I read all of Robert Caro a number of years ago. No better biography written.
So when I hear Portman, LaRose, Romney and others oppose the “federal takeover” of voting rights, I knew it sounded familiar.
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Indeed, that was the precise framing used by the Southern segregationists dedicated to stopping any and all civil rights legislation…but who knew they could no longer appeal to openly racist sentiments as their forerunners had
So they always grounded their obstruction…
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in the less charged narrative of a “federal takeover;” a takeover by outsiders; that the problems were already being solved within the states with no need for “federal interference.”
(And we know that those problems were NOT being solved)
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By eschewing the racist rhetoric of Southern predecessors, the “federal takeover” frame also made it easier for non-southern allies to join the cause of stopping civil rights legislation from passing.
It was a “vastly more effective” strategy.
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But as Caro points out, the impact was the same.
Those decades of obstruction rendered a cost on the Black citizens of the South in particular…a cost of “tears and plain and blood,” as even anti-lynching laws didn’t pass
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So as you hear “genteel” politicians of today throw around the term “federal takeover” as they oppose voting rights, but praise MLK, know that they are not only taking the 30s-60s segregationists’ side, they are adopting the most effective play from that segregation playbook
END
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Few authors have more informed (and reshaped) my understanding of American history than Isabel Wilkerson.
I had the honor and thrill of hearing her speak the other night, and she shared a story and lesson I will never forget.
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I couldn’t take notes as she told it, but I will capture it as best I can, having done a little research to fill it out.
In the early to mid-1900s, millions of Black Americans migrated north, escaping the punishing life and crushing poverty of the Jim Crow south.
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As Wilkerson describes, these families were basically defectors: “American citizens [who] had to flee the place of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens they had always been. It was the seeking of political asylum from within the borders of one’s own country.”
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According to Strength in Numbers, “search interest for “Cancel Disney+” has hit an all-time high — even higher than the boycott movements from when Disney “went woke” in 2020-2022.
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The current Disney boycott is now 4x as large as any over the last 5 years, gauged by search interest.”
And those searches were just the beginning:
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And yesterday, we saw the result of that fierce consumer backlash:
A few weeks ago, when discussing the raid of John Bolton’s home, Vance kept describing the investigation with the words “we” and “our.”
It showed that Project 2025’s goal of erasing any independence of the FBI has happened.
And the true danger of that red line…
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…being crossed is playing out right now, amid the Kirk investigation.
“We.”
“Our.”
Trump. Vance. Miller. Bondi. Patel.
When it comes to an FBI investigation, they are all now one and the same.
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Which of course means that those who have already decided and announced who’s to blame and who should be punished are also the ones overseeing the investigation and, according to Trump yesterday, charges that follow.
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