A Bad Day For Republicans

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter for March 30. (I'm getting very lazy about this blog; why should anyone bother reading this? Just subscribe to HCR's newsletter.)

Anyway, for one thing, "Today a federal judge ruled that the non-disclosure agreement the former president required employees to sign is so broad and vague it is unenforceable." This could open the door for others to write books or otherwise publicize things that went on in the Trump White House that "the former guy" would rather didn't see daylight.

Also today, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that a defamation lawsuit against the former president by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos could go forward. The suit had been on hold because Trump’s lawyers argued that a sitting president could not face legal action. While two previous courts ruled against him, today’s decision is from the highest court in New York. It opens up the possibility that Trump will face a deposition in which he could be asked, under oath, about sexual assault accusations. 

That's good news! "The former guy" under oath? The man can't help lying any more than he can help breathing. Supporters have warned him in the past not to agree to testify under oath because he might fall into a "perjury trap." There's one unbeatable defense against perjury -- don't lie! But for "the former guy," anything that requires him to tell the truth under penalty of perjury is a perjury trap.

On Friday, former president Trump told the Fox News Channel that his supporters were “hugging and kissing” the law enforcement officers at the Capitol on January 6, but now two U.S. Capitol Police officers have sued the former president for inflaming the insurrectionists on January 6, nearly leading to their deaths.

How could the man say something so preposterous? I guess it tells us what he believes about assault, just as he stated on the Access Hollywood tapes: If you're a star (or a supporter), you can get away with it.

News broke today that Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a major Trump supporter, is being investigated by the Department of Justice for traveling with a 17-year-old girl he paid to accompany him. The probe began during the last administration under Attorney General William Barr, and is linked to a political ally of Gaetz’s, Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Seminole County, Florida, who last summer was indicted on sex trafficking charges. Greenberg was associated with Trump ally Roger Stone.

Gaetz is a detestable little puppy who has long been "the former guy's" foremost supporter in the House -- Gaetz in the House, Graham in the Senate. His buddy Greenberg is a real piece of work; click here for an article by David Harris in the Orlando Sentinel entitled "Who is Joel Greenberg? Former tax collector tied to U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz steeped in controversy before criminal charges."

These stories are enough to spell a bad day indeed for supporters of the former president, but there is an even bigger story, broken yesterday by the incomparable Jane Mayer at the New Yorker.

While Republicans insist that the For the People Act voting rights act, H.R. 1, is a partisan plan, in fact, a leaked conference call from January 8 between a policy advisor to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and leaders of a number of conservative groups showed the participants’ concern that H.R. 1 is quite popular even with Republicans. Across the political spectrum, ordinary Americans especially like its provision to limit the dark money that has flowed into our elections since the 2010 Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision, permitting billionaires to buy an election’s outcome.

In the 2020 federal election cycle, dark-money groups spent more than a billion dollars. More than 654 million came from just fifteen groups, the top of which is connected to McConnell. In February, a Data for Progress poll showed that 68% of likely voters, including 57% of Republicans, like the bill that would staunch the flow of this money.

Apparently the money guys on the conference call came to the conclusion that it was fruitless to argue in the media that the For the People Act, H.R. 1, is a bad piece of legislation, because it's just too popular with everyone, including Republicans. They decided not to waste their money fighting the bill in the media, but just to concentrate on killing it in Congress (meaning the Senate).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voter Suppression After The Civil War

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter for March 28, 2021, about white suppression of the black vote after the Civil War and during Reconstruction.

They added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing human enslavement except as punishment for crime and, when white southerners refused to rebuild the southern states with their free Black neighbors, in March 1867 passed the Military Reconstruction Act. This landmark law permitted Black men in the South to vote for delegates to write new state constitutions. The new constitutions confirmed the right of Black men to vote.

Most former Confederates wanted no part of this new system. They tried to stop voters from ratifying the new constitutions by dressing up in white sheets as the ghosts of dead southern soldiers, terrorizing Black voters and the white men who were willing to rebuild the South on these new terms to keep them from the polls. They organized as the Ku Klux Klan, saying they were “an institution of chivalry, humanity, mercy, and patriotism” intended “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States… [and] to aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws.” But by this they meant the Constitution before the war and the Thirteenth Amendment: candidates for admission to the Ku Klux Klan had to oppose “Negro equality both social and political” and favor “a white man’s government.”

The bloody attempts of the Ku Klux Klan to suppress voting didn’t work. The new constitutions went into effect, and in 1868 the former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union with Black male suffrage. In that year’s election, Georgia voters put 33 Black Georgians into the state’s general assembly, only to have the white legislators expel them on the grounds that the Georgia state constitution did not explicitly permit Black men to hold office.

Black people -- well, black men -- theoretically had the right to vote. But white Southerners -- Democrats -- did everything they could to prevent it.

Over the next decades, white southerners worked to silence the voices of Black Americans in politics, and in 1890, fourteen southern congressmen wrote a book to explain to their northern colleagues why Democrats had to control the South. Why the Solid South? or Reconstruction and its Results insisted that Black voters who had supported the Republicans after the Civil War had used their votes to pervert the government by using it to give themselves services paid for with white tax dollars.

Later that year, a new constitution in Mississippi started the process of making sure Black people could not vote by requiring educational tests, poll taxes, or a grandfather who had voted, effectively getting rid of Black voting.

Eight years later, there was still enough Black voting in North Carolina and enough class solidarity with poor whites that voters in Wilmington elected a coalition government of Black Republicans and white Populists. White Democrats agreed that the coalition had won fairly, but about 2000 of them nonetheless armed themselves to “reform” the city government. They issued a “White Declaration of Independence” and said they would “never again be ruled, by men of African origin.” It was time, they said, “for the intelligent citizens of this community owning 95% of the property and paying taxes in proportion, to end the rule by Negroes.”

As they forced the elected officials out of office and took their places, the new Democratic mayor claimed “there was no intimidation used,” but as many as 300 African Americans died in the Wilmington coup.

No intimidation, but 300 killed.

Paul Weyrich: The Goo-Goo Syndrome, 1980

Click here for a short (40 seconds) video of Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and right-wing troublemaker, addressing a gathering of Reagan's religious followers in Dallas in the fall of 1980 as the coalition of movement conservatives with the religious right was taking shape, to the detriment of us all. Here's the  money quote:

How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government? They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

This was a flat-out declaration by one of the first movement conservatives that Republican success was based on vote suppression. If everyone votes, they lose -- so they have to keep their opponents from voting.

What's In Georgia's New Voter Law?

On March 25, Georgia passed in one day -- through the House, through the Senate, passed into law by Governor Brian Kemp -- SB 202, the Election Integrity Act of 2021,  a bill that radically alters the rules of elections held in Georgia. 

The Democrats say it's Jim Crow, citing provisions such as:

Another new rule that affects both in-person early voting and election day voting would prohibit anyone except poll workers from handing out water to voters in line, and outlaw passing out food and water to voters within 150 feet of the building that serves as a poll, inside a polling place or within 25 feet of any voter standing in line.

 And:

If you live in Fulton County, you'll no longer be able to use one of two mobile voting buses the county purchased last year to help with long lines. While a 2019 omnibus allowed early voting sites to be more locations, including places that are normally election day polls, the Republican-led legislature has now written laws that expressly prohibits a mobile poll except during an emergency declared by the governor.

The Republicans say it's all about election security, and that it actually expands voter access, citing provisions such as:

One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional. Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum. If you live in a larger metropolitan county, you might not notice a change. For most other counties, you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.

There's a lot in this 98-page law. Who's right? Click here for an article at GPB.org (Georgia Public Broadcasting) by Stephen Fowler entitled "What Does Georgia's New Voting Law SB 202 do?" for a summary of what's actually in the law.

All Hands On Deck!

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter today, March 25, which begins: "There is only one story today."

And that story concerns the continued existence of democracy in the United States.

Tonight, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a 95-page law designed to suppress the vote in the state where voters chose two Democratic senators in 2020, making it possible for Democrats to enact their agenda. Among other things, the new law strips power from the Republican secretary of state who stood up to Trump’s demand that he change the 2020 voting results. The law also makes it a crime to give water or food to people waiting in line to vote.

There are currently more than 250 measures in 43 states designed to keep Republicans in power no matter how the people vote.

Ms. Richardson says there will be one question historians ask of this period: 

Did Americans defend their democracy or did they fall to oligarchy?

The way things stand today, it looks as if the continued existence of American democracy depends on the fate of the filibuster.

 Click here for Ms. Richardson's March 9 newsletter article, entitled "Filibustering for Beginners."

Here is another short explanation of the filibuster by Ms. Richardson at billmoyers.com, in an article entitled "What We're Inheriting Is So Much Worse Than We Could Have Imagined," about the fact that the Trump administration had literally no plan for distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines:

The filibuster is peculiar to the Senate, and is a procedure designed to draw out the session to prevent a vote on a measure. It is an old system, but it is not exactly hallowed: it was a bit of a mistake.

The Constitution provides for the Senate to pass most measures by a simple majority. It also permits each house of Congress to write its own rules. According to historian Brian Bixby, the House discovered early on that it needed a procedure to stop debate and get on with a vote. The Senate, a much smaller body, did not.

In the 1830s, senators in the minority discovered they could prevent votes on issues they disliked simply by talking the issue to death. In 1917, when both President Woodrow Wilson and the American people turned against the filibuster after senators used it to stop Wilson from preparing for war, the Senate reluctantly adopted a procedure to end a filibuster using a process called “cloture,” but that process is slow and it takes a majority of three-fifths of all members. Today, that is 60 votes.

From 1917 to 1964, senators filibustered primarily to stop civil rights legislation. The process was grueling: a senator had to talk for hours, as South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond did in 1957, when he spoke for 24 hours straight to stand against a civil rights act. But the need to speed up Senate business meant that in the 1960s and 1970s, senators settled on procedural filibusters that enabled an individual senator to kill a measure simply by declaring opposition, rather than through the old-fashioned system of all-night speeches. The Senate also declared some measures, such as budget resolutions, immune to filibusters. Effectively, this means that it takes 60 votes, rather than a simple majority, to get anything — other than absolutely imperative financial measures — done.

In 2013, frustrated by the Republicans’ filibustering of President Obama’s judicial nominees and picks for a number of officials in the Executive Branch, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) prohibited filibusters on certain Executive Branch and judicial nominees. In 2017, when Democrats tried to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell killed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, as well.

The filibuster remains in place for legislation.

The Democrats have passed an act in the House called the For the People Act, which protects voting, ends partisan gerrymandering, and keeps dark money out of elections -- if it were to be enacted, it would override attempts by rogue states -- such as Georgia, at the moment -- to subvert the electoral process and ensure continued Republican rule, no matter how the people vote. 

The Republicans in the Senate will vote to kill the bill. So with the filibuster intact, Republican states can follow Georgia's lead and enact laws that act blatantly to suppress the vote. The future of American democracy will be on the ballot in November 2022. Will the Democrats be able to pass a law ensuring that that election is a fair one? The outcome is uncertain.

Good luck, America.

 

Heather Cox Richardson, Gun Control And The NRA

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter for March 23. This one, after the mass shooting leaving ten dead in a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, is about gun control, a short history of the NRA, and the organization's alignment with Ronald Reagan and movement conservatism in 1980.

QAnon In One Easy Lesson

Click here for an article on QAnon appearing in Quora, by Daniel Rollings, self-described as "de-programmed from the religious authoritarian matrix," in answer to the Quora question, "Anyone

who believed in the Q-Anon theories and has since recovered, what was it that made you change your mind?"

 

It's a pretty good explanation of the QAnon phenomenon: as a cult, or as an "augmented-reality" game; a magnet for conspiracy theorists of all stripes; fueled by such delusional prime movers as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and William Cooper's "Behold a Pale Horse," with gas poured on the flames by Alex Jones at InfoWars.

 

It's a long article, but it's a good explanation, and it's worthwhile to follow some of the links.

Republican Supreme Court Threatens

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter posting for March 21, 2021. It's pretty scary.

The Trump/McConnell Supreme Court may be about to start exercising its right-wing power.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a somewhat confusing case about the rights of workers. The case is about whether union organizers can talk to farm workers in their workplaces (when they are not working). The 1975 law that permits such conversations has enabled agricultural workers, who are mostly people of color and immigrants, to bargain for better conditions. But in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, companies argue that the regulation permitting organizers into work spaces deprives the property owner of economic benefit and thus is unconstitutional.

SCOTUS's conservatives may vote in favor of the company and against the workers, which will likely have knock-on effects if a union's right to enter the workspace is curtailed.

But most frightening is the prospect of SCOTUS ruling upholding something called the nondelegation doctrine. In the 1930s, FDR established a number of agencies which would regulate various facets of the country's economic life. These agencies were very popular with the people -- but correspondingly unpopular with business leaders, who wanted to be able to act freely, without government supervision. The principle of the nondelegation doctrine didn't get much of a foothold and was pretty much ignored until the Reagan years, and the idea has been gathering steam lately.

 It looks as though the court may reexamine whether or not Congress can delegate authority to administrative agencies. It looks as though the conservative court may curtail the modern administrative state that since the 1930s has regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure.

Justice Elena Kagan has said that enactment of the nondelegation doctrine would mean that “most of Government is unconstitutional.”  

But that, of course, is the point. We are caught up in a struggle between two ideologies: one saying that the government has a significant role to play in keeping the playing field level in the American economy and society, and the other saying it does not.

If SCOTUS enacts laws with sweeping powers to end government regulation and let corporations act freely, God help us all.

 

 

 

Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, And Other Riff-Raff

 

Click here here for Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter from March 19, 2021. She opens:

When I see Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and other voices from our right wing, siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his demand that President Joe Biden debate him or pretending that the January 6 attack on the Capitol wasn’t a big deal, or Republicans voting to overturn a legitimate election or trying to keep Americans from voting, sometimes I despair of our democracy.

She goes on to say that she is reassured by the fact that this attitude is not widespread in the country -- but it is widespread in the Republican party. 

66% of people who believe that Trump won the election say that the riot at the Capitol is getting too much attention. Eighty-two percent of them said Trump’s conduct leading up to the insurrection was not wrong and that the House should not have voted to impeach him.  

Among those who believe the big lie, that Biden stole the election and Trump is the legitimate president, they believe that they are not insurrectionists seeking to overturn a legitimate government -- they are heroic patriots seeking to rescue democracy.

One of those arrested for violent behavior at the Capitol on January 6 said:

“We’re not going to merge into some globalist, communist system, it will not happen. There will be a lot of bloodshed if it comes down to that, trust me…. Nobody wants this, but they’re pushing us to a point where we have no choice.”

Another posted on social media:

“What’s more disturbing to me than the Dems trying to steal this election, is how many people… just accepted Biden won, despite the obvious corruption… Luke warm Patriots are dangerous.”

And:

“We tried playing nice and by the rules, now you will deal with the monster you created. The spirit of 1776 has resurfaced and has created groups like the Proudboys and we will not be extinguished. We will grow like the flame that fuels us and spread like the love that guides us. We are unstoppable, unrelenting and now … unforgiving. Good luck to all you traitors of this country we so deeply love … you’re going to need it.”

After the attack, during which approximately 140 members of the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department were assaulted, some of those charged posted:

“[I]f you feel bad for the police, you are part of the problem. They care more about federal property (our property) than protecting and serving the people.” 

And:

“I’m proud as f**k what we accomplished yesterday, but we need to start planning and we are starting planning, for a Biden presidency.”

 

 

Deb Haaland, 35th Generation American, Named Secretary of the Interior Department

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter for March 15, 2021.

It's a good brief explanation of the (shameful) history of the Department of the Interior, from its formation in 1849, when it took under its umbrella Indian Affairs.

As settlers pushed into Indigenous territory, the government took control of the land through treaties that promised the tribes food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and usually the tools and seeds to become farmers. As well, tribal members usually received a yearly payment of cash. These distributions of goods and money were not payment for the land. They replaced the livelihood the tribes lost when they gave up their lands.

Either willingly or by force, tribes moved onto reservations, large tracts overseen by an agent who, once Indian Affairs was in the Department of the Interior, was a political appointee chosen by the U.S. senators of the state in which the reservation was located. While some of the agents actually tried to do their job, most were put into office to advance the interests of the political party in power. So, they took the money Congress appropriated for the tribe they oversaw, then gave the contracts for the beef, flour, clothing, blankets, and so on, to cronies, who would fulfill the contracts with moldy food and rags, if they bothered to fulfill them at all. The agents would pocket the rest of the money, using it to help keep their political party in power and themselves in office.

The mistreatment of native Americans was unbelievable, but there were other egregious abuses, such as Warren Harding's Teapot Dome scandal:

Soon after President Warren G. Harding took office in 1921, his Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, began to accept huge bribes from oil tycoon Edward Doheny. In 1922, Fall persuaded the Secretary of the Navy to transfer control of the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming, along with two other oil fields in California, to him. Harding signed off on the deal, and Fall promptly gave Doheny secret, no-bid leases for the fields.

The Teapot Dome scandal sent Fall to prison for a year, making him the first former cabinet official to serve time.

Although Doheny was convinced that socialism was destroying America, Teapot Dome marked the beginning of the power of the oil industry in the American government, power ultimately personified when Trump appointed a lawyer and lobbyist for the energy and oil industry, David Bernhardt, to head the department. Bernhardt—who was confirmed by a vote of 56 to 41—rolled back environmental regulations and opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration.

Let's hope the Biden administration, and Deb Haaland, can do better.

 

Ron Johnson: The Mob On January 6 Would Never Do Anything To Break The Law

Click here for an article entitled "Ron Johnson says Capitol attackers 'love this country' but he would have felt unsafe if Black Lives Matter stormed building instead," by Molly Beck, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about her Wisconsin senator, Ron Johnson, and remarks he made on a radio show about the violent attack on the Capitol by the Trump crew on January 6.

Johnson had previously said that he "didn't feel threatened" during the attack. He reiterated that, and said:

"I knew those were people who love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn't concerned," Johnson said about the predominantly white crowd that marched to the U.S. Capitol to overturn a presidential election and triggered an assault that left five people dead, 140 police officers injured and windows smashed. 

"Now, had the tables been turned, and Joe — this is going to get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa, I might have been a little concerned," Johnson said during an interview with syndicated radio show host Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo.

Heather Cox Richardson's Column, Sunday, March 7

Heather Cox Richardson has a particularly good article yesterday, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, so I'm posting it in its entirety. 

It's a recap of certain aspects of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, the drive for black voter registration in Selma, culminating in Bloody Sunday, the violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge (named after a Confederate general, grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan), and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. It tells how that Act was essentially gutted by the Roberts Court in 2013 with the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, and the subsequent Republican drive for voter suppression resulting in the problems today.

This is her daily free article, which I strongly recommend. There's a paid version which I haven't gotten around to getting -- I'll have to remedy that situation soon!

Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, but it did not adequately address the problem of voter suppression. In Selma, a judge had stopped the voter registration protests by issuing an injunction prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.

To call attention to the crisis in her city, Amelia Boynton, who was a part of the Dallas County Voters League but who, in this case, was acting with a group of local activists, traveled to Birmingham to invite Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to the city. King had become a household name after the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, and his presence would bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.

King and other prominent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in January to press the voter registration drive. For seven weeks, Black residents tried to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2000 of them for a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.  

Then, on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting, but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles-- from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.

On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bull whips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull, and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the fray.

Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this time, King led the marchers in prayer and then took them back to Selma. That night, a white mob beat to death a Unitarian Universalist minister, James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to join the marchers.

On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us… must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

The marchers remained determined to complete their trip to Montgomery, and when Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, refused to protect them, President Johnson stepped in. When the marchers set off for a third time on March 21, 1,900 members of the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal marshals protected them. Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people.

On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag, Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”

That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members tailing her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson recalled “the outrage of Selma” when he said "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter registration in districts where African Americans were historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”

But less than 50 years later, in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The Shelby County v. Holder decision opened the door, once again, for voter suppression. Since then, states have made it harder to vote. And now, in the wake of the 2020 election, in which voters handed control of the government to Democrats, legislatures in 43 states are considering sweeping legislation to restrict voting, especially voting by people of color. Among the things Georgia wants to outlaw is giving water to voters as they wait for hours in line to get to the polls.

Today, 56 years after Bloody Sunday, President Biden signed an executive order “to promote voting access and allow all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.” He called on Congress to pass the For the People Act, making it easier to vote, and to restore the Voting Rights Act, now named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act after the man who went on from his days in the Civil Rights Movement to serve 17 terms as a representative from Georgia, bearing the scars of March 7, 1965, until he died on July 17, 2020.

The fact sheet from the White House announcing the executive order explained: “democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend, strengthen, and renew it.” Or, as Representative Lewis put it: “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

 

The Amazing Tucker Carlson

Here's an excerpt from Brian Stelter's blog, Reliable Sources:

Tucker Carlson continued on Friday night to mock the news media for its reporting on the threat posed by dangerous conspiracy theories and those who buy into deranged nonsense like QAnon. "You ever notice how all like scary internet conspiracy theorists, radical QAnon people ... maybe they are kind of confused or have the wrong ideas — they are all gentle people, waving American flags. They like the country," Carlson said. "They are not torching Wendy's. They are not looting retail stores. They are not shooting cops. No, that's not them. The other people are doing that."

 

It's as if Carlson is unaware of the Jan. 6 insurrection, or that the basic founding premise of QAnon involves rounding up supposed deep-state traitors and hanging them. But he's a pretty well-informed guy, so is he really unaware of that?