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      Texas’s ‘states’ rights’ argument in the border dispute sets a dangerous precedent

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      Over the past few weeks, a quiet legal crisis has been unfolding on the US-Mexico border. Texas has seized control of part of the border and claimed the right to prevent federal authorities from exercising jurisdiction there. After the US supreme court ruled that the federal government could tear down razor wire erected by Texas authorities, the state vowed to erect more – and Governor Greg Abbott claimed that because the federal government had failed to protect his state from an “invasion” of refugees, it has “broken the compact between the United States and the States” and lost the right to exercise authority over the border altogether.To understand why this is so alarming, you need to see it in two historical contexts. The first is the notion of a “compact” between the states. This idea holds that the constitution is not the supreme law of the land but rather a mere agreement between independently sovereign states. Those states hence retain the right to decide when certain actions by the federal government break the compact – and to reclaim their independence accordingly.This idea – sometimes known as “compact theory” – was key to the quasi-legal arguments deployed by the Confederate states in the 19th century to justify first secession, and then civil war. As well as being rejected by the framers of the constitution, it was also explicitly ruled incorrect by the supreme court once the civil war was over. Nowadays, there is really no such thing as “compact theory” outside of the imagination of neo-Confederates and other far-right groups – there’s just federal law, and actions that break that law.Secondly, the erroneous idea of the compact and the broader agenda of “states’ rights” of which it is a part have often been deployed in order to advance a white supremacist agenda. Slavery is the most notable example. But the southern states – including Texas – also invoked these ideas to defend the system of Jim Crow, which within living memory denied full rights to generations of African Americans. Only the civil rights movement forced a change.Another part of this tradition is the inversion of the realities of power and violence which lie at its heart. Slavery was justified in part by arguments that the slaves, if freed, would threaten and even exterminate the white race. Jim Crow was reinforced by the related idea that free Black people would, if not physically eradicate white people, destroy the white body politic by contaminating it with unfit citizens. In each case the reality of who was really a threat to whom – the slavedriver to the slave, the Klansman to the free Black citizen – was hidden by an elaborate ideology of fear which in reality was used to justify the continuation of white supremacy.By claiming the right to nullify federal authority in order to wield lethal force against non-white migrants, Abbott is placing himself squarely in the center of these two traditions. His actions have already contributed to the death of two children and a mother who drowned in the Rio Grande as Texas authorities prevented federal agents from coming to their aid. Refugees are among the most powerless people in the world, but to Abbott they are elements of an “invading” force which threatens the security of Texas and the United States. Like his predecessors, he believes that even the constitution shouldn’t stand in the way of his ability to harm them.But just because Abbott is invoking some of the most sordid chapters in American history to justify his actions doesn’t mean we should have confidence that he will fail.One of the most disturbing aspects of this whole affair is that despite Abbott’s arguments having no legal merit, four supreme court justices were willing to endorse Texas blocking federal authorities from removing the razor wire at the border. The fact that this case was so narrowly decided is a five-alarm fire that suggests we are only one new court decision or one new Republican supreme court appointment away from a radical restructuring of America’s constitutional order. Future historians may look back on the 2020s as a turning point as profound as the civil rights movement of the 1960s – and one in which the pendulum swung back the other way.What Texas is doing also dramatically raises the stakes of this year’s presidential election – and not just because the next president may be able to pick another supreme court justice. With so many Republicans endorsing the idea that the situation at the border can be characterized as an invasion, the road seems to be open for a Republican president to make a federal invasion declaration.This would not only pave the way for an even more militarized treatment of refugees, but also allow the federal government to suspend the rights of millions of Americans living in border areas if it deems such a step necessary to repel the supposed attack.Luckily, there are legal and institutional barriers to such a step – many constitutional scholars believe that a federal invasion declaration requires an act of Congress. But in this case as in others, all roads lead to the supreme court, and it has already signaled its openness to many extreme ideas. America is in a time of great constitutional danger, and the border may be both an early warning sign – and the place where the country ultimately comes unstuck.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University. He writes a newsletter called America Explained More

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      John Lewis review: superb first biography of a civil rights hero

