As we have written, American history is not a steady march toward greater equality, democracy and individual rights. America’s commitment to these liberal values has competed with an alternative set of illiberal values that hold that full American citizenship should be limited by race, ethnicity, gender and class.
The most famous example of this conflict is the Jim Crow era after Reconstruction, when many of the political and legal rights gained by African Americans in the Civil War era were swept away by disenfranchisement, segregation and discrimination. From roughly 1870 until 1940, democracy and equal rights were retreating, not advancing, leaving what was described in the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson as “the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.”
Today, the Trump administration is seeking to roll back America’s commitment to equality and engaging in a broad effort to limit – if not outright deny – the rights, liberties and benefits of democracy to all Americans.
Trump may force a second civil war on America with his plan
to use the military to round up at least 11 million undocumented people inside
the United States — even if it means breaking up families — send them to
detention camps, and then deport them.
As well as his plan to target his political enemies for
prosecution — including Democrats, journalists, and other critics.
What happens when we, especially those of us in blue
states and cities, resist these authoritarian moves — as we must, as we have a
moral duty to?
What happens when we try to protect hardworking members
of our communities who have been our neighbors and friends for years, from
Trump’s federal troops?
What happens when we refuse to allow Trump’s lackeys to
wreak revenge on his political enemies who live within our states and
communities?
Will our resistance give Trump an excuse to use force
against us?
This is not far-fetched. We need to answer these questions
for ourselves. We should prepare.
Trump has said he’ll use the Insurrection Act — which grants
a president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to
suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or
conspiracy.”
He’s also said he’ll use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to
end sanctuary cities. Such cities now limit cooperation with
federal immigration authorities. Trump told Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that
“we can do things in terms of moving people out.”
By Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented
A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.
These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation.
Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.
ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s members-only email newsletters, internal videos, strategy documents and fundraising pitches, none of which has been previously made public. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to underpin every major sphere of influence in American society with Christianity. In the Bible, the city of Ziklag was where David and his soldiers found refuge during their war with King Saul.
Have you noticed how rarely Republicans talk about actual
issues?
They rant about brown people pouring over the southern
border but refuse to even discuss what could be done about it. In fact, when
the Senate came up with a workable solution, Republicans in the House killed it
at the insistence of former U.S. President Donald Trump. No policies, no
solutions other than a Nazi-like roundup of 11 million people and a series of
concentration camps.
They complain about the state of the economy, but have no
arguments about what can be done to enhance the economy other than more tax
cuts for billionaires, who are already paying a pathetic average 3.4% income tax.
They whine that our students aren’t doing well but refuse
to engage in any serious discussion about how to take us back to the era when
America had the newest and most successful public education system in the
world.
They’ll yell about prescription drug prices and the high
cost of insurance, but their only policy suggestion is to end Obamacare and
Medicaid.
They love to slander Back Lives Matter and big cities with large Black
populations but refuse to even entertain a conversation about healing the
racial divide in this country; instead, their efforts are directed toward
outlawing or decertifying Black History classes, as just happened in
South Carolina.
All of this is because the GOP is now a post-politics
party.
The reason why is simple and straightforward: The people
who’ve captured the Republican Party envision a day when they won’t have to
even pretend that they’re engaging in good-faith political discussions or
negotiations because they will have outlawed, sidelined, or intimidated their
opposition into impotence and silence.
They’re using our political system this election year, in
other words, so they can seize enough power to destroy our political system.
And they have a model they’re using for what they want to
replace it with: the Confederacy.
Despite the popularity of the recent movie “Civil War,”
we’re not on the verge of a second one. But we are separating
into so-called “red” and “blue.” And if Trump is reelected president, he’ll
hasten the separation.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe
v. Wade left the issue of abortion to the states, one out of three
women of childbearing age now lives in a state that makes it nearly impossible
to get an abortion.
And while red states are making it harder than ever to
get abortions, they’re making it easier than ever to buy guns.
Red states are also banning diversity, equity, and
inclusion (DEI) initiatives in education. Florida’s Board of Education recently
prohibited public colleges from using state and federal funds for DEI. Texas
Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law to require that all state-funded colleges
and universities close their DEI offices.
Red states are suppressing votes. In Florida and Texas,
teams of “election police” have
been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, another fallout
from Trump’s big lie.
They’re banning the teaching of America’s history of
racism. They’re requiring transgender students to use bathrooms and join sports
teams that reflect their sex at birth.
They’re making it harder to protest. More difficult to
qualify for unemployment benefits and other forms of public assistance. Harder
than ever to form labor unions.
They’re even passing “bounty” laws —
enforced not by governments but by rewards to private citizens for filing
lawsuits — on issues ranging from classroom speech to abortion to vaccination.
Goes
to show how alive the plantation mentality is in the South
Is
the South preparing itself for a second Civil War? The following statement was
issued by the Republican Governors of Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, South
Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. It speaks for itself.
President Joe Biden made this comment on the union's win:
"Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose."
Here's the full statement by the Republican governors:
MONTGOMERY, APRIL 16, 2024– Governor
Kay Ivey, along with the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina,
Tennessee and Texas, issued the following joint statement:
“We the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South
Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization
campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought
into our states. As governors, we have a responsibility to our
constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our
state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.
“The reality is companies have choices when it comes to
where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity. We have worked tirelessly on
behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs
have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry.
Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy – in fact, in
this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs. In
America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell
us who can pick up a box or flip a switch. No one wants to hear this, but
it’s the ugly reality. We’ve seen it play out this way
every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not
one of those plants remains in operation. And we are seeing it in the
fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking
investments and cutting jobs. Putting businesses in our states in that position
is the last thing we want to do.
Since the rise of Jacksonian democracy and the expansion of the vote to all white men in the late 1820s, however, the support of rural white people has been vital to the governing power of almost every major party coalition. Which is why my co-author Paul Waldman and I describe rural white people as America’s “essential minority” in our book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.”
As a political scientist, I’ve written or co-written five books addressing issues of racial politics at some level of government or part of the country. My latest, “White Rural Rage,” seeks to understand the complex intersections of race, place and opinion and the implications they hold for our political system.
The unfortunate fact is that polls suggest many rural white people’s commitment to the American political system is eroding. Even when they are not members of militant organizations, rural white people, as a group, now pose four interconnected threats to the fate of the United States’ pluralist, constitutional democracy.
Although these do not apply to all rural white people, nor exclusively to them in general, when compared with other Americans, rural white people:
Express the most racist, least inclusive, most xenophobic, most anti-LGBTQ+ and most anti-immigrant sentiments.
Subscribe at the highest rates to conspiracy theories about QAnon, the 2020 presidential election, Barack Obama’s citizenship and COVID-19 vaccines.
Support a variety of antidemocratic and unconstitutional positions and exhibit strong attachments to white nationalist and white Christian nationalist movements inimical to secular, constitutional governance.
Are most likely to justify, if not call for, force or violence as acceptable alternatives to deliberative, peaceful democracy.
On Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump exhorted followers to object to the results of the 2020 presidential election. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
In 2024, former President Donald Trump will face some of his greatest challenges: criminal court cases, primary opponents and constitutional challenges to his eligibility to hold the office of president again.
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector ofPresident and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
To me as a scholar of constitutional law, each sentence and sentence fragment captures the commitment made by the nation in the wake of the Civil War to govern by constitutional politics.
People seeking political and constitutional changes must play by the rules set out in the Constitution. In a democracy, people cannot substitute force, violence or intimidation for persuasion, coalition building and voting.
A KKK rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Sept. 21, 1923. Dayton Metro Library
It was Dec. 19, 1923 – 100 years ago. The first day of Christmas break at the University of Dayton, with fewer than 40 students still on campus.
At 10:30 p.m., the quiet was shattered by a series of explosions, as 12 bombs went off throughout campus.
Frightened students discovered that, while damage was minimal, there was an eight-foot burning cross on the edge of campus.
Running to tear it down, they were confronted by several hundred Klansmen screaming threats from 40 to 50 cars.
It wasn’t the first time Dayton’s residents had endured terror from the Ku Klux Klan. Hundreds of neighbors poured out of their houses and charged at the hooded invaders. The Klansmen sped away, and the students and others extinguished the fire and tore down the cross.
The KKK is most infamous for violently terrorizing African Americans. But in the 1920s its hatred also had other targets, especially outside the South.
This version of the KKK, known as the Second Ku Klux Klan, harassed Catholics, Jews and immigrants – including students and staff at Catholic universities like Dayton, where I am a historian of American religion. All of this is the focus of my 2013 article, “Hearing the Silence.”
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MONTGOMERY, APRIL 16, 2024– Governor
Kay Ivey, along with the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina,
Tennessee and Texas, issued the following joint statement:
