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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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      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

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      ‘2024 is not a repeat of 2020’: how the Biden campaign hopes to energize Black voters

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      Entering the 2024 campaign season, Joe Biden faces a slew of challenges, including economic uncertainties, foreign policy tensions and healthcare reform. Most notable, however, comes from the critical engine that delivered 2020 key victories in swing states: the African American voting bloc.Recent polls show a historic low of 37% in Biden’s overall approval ratings, while others highlight underlying factors, such as the alarming decline in Black voter support, from 86% in January 2021 to 60% now, the lowest of his presidency.Many Black Americans feel the Democratic party has ignored their concerns and reneged on promises. There’s a perception that the party is taking African Americans for granted as well as growing cynicism with the lack of progress on issues such as affordable housing, healthcare costs and student loan debt. More specific policies, like the recent decision to halt the ban on menthol cigarettes, which disproportionately affect Black smokers, have further raised concerns.But members of Biden’s campaign say definitive conclusions from early polls are premature, adding they have a comprehensive strategy to address growing apprehensions.“The DNC hasn’t let up on engaging and mobilizing Black voters,” said the Democratic National Committee chair, Jaime Harrison. “This isn’t something I take lightly. I know what it feels like to have our community taken for granted and only have folks show up for us when they need our vote on election day.”He traced the party’s commitment to investing more heavily in organizing, persuading and activating Black voters ahead of the 2022 midterm election cycle to their plan to double down on those efforts in 2024. Harrison said he’s met with Black voters across the country in the past year, “listened to what matters to them most and shared with them the successes of the administration for Black Americans”, including an investment of more than $7.3bn in HBCUs, lowering prescription drug prices for seniors, the drop in child poverty and executive action on criminal justice reform.The DNC’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, acknowledged that messaging is one of their primary challenges going into 2024, which could be contributing to the disconnect currently reflected in polls.“For those voters that we know a lot of these policies impact, we have to communicate ways in which they can get these benefits,” he said. “Like all this funding for capital, all the student loan forgiveness – not everybody knows how to tap into that.“African American voters know that a lot is at stake, and I think, similar to other audiences of color and young voters, it’s our job to communicate to them what’s at stake. And if we do that successfully, and also from a place of respect in our messaging and how we do it, I think that these voters will turn out and vote for Joe Biden.”The DNC has infused $4.8m on off-year advertising costs, with a total ad buy, to date, of $45.6m, including funding from groups such as the Biden Victory Fund ($4.8m).Fulks said they will also focus heavily on college campuses, including HBCUs, and traditional media outreach such as online engagement, television appearances, drivetime radio features, tapping influential figures such as Roland Martin, Steve Harvey and DL Hughley.Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Florida’s Barry University, emphasized the critical role messaging plays and said Democrats need to be forcefully working to retain, or in some cases, restore, traditional support from Black voters, making sure everyday families are aware of the bread-and-butter issues the administration has tackled.“In 2020, Biden may have been Democrats’ best bet to beat Trump, but 2024 is not a repeat of 2020,” he said. “His administration needs to make a better case to the public about their successes. They should make the Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act, and their role in supporting the unions help tell the story about how they are helping people close to home.”The civil rights historian Katherine Mellen Charron, who lectures on southern history and democracy at North Carolina State University, sees it as more of an age-related challenge.“The change between 2020 and now also falls along generational lines,” she said. “Elders from the movement years of the late 20th century went along with [the South Carolina’s congressman Jim] Clyburn’s endorsement [of Biden] and its logic: ‘He knows us.’ Younger people and activists don’t have that same historical relationship with the Democratic party.”In response to such scrutiny, DNC’s political director, Brencia Berry, said the Biden administration will use a second term to continue their agenda. Berry said the first step to countering the polls is “talking to Black voters well before we ask for their vote and building relationships with folks on the ground”.This involves setting the stakes for this election by contrasting the Biden-Harris agenda with how far backward Republicans want to take Black Americans if they win – such as how Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for example plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris made it clear that Black voters are a priority when they made South Carolina the first state on the presidential primary calendar,” Berry added about their critical decision given the state’s significant Black population. “We have an opportunity to spend the earliest part of the election year engaging Black voters in states like South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan.”Jamil Scott, a political behavior researcher and Georgetown University government professor, called Biden’s re-election bid “complicated … It’s always tough when the president makes legislative promises because these only come to fruition if the legislative branch is on board with his agenda.”But the political scientist Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey of Georgia State University plainly said the promises from Biden’s 2020 campaign were not kept for the electorate. She pointed to the administration’s failure to decriminalize marijuana, take significant action on voters’ rights, and not “substantively address police reform. [Biden] continues to speak out on police misconduct but has not done anything to reform the police, including an inability to eliminate cash bail, which disproportionately impacts lower-income people.”The DNC conceded that such issues need to be clearly addressed on the campaign trail and said they will tackle any misinterpretations in their efforts.“What you’re going to see from us [is] boots on the ground coming out in the new year,” Fulks said, “being in front of these voters and relaying [our message]. I think that a part of it is that voters of color want to feel like they are deeply involved in a campaign. They don’t want to feel like they’re being told that they’re given handouts. These are hardworking Americans who sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.”Foreman believes that while 2024 isn’t “a make or break moment for African American support for the Democratic party,” a weak showing with critical blocs, including younger voters, could sway the party’s direction.He also recognized the calls for Biden not to seek re-election from within the party. Last month, David Axelrod, a former Obama advisor, questioned Biden’s candidacy in light of another poll showing Trump leading in five key states. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic party,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”Biden dropping out, Foreman said, could do the party some good because “a different, younger candidate could help mobilize new voters”.“But when it comes down to it, if Biden is the nominee, then the job will be for all Democrats – African American and otherwise – to get out in the various local communities and work hard to motivate people to vote.” More

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      Black Georgian men helped Biden win the White House – are they losing faith?

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      Morehouse College, a 156-year-old Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, has produced graduates such as Martin Luther King and Spike Lee. It has been an essential campaign stop for Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama, John Lewis and, last September, Kamala Harris.But as another presidential election looms, Joe Biden can take nothing for granted here. “A resounding no,” was 28-year-old Ade Abney’s verdict on whether the US president has delivered on his promises to Black voters. “I voted for Biden in 2020 but next year I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It probably will not be him.”Georgia is among half a dozen swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college next November. Despite its history as a bastion of conservatism in the south, Democrats have scored notable wins in presidential and Senate elections in recent years. African American voters have been fundamental to that success, with Biden securing 88% of the Black vote in 2020.But opinion polls suggest an erosion of support for the president. An October survey by the New York Times and Siena College found that, while 76% of Black voters in Georgia favour Biden, 19% prefer his likely rival Donald Trump – an unprecedented share for a Republican in modern times. It was enough to give Trump a six-point lead in the state overall.The current shift is particularly acute among Black men for reasons that include a perception that Trump would cut taxes and offer better economic opportunities. Abney, a Morehouse graduate who now works at the college, said: “I was in a barbershop and the barbershop conversation was how they like Trump.“The reason was at least when he was in office they felt as though they were able to make more money. A lot of people attribute that specifically to him. A lot of that conversation was pretty clear in terms of OK, well, I had more money when he was in office so I want him back.”Standing beside Abney at the tree-lined college entrance, Dejaun Wright, 23, offered even sharper criticism of Biden. “There’s a lot of broken promises, a lot of a lack of integrity,” the philosophy student said. “He campaigned on promises such as student loan forgiveness and every instance where he’s shown interest in that, he’s always applied a caveat: oh, well, I said student loan forgiveness, but I only forgive $10,000.“A lot of the things that he promised he’s offered either with a caveat or he just hasn’t offered at all. It’s a slap in the face. If you are going to build a campaign and then build a presidency off of lies, or at least not keeping your promises, then I don’t know if I can trust you again.”At liberal colleges such as Morehouse, there is also rising discontent over 81-year-old Biden’s staunch support for Israel, even as it unleashes an aerial and ground blitz against Hamas that is causing thousands of civilian deaths and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.Wright added: “I’m not appreciative of how vocal he’s been in his blind support of Israel. No sense of criticism there whatsoever. He’s actively been ignoring all of us. We’ve all been saying we don’t support this war in Israel. We don’t like our tax money funding a genocide like this, especially considering the amount of debt we have.”Black men do still vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and it’s only a small segment who might be turning away. In 2020 87% of Black men supported Joe Biden, which although down slightly from the 95% who voted for Barack Obama in his first campaign was better than the 82% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Black women support Democrats even more strongly: in 2016 and 2020, 94% and 95% voted for Biden.) Only 12% of Black men voted for Trump in 2020 and no Democrat has attracted less than 80% of Black voters since the civil rights era.Small numbers could nevertheless make a big difference. Like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, Georgia has become a closely fought battleground that could decide the presidency. In 2020 Biden won the state by a margin of just 11,779 votes, or 0.24%, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 28 years. Trump’s false claims and efforts to overturn the result led to criminal charges and a potential trial next year.Democrats’ gains continued two months later, when Raphael Warnock became the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff became the state’s first Jewish senator. Last year, Warnock won re-election in a runoff against the Republican Herschel Walker, an African American former football star who failed to make significant gains among Black voters.But Stacey Abrams, bidding to become America’s first Black female governor, was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp. In the House of Representatives, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene cruised to re-election. The state remains so finely balanced that even a fraction of Black voters switching to Trump, voting third party or simply staying at home on election day could make all the difference.Cliff Albright, a co-founder and executive director of the Black Lives Matter Fund, does not believe there is more of an enthusiasm gap now than at the same stage in 2019, when Black voters were unexcited about Biden. “People confuse electability for enthusiasm,” he said. “We weren’t that enthusiastic and we’re still not that enthusiastic. But that’s not news.“It’s just showing up differently because we’re a year out from the election. My prediction is that as we get closer, that pragmatism will set back in and people will start to realise more that this is not a referendum about Biden. This is a choice between this person and the one that we know is anti-us or somebody else who’s equally as bad.”Albright does not believe polls that say Trump will improve on his share of the Black vote next time. But he acknowledges that Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could hurt him among young Black voters, especially with independent candidates such as Cornel West offering a clear alternative by demanding a ceasefire.“A lot of Black folks see ourselves in the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “A lot of us view that as a David and Goliath situation, a colonial situation. We see ourselves in what’s happening. When we see armed military using teargas and rockets and all that, we also see the George Floyd protests and ourselves going up against tanks and police forces.“There’s some very strong feelings about what many have called a genocide that is taking place in front of our eyes. Not only are you supporting the Israeli government’s ability to carry out this war but you are literally transferring more and more money so that they can do so. It’s not just political cover. It is actual financial and military support.He continued: “You get the Black folks, especially younger Black folks, that are like, ‘you keep saying you don’t have money for us but you’ve got money to go over here to kill some other folks that actually look like us.’ People can say, ‘oh, Trump would be worse,’ but that doesn’t change that what these folks are seeing right now is not Trump doing it. They’re seeing President Biden do it and so that is going to impact.“And many of these young folks, once they turn you off, you’re done. He could come back next month and increase the student debt cancellation. He could come up with some new gun legislation. He could go even further on some of the climate change issues. But many of these folks that right now are furious about what’s going on in Gaza, none of that would change their minds. They’re that mad.”Israel is not the only foreign policy issue weighing on Black voters. While his unwavering support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression – Congress has already allocated $111bn in assistance – has earned global plaudits, it appears to be playing differently in some African American communities.Kendra Cotton, chief executive of the New Georgia Project (NGP), a non-partisan organisation that works to empower voters of colour, said she didn’t think much of Ukraine until she “saw all of the African immigrants getting kicked off those trains. Then my eyes glassed over and I was like, this ain’t my problem and I didn’t want anything to do with it.“While I empathise with what’s going on in Ukraine, what I know is, if my Black behind was over there, they’d have kicked me off the trains too, so good luck to you.”She added: “We have people under these overpasses right here living in tents … People are trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents.“So, when you’re talking about billions in aid leaving the country, people don’t know how to qualify that in their minds: OK, but what are you doing domestically? Because when you talk about domestic issues, all you hear is we ain’t got it, there’s no money for that.”The NGP has registered almost 50,000 voters this year as it continues to fight voter purges in the state. In a September survey it found approval of Biden’s job performance down to just 61% among Black Georgia voters, and only 45% of Black 18 to 24-year-olds. Keron Blair, chief of field and organising for the NGP, argues that the White House has less of a policy problem than a communication one.He said: “I talk to people who’ve had thousands of dollars in student loans forgiven. We hear from people who got money directly into their pockets because of IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. We hear from communities that have received resources for infrastructure. We see the broadband initiative.“That has not been communicated in a serious and strategic way to voters and so people are always going to ask, I voted last time, what happened? If they don’t know the things they are seeing and experienced are the result of choices made by the administration, they’re going to feel like not much has shifted.”Indeed, the gap between positive economic data and a sense of malaise on the ground is evident among Black voters. Gregory Williams, 37, a health coach, said: “The economy doesn’t feel like it’s strong. Everything feels out of whack. Inflation is crazy. Cities that are far out are expensive. Everything is just up right now. It’s hard to even get a loan for a house. Atlanta has the most evictions it’s ever had in its history.”Williams does not rule out voting for Trump. “It depends if he makes sense. He might not be saying what people want him to say but there’s a lot of things that he does and it seems like it helps. It gets a visual effect. People see things happening.”Jasper Preston, 35, a programme director at a homelessness non-profit, added: “Biden’s presidency has been an absolute nightmare for me personally. All the progress I made becoming more financially secure has been completely undone. I find myself worse off than during the Obama years and that has caused quite a setback. I have four children so it’s been very unpleasant trying to make ends meet.”Preston is a longtime Trump supporter who was ridiculed for it by his siblings living on the South Side of Chicago. But not any more, he said. “One privately gave me a call to very secretly admit that she is no longer a Democrat and will be voting for Trump in this upcoming election. She can’t tell anybody around South Side Chicago because, well, it’s South Side Chicago.“The same for my other siblings in Chicago as well as in here in Georgia. People are realising, ‘Oh, my wallet has definitely been drastically affected by this new administration, and all the promises they made based on skin colour turned out to be lies, and apparently promises about skin colour don’t make for a good president.’”In his victory speech after winning the 2020 election, Biden acknowledged that when his campaign was at its lowest ebb, African American voters stood up for him. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he promised. In his inaugural address two months later, he named racial justice as one of four national crises that would take priority during his administration.While Biden has poured money into historically Black colleges and universities and appointed record numbers of people of colour as judges, efforts at police reform or to protect voting rights have stalled in Congress. When the president travelled to Atlanta last year to make his most aggressive case yet for reform of the Senate filibuster rule, some campaigners boycotted the event.Shelley Wynter, a conservative radio host and member of the Georgia Black Republican Council, said: “A Biden partisan person will tell you all these things that he’s done, but none of it was specifically for Black people. If Ukraine gets attacked and you can find billions and billions of dollars to send to Ukraine, you could have sent money into inner-city urban areas to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’”He continued: “If I vote for you and I’ve continuously voted for you and I’m the strongest, most loyal base of voters that you have, and you’ve still got nothing specifically for this group yet you can do stuff for other people, that’s why people are shifting, particularly Black men.“I equate what’s going on to what happens in a Black church. If you go to an average Black church, you’re going to see 90% women, a sprinkling of men. Most of those men are going