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      John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community chronicles one man’s quest for a more perfect union. An adventure of recent times, it is made exceptional by the way the narrative intersects with current events. It is the perfect book, at the right time.Raymond Arsenault also offers the first full-length biography of the Georgia congressman and stalwart freedom-fighter. The book illuminates Lewis’s time as a planner and participant of protests, his service in Congress and his time as an American elder statesman.Exemplary of Malcom X’s observation, “of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research,” Arsenault’s life of Lewis also brings to mind William Faulkner’s take on American life: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”John Robert Lewis was born into a poor family of sharecroppers in Alabama. Sharecropping amounted to slavery in all but name. White people owned the land and equipment. At the company store, seed and other supplies, from cornmeal to calico, were available on credit. The prices set for all this, and for the cotton harvest, were calculated to keep Black people in debt.Recalling his childhood, Lewis was not referring to material wealth when he wrote: “The world I knew as a little boy was a rich, happy one … It was a small world … filled with family and friends.”His school books made him aware of the unfairness of Jim Crow: “I knew names written in the front of our raggedy secondhand textbooks were white children’s names, and that these books had been new when they belonged to them.”His parents and nine siblings’ initial indifference to learning proved frustrating. They viewed his emergent strength, which would help him withstand a career punctuated by arrests and beatings, as a means to help increase a meager income. First sent into the cotton fields at six, Lewis was frequently compelled to miss class through high school.His political mission grew out of a religious calling. His was a gospel of justice and liberation. As a child he practiced preaching to a congregation of the chickens. In time, like Martin Luther King Jr, he was ordained a Baptist minister.Inspired by Gandhi and Bayard Rustin as well as by King, Lewis also embraced non-violence in emulation of Jesus. He took to heart Christ’s call to turn the other cheek: love your enemy and love one another. He called his modeling of Christ’s confrontation with injustice “getting into good trouble”.Education offered opportunities. In college, Lewis met and befriended likeminded young people. Helping form and lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he attracted others eager to take action, as Freedom Riders or whatever else gaining equal treatment might take.Lewis’s willingness to suffer attack while defending his beliefs gave him credibility like no other. The most remembered blow produced a skull fracture in Selma, Alabama. That barbaric 1965 assault against peaceful protesters came from authorities headed by George Wallace, the governor who said: “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” A move to maintain white supremacy, the atrocity became known as “Bloody Sunday”.Time after time, Lewis found unity among colleagues elusive. In 1963, at the March on Washington, four higher-ups insisted on softening his speech. Even so, his radicalized passion shone through.Collaborating with Jack and Robert Kennedy, their self-satisfied delusion masquerading as optimism, was also problematic. Time and again, political expedience tempered the president and the attorney general in their commitment to civil rights. Sixty years on, among lessons Lewis attempted teaching was the inevitability of backlash following progress. If Barack Obama represented propulsion forward, the improbable installment of Donald Trump was like a race backward. Angering some, this was why, looking past Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, Lewis endorsed for president the less exciting but more electable Joe Biden.Lewis’s ability to forgive indicates something of his greatness. Of George Wallace’s plea for forgiveness, in 1986, he said: “It was almost like someone confessing to a priest.”Rather like a priest, Lewis was admired across the House chamber. His moral compass was the “conscience of Congress”. Near the end of his life, in 2020, employing all his measured and collaborative demeanor, he exerted this standing in an attempt to restore the Voting Rights Act, gutted by a rightwing supreme court. Exhibiting what seemed to be endless resolve, he nearly succeeded.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI met Lewis in 1993, in Miami, at the conference of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The event’s theme, “cultural diversity”, got more dubious by the day. Only Black people attended excellent Black history workshops. Only rich white people toured Palm Beach houses.There were subsidized airfares, conference fees and accommodation for people of color. But I asked the Trust’s new president, Richard Moe, if it wouldn’t be good for the Trust to acquire Villa Lewaro, a house at Irvington, New York, once the residence of Madam CJ Walker, a Black business pioneer. Moe answered: “I intend to take the Trust out of the business of acquiring the houses of the rich.”I hoped Lewis’s keynote address would deem preservation a civil right. It didn’t. Instead, Lewis lamented how high costs made preserving landmarks in poor Black neighborhoods an unaffordable luxury. Moe heartily concurred. I stood to protest.Moe cut me off: “Mr Adams, you are making a statement, not asking a question. You are out of order!”“No,” Lewis said. “The young man did ask a question! He asked: ‘Why in places like Harlem, with abatements and grants, taxpayers subsidize destruction, instead of preserving Black heritage?’ I never thought of it that way. And he’s right.”In that moment, John Lewis became my hero. As a preservationist, I share his mission to obtain that Beloved Community. It is a place where inclusion is a right and where welcome is a given.
      John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community is published in the US by Yale University Press
      Michael Henry Adams is an architectural-cultural historian and historic preservation activist More

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      Ron DeSantis insists US is ‘not a racist country’, echoing claim by Nikki Haley

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      The hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said the US was “not a racist country”, echoing a controversial claim by Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is also trying to deny Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination.“Well, the US is not a racist country,” DeSantis told a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. “And we’ve overcome things in our history. You know, I think the founding fathers – they established a set of principles that are universal.”More than 250 years before independence from Britain, enslaved African people were brought to American soil by Spanish ships in the 1500s. Native Americans were displaced and enslaved.The first ship of enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil in 1619. Slavery in southern states caused the civil war (a fact Haley failed to mention when quizzed on the subject last month), a conflict fought between 1861 and 1865 and ending with slavery abolished. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation and unequal treatment in southern states until the civil rights reforms of the 1960s.Entrenched social and economic inequalities persist, affecting all racial minorities. The last presidential election, in 2020, took place after a summer of protests for racial justice inspired by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Going into the New Hampshire primary next week, DeSantis and Haley trail Trump by wide margins. This week, DeSantis edged out Haley for a distant second in Iowa.On Tuesday, Haley, whose parents came to the US from India, told Fox News: “I’m a brown girl … who became the first female minority governor in history, who became a UN ambassador and who is now running for president.“If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is. You can sit there and give me all the reasons why you think I can’t do this. I will continue to defy everybody on why we can do this. And we will get it done.“We’re not a racist country … we’ve never been a racist country. Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”Amid criticism, a Haley spokesperson said: “America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country.”Race and racism are polarising issues across US society. Republicans have recently pursued attacks on teaching about race and racism in US history as a way of attracting support. DeSantis has faced his own controversies, including over a Florida attempt to change how the history of slavery is taught.In New Hampshire, asked about Haley’s remarks, DeSantis said the principles of the Declaration of Independence – signed in 1776, saying “all men are created equal” – “may not have been universally applied at the time. But I think they understood what they were doing. They understood that those principles would be the engine for progress for generations to come.”Pressed on Haley’s contention that the US is not a racist country, DeSantis said: “Well, what I said was we’ve had challenges with how race was viewed.“And so, for example, those were universal principles in the Declaration of Independence. And you had a [supreme court] decision in the 1850s [that] said Dred Scott [an enslaved man who sued for his freedom], because he was Black, wasn’t an American citizen. That was wrong. That was discriminating on the basis of race. That’s why you ended up having the 14th amendment ratified to overturn Dred Scott.”Approved after the civil war, the 14th amendment gave citizenship to formerly enslaved people. It also barred former Confederates running for office – a provision Colorado and Maine are now seeking to apply to Trump, for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress.According to the Pew Research Center, Republican voters are overwhelmingly white.“Yes,” DeSantis continued. “We’ve had challenges with how we’ve dealt with race as a society.”On Wednesday, Kamala Harris, the first woman and first woman of colour to be vice-president, discussed Haley and DeSantis’s remarks with ABC.“The issue of race in America is not something that should be the subject of a soundbite,” Harris said. “The history of racism in America should never be the subject of … a question that is meant to elicit a one-sentence answer.“But there is no denying that we have, in our history as a nation, racism, and that racism has played a role in the history of our nation.” More

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      The supreme court now serves the billionaire donor class – let’s rein it in | Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King

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      There is little doubt 2024 will be a consequential year as we enter a presidential election that will decide the future of American democracy. But while the race for the presidency will capture most of the headlines, a darker and more subtle governmental force continues to churn out devastating decisions that chip away at our fundamental freedoms.We’re talking, of course, about the US supreme court.This court – the governing body intended to safeguard the freedoms that are so crucial to the ideals of civil rights – has been weaponized by an extremist faction. One-third of the supreme court is dangerously political and was appointed by an individual who has repeatedly made clear he seeks to dismantle American democracy. Another three have spent their terms ignoring decades worth of legal precedent and prioritizing the interests of the elite few over the working people, families and communities that drive our nation forward.As a Maga supermajority, these justices have undone established rulings and legal norms in an attempt to reverse the progress of modern America and to systematically unravel Black political power. Those who pose the greatest threat to our freedoms will not only be on the ballot this November – they will be sitting in robes behind the bench.All we have to do is look at their track record to see what they’ll do next. For over a decade, extreme justices have issued legal rulings that force an unpopular and radical agenda on to the American people that is rooted in white supremacy.In just the past few years, these justices’ decisions have opened the door for extreme actors to gut the freedoms of communities of color – from passing anti-voting bills that make it harder for Black voters to cast ballots to abortion bans that disproportionately affect Black women. And the seeds they’ve planted are beginning to take root in the district courts and courts of appeal. The supreme court’s Maga supermajority dismantled affirmative action – taking away our most potent tool to level the playing field in higher education – and opened the door for gun violence to run rampant in the disastrous Bruen case. And this week, the court will hear oral arguments for a case that seeks to destroy the federal government’s ability to confront the most pressing issues of our time.Everywhere you look, you will see the story of a supreme court that has radicalized in service of its billionaire donors at the expense of Black Americans – gutting union power to attack workers’ rights, rolling back the clock on reproductive rights to strip people of the ability to make their own healthcare decisions, decimating environmental protections in service of corporations.After all, Black workers continue to have a higher union membership rate than white workers, despite making up just 14% of the US’s total population. Black women have 2.6 times the maternal mortality rate of white women. Black and Latino voters are disproportionately targeted by state-based voter suppression laws that require ID checks to cast a ballot.Black Americans continue to be targeted by conservative donor interests because our rights are intrinsically intertwined to American progress. If we strengthen our educational system, we increase access to colleges for Black and brown students. If we remove barriers to the ballot box, more elected officials will be elected to fight for civil rights. And that’s bad news for America’s billionaire donor class.The American people are taking notice of the ways in which the supreme court has corrupted the system – its approval rating sits at an all-time low, with three out of four voters supporting an ethics code. Now, we are taking matters into our own hands: after the court’s Dobbs decision shattered federal protections for abortion access, voters turned out in every single state that introduced a ballot measure to enshrine those protections into state constitutions.As the extreme rightwing plot to capture our democracy progresses, we need our elected officials to step in and do their jobs. That’s why we – alongside United for Democracy – are calling on leaders in Congress to rein in the supreme court. Congress must conduct immediate hearings, investigations and reforms to fix the institution that is harming the Americans it is tasked to protect.With the election right around the corner, and in the face of endless attacks aimed at dismantling my father’s legacy, Black voters will again be expected to “save democracy”. As our communities again prepare to out-organize voter suppression, we need those vying for votes to show that – on the other side of the victory speeches – they are committed to building a democracy that no longer needs saving, a democracy that reflects Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s vision.That means restoring integrity to the supreme court. More

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      Prosecutors are charging Trump using laws made to fight the KKK. Here’s why | Sidney Blumenthal

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      On Tuesday, in response to the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith over Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump threatened a new round of violence – or “bedlam” – if he loses the election. In early February, the US supreme court will also rule on the Colorado supreme court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot for his part in the insurrection.The two cases might appear to be disconnected, but they are inseparable in law and history. They are united by Congress’s Reconstruction-era action to enforce the 14th amendment’s extension of constitutional rights against the former Confederates’ campaign of racial and political violence – the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870 and 1871.Smith has indicted Trump under the KKK Act, which incorporates the 14th amendment, section 3, of the constitution. The Colorado court’s disqualification comes under the third section of the amendment, which disqualifies from office anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States. There are clear and compelling reasons why Trump has been indicted under the KKK Act and disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3. Those reasons are stated in the indictments and court rulings.Trump has been charged on the same grounds that Klansmen were prosecuted, not only during Reconstruction but also during the civil rights era of the 1960s, and he has been removed from the ballot on the same basis as Confederate traitors were removed from elective office. Complacent commentators have dismissed the charges that Trump has brought on himself, hoping to calm the waters by vainly demonstrating their fair-mindedness. But the law is not somnambulant forever and the historical reality underlying it cannot be erased as it was in the aftermath of the dismantling of Reconstruction in a ‘lost cause’ of false conciliation.Through the civil war amendments, the newly freed slaves began to establish themselves as citizens with equal protection under the law and the right to vote. By 1867, in 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, 80% of eligible black men had registered to vote. Blacks and whites enacted new state constitutions and elected Republicans to state and federal offices, including many African Americans. Almost at once they were subjected to a reign of terror.The Ku Klux Klan, established in 1866 and led by former Confederate officers, mobilized to deprive black Americans of their rights, and spread across the south to reimpose white supremacy. Reconstruction was subverted by a violent counterrevolution proclaimed as “Redemption”. Nearly 10% of the black delegates to those constitutional conventions were murdered.In 1867, the Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, dividing the south into five districts to be governed under the authority of Union generals. No former Confederate state could be considered legitimate or receive congressional representation until it held a democratically elected convention that adopted the 14th amendment. The Military Reconstruction Act excluded from the conventions anyone who fell under section 3 of the 14th amendment, which barred those who had taken an oath to the constitution but violated it by engaging in insurrection from holding many offices in the postwar United States.When states applied for readmittance the Congress authorized each one with legislation stating they had qualified under section 3. Four southern states – South Carolina, Texas, Arkansas and Alabama – incorporated section 3 into their new constitutions.The state of Georgia was readmitted on this basis in 1869. But as President Ulysses Grant stated in his first annual message to the Congress later that year, white Democrats in the Georgia legislature “in violation of the constitution which they had just ratified (as since decided by the supreme court of the State) … unseated the colored members of the legislature and admitted to seats some members who are disqualified by the third clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution – an article which they themselves had contributed to ratify”.As a result, the Congress deprived Georgia of its federal representation until members of the legislature swore an oath of eligibility or had been cleared from the disability by Congress, as stipulated by the 14th amendment. From the start, Congress’s actions made it clear that when section 3 was ratified, it came into force carrying real consequences for violations.Behind these removals and oaths was a surging Klan that staged hundreds of violent nighttime raids, lynchings, rapes, church and school burnings, and whippings of black citizens, as well as assassinations of white Republicans. The Klan is estimated to have killed anywhere from 2,500 to 20,000 people during Reconstruction.The grand dragon of the KKK, the former Confederate general John B Gordon, testified before a congressional committee to disclaim any knowledge of the Klan: “I do not know anything about any Ku Klux organization … We never called it Ku Klux, and therefore I do not know anything about Ku Klux.” By contrast, the Klan’s grand wizard, the former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who ordered the massacre of black troops after their surrender during the war, explained that blacks “were becoming very insolent”, and that “this [Ku Klux Klan] was got up to protect the weak, with no political intention at all”.The KKK Act was Congress’s attempt to stamp out the Klan’s domestic terrorism. It criminalized using “force, bribery, threats, intimidation, or other unlawful means” to interfere with any citizen’s right and ability to vote.Striking at former Confederates who were commanding the Klan, the act then prescribed imprisonment of “any person who shall hereafter knowingly accept or hold any office under the United States, or any State to which he is ineligible under the third section of the fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution of the United States … ” Under the KKK Act, Grant’s attorney general, Amos Akerman, successfully prosecuted more than 1,100 cases against members of the Klan, effectively breaking it up.In the 1872 campaign, a large faction of the national Republican party opposed the KKK Act and advocated reconciliation with the south. They called themselves the Liberal Republican party and aligned with the Democrats against Grant’s re-election. The Amnesty Act of 1872, lifting the disability of section 3, was a sop to outflank the Liberal Republicans and marked the beginning of the end of Reconstruction. Still, Grant was re-elected, winning eight southern states with a black-white coalition.Post-Klan terrorist organizations – the White League in Louisiana, the White Liners in Mississippi and the Red Shirts in South Carolina – sprang up across the South to use paramilitary force to seize state governments. The Republicans lost their House majority in 1874; Democrats cut the justice department’s budget for enforcing the KKK Act. The 1876 presidential election was decided in a literal smoked-filled room through a deal in which the Republican candidate, Rutherford B Hayes, would become president in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the south.The final contemporaneous effort at an enforcement act, the Federal Elections Act of 1890, drafted by Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, would have provided US marshals to secure elections in the states, but was defeated in the Congress. In 1896, the supreme court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson upholding segregation was the capstone on a series of court decisions eviscerating Reconstruction laws. Not until Plessy was overturned in Brown v Board of Education in 1954 with the rise of the civil rights movement did the civil war amendments and their enforcement stir to life again.In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the local police in Neshoba county, Mississippi. The justice department brought the case against 18 killers under the federal conspiracy statutes of the KKK Act before a grand jury presided over by federal judge William Harold Cox, a diehard segregationist. Cox dismissed the charges brought under section 241 of the KKK Act – a “conspiracy against rights”, extending federal criminal jurisdiction over private actors interfering with other citizens’ “free exercise of enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States”.The circuit court upheld Cox on the ground that section 241 does not include rights protected by the 14th amendment. The justice department appealed to the US supreme court, represented in the case by the solicitor general, Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the Brown case for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.On 28 March 1966, in United States v Price, et al, known as the Mississippi Burning case, the court ruled unanimously that section 241 was applicable. The decision, written by Justice Abe Fortas, reviewed the history of the civil war amendments. “We think that history leaves no doubt that, if we are to give Section 241 the scope that its origins dictate, we must accord it a sweep as broad as its language,” he wrote. “In this context, it is hardly conceivable that Congress intended Section 241 to apply only to a narrow and relatively unimportant category of rights. We cannot doubt that the purpose and effect of Section 241 was to reach assaults upon rights under the entire Constitution, including the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and not merely under part of it.”It is precisely under section 241 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, upheld by the supreme court in an opinion that establishes the broadest possible application, that the justice department indicted Donald Trump on 1 August 2023. The indictment was not restricted to Trump’s activities during the January 6 US Capitol riot, but to the period of his conspiracy to stage a coup, a span that began after the election to the day he left office.To wit, count 4: “From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”The special prosecutor then made clear that the law that Trump had violated was the pertinent section of the KKK Act: “In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 241.”Trump’s indictment under the KKK Act is the core of the charges against him. To convict him, there would be no need to determine definitively whether his incitement at the White House rally on 6 January 2021 makes him responsible for the assault on the Capitol, whether he obstructed a federal procedure or his state of mind during the insurrection. He would be held accountable for his centrality in the entire broad conspiracy under section 241 – under an expansive interpretation already decided by the supreme court. Moreover, section 241 does not require an overt act in furtherance of “conspiracy against rights”, though it does require intent. It also does not require an act of violence.The 14th amendment, section 3, provides a disqualification for insurrectionists. It was a self-executing document, just as was the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. The Congress enacted a series of enforcement acts – the first and second Reconstruction Acts, and the first Civil Rights Act. As President Grant and the Congress stated in the crisis over Georgia in 1869, the only means to remove the “disability” of disqualification was by an act of the Congress as stipulated in section 3 – an amnesty. The very existence of a remedy providing for the removal of the disqualification implies that the law is self-executing, as Grant and the Congress understood.The Ku Klux Klan Act, which specifically included section 3, was a further instrument to deal with a new insurrection. During Reconstruction that section was used within the KKK Act to suppress precisely that insurrection. Grant and the Congress knew that the 14th amendment was not limited to the insurrection that forced the civil war, but also was a governing constitutional document applicable to future insurrections.None of Trump’s defenders have suggested pursuing the proper remedy that is given within section 3, namely a congressional amnesty for him. To do so would be an admission that he was guilty of engaging in an insurrection against the United States. There would be no need for an amnesty unless there was a crime. An amnesty would be analogous to a pardon. But, with flagrant irresponsibility, virtually all of the Republican presidential primary candidates have offered that they would pardon Trump. They signaled that he has committed crimes and yet must be unaccountable. Still, despite their own logic, or illogic, they avoid discussing an amnesty.A number of commentators opine that Trump must not be held to account because it would arouse his enraged followers and violate the spirit of direct democracy (never mind the spirit of the law). Others assert that liberals who speak about the rule of law are perverse elitists who, by supporting Trump’s disqualification, reveal their true contempt for the people’s will. They urge relief for Trump as a naive gesture of good faith, as if even-handedness will encourage tolerance and pluralism. In short, the mechanism for the preservation of democracy must be withheld in the name of democracy.Meanwhile, at the federal appeals court hearing on his claim that he is immune from all prosecution because he is exempt from the 14th amendment, Trump threatened that if his trials proceed, if he fails to be granted “absolute immunity”, and if he loses the election, there would be “bedlam” – yet another incitement to insurrection.Taking his 14th amendment argument to its logical conclusion, his attorney, D John Sauer, argued before the three-judge panel that Trump could order the military to assassinate an opponent and be protected from indictment unless he was first impeached and convicted by the Senate. His statement attempted to elevate to a constitutional immunity Trump’s notorious remark in 2015: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump’s attorney seemed unaware or indifferent that by the same logic President Biden could with impunity order the assassination of Trump.In 1927, Trump’s father, Fred Trump, 21 years old, was arrested, according to police records, at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York, where 1,000 robed and hooded Klansmen marched through the streets. “This never happened,” Donald Trump said when the story reappeared in 2022. “Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”The Trump trials have put the civil war and Reconstruction amendments on trial again – “the results of the war”, as Grant called it. Trump’s indictment under section 241 of the KKK Act tests the federal government’s ability and willingness to secure basic voting rights and defend the constitution. Or else there will be “bedlam”.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Sherrilyn Ifill on a Trump win: ‘We will cease to be a democracy’

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      The timing is right for a 14th amendment renaissance, says Sherrilyn Ifill.The 14th amendment, created during the Reconstruction era, carries the promise of equality for Black people and accountability for people engaged in insurrection and white supremacy, though its provisions have never been enforced fully.Pro-democracy advocacy groups are using the amendment’s third section to keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot for engaging in insurrection, a high-profile and novel approach for a presidential candidate. So far, a court in Colorado and a Maine elections official have used these arguments to say Trump can’t appear on the ballot in those states. The cases, which Trump has appealed, are expected to go to the US supreme court.Ifill, a longtime civil rights lawyer, wants a generation of attorneys to be trained on the amendment and for it to enter into Americans’ understanding of their rights. In Washington DC in 2024, she will launch a center focused on the 14th amendment at the Howard University law school, a historically Black university.As a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Ifill has sued Trump before, alleging that his presidential campaign disfranchised Black voters in 2020. Since she left the NAACP in 2022, she has repeatedly sounded the alarm about US democracy in peril, saying the country is in a “moment of existential crisis”.If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, “we will cease to be a democracy”, she said.The Guardian spoke to Ifill about the stakes of this year’s election, and how to protect civil rights at a critical time. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Are we in a crisis point for democracy, unlike we’ve seen in our lifetimes?Absolutely. No question about it. We are in a crisis. Any time members of Congress say, as many apparently told Senator Mitt Romney, that they’re afraid to cast the vote they believe they should cast on impeachment because they worry about their children and their wives, we have a problem. We are in an authoritarian moment. Unfortunately, it’s a global authoritarian moment, which makes it even more challenging.What can we do about it?All the things that we’re doing. When litigating, we’re trying to hold people accountable to the rule of law, which is critical. We have to be educated ourselves about the tools that are available for us. We can stop telling fairy stories about this country. That’s what I find so beautiful about the architecture of the 14th amendment is that recognition, even amid the soaring promises, that the stubbornness of white supremacy and insurrection will remain and that we will need to confront it with power.Tell me about the idea behind the 14th Amendment Center. Why the 14th amendment?The first constitution obviously left a lot of things unsolved, kicked the can down the road on slavery and is deeply flawed without question. The second constitution, which is the one created after the civil war, is really bound up first and foremost in the civil war amendments: the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Those amendments reimagined a new America precipitated by, of course, the civil war and the need to finally fulfill the promise of equality, of Black people becoming full citizens of this country.It’s a powerful, powerful amendment. And yet, most of us, even as lawyers in law school, study only a fraction of it. Most citizens in our country don’t even know about it. I always say that if you walk up to a guy who’s got an AR-15 on his back in a McDonald’s, and you ask him, why do you have that long gun on your back just to get a quarter-pounder? He’s gonna say, because it’s my second amendment right. We’re having a conversation right now about what people can say on college campuses, and people feel very comfortable articulating their first amendment rights. We don’t talk about “my 14th amendment rights”, even those of us who are civil rights lawyers and litigate predominantly under the 14th amendment or statutes that come from the 14th amendment.As a result, we tend to talk about discrimination in terms of feelings or morality or the goodness of a person or whether they have a racist bone in their body or whether they see race, not that equality is a constitutional imperative. We talk about it as though it is optional, depending on how good the person is. That is not the spirit of the 14th amendment. I think it has been, I’ll go as far as to say, hijacked. At this time in our country, I think we need to re-engage it, particularly because the 14th amendment was created by a group of legislators and those who influenced them who had stared into the face of insurrection and into the face of violent white supremacy. Both of those very dangerous elements are elements that we are confronting today.Do you believe that the US has ever really met the full promise and strength of the 14th amendment?I don’t. That’s not even my opinion, it’s objectively true. The supreme court set about cutting back the promise of the 14th amendment pretty early on in the 19th century, in US v Cruikshank, in the civil rights cases and in Plessy v Ferguson. Even though the 14th amendment, section 5 gives Congress the power to enforce the guarantees, Congress is silent for the first half of the 20th century until forced to begin legislating by a grassroots activist wave that we call the civil rights movement.What kind of work do you envision the center will do? Training other lawyers on the 14th amendment, scholarly work, taking on cases?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI see the goal of the center, first and foremost, to train a generation of lawyers who are fully conversant with and equipped to utilize the 14th amendment as advocates – whether they are legislative advocates, whether they are litigators, whether they are educators, whatever they choose to do with their law degree.We’re seeing it right now with the section 3 challenges to Trump appearing on the ballot, which I find very exciting. The finest lawyers in our country did not learn about section 3 of the 14th amendment in law school. One of the reasons you’re seeing the controversies between different law scholars about whether Trump can be on the ballot is because it’s not been tried before. Fortunately for us, we have not faced an insurrection at the national level of this sort.You mentioned the section 3 cases. Why do you think there is this reluctance on the part of judges to intervene on this specific section in some instances?It hasn’t been done at this level, certainly at the presidential level. I think that judges are afraid. They’re afraid because of the political consequences, but I think given the particular nature of this candidate, it would not surprise me if judges were not at least pausing to consider personal consequences for them and their families. That is a sure sign that we are a democracy in peril. Mostly, it is fear.You hear people say all the time, let the voters decide. You don’t just ignore sections of the constitution because the voters can decide. That isn’t how it works. It isn’t that we could have state-sanctioned racial segregation in our schools because we put it to a vote. That’s not how it works. It’s trying to offload what was clearly an obligation that the framers of the 14th amendment believed had to be undertaken.What happens if Trump returns to the presidency?In very short order, we will cease to be a democracy. Trump has made clear what his plans are – a country in which the Department of Justice is weaponized against the perceived enemies of the president, a country in which the guarantees of civil service are destroyed, a country in which favors of governmental largesse and support are handed out based on personal allegiance to the president, the hijacking of the courts, and the encouragement of random political violence. It’s not a recipe for democracy.If he does win, then how do you and others who are engaged in all of this work try to rein him in, keep him accountable?You fight. It’s not even a question at that point of me and other people who do this work; it’s a question of every American who wants to live in a free democracy. What do you do? Do you acquiesce? Or do you resist? You show up, and you resist. Just as it’s happened in countries around the world, some of whom we admire tremendously. We are not immune and we have allowed too many guardrails to be breached. If we all ultimately end up having to pay that price, then we go back to the drawing board and we keep pushing to make this country a democracy again.What are you most concerned about in 2024?People checking out, deciding they don’t want to vote. It’s just not the time for that. People need to be all in and need to understand what the stakes are and need to get comfortable with what it means to vote for president, which is not that you’re necessarily voting for the perfect candidate or the candidate that you love. You’re voting for a candidate who is responsible, mature, who is sane, who is not merely using the government for their own ends, who understands government and who is prepared to actually govern and implement policies that are in the best interests of the people in this country, who is prepared to use the levers of power in ways that are democratic, open, transparent, that allow for dissent without retaliation.Those choices seem very clear to me. More

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      Wife of financier who called for Harvard head’s exit faces plagiarism allegations

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      The wife of Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who accused Claudine Gay of being a plagiarist and led calls for her resignation as Harvard president, is now facing allegations of plagiarism herself.Neri Oxman, a prominent former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has apologized after Business Insider identified multiple instances in which she lifted passages from other scholars’ work without proper attribution in her 2010 dissertation. She also pledged to review the primary sources and request the necessary corrections.Business Insider on Thursday initially labeled four passages of Oxman’s dissertation as plagiarized – without any attribution – from Wikipedia entries. But by Friday, the outlet had found at least 15 such passages, a turn of events that was similar to that which led to Gay’s ouster from the Harvard presidency.Business Insider also identified research papers written by Oxman that contained plagiarism, including a 2007 paper – titled Get Real: Towards Performance Driven Computational Geometry – and a 2011 paper named Variable Property Rapid Prototyping.The 2011 paper contained more than 100 words lifted from a book without any attribution or citation, included two sentences from another book verbatim without any attribution, and pulled material from a 2004 paper without citing it, according to Business Insider.In response to Gay’s resignation, Ackman published a 4,000-word post on X – formerly Twitter – in which he criticized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well as complained about “racism against white people”. He also complained that Gay, a Black woman, was allowed to remain on Harvard’s faculty. Gay had faced plagiarism allegations over her 1997 dissertation, but she requested corrections and was cleared of academic misconduct by a three-member independent review board.Ackman struck a different tone on X when addressing the plagiarism allegations against his wife. He wrote on X: “It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family. This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.”He went on to promise to lead plagiarism reviews against all current MIT faculty, board and committee members, and its president, Sally Kornbluth.Ackman additionally criticized Business Insider and the reporters at the publication who authored the story investigating Oxman, saying he would spearhead plagiarism reviews against the outlet’s staff.Previously, Ackman was a donor to the Democratic party. But the New York Times reported that the billionaire’s campaign against Harvard came because he resented the fact that years’ worth of donations to the university did not yield him more influence there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservatives have seized upon and supported Ackman’s complaints about Harvard.Meanwhile, Oxman has also been criticized for accepting a $125,000 gift from the late Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious sex trafficker and disgraced financier. Oxman responded to the donation by sending an art gift to Epstein.Oxman was a tenured faculty member at MIT before leaving the school and moving to New York City in 2020. Some consider her a celebrity in the field of architecture and design, and her new company – named Oxman – was in the middle of a soft launch when she issued her apology in response to Business Insider’s reporting. More

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      in US Politics

      Revisited: Al Sharpton on 60 years since the march on Washington – podcast

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      The Politics Weekly America team are taking a break. So this week, we’re looking back at one of our favourite episodes of the year.
      From August: Jonathan Freedland sits down with Rev Al Sharpton to discuss why he believes Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream’ speech has been abused by some on the right, why he is still fighting for police reform, and how James Brown was so influential on his life

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More