politically inclined citizens: Stay away from Hitler references. They have a “boy who cried wolf” quality and usually end up backfiring, making you appear more extreme than the opponent you’re trying to label.

However, as everyone knows, every rule has an exception. And 93-year-old Ruth Hecht has more than earned hers.

Like most in the boisterous crowd that filled the arena at Kamala Harris’ rally during her Charlotte stop last week, Hecht was inspired by the Democratic candidate for president, especially by her debate with Donald Trump a few days earlier.

“I’m so proud of her,” she said of Harris. “She’s dynamic, educated and so poised.”

But Hecht, a retired registered nurse who now lives in a senior facility in Matthews, North Carolina brought a warning born of her own World War II experience, when she was shuttled to Belgium from Austria, eventually making it to safety in the United States. Fellow Jews in wartime Europe were not so lucky. She herself had a close call, something she is reminded of every time she brushes her hand across her beautiful face and feels scars from surgery to repair damage inflicted by fragments of a German bomb.

She held my own hand and looked into my eyes, as she issued a warning: “You want to know why I’m here? I want democracy to continue.” She heard echoes, she said, in Trump’s demonization of minorities and immigrants, his pledge to prosecute and jail political opponents and refusal to accept election results unless he wins. The people around Trump scare her.

“I learned the hard way, and I don’t want this country to go through that.”

While her journey might have set her apart from most who stood in line for hours, and then waited a few more, there was a sense of urgency and anxiety that tainted the upbeat mood.

Can you blame them when Trump and running mate JD Vance (who once wondered if Trump could be “America’s Hitler”) tell Democrats to end any criticism in the wake of a gunman seen near Trump’s golf course, but refuse to end heated, baseless and racist rumors about Haitians legally residing and working in the city of Springfield in Ohio. It’s the state Vance is supposed to represent, though if you asked if he considers those particular residents his constituents, I’m not sure he would understand the question.

Their words, amplified on conservative, conspiracy-minded sites, are stoking chaos and unrest, with extremists, no doubt feeling a kinship, joining in.

In contrast, Harris, in a conversation with National Association of Black Journalists’ reporters this week, said that while she and her family felt protected, she worried for other Americans. “Not everybody has Secret Service, and there are far too many people in our country right now who are not feeling safe,” she said.

Those might include some constituents of Ohio Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, who is urging folks to write down the addresses of homes with Harris signs in the yard. He would certainly seem more at home in a time when the government was there to intimidate and bully rather than serve and protect everyone.

Zuchowski is just following the lead of Trump, who is placing blame for the country’s ills on immigrants, the Black and brown ones, that is. Two of the former president’s three wives — both immigrants — escape his opprobrium.

I wonder why.

When Donald Trump Jr. suggests that Haitian immigrants are less intelligent as a group, with low IQs, he is dipping into dangerous and debunked race science that has been used as justification for heinous acts throughout history.

It’s no wonder many Harris supporters share Ruth Hecht’s fears.

Her son Martin Hecht, 62, who had traveled from the Portland, Oregon, area to help his mom celebrate her birthday, said he was very excited that Harris could be the first female president of the United States. But he realistically knows and is worried that a second Trump administration is possible. “I can’t imagine why so many people are supporting Trump,” he said.

The phrase “this is the most important election of our lifetime” has been repeated so often, it’s become cliché. Yet everyone I spoke with at the Charlotte rally believed it this time. Most also thought North Carolina, the state that has tantalized Democratic presidential candidates since Barack Obama narrowly won here in 2008, was winnable for Harris in 2024.

From Harris at the top of the ticket to down-ballot Democratic candidates (many of whom shared a few words before the vice president’s speech), there was optimism, but also the hard truth that success will take work, campaigning and increased voter turnout, often quite sketchy when it comes to Democrats in the state.

No DJ blasting Frankie Beverly and Maze or mini-set from Charlotte native and Grammy winner Anthony Hamilton could quite make the crowd forget that a lot can happen before November, despite polls that show Harris with a slight, within-the-margin-of-error lead in North Carolina.

Republicans are worried, which may be one reason they are trying things like an Republican National Committee lawsuit to prevent University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill students from using digital ID to vote or an effort to purge voter rolls of more than 200,000 names.

Even someone who carries the name that’s the vibe of the Harris-Walz ticket’s “New Way Forward” said she is cautious. Joy Del Gaizo of New London, N.C., said she felt a “responsibility to the future of my kids and grandkids.” She has four of each.

Del Gaizo, a retired information technology consultant, recalled how she cried after Trump was elected in 2016, and vowed to do everything — from calling prospective voters to going door-to-door in her Republican-leaning neighborhood — this election season.

“I would not want to live in a country that is a dictatorship,” she said, remembering Trump’s promise he won’t be a dictator, “except for day one.”

And when Harris took the stage, the crowd chanted “not going back,” fueled by a desire to elect the Harris-Walz ticket, and to make sure the Trump exposed at the debate and over the past nine years never gets another chance to return rage and retribution to the White House, and take millions of voters down the same path.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

There Is No Bipartisan 'Unity' Now -- But There Are Critical Differences

There Is No Bipartisan 'Unity' Now -- But There Are Critical Differences

Stop. Reflect. Promise to do better, as individuals and as a country.

That would be a thoughtful reaction to an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally for former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump. And that was the immediate reaction from many leaders.

But in a place where the 2012 murders of children in a Connecticut elementary school became fodder for warped conspiracies that linger, painfully, especially for grieving parents, and the 2022 beating of the then-82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer inspired jokes from the same politicians now calling for civility, America could be too far gone for common sense and compassion — at least for more than a few hours.

Maybe it was foolish to expect more than cursory words to cover a widening divide. But you can’t fault Americans on edge for seeking a truce.

What happened Saturday in Pennsylvania was serious, the attempted assassination of Trump and the killing of firefighter Corey Comperatore, with others injured and attendees experiencing trauma they will no doubt relive many times. Although it happened in an open-carry state, if the pattern holds, America will save discussions about the proliferation of guns for another day.

Comperatore’s widow told theNew York Post that when President Joe Biden wanted to express his condolences, she refused to take the call. “My husband was a devout Republican and he would not have wanted me to talk to him,” Helen Comperatore said, which says more about an America divided than I ever could.

It didn’t take long for terms such as “false flag” to be tossed around, speculating that the photo of a bloodied Trump with raised fist just had to be staged, and, at the other end of the political spectrum, some ascribing all sorts of political motives to a 20-year-old whose life is still being scrutinized by law enforcement.

Our country has a long history of violence toward its leaders. Perpetrators have had political motives and personal obsessions, and some just wanted to be famous. We don’t know what we don’t know about the Pennsylvania shooter, and he can’t tell us what made him do it.

Yet, if you cast the investigators as corrupt members of a “deep state” with their own secret agendas, how could you ever trust any findings by the FBI or DOJ?

Then there were the Trump-supporting voters and GOP leaders who gave the Almighty a major role in the candidate’s narrow escape, with God in the spotlight in the first days of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott may not have won the VP prize, but he sure shook the rafters Monday with his fire-and-brimstone sermon, one that blamed the devil and credited divine intervention.

If that is your belief, God bless, truly. No one would begrudge a whispered prayer in the aftermath of something so shocking. However, that sentiment strikes me as a bit insensitive to the men, women and children who weren’t so lucky, not only on Saturday but also in countless shootings: in schools and businesses and places of worship, like the Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 people lost their lives in 2018, not all that far from the site of the Trump rally.

And it dangerously leads to apocalyptic language, the kind that validates holy wars, from folks like Brett Galaszewski, the vice chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party. The election is “more than just right versus left,” he said. “This is good versus evil.”

When you put it that way, it’s clear that unity, on anything, is easier said than done. In politics? Forget it. Is it even desirable if it’s a way to force people with opposing views to just shut up?

“Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy. It’s part of human nature,” Biden said in a rare Oval Office address.

Americans shouldn’t have to shy away from very real differences in policies and politics. What would be the use when supposedly conciliatory calls for unity inevitably strike a partisan tone?

Trump reported that his call from the current president went well; he also wrote that his conditions for bringing the country together include dismissing “the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C.” and what he labels the “witch hunts.”

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, candidate Trump’s pick to fill the vice president slot on the GOP ticket, was rewarded rather than punished for his rush to judgment. Immediately after the shooting, Vance, the onetime Trump critic who now supports the man with the fervor of a convert who has seen the light, posted: “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

At least the politician who once wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler” is bold in his hypocrisy.

It made sense for North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Trump ally and acolyte, to speak Monday in Milwaukee. But since the GOP gubernatorial nominee is most known for his incendiary rhetoric — about women, the LGBTQ community and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — a peacemaker he will never be. Lately, Robinson has been trying to explain how his words, in a church speech, that “some folks need killing,” were taken out of context.

He does that a lot.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson probably had the best excuse for why his convention speech condemned Democratic Party policies as a “clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people.” The teleprompter loaded an early version of his remarks, he said, not his revised words that stressed reconciliation.

With West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s bulldog Babydog getting so much attention, Tuesday’s convention watchers might have missed his prediction that “we become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.”

With a Tuesday agenda featuring mayhem, particularly in “Democrat” cities — presumably including the one where the Republican Party is meeting, one Trump reportedly called “horrible” — it was clear that to the GOP, it is only Democrats who should play nice.

Knowing their timidity, they probably will. I guess we’ll see when the party meets in Chicago next month.

Back in Milwaukee, Arizona Senate hopeful and former media star Kari Lake started Tuesday’s lineup with attacks on the “fake news,” a target for Democrats and Republicans alike this election cycle.

At last, a hint of unity.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call "Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis" podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.

Byron Donalds

For Republicans, Turning History Upside Down Is The Point

It turns out Nikki Haley stumbling over the cause of the Civil War was not a one-off.

The topsy-turvy twisting of American history, as it applies to Black Americans — their resilience and contributions despite injustice — is a tactic, a well-planned cynical one. And recent perpetrators don’t even have the decency to make a half-hearted attempt at backtracking, as Haley eventually and reluctantly managed to do after being called out on her amnesia about slavery.

Now politicians are standing proudly as they try to co-opt the language and history of the Civil Rights movement, which fought for equal rights for all and forced America to take a step toward living up to its ideals.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a master, presenting himself as a billionaire victim and inviting his supporters to follow. But dishonest is too mild a word for politicians when they do everything but break into a chorus of “We Shall Overcome” to sideline the legacy of Americans who truly had to.

In the Florida of Gov. Ron DeSantis, it was not a surprise when the state’s Transportation Department told cities that if they chose to light up their bridges at night, the only acceptable colors would be red, white and blue. The prohibition, set to last between Memorial Day and Labor Day, was widely seen as using an aura of patriotism to preempt the tradition of displaying rainbow colors during June for Pride Month.

But did DeSantis have to label it a part of the state’s “Freedom Summer,” a name that powerfully resonates in American history?

Freedom Summer, also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive — the brainchild of Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — that brought hundreds of white volunteers to join with African Americans to register Black voters in the state. The intimidation and violence they faced led to international attention, outrage and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

For DeSantis — who has gerrymandered Black voters out of representation, thwarted voters’ efforts to restore voting rights to former felons and fought against having just such history taught in Florida schools — his version of “Freedom Summer” was no doubt intentional.

Staying in Florida, Republican U.S. House member Byron Donalds has been making the rounds defending statements he made at a Philadelphia event designed to attract Black voters to the GOP.

“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,” he said, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rather than explain away his comments, Donalds should travel to Mims, Fla., for a lesson in Jim Crow’s effect on Black families in his own state. A cultural center tells of Harry T. and Harriette Moore, teachers whose Civil Rights activism cost them first their jobs, and then their lives, when a bomb exploded under their bedroom. It was Christmas night 1951 and the couple’s 25th anniversary.

When their daughter Evangeline Moore died in 2015 at the age of 85, her Washington Post obituary recounted a last message. “My mother told me from her deathbed that she never wanted me to ever think about hating white people — or anybody else,” Ms. Moore told the Orlando Sentinel in 2009, “because it would make me ugly, and she didn’t want me to be an ugly woman.”

That Donalds is a Black man doesn’t excuse his message. Considering that he owes the possibility of his rise to activists like the Moores, it might make it worse.

Then there’s a North Carolina GOP congressman’s rush to the bottom. Rep. Dan Bishop is making a bid to be his state’s attorney general, running against Jeff Jackson, a Democratic congressman gerrymandered out of any chance to be reelected to his own House seat.

Though he aspires to be the state’s top legal adviser, Bishop has joined fellow Republicans’ disdain for the country’s justice system after it held Donald Trump to account in a New York courtroom, with a jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts.

Bishop did not stop there, though. “When I say it’s rigged, they don’t go into it as a fair fight,” he said in an interview on Charlotte radio station WBT. “They go into a place where they know the fight is unfair. It’s as bad as it was in Alabama in 1950 if a person happened to be Black in order to get justice. That’s what they did in New York,” he said.

Bishop actually compared a man with a high-priced defense who helped pick a jury in the jurisdiction in which the crimes were charged to a Black man in Alabama in 1950.

There was not much justice for the victim or perpetrator in Alabama in 1950 for Hilliard Brooks Jr.,a 22-year-old Black man murdered on Aug. 13 of that year in Montgomery, after he was accused by a white bus driver of “creating a disturbance” for refusing to enter through the back door. He was shot by a white police officer, though no one was ever charged, and left behind a wife and two children.

His story and thousands of others are told at the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, a museum and memorial complex that’s an essential visit for any American, particularly one who would ask the diverse citizens of a Southern state to trust him to interpret and enforce the law fairly.

Now, laws that prohibit the teaching of African American history make sense. It’s so much easier to sell lies if the next generations don’t know the truth.

Bishop and Donalds, DeSantis and Trump know what they’re doing, as do all the politicians who would erase and replace in their bid to divide and conquer. In fact, Bishop was defiant, saying “the people who attack me for saying so can attack all they want.”

Sadly, those attacks he knew were coming might actually help him ingratiate himself, not only with his party’s leader but also with voters who find comfort in playing victim, too.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Lara Trump

The RNC's Impending Coronation Of Trump Reveals Its Degeneracy

Donald Trump does not have to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States.

No, the man who has been found guilty of 34 felonies in New York state, a twice-impeached former president, liable for a multimillion-dollar judgment for sexually assaulting and defaming a woman, who has placed retribution at the top of his agenda for a second term and promises to be a dictator on Day 1, doesn’t have to be a lock for the top spot as the GOP tries to recapture the White House.

But he is.

There is no suspense, even though there is more than a month before the Republican convention begins July 15 — just days after the world hears Trump’s sentence on July 11 for those felonies, and not long after a June 27 debate in which Trump, based on past performance, will spend a fair amount of time insisting without evidence that he won in 2020.

But his fans are loud and proud of their guy, no matter what 12 ordinary Americans and anyone else have decided. Heck, do they even consider Manhattanites American?

Donald Trump and the person Trump chooses for the second spot — someone who has debased himself or herself the most in the humiliating veepstakes now underway — will take the stage at that Milwaukee convention to thunderous applause.

On that, I will bet the house. That’s because the Republican Party has already made its choice — a man instead of a country.

The traditions Americans profess to hold dear, including respect for the rule of law, apparently mean nothing if they stand in the way of him taking control. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden can head straight to jail, no trial needed.

One incident embodies the party’s transformation.

In the not-that-long-ago past, a statement from former Maryland governor and current GOP Senate nominee Larry Hogan would have been the template for anyone from any party. Before the verdict in Trump’s New York state trial was announced, Hogan posted on X: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. … We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

The answer from Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign: “You just ended your campaign.” Lara Trump, Republican National Committee co-chair, Trump daughter-in-law and someone with some control over RNC purse strings, added her own comments on CNN: Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point and, quite frankly, anybody in America, if that’s the way you feel.”

With others in his party denouncing the U.S. justice system and repeating every Trump lie about how he wasn’t allowed to testify in his trial and more, Hogan’s hardly incendiary words did indeed register as an outlier.

That Trump acolytes left someone who could swing party Senate control hanging out to dry is telling. That some of the former president’s supporters are already making threats against the jurors, the judge and district attorney is dangerous.

It didn’t have to be this way.

All those Republicans who made a case against the president, who tried to take the lead and perhaps lead the party away from someone who elevates strongmen in North Korea and Hungary as role models, did not have to just give up.

Where did they all go — Nikki Haley, who was getting votes in primary races long after she dropped out, or Sens. Tim Scott and Ted Cruz, former Trump opponents who once promoted a different way forward? Back to Trump, of course. Risking the support of a base that goes along with whatever Trump plans to do became a step too far for anyone who wants a future in that Republican Party.

I wonder what those veterans traveling this week to Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing think of a U.S. contemplating giving up on allies, as Trump and several congressional Republicans repeating his bad-mouthing of NATO threaten to do. The right to criticize is one thing they fought for — but abandonment?

One of them, D-Day veteran Harold Terens, told NBC, “I believe that freedom and democracy are definitely under threat.” Now, why do I think that at 100 years old, he would be a more reliable defender of democracy than someone who has disparaged military veterans with nary a peep from party members?

What won’t we hear at the July convention?

Congressional Republicans won’t be able to crow about bills passed, since committee meetings to bark accusations at Attorney General Merrick Garland or Dr. Anthony Fauci are the only agenda items that matter. Eleven senators have signed a letter promising to obstruct bipartisan progress because of the New York state case against their leader. And Speaker Mike Johnson is leading calls for the Republican House majority to investigate Trump’s investigators.

Nothing new there.

What we haven’t heard many people say is that he didn’t do it — whatever he is accused of doing. It’s usually just excuses that whatever it was, it wasn’t that bad, or someone else did worse.

In his post-trial press conference, the one where he did not take questions but ranted about being a victim, Trump gave a preview of what is to come. That alone should have triggered some self-reflection: Is this the guy we want to represent us? Is this the America we want to see?

Will Democrats ask themselves similar questions at their own Chicago gathering in August before their inevitable nomination of the incumbent, with some having doubts? Of course. But neither President Biden nor any candidate from any party has ever made denying the result of an election or attacking the U.S. justice system a litmus test.

This summer, one convention will more closely resemble a coronation in a country that overthrew its king, with party members who hedge when asked if they will accept the results in November, for whom the Constitution is a mere suggestion.

Who knew “Mad” King George III would get the last laugh?

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call "Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis" podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.

A Shameful Tradition: Republicans Erect New Hurdles To Voting

A Shameful Tradition: Republicans Erect New Hurdles To Voting

After the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution — abolishing enslavement, awarding citizenship to Black Americans and guaranteeing their right to vote (Black men, anyway) — it was a time of progress and celebration.

African Americans were elevated to positions in cities, states and at the federal level, including American heroes such as Robert Smalls of South Carolina, first elected in 1874, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was well known by then, though. His sailing skills were crucial in a dramatic escape from enslavement that saw him hijack a Confederate ship he would turn over to the U.S. Navy.

But not everyone viewed the success of Smalls and so many like him as triumphs, proof of the “all men are created equal” doctrine in the Declaration of Independence. For some whites, steeped in the tangled myth of white supremacy and superiority and shocked by the rise of those they considered beneath them, the only answer was repression and violence, often meted out at polling places and the ballot box.

It didn’t matter that these newly elected legislators, when given power, promoted policies that benefited everyone, such as universal public schooling.

In incidents throughout the South, the White League and the Klan killed Black men who had the audacity to exercise their right to vote, intimidating and silencing those who considered doing the same. In the Colfax Massacre in April 1873, an armed group set fire to the Colfax, Louisiana, courthouse, where Republicans and freed people had gathered; between 70 and 150 African Americans were killed by gunfire or in the flames. In Wilmington, North Carolina., white vigilantes intimidated Black voters at the polls, and in 1898, in a bloody coup, overthrew the duly elected, biracial “Fusion” government.

Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” couching a return to white domination in the pious language of religion, not the first or last time God was used so shamelessly as cover.

The perpetrators then were Democrats, allied against Lincoln’s Republican Party.

Today, it’s most often Republicans — afraid they can’t convince a majority with ideas alone — who engage in tactics to shrink the electorate to one more amenable to a “Make America Great Again” promise, one that harks back to a time that was not so great for everyone.

It’s not a coincidence that those most amenable to the leader of that movement are white Christian nationalists, eager to align a flawed messenger with a higher power, in order to gain more power on earth.

But the tools are subtle in 2024.

In Republican-led states, with like-minded legislatures, a proliferation of laws has erected hurdles to voting, ones that opponents say disproportionately hit minorities, the poor and the elderly. This week, a federal court in North Carolina is hearing a case brought by the NAACP that is fighting voter ID requirements that Republicans in the state say are not tough enough.

Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have announced an effort to recruit 100,000 poll watchers in battleground states. You don’t have to be a mind reader to imagine where they could be stationed — Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee — the places where minority voters are concentrated and where Trump insists fraud is going on.

From the 1980s until a few years ago, the RNC was hampered by a consent decree after complaints that posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at polls in minority neighborhoods just might intimidate voters. You have to wonder if they’ve learned anything.

America has seen it all before.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, laws that simply sought to balance the scales, right wrongs and achieve some semblance of justice, were all greeted with pushback that the government was going too far, too fast — that whites were losing something when minorities gained long-denied rights.

Some in the crowd in America’s 21st-century attempted coup, on Jan, 6, 2021, toted Confederate flags and signs demanding a violent take back of a country they don’t recognize and don’t want to accept.

Trump in Time magazine echoes the grievances that have never faded away, as he lays out his plans if elected in November. He promises policies to address what he calls a “definite anti-white feeling” in America.

“If you look at the Biden administration, they’re sort of against anybody depending on certain views,” Trump told Time. “They’re against Catholics. They’re against a lot of different people. … I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed either.”

No proof, of course, that Mass-attending President Joe Biden is anti-Catholic, or that African Americans, with disproportionate outcomes on everything from maternal health to housing, are cruising along. But division and victimhood are all Trump knows. He supports his followers’ views, all FBI evidence to the contrary, that discrimination and hate crimes against whites are bigger problems than discrimination and violence against African Americans.

Trump and Republicans have already succeeded in states across the country, outlawing the teaching of basic history like the facts at the top of this column, for fear the truth about hard-fought gains, often accompanied by bloody sacrifice, might hurt someone’s feelings or perhaps provoke empathy and understanding for the “other.”

Ignorance of history makes it much easier to sell the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that byzantine rules and poll watchers are needed to prevent the same in 2024.

Trump’s antics in a Manhattan courtroom have drawn all the attention, understandable with headlines about adult film stars, tabloids and the like. Trump won, in part, in 2016 because he knew how to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

But it’s important to pay attention to the words and actions of those who only love an America that excludes rather than includes the voices and votes of all its citizens, those who look back and like the view.

We’ve seen that America — throughout history and as recently as January 2021. It wasn’t pretty.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Will Voters Blame Trump For Loss Of Abortion Rights?

Will Voters Blame Trump For Loss Of Abortion Rights?

A long-promised Donald Trump statement on abortion has finally been released. As expected, it was vague and pleased few. The former president both bragged about his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and stopped short of endorsing a national abortion ban, instead pledging to leave the decision up to the states.

While it may anger the faction of his party endorsing a national ban, the statement proves the almost certain Republican Party presidential nominee, as transactional and self-serving as ever, can read the polls and the political winds.

Remember, this is the man with a history of declaring himself “pro-choice,” “pro-life” and in favor of punishing women who seek abortions. I’m not sure what he truly believes, but it’s clear from his dancing around the issue that he knows he could pay a price for the GOP’s anti-abortion rights stance in November.

But maybe dealing in contradictions won’t hurt him and his party as much as Trump believes and Democrats hope.

It may not make perfect sense, but a certain voting pattern has been happening lately. Citizens in red states surprise observers when they lean blue on the issue of reproductive and abortion rights, yet continue to reelect the politicians who support those bans.

Ohio has proven that two things could be true at once: Democrat Tim Ryan, Ohioan through and through, could experience defeat in a 2022 Senate race at the hands of Donald Trump-endorsed Republican J.D. Vance, who just a few years ago was tagged as an elitist leaving behind background and family with his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy.” This was after calling Trump an “idiot” in 2016.

And those same voters could troop to the ballot box in November 2023 to make sure a right to abortion is enshrined in the state’s constitution — after earlier rejecting a state GOP attempt to make it more difficult to win that right.

Vance was shaken by that result last year, writing “we need to understand why we lost this battle so we can win the war.”

But in spite of the surprise Ohio voters handed Republicans, incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is still facing a tough reelection race in the fall. That’s despite his working-class credibility across the state, a record of accomplishments that have benefited Ohio and endorsements from groups such as the 100,000-member Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council. Brown criticizes free-trade agreements, even those coming from his own party, when he says they hurt his constituents.

His GOP opponent, wealthy businessman Bernie Moreno, may have no experience and a background many voters are still filling in, but he has something much more important — a Donald Trump endorsement.

In a state that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 by a comfortable margin, that may be more than enough. The fact that Ohio voters have proven to be on board with a Democrat’s record and his party’s stand on the issue of reproductive rights is fighting a growing partisan divide that sees a lot less ticket-splitting.

Inside Elections rates both Brown’s race and that of established Montana Sen. Jon Tester, another Democratic incumbent in a red state, as Toss-ups.

Democrats see abortion rights giving them a fighting chance in states they’ve recently seen as lost causes. It wasn’t that long ago (2008 and 2012, in fact) that the party won both Ohio and even, yes, Florida. With an abortion rights initiative on the Sunshine State’s ballot in November, Democrats have even been dreaming of a resurgence in the land of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

It will take more than dreams in a time when party is also identity.

I admit I was surprised the first time I saw someone at a Trump rally years ago wearing a T-shirtthat read: “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.” But today, with Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, siding with the strongman against U.S. generals and NATO allies, is it so surprising that traditional hawkish, national security views have been upended by the strongman who is the head of the GOP?

Does it work the other way around? We’re about to see in my home state of Maryland, where the very popular Republican former governor in that usually Democratic state, Larry Hogan, is looking strong as he runs for the U.S. Senate. Democrats haven’t even chosen his opponent yet. But will voters in a state that soundly rejected Trump vote for a politician they may like but may not trust once he gets to D.C. on issues such as abortion?

This dynamic may be tested most in states that, unlike Ohio or Maryland, are not so branded with one party in its political representation. Following the slew of red-state laws limiting abortion, will voting reveal more ambivalence on the issue than state legislatures believed?

One that could be a test case is Arizona, which President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, and was looking tight in early 2024 polls. With the state’s Republican, very conservative high court this week upholding an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, the upcoming U.S. Senate race, likely between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, has gotten especially interesting.

Lake has followed the lead of her favorite politician, running away from a law she once praised. Arizona organizers say they already have enough signatures for a ballot measure to enshrine abortion in the state’s constitution.

Whether abortion rights will be the issue to cause voters to question party loyalty up and down the ballot is a question the fall elections could answer.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

January 6 riot

America's Two-Tiered Justice System -- And Why Trump Is Not Its Victim

It may come as a surprise to hear that I actually agree with Donald Trump on something: America does have a two-tiered system of justice. In fact, you could say I beat him to it since I reached that conclusion long before the former president adopted it as his mantra.

I was not even in grade school when my older brother was arrested. While I didn’t know much about the world, I always thought that you had to do something terrible for law enforcement to haul you away. I also knew my brother Tony. And, though he teased me in the annoying way big brothers do, I valued him not only as a brother and friend, but as a pretty cool dude. So, I knew he couldn’t be the bad guy.

I still remember that night.

My mom and dad, fresh off the joy of a church dance, were confronted with the crisis when they hit the front door, and they scrambled to find the deed to the house in case they needed it to bail their son out (because if my father had anything to say about it, Tony was not going to spend a night in jail).

I was more confused when I discovered his “crime,” sitting down in a diner and ordering a burger.

That was it?

It really was the “system,” I realized, not my brother. Maryland law, at a time not that long ago, allowed business owners to bar Black people from their establishments. What the state did was technically legal — but wrong. I was sure of it.

An unjust law allowed the police whose salary my parents paid with their taxes to handcuff, fingerprint and jail my big brother because people who looked like my family were not included in an oath to “protect and serve.”

It was definitely a two-tiered system of justice, one that folks like my three eldest siblings and civil rights lawyer Juanita Jackson Mitchell — whose expertise brought my brother home — worked to correct with activism and courage, an adjective that definitely does not apply to Trump’s January 6 army of lawbreakers.

That the activists’ job is not done is clear when poor folks and minorities, often represented by overworked public defenders, languish in jails when they haven’t been tried or convicted of anything.

It’s why my solidarity with Trump ends when you dive into the actual details.

No matter how much he tries to align himself with civil rights martyrs or find common cause with Black voters whom he insists feel his pain, the current GOP presidential candidate’s actions and promises reveal a different truth.

Staring down charges in federal and state court, Trump has not spent time in handcuffs or a cell, he has a high-powered team of lawyers to delay and defend, and he has the luxury of raising money for a presidential campaign while complaining about his misfortune, even running on it.

The man who has no problem repeating the word “illegals,” with a heavy dose of dangerous dehumanization — calling those who cross our borders “animals” — reveres and elevates felons who bought into his stolen-election lies and decided to act.

Trump refuses to say “criminals” when referring to the thugs who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, while trying to overturn the results of a free and fair presidential election.

On the campaign trail, he is saying that, if elected in November, he will pardon and let loose a bunch of people I surely don’t want running around the streets of my neighborhood or anywhere in this country. Most of their sentences are already below what prosecutors recommended.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, as of January of this year, “Approximately 452 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 123 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.” About 140 police officers were assaulted. And 718 of those charged have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, including four to federal charges of seditious conspiracy.

One man, sentenced to six years and six months, blindsided a police officer — an Army veteran who had served in Iraq — knocking him off a five-foot ledge. Another was charged this month with firing a gun into the air that day.

Yet, Trump was cheered as he made a mockery of America’s national anthem in an Ohio speech over the weekend, offering a twisted rendition to honor those who did his bidding, calling them “unbelievable patriots.” The man who never served in the military and disparaged those who did finally found an occasion to salute.

Hypocrisy is too mild a word to describe Trump, his adoring crowd and the members of a Republican Party campaigning on “law and order” while agreeing with the boss’ autocratic agenda — or staying silent and looking the other way.

Trump’s supporters, many of them lawmakers who cowered in fear that January day, have gained amnesia and lost a spine since then.

They should be ashamed.

It does make perfect sense that Trump has a soft spot for the criminals who broke down doors and smashed windows, assaulted police and relieved themselves in the pristine halls of my House and yours — they were breaking the law not in the name of an ideal, but on behalf of a man unwilling to loosen his grip on raw power, even after a majority of Americans said “no.”

The societal changes they were fighting for were far from noble, far different than the ideals that drove my brother, who has been vindicated by the moral arc of history.

It’s been a lot of years since my young eyes were opened to the gulf between what America promises and what it delivers. I lost innocence I will never recover when I saw my usually bubbly mother, in party dress and high heels, crying on the night of her son’s first arrest — yes, there was another diner and another arrest before his activist days were done.

I see a system of mass incarceration that outpaces other countries, still tainted by racism and inequities.

Then why am I less cynical and more hopeful about what justice should mean in America than those who have always enjoyed the privileges of resting on that top tier, yet are still outraged, screaming about the unfairness of it all?

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call "Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis" podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Mark Robinson

If Mark Robinson Is Your Standard-Bearer, It's Time To Check Your Standards

A lot of people now know about Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina. Some national and international outsiders looking in were shocked at his Super Tuesday win. But I always thought the Donald Trump-endorsed Robinson was a shoo-in. That’s the red-versus-blue country we live in, when many times the “D” or “R” label means more than the person wearing it.

Yet, I find myself glancing side to side at my fellow North Carolinians, realizing that with Robinson’s win, they either don’t know much about the man other than his party affiliation, or they know him and approve of what he says and how he says it.

And as loud as he screams his repugnant views, there’s no excuse for anyone within state lines pretending he’s an unknown quantity. I swear you can hear him roar from the beach to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

His voters won’t be able to hide now, though, since national newspapers and cable networks are all doing their “Mark Robinson” stories in the same way gawkers slow down for a better look at a car crash on the side of the road.

So, what exactly has Robinson said to make national media finally notice? Take your pick, since the list of racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic comments and personal insults is long.

The civil rights movement that provided the path for Robinson, a Black man, to rise to his current post of lieutenant governor? He has said it was “crap,” called the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and disavowed being any part of the African American community. “Why would I want to be part of a ‘community’ that sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk?” he wrote, employing every offensive stereotype that would be right at home at a white supremacist get-together.

Women? Robinson’s message to a North Carolina church was that Christians were “called to be led by men,” that God sent Moses to lead the Israelites. “Not Momma Moses,” he said. “Daddy Moses.”

Robinson reserves especially toxic rhetoric for members of the LGBTQ community, unapologetically, and often in sermons. “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” Robinson preached in one of them.

And though Robinson has tried to clean up his record with a trip to Israel, the Hitler-quoting candidate wrote in 2018 on Facebook: “This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.”

There is plenty more, but you get the idea.

His party is embracing him, from the Republican Governors Association to party leader Trump, who called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” I don’t remember King screaming hateful diatribes or conspiracy theories, and Robinson himself probably would recoil at any comparison to a man he has so little respect for.

You can see why Trump sees a kindred spirit in Robinson. After all, the man at the top of the GOP ticket, a spot clinched by this week’s primary results, isn’t known for his decorum. Both leave no personal insult unsaid. An example? Each somehow found humor in the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, and it goes downhill from there, with Robinson finding any opportunity to spew potshots at everyone from Beyoncé to former first lady Michelle Obama, as well as at the Black Panther film.

While it’s no surprise those two are besties, it’s telling that GOP voters are similarly enamored, picking these two men to lead them.North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, Robinson’s Democratic opponent in November, is — like current Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a former attorney general – pretty low key, preferring to do just the job.

Either candidate would make history, as North Carolina’s first Black or Jewish governor.

Expect bombast, headlines and cash in a match made in news junkie heaven, with two candidates who could not be more different in policy and demeanor. And that’s even though Republicans in the state legislature have stripped the governor’s office of as much power as they could get away with — and with a supermajority, they could get away with a lot.

In the tradition of many extreme candidates facing a general election, Robinson has already begun the big pivot, blaming the media for misleading voters about him and his views. That’s not a great strategy when everything is on tape, video or in social media posts.

He will still try, though, especially since he really hates the media. He once told a Christian gathering, a conference sponsored by the North Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition, that he could “smell” members of the media in the dark and “they stink to high heaven” — to applause.

But I wonder if Robinson really needs to change a thing.

In the past, North Carolinians most often have chosen hard workers over firebrands — and Democrats over Republicans — for governor, while narrowly sticking to the GOP in federal elections.

But will the old rules hold?

It’s not as though conservative Republicans in North Carolina didn’t have a choice. In fact, using electability as one argument, his primary opponents attacked Robinson’s statements as hard as any Democrat would, spending plenty on televised ads to get the word — his words — out.

One of them, attorney and businessman Bill Graham, had the support of one of the state’s U.S. senators, Thom Tillis, a Republican, which may have worked against him at a time when even a slightly moderate view is rejected by base voters as part of an inauthentic “establishment.”

Robinson smoked them all, winning nearly two-thirds of the vote.

A warning to Democrats: Don’t celebrate. Getting the candidate you wish for doesn’t always work out in November. Ask Hillary Clinton.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call "Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis "podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call

'Are You Not Entertained?' When National Politics Becomes A Violent Spectacle

'Are You Not Entertained?' When National Politics Becomes A Violent Spectacle

“Are you not entertained?” shouts Maximus as the titular Gladiator in the 2000 film. And actor Russell Crowe sells it — enough to snag an Oscar — as he repeats the line to the stadium. “Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?”

Everyone loves a spectacle, even now, which is why more than 123 million viewers reportedly tuned in to this week’s Super Bowl, whether you were there for the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Francisco 49ers — or a shirtless Usher.

Don’t forget, though, that the shouted movie line was about a lot more than the show. It was a taunt, used to communicate the gladiator’s disgust with the reason the crowd cheered him. They weren’t interested in a game well-played by evenly matched opponents, which I’ll wager was the main reason Sunday’s Las Vegas event was a must-see.

That ancient Roman audience showed up for the blood. The more gruesomely the gladiator dispatched the fighters in front of him, the louder the crowd’s approval, no quarter nor empathy given.

In politics today, I’m afraid too many political gladiators are harking back to the example of ancient Rome’s idea of what will win over the citizenry, rather than pulling a page from Kansas City coach Andy Reid’s strategic playbook.

Entertainment, sure. As fractious as possible.

Valentina Gomez, 24, a Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state, wants to make sure voters know what she thinks of LGBTQ-inclusive books. A campaign video that went viral on social media shows the candidate using a flamethrower to torch a few, with the message: “When I’m Secretary of State, I will BURN all books that are grooming, indoctrinating, and sexualizing our children. MAGA. America First.”

Rather than back away, her campaign responded in a statement to NBC News: “You want to be gay? Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children.”

Not good news for the teens who are gay, struggling for understanding and acceptance.

Kathy Belge, one of the authors of Queer: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens, which appears to be a book Gomez targets, told NBC it “was written to give teens accurate and helpful information about what it means to be part of the LGBTQ community.”

“We discuss important issues that teens face, like coming out, bullying, dating and finding community and support. And yes, dealing with haters like this political candidate.”

State Rep. John Bradford of North Carolina is trying to rise to the top of a GOP primary race for the Eighth District, one that features six candidates vying for the U.S. House seat.

So he brought his bat, the one he promises to take to Washington, D.C. In a television ad, he uses it to smash a screen playing a speech by President Joe Biden as he decries: “Record illegal aliens. Record drug trafficking. Record crime.”

Staying in North Carolina, where gerrymandered districts reward the most extreme candidate, Grey Mills is a state representative now angling to be the Republican candidate for the 10th District seat. To do it, he is making tough border policy a signature issue, with a campaign ad that says he will use military force against drug cartels, accompanied by murky images of something being blown up. If the site of his planned assault is on Mexican soil, he might get some pushback from our neighbor to the south.

There seems to be little thought to what angry words and images can lead to.

Were the men the FBI recently announced were involved in a plot to travel to the Texas-Mexico border to kill Border Patrol agents and immigrants crossing illegally and basically “start a war” at all influenced by the dehumanization of asylum-seekers? Do the cynical politicians who would rather use desperate individuals as political weapons than work with Democrats on a solution care?

I’m sure one of the main things these candidates with the viral ads crave, along with the views, would be a hearty endorsement from the man whose tactics they emulate.

It has worked for Donald Trump this election season, as his control over the GOP hardens.

Fear of the threats and harassment that would await witnesses prompted Special Counsel Jack Smith to ask the judge in Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida to shield the witnesses’ identities.

Aggression is such a part of the Trump playbook, it’s shocking how much he gets away with, like his statement that Vladimir Putin and Russia could do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that don’t pony up to the GOP front-runner’s satisfaction.

His Republican followers fall in line, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), onetime protector of strong defense and international relationships. The excuses make about as much sense as recent Trump speeches, full of distortions, random rants, and a charge that a reelected Joe Biden would rename Pennsylvania. (And they say the president has lost a step.)

It is possible to urge NATO members to be more diligent in funding their countries’ militaries without threatening to throw them all to the proverbial wolves — including one wolf in particular who disposes of opponents and imprisons American journalists.

But would the crowd that cheers an emboldened Trump and his acolytes be entertained?

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Hey, Historically Ignorant GOP Candidates -- Go School Yourselves!

Hey, Historically Ignorant GOP Candidates -- Go School Yourselves!

Who would have thought so many of those competing to be president of the United States would have slept through American History 101? And I wonder why, if a working-class student at a modest Catholic school in Baltimore managed bus trips to museums in that city and neighboring Washington, D.C., folks who grew up with far more resources than I ever dreamed of never found the time to learn from the treasures such institutions contain?

Welcome to campaign 2024, when it seems each day’s headlines include at least one fractured history lesson, revealing just how much our leaders don’t know or don’t want to know about America’s past, and why that matters for our present and future.

There’s Donald Trump, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, trying to snatch the title of “great negotiator” from the president he has said in the past he could have beaten, Abraham Lincoln

“The Civil War was so fascinating, so horrible,” Trump said while campaigning in Iowa, as reported in The Washington Post and other outlets. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you,” he told prospective voters.

As Liz Cheney retorted on X: “Which part of the Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union? Question for members of the GOP — the party of Lincoln — who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?”

Historians agree with the assessment of the former Wyoming congresswoman, whose rejection of Trump-worship cast her into the wilderness, despite former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s long-ago promise that difference of opinion would be welcome in his GOP.

Those who have studied history cite states’ declarations of secession that explicitly listed maintaining the lucrative system that bought, sold and “owned” men, women and children as the reason for rebellion against the United States of America.

Because of my habit of hanging around museums, I actually read South Carolina’s document, displayed with reverence in Charleston years ago. A secession convention called in that state shortly after Lincoln’s election could not tolerate “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.”

South Carolina was the first to secede, motivated as well by the reluctance of some states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, returning escapees to bondage. I guess those states’ rights — the right of individual states to determine their own course — mattered.

Until they didn’t.

It’s rather ironic that so much occurred in the home state of another history-challenged candidate, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, whose gaffe of forgetting to mention slavery when asked what caused the Civil War was anything but, considering her record.

Her rambling answer read more like a candidate being too clever by half, trying to keep her South Carolina conservative base as well as Trump supporters happy by sidestepping the “s” word. She was not quick enough on her feet to realize that telling the truth wouldn’t be a deal-breaker in New Hampshire, which sent many of its own to fight and die to keep the Union intact.

Though the woman trying on the cape of super-hero Republican Trump-vanquisher would like to move on from her original answer and ever clumsier attempts at clean-up, the whole chapter remains a part of Haley’s story because it reveals a lot about her.

Haley is the same candidate who in 2010 called the Civil War a matter of “tradition versus change,” and said she could cynically and strategically use her identity as an Indian-American woman and governor to counter NAACP efforts to force removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds with boycotts. Maybe working with civil rights groups to expand voting rights or bolster her state’s public schools would be the more positive play.

But the literal audience for Haley’s messaging was Confederate heritage group members.

Nikki Haley wouldn’t even have to travel far for a history lesson.

My brief holiday season trip to Charleston, South.Carolnia, would not have been complete without a visit to the International African American Museum, opened last year, looking out onto the city’s harbor, where an estimated 40 percent of enslaved Africans entered the U.S. Its dynamic exhibitions explore culture, connections and invaluable history, including the story of the Carolina gold rice that made the state rich with the skill and knowledge of the enslaved, many of whom died from that crop’s brutal cultivation.

It’s a skill many brought from home countries, perhaps a lesson for that fading Republican candidate Ron DeSantis, whose Florida African American history curriculum might actually make students less informed since it teaches Africans had to be dragged to America to learn a thing or two.

When President Joe Biden made his own trip to Charleston this week, he honored the history, both sad and triumphant, of Mother Emanuel AME Church. It’s where activists rebelled against oppression, and where that legacy fueled a white supremacist’s massacre of nine worshippers in 2015.

Their deaths were the final push that led Haley to join those calling for the flag she had defended to be moved.

The nine South Carolinians shot that day, pictured on the wall of the museum in Charleston, are as much a sign of the state’s current challenges as they are a part of its very recent past. As Malcolm Graham, a Charlotte, North Carolina city councilman and brother of Mother Emanuel victim Cynthia Graham Hurd states on a quote on the museum wall: “We can’t simply move on. We’ve got work to do.”

In Biden’s return to the church, he looked to the future, as well, to honor the resolve of the generations who have worshipped and worked for change there: “That’s patriotism. That’s patriotism. To love something so much you make it better, no matter the struggle.”

It’s a word — patriotism — that some would twist to describe those aching for another Civil War not as jailed criminals but as “hostages,” as Trump and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)., outrageously suggested.

In rapid news cycles with primary contests looming, it’s folly to glance in the rearview mirror for too long, I suppose. But that kind of amnesia could be perilous for those Americans who refuse to let hard-won progress slip away.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Mike Johnson

Speaker Johnson's Strange Manipulation Of His Shadowy 'Black Son'

“Some of my best friends are Black” is a phrase that has become cliché, and deservedly so, since it is essentially a dodge. Folks uttering those words are looking for a free pass, credit for knowing what it means to be Black in America without doing the work.

By now, most people know that proximity does not equal understanding.

Most, but not all.

The new speaker of the House, GOP Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has been known to showcase the Black child in his family’s life over two decades, usually when his empathy on matters of race needs a boost. Johnson controls the narrative. He doesn’t want to infringe on the privacy of a now-grown man with a family, he says, so he won’t go into too much detail.

Just enough, though, to show he gets it.

I have nothing against any person of any race who wants to foster, mentor or teach any young person in need of guidance. I applaud the realization that all parties on both sides of such relationships have opportunities to learn and grow. At the same time, I think it’s fair that reporters question just how formal the relationship between congressman and child has been, and why this child is conspicuously missing from family biographies and photographs.

I also wonder about any story cut from the same cloth as The Blind Side, the simple tale of a wealthy white family “adopting” a deprived Black child, rescuing him from an ignoble fate and smoothing his way to football glory in college and the pros. That “just like a movie” story, which has been cited by Johnson as a template, was far more complicated, as the world has come to learn.

Johnson’s tale seems to be similar in many ways, with one particular problem common to these kinds of inspirational parables. They almost always place the white benefactor front and center, instead of the person who was a person before being molded by a Good Samaritan.

In the case of popular movie The Blind Side, a young Michael Oher was already a gifted, smart and hard-working young man and athlete with admirable Black role models, not the nearly mute cipher portrayed as a vessel for the Tuohy family’s largesse in an Oscar-winning film. Oher, in his own voice, said as much in books and when he took his “family” to court to sever a conservatorship that was never an adoption.

I don’t know much about Johnson’s ward, son, or however he would describe the man, also named Michael, except what I’ve learned when he makes a cameo appearance in a pithy yarn from the new speaker.

Reparations? Johnson is against awarding any kind of compensation to descendants of those discriminated against, locked out of an equal shot at the American dream for generations. He came to the conclusion not after a close examination of American history. No, rather than depending on the facts of the case, attorney-turned-lawmaker Johnson relied on Michael, who, he told a House subcommittee, thought reparations defied an “important tradition of self-reliance.”

Funny, I don’t know what the Johnsons’ four biological children think about reparations, or anything else.

After George Floyd was murdered, Johnson acknowledged the existence of a world that treated his two then 14-year-olds differently. Johnson said on PBS: “Michael being a Black American and Jack being white Caucasian. They have different challenges. My son Jack has an easier path. He just does.”

But that was so 2020. Since his recent promotion, to assuage a MAGA base who believes such talk makes him an “undercover Democrat,” as one conservative activist has put it, Johnson told Fox News’ Sean Hannity it wasn’t race so much as “culture and society,” that was the culprit, “a really troubled background” and “a lot of challenges.”

Seems like Johnson, while shielding the child who’s like a member of his family, doesn’t mind squeezing him into the most stereotypical The Blind Side frame, speaking for and about him.

Pretty much everyone could have seen that coming from a politician with Johnson’s mix of piety, judgment, and ambition.

It’s pretty rich that Johnson downplayed the role of systemic racism as he represented a state that in the past spawned the U.S. Supreme Court disgrace of Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine, and is now in court disputes on congressional districts that give African American voters a fair chance.

Where does Johnson stand on banning books that teach his son or any other child these Louisiana truths? Maybe we’ll soon hear from Johnson that “Michael” disapproves.

If Mike Johnson really wanted to know what African Americans feel, about anything, he could reach out to his constituents in the state’s Fourth District, which is about one-third Black.

In talking with residents of the Shreveport-Bossier area, The Washington Post and The New York Times found stark divides along party and race, which often walk together in the South, though no race is monolithic in opinion. Many white conservatives, including his mom, were quoted as loving Johnson’s agenda, and believing a spiritual hand more than an exhausted Republican House caucus eased his elevation to speaker.

Instead of listening only to that choir and the Black child who, in his telling, whispers in his ear on racial issues, Johnson should consider consulting dissenting constituents who tell him things he may not want to hear. Those citizens have far more experience raising Black children in a state and district with a history of racial discrimination in education, housing, employment, voting rights, criminal justice and so much more.

In showing humility and doing the work he was sent to Washington to do, Johnson might learn something — and finally give Michael that privacy.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Matt Gaetz

Does America 'Deserve' The Leadership Of House Republicans? Really?

“I think there’s some reason to doubt whether or not Matt Gaetz is serious,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, Republican from South Dakota.

Talk about an understatement. When a member of your own party verbally spanks you, and another characterizes your immediate fundraising following Tuesday’s congressional chaos as “disgusting,” as Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana made a point of doing, self-reflection might be a logical reaction.

But that is not what drives Gaetz, the Florida Republican who definitely got what he wanted — time in the spotlight and, yes, the ouster of now former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.

What do Americans think, the people who don’t much care about the latest congressional preening, not when they came so very close to losing needed food aid, veteran counseling, education funding, access to parks and museums and all the meaningful and essential things in jeopardy when the government shuts down?

Well, of course some of those with worries about everything from the economy to the border who gave the GOP their current majority, albeit a sliver of one, might be pleased with the mess — as long as Gaetz and his tiny cohort disrupt. But what about those who wanted change, but not the drama of representatives such as Gaetz — and Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), George Santos (R-NY) and Lauren Boebert (R_CO)?

Greene made sure to insert an amendment in a Defense spending bill that would cut the salary of Secretary Lloyd Austin to $1, her petty posturing slamming the first African American to hold that position no coincidence. Fabulist Santos emerges from his corner from time to time, just to remind everyone that he’s a congressman and you’re not. Boebert? Enough said.

Don’t weep for the unfortunate McCarthy, though, considering the only thing he seemed serious about was becoming speaker. He didn’t even realize that if you want a few Democrats to throw you a lifeline, perhaps you shouldn’t break your pledge on opening an impeachment inquiry without a vote. And blaming the opposing party for dysfunction you clearly own is definitely not a good idea.

When he bargained away the store, giving far-right members the power to take it all away with one vote, when he grinned and bore it when Gaetz marked “present,” instead of affirming his leadership nine short months ago, McCarthy was cooked.

But there’s a reason so many Republicans are furious with Gaetz. And no, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called out Gaetz in The Washington Post, doesn’t get a cookie. The man so many in both parties blame for poisoning any semblance of bipartisanship as speaker in the 1990s has more in common with the Florida firebrand than he has the self-awareness to admit.

This week’s food fight is the latest move that exposes the endgame of today’s GOP — power with a heavy dose of trolling. Being serious leaders of a country in need of leadership was never in the plan.

It makes sense that Donald Trump is the Republican Party. Ever on brand, the former president and current front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination couldn’t let the Washington GOP contingent get all the buzz.

So, this week he showed up and showed out at his trial on fraud charges in New York City.

It wasn’t the least bit amusing.

Trump’s performances curdled a long time ago, if they ever worked, at least for those on the receiving end of his bile. What he does, what his party does with rhetoric and action that riles up the base, hurts real people. His targeting of an American public servant is nothing new; this time, lies on social media about the New York judge’s clerk earned Trump a gag order.

From New York and Washington, the events of this week resembled a reality show that would tank in the ratings: “White Men Behaving Badly.”

The short-term funding deal keeping the government running is on track to expire in time for the holidays, while House Republicans are embroiled in what is sure to be a contentious battle over who will become the next permanent (ha!) speaker.

Who would want the job, knowing what happened to the last one — and previous GOP House speakers Paul D. Ryan and John A. Boehner?

Power, though, draws candidates like rotten meat draws flies, especially if you don’t intend to do the job. Rep. Jim Jordan has thrown his hat into the ring and possibly donned a jacket for a chance to bang that gavel. As Judiciary chair, the Ohio Republican has already proven to be an expert troller.

Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas has said he will file paperwork to nominate Trump, and why not?

One of the first actions of the guy holding the spot for now, Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, proves that he has a qualification his party seems to love. In an act of vindictive cruelty, McHenry ordered former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to vacate her Capitol hideaway office — while the Democrat was in California for the funeral of her longtime friend, Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Classy.

In a statement, Pelosi said: “Office space doesn’t matter to me, but it seems to be important to them. Now that the new Republican leadership has settled this important matter, let’s hope they get to work on what’s truly important for the American people.”

Remember the lack of drama that marked Pelosi’s time as speaker, operating with a majority nearly as tight as McCarthy’s?

The GOP might take a leadership lesson from Pelosi, who put politics aside when she remained calm, and reached out with concern to her GOP colleagues when the Capitol was under attack from rioters some Republicans now characterize as “patriots.”

The current House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, is learning fast. Jeffries kept his caucus together this week, and wound up looking like the grown-up, in contrast to an opposing party eating its young.

Turns out diversity really is our strength.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Is Purple North Carolina Turning Florida Red? The Mouse Wants To Know

Is Purple North Carolina Turning Florida Red? The Mouse Wants To Know

North Carolina is a state on the verge. Of what? Well, that depends on whom you ask. Some residents are thrilled that the state seems to be politically falling in line with a bunch of its neighbors to the south, most recently with an abortion bill. Others, particularly those who felt protected in relatively progressive urban bubbles, aren’t happy with the shift and are vocalizing their displeasure.

To back up a bit, in the past few years, the state’s tint could reasonably have been described as a reddish shade of purple. You could see it in its Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, with moderate policies and a calm demeanor that shielded his resolve, and a competing state legislature with a Republican majority big enough to flex its muscles but still subject to a veto when it pushed too far right.

There were the occasional cautionary tales, as in 2016, when then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the infamous HB2, or as it was nicknamed, the “Bathroom Bill.” It was the state GOP’s response to a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance, particularly the part that said people could use the bathroom for the gender with which they identified.

That installment in the ever-present rural vs. urban culture clash attracted the national spotlight as well as late-night comics’ jokes. Both proved harsh.

When concerts — including “The Boss,” Bruce Springsteen — and beloved basketball tournaments were canceled, once-bold politicians backtracked and McCrory lost his reelection race to Cooper, who is now approaching the end of his second term.

But memories are short, especially after the 2022 midterms, when the stars and voters aligned for North Carolina Republicans.

While Democrats did better than expected nationally, Republicans held their own and even made gains in North Carolina. Ted Budd, who as a House member voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory, won the U.S. Senate seat of the retiring Richard Burr, one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Donald Trump on an impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.

That’s a philosophical, if not party, change.

In the state General Assembly, Republicans won a veto-proof majority in the state Senate and came one vote short in the House. The state’s Supreme Court changed as well, with a 4-3 Democratic majority shifting to a 5-2 Republican advantage.

When Democratic state Rep. Tricia Cotham, months after her election in a blue district, donned a red dress for her April announcement of a switch to the GOP, any gubernatorial veto became vulnerable to an override.

A word about Cotham: Shocked constituents and folks who knew her when — meaning: all her political life — asked how someone who campaigned with support from those who supported LGBTQ rights, someone who spoke of her own abortion when she stood firm in support of reproductive freedom a few short years ago, who had said, as The Charlotte Observer pointed out, she would “stand up to Republican attacks on our health care” as well as “oppose attacks on our democracy, preserve fundamental voting rights, and ensure all voices are heard” could turn on a dime? Well, she explained, Democrats hurt her feelings; many feeling burned by the bait-and-switch are not quite buying it.

Attention, though, is now focused on a GOP agenda in overdrive, mirroring moves in Ron DeSantis-led Florida, with a few extras.

Why the rush, in a state with registered voters roughly split into thirds among Democrats, Republicans and the unaffiliated, and where elections up and down the ballot are always close?

Because Republicans can.

GOP fever dream

Top of the list, of course, of proposals and bills rushing through the state House and/or Senate with minimal debate, were those that targeted transgender young people, restricting gender-affirming care and prohibiting transgender girls from joining female sports teams in middle school, high school and college. Never mind that fewer than 20 transgender athletes have been approved to play high school sports in the state this year, and just two were trans girls.

Opponents worry about the effect on public schools if North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program of vouchers is expanded, as the Republican majority favors. It makes public money available to everyone, regardless of income, for any school, which includes private institutions and those with religious affiliations. For those already able to afford private schools, this would be a nice bonus; and the money comes with no strings, no need to follow state standards.

Headlines of gun violence have not deterred efforts to loosen the state’s gun laws. And would any red-state agenda be complete without bills meant to soft-pedal any mention of racism in the teaching of American history? Cooper has been on a travel and media blitz trying to convince Cotham and perhaps other Republicans to change their minds and their votes after, as expected, he vetoes the recently passed 12-week abortion ban, which also includes other restrictions, like an extended waiting period and new requirements for clinics.

Few, including the demonstrators outside the Capitol building in Raleigh, expect minds to change. North Carolina, with a 20-week ban, had been a refuge for those in the South. Perhaps not for long.

With the new GOP majority on the state Supreme Court, the electoral future looks rosy for Republicans. This court has already ended voting rights for some former felons, reinstated a voter-ID law a trial court had ruled was infected by racial bias and overturned a ruling on gerrymandering. With the legislature able to draw new lines, the seven-seven balance in the state’s U.S. House delegation may not survive.

Is the GOP’s fever dream of an 11-3 advantage possible? We’re about to find out.

The test of whether North Carolina will go full DeSantis will come in 2024, with the race for governor. Cooper, no doubt exhausted by constant sparring with the legislature that has worked to diminish the powers of his office from Day 1, is term-limited. Though the field is far from set, voters will have a clear choice.

Front-runners include state Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, who stood with those protesting the abortion ban and, on the Republican side, Mark Robinson, who has carved out a distinct national profile with his divisive rhetoric on gun laws, his support of some far-right conspiracy theories, and his hateful dismissal of LGBTQ citizens and their rights.

Let’s just say, when Disney’s making that list of states where the mouse might find a new home, for now there’s an asterisk next to North Carolina.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

'Tennessee Three' Revive King's Message For Those Who Need To Hear It

'Tennessee Three' Revive King's Message For Those Who Need To Hear It

Since I could not say it any better than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I’ll just quote him: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler nor the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

His Letter from Birmingham Jail, written and published in 1963, was King’s answer to the well-respected white clergy members who deemed his civil rights protests “unwise,” and published their disapproval in an ad in a Birmingham newspaper.

But the message could just as easily apply to the Republican state legislators in Tennessee who last week expelled two Black Democratic colleagues for breaking “decorum,” even as children afraid for their lives continued to plead for gun reform that might make them feel just a bit safer in their schoolrooms. There was shouting but no arrests, no violence, no property damage — just peaceful demands for “justice.”

That Republicans called these demonstrators “insurrectionists” was a disgusting touch that might have had those 1960s-era white clergymen, clueless as they were back then, shaking their heads.

It’s ironic that Tennessee is one of many states peering into a microscope for any sign that classroom lessons on race might cross some vague line, after a law forbidding discussion of so-called divisive concepts was signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in 2021. A chapter of “Moms for Liberty” didn’t spare a book about King from its wrath.

The actions by Republican lawmakers in Nashville prove that more, not less, teaching on the truthful history of America and Tennessee, birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, is sorely needed because, clearly, they haven’t learned a thing.

Trying to make uncomfortable truths go away by admonishing and punishing those who bring them into the light has never worked for long.

The fact that three adults and three children at a Christian school in Nashville had been murdered by an assailant wielding a semi-automatic weapon seemed to disappear as GOP members of the Tennessee General Assembly took turns dressing down the “Tennessee Three,” reaching for the most condescending words in their vocabularies.

“Just because you don’t get your way, you can’t come to the well, bring your friends, and throw a temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn,” Republican state Rep. Andrew Farmer said to Rep. Justin Pearson. He responded by deriding Farmer’s tone: “How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?”

Better to have listened rather than lectured, and felt the urgency of colleagues who do not look like them, who have backgrounds as activists, who were elected overwhelmingly by constituents, tens of thousands of them, who were stripped of representation when the lawmakers had their microphones cut off, their IDs invalidated and their bodies, finally, cast out.

Better for the legislators from a different political party to have learned from them, and from parents and children in the galleries and outside the chambers.

The third member of the trio, Rep. Gloria Johnson, a teacher, recalled seeing students fleeing a shooting at her school in 2008. She honored the names and memories of those killed at Covenant School. Johnson, spared expulsion by a single vote, unlike the two she stood alongside, is a white woman in her 60s. Just let that sink in for a moment.

And remember, since most of the GOP legislators hypocritically rolling in moral high dudgeon did not, that the disgraceful scene took place in the week of the 55th anniversary of the murder of King by an assassin’s bullet — across the state in Memphis.

What did they accomplish with the swift move? Well, after the events of last week, three state legislators whom few outside of their districts knew much about have had their profiles and causes elevated.

'Built on a protest'

Pearson sounded more preacher than politician when he said: “You are seeking to expel District 86's representation in this House — in a country that was built on a protest,” adding: “In a country built on people who speak out of turn, who spoke out of turn, who fought out of turn to build a nation. I come from a long line of people who have resisted.”

The expelled Democratic Rep. Justin Jones was equally eloquent when he asked: “How can you bring dishonor to an already dishonorable House? How can you bring disorder to a House that is out of order, where the speaker refuses to let representatives elected to speak for their people even be heard?”

Their fight recalled the legacy of King, who traveled to Memphis to raise the voices of that city’s neglected and disrespected sanitation workers, toiling in dangerous conditions for low pay.

The world has also learned about the members of the Tennessee legislature’s Republican caucus, predominantly white and male. Past comments about bringing back “hanging by a tree” as a method of execution, charges of criminal and sexual misconduct and persistent instances of reflexive racism have not been enough to earn the expulsion handed to Jones and Pearson.

Now, Jones is back after the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted on Monday to return him to his seat as “interim” representative before a special election is held. Though he drew the attention and visits from national Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, he did not really need their words to craft a way forward.

Upon his return, speaking from the steps of the Tennessee State Capitol, Jones said: “Today we are sending a resounding message that democracy will not be killed in the comfort of silence.” After a vote is held in Shelby County, Pearson may not be far behind.

But how much will politics as usual really change?

With gerrymandered districts and a supermajority that can do pretty much what it wants, Tennessee Republicans may not be worried about their power slipping away, not anytime soon. In states throughout the country, with blue dots of cities overwhelmed by surrounding red, any meaningful political swing would certainly be an uphill battle.

But I have a feeling the young people who crowded into the Capitol and the elected officials who echoed their concerns are hardly going to shut up.

Mary C. Curtis is an award-winning columnist for Roll Call and hosts its "Equal Time" podcast host. She is a contributor to NPR and The Op-Ed Project.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Donald Trump

From Trump And Biden, Competing Visions Of Our Past -- And Future

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” And just to make sure everyone in the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference and those watching at home got the message, former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated that last line: "I am your retribution.”

Trump revisited his “American carnage” 2017 inauguration speech to again paint a picture of an angry and divided America — with a promise to lead a charge into battle if elected.

On the same weekend, President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that day on March 7, 1965, when marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge heading to the capital city of Montgomery for voting rights and for justice in the name of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson — who was killed by an Alabama state trooper — were met with violence from law enforcement as the world watched.

The result of the marchers’ resolve and sacrifice was the Voting Rights Act, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965.

“No matter how hard some people try, we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know,” Biden said Sunday. “We should learn everything — the good, the bad, the truth — of who we are as a nation.”

And, after renewing his call to strengthen those same voting rights citizens had demanded that day in 1965, Biden concluded: “My fellow Americans, on this Sunday of our time, we know where we’ve been and we know, more importantly, where we have to go: forward together.”

At CPAC at National Harbor, Maryland., last week, the speaker’s list included Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, whose followers attacked his country’s capital city after his loss; and Kari Lake, still in election denial about her own November defeat in Arizona’s gubernatorial race. Notice the theme?

Attendees could choose between sessions on “Finish the Wall, Build the Dome” or “No Chinese Balloon Above Tennessee,” but there was no room for a lesson on the American history made on that Selma bridge 58 years ago.

In Selma, where devastating tornado damage provided a backdrop for a community that has never given up in the face of crises, one of those marking the day with another pilgrimage to the bridge was 67-year-old Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who, as a little girl, was a civil rights activist and one of those tear-gassed and chased by troops on March 7, 1965.

After she attended her first church meeting and heard the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others speak about the fight for freedom, she disobeyed worried and wary parents and kept returning. She was a child who asked questions, and she knew right from wrong, which led her to the bridge that day.

Traumatized by her experience, by seeing how low her country would go to maintain its system of white supremacy, she ran home and wrote about her own funeral arrangements. But she has never wavered.

“In many ways, I have felt hopeless,” Webb-Christburg told Politico. “But there have been other reasons where hope still prevails with me. And it still does.”

It was a message of light born out of the darkness no child should experience. But would her historic and optimistic truth, which she has shared with young people, be axed from history lessons for children the age she was back then?

Would it be judged “woke” by the likes of the Saturday CPAC crowd that cheered Trump’s dark vision?

The story of March 7, 1965, and what followed had good guys and bad guys. Does the lack of support for recognizing those of all races working for equal rights under the law, then and now, put you on the side of the troopers bashing men, women and children with batons and the legislators who voted “no” on voting rights?

It sure seems that way, since picking sides is not that hard.

Putting politics aside

Though it’s hard to believe, there was a time when Democrats and Republicans occasionally put politics aside, recognizing that, despite differences, some things were above partisanship, some events were too important a part of American history and must be remembered and honored if our country’s values were to mean anything at all.

In fact, in 2015, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy went. The California Republican may have been pushed, after the lack of GOP leadership representation prompted criticism. But he went, and he wasn’t the only Republican in the delegation to pay his respects.

On that day in 2015, then-President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama walked across the bridge with former GOP President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush. Also in attendance was Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who died in 2020.

Who could forget the image of the young Lewis, wearing a trench coat and toting a backpack, marching bravely in the front of the line in 1965, and, despite brutal beatings by troopers that cracked his skull, reached out to help the women and others being trampled and attacked during peaceful protest.

While president, Bush had in 2006 signed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act with broad Republican support. But since Supreme Court justices he appointed struck down key provisions of that landmark bill in the 2013 Shelby decision, laws to bolster voting rights — including one bearing Lewis’ name — have failed to make it through Congress.

I have to wonder if McCarthy, now the speaker of the House who kowtows to Trump and fringe members of his party, would be proud to admit he was ever in Selma that day in 2015. That McCarthy handed over Jan. 6, 2021, tapes of the Capitol riot, conducted by a MAGA mob, to a Fox News host he knew would excuse rioters who vandalized a tribute to Lewis, says everything about them — and him.

We know where Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former college football head coach, was last week — at CPAC, serving up his usual word salad about the “far left” and “crazies” and making false claims about schools not teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Tuberville might not be able to identify the three branches of government or why the Allies fought in World War II, but he sure knows enough to skip an important event in the state he represents so he can shout “woke” at folks who have trouble defining it.

This past weekend, the choice for our leaders — and Americans — could not have been clearer.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

Bad Old Days: Now Republicans Want To Bring Back Child Labor

Bad Old Days: Now Republicans Want To Bring Back Child Labor

When songwriters Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager penned “Everything Old Is New Again” decades ago, I wonder if they could have imagined the jaunty, oft-covered tune would one day be turned into a blueprint for some very dangerous doings.

In 2023, turning to the past to find solutions for present challenges is taking the country down roads far darker than the song’s images of mellow trumpets, Bacardi cocktails and “dancin’ at your Long Island Jazz Age parties.”

Today, those glancing “backward when forward fails,” as a verse explains, have landed on child labor and Jim Crow — not exactly the good old days. And the citizens of every age whose lives could be turned upside down don’t feel like singing.

In Iowa and Minnesota, bills working their way through the system float an idea that was abandoned when even the cruelest among Americans couldn’t stomach policies that permitted children to toil in sweatshops and on assembly lines, stealing time from education that might have led to brighter futures. Some of the work could possibly endanger their lives.

But what’s a country to do when there is need — the need for low-income families to earn more money and for businesses to fill hiring goals? Something once thought repugnant can look pretty seductive if the alternative, trying to level the playing field with empathetic policy, is out of the question. So, why not reach back to a time when inequality was the point, tolerated by those who benefited and ignored by those who didn’t feel the pain?

And by jobs, I’m not talking about babysitting or scooping ice cream.

“Legislators in Iowa and Minnesota introduced bills in January to loosen child labor law regulations around age and workplace safety protections in some of the country’s most dangerous workplaces,” The Washington Post reported. “Minnesota’s bill would permit 16- and 17-year-olds to work construction jobs. The Iowa measure would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants.”

What could go wrong? Well, the Labor Department has been taking an interest, with investigations already looking into how much industry is or is not protecting younger workers.

Those actions haven’t stopped other states from exploring ways to loosen regulations.

Such work will predictably affect poor Americans more than most. I hardly think wealthy kids would choose working in a meatpacking plant over an internship in a chosen field. Such internships or jobs with little or no pay have been nonstarters for a young person who has to help the family pay the bills.

And, in this country, with its persistent racial wealth gaps, minorities might no doubt disproportionately be the ones working longer hours in more dangerous jobs.

There’s nothing wrong with hard work. At a young age, my grandfather toiled on oyster boats off the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a job so tough that the move to the big city of Baltimore and the life of a longshoreman on the docks were an improvement. But in his time, he had fewer options. Young people today certainly do not, and shouldn’t be too broke to exercise them.

Considering America’s history, it’s no surprise that minorities might be the first to feel any rollback of rights. In Mississippi, separate and unequal seems the reason for changes in the court and criminal justice systems, changes that have Jim Crow written all over them.

“A white supermajority of the Mississippi House,” reported Mississippi Today, “voted after an intense, four-plus hour debate to create a separate court system and an expanded police force within the city of Jackson — the Blackest city in America — that would be appointed completely by white state officials.” State Rep. Edward Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton, Miss., referenced a state Constitution that removed voting rights from Black Mississippi citizens when he said during the debate, “This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again. … We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves.’”

This is a state where districts are so gerrymandered that bills can sail through the legislature with the votes of its white GOP members, and not a single Democratic one. With the state’s history of citizens attending separate schools and churches, of living in separate neighborhoods, of treating its Black citizens as children who need to be controlled, the proposed bill looks less like a return to the past than business as usual.

That’s the problem with fond longing for a rosy past that never was. It ignores the reality of those who survived only because of the hope of a brighter, safer, more equitable future.

Thankfully, there have always been Americans who remember “then,” fighting to make America great “now.” It’s why attempts to roll back everything from LGBTQ rights to any fully accurate history taught to schoolchildren will meet resistance.

Still, I am reminded of a line in that song that I admit I will never hum so cluelessly again, a line that those kicking and screaming to halt progress hold onto with a tight grip: “And don’t throw the past away / You might need it some rainy day.”

For those for whom the past is bliss, it’s pouring.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What are the dangers of child labor?

A. Child labor can harm children physically and mentally, deprive them of education and opportunities for advancement, and contribute to the cycle of poverty.

Q. What can be done to prevent the resurgence of child labor?

A. Advocacy and education are key to preventing the resurgence of child labor, including supporting laws that protect children, raising awareness, and providing resources for education and job training.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.