Adam Serwer, “The Great Resegregation”
What the proponents of the Great Resegregation seek is a counterrevolution not merely in law, but also in culture. The civil-rights revolution of the 1960s changed hearts and minds as well as laws, and one of those changes was that racially exclusive institutions became morally suspect. Notably, Trump officials are not willing to state their aims explicitly; they feel obligated to pay lip service to ideals of color-blind meritocracy and mislead about their intentions.
“My view is that the diversity ethos has really sunk deep roots,” the Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy told me. “There are a lot of people across a wide variety of ideological positions who would not like a racially homogeneous, all-white outfit. Even people who say they’re against affirmative action, they would feel somewhat nervous or somewhat embarrassed or somewhat guilty about that.” Trumpists seek to not just repeal protections against discrimination, but reverse the “diversity ethos” that has enabled America’s tenuous strides toward equality.
David Blight, “Birthright Citizenship Is a Sacred Guarantee”
The attempt to end birthright citizenship in the United States is an attempt to reverse history, to push our nation back, way back, before the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and the secession crisis that soon delivered the nation into the Civil War. Calling this action “unconstitutional” is utterly inadequate; the maneuver is the soiling of sacred text with profane lies.
Birthright citizenship is a shield of protection to anyone born in this country, as close to a national self-definition as we have; it is our legal DNA. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment should be emblazoned on small laminated cards and carried in every American’s pocket. The language is amply clear:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
That language is as fundamental to the Constitution as any other provision, perhaps even more important to the survival and growth of our pluralistic republic than the First Amendment, which protects free speech, free press, the right of assembly, and the right to petition the government. It is as inherent to constitutional function as federalism itself.
Shay Stewart-Bouley, “I Am Not Scared of This Administration. I Am Angry”
Trump’s attacks on DEI represent a clear desire to take us back to the time when uppity Black folks like me were put in our place. He wants white men to be our rulers again and that doesn’t sadden me. It fills me with rage.
Rage to even consider the possibility that my four beautiful grandbabies who are children of the South, living in midst of the Bible Belt, may grow up in a world that more closely resembles the world their great-grandfather grew up in, than the integrated world in which I was raised in Chicago. While far from perfect and still riddled with racism, it was not quite the state-sponsored racism and apartheid that Trump and that man from South Africa desire.
Robyn Pennacchia, “Never Having to Say You’re Sorry for Saying the R-Word”
They think they are replicating what the Left did with regard to what they understand as “woke.” They think we just made up new rules for everyone to follow in order to trip them up and get them in trouble for no reason — sort of like how old money people made up weird new etiquette rules (like a raised pinky while drinking tea) in order to trip up the nouveau riche during the Gilded Age. They think we took things that weren’t real problems (specifically anti-Black racism) and made a big thing out of them in order to make them feel like bad people. They think we invented trans people just to personally annoy them.
They literally think that intersectionality means that the more forms of oppression one experiences, the better they are and the more valid their opinion on every possible topic.
They created a completely insane narrative in their heads where all of this was about personally hurting them and creating a hierarchy in which they were at the bottom — instead of dismantling the hierarchy altogether. … They believed that people went along with this not because they believed it, but because it was popular.
Chris Williams, “If You Look This Way, You’ll See the Dead Body of the Separation of Church and State”
What is the anti-Christian “violence” and “vandalism” we need protection from? Is it anti-Christian for a swearing President to opt out of putting their hand over the Bible? Upside down Bible photo-ops? What are the consequences for such transgressions? Will hosting book readings by drag queens be deemed “anti-Christian” because they don’t honor God? Who will be the arbiter of what does and doesn’t sufficiently honor God? Paula White? Will Klan rallies be protected by the First Amendment while protesting a Klan rally would get the Faith Office sent after you because, at the heart of it, the Klan is and has always been a Christian group? We used to have a strong First Amendment that would nip questions like this in the bud and protect members of a religious minority from the tyranny of whatever faithful were in power. Now, all we seem to have are thoughts and prayers.
Dan Sinker, “What Felt Impossible Became Possible”
Things are really dark right now. We have a new crop of fascists pledging “America First” in the White House. A new series of attacks on immigrants and people of color. Even as someone who expected things to get bad fast, the level of cruelty and destruction being wrought by Donald Trump and the unelected Elon Musk is staggering.
And it feels unstoppable.
That’s why I’ve spent so much time lately learning about those that lived under the thumb of the KKK in the ’20s. The speed with which the group grew, the influence it held, the mainstream embrace it received, and the fear it spread—I think about how impossible it must have felt to imagine that their influence would ever ebb.
And I think about people like George Dale—there were many like him—who, despite it feeling impossible, and despite paying incredible personal cost, kept fighting anyway.
Kyiv Independent, “A president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasn’t Zelensky”
The president of a battered Ukraine, an ally of the U.S., became the first world leader in history to be kicked out of the White House. Not a dictator, not a disgraced politician — the president of Ukraine, a country suffering from the worst invasion in the 21st century. The country that the U.S. administration swore to bring peace to.
In an ugly exchange, the president and vice president joined forces to admonish Zelensky for “not being grateful” enough for the help Ukraine was getting.
To that, Zelensky reminded them that he had thanked the American people multiple times, including earlier that day. But it appears that gratitude to the American people isn’t what Trump and Vance were looking for — they wanted him to grovel and prostrate himself in front of Trump. Kiss the ring.
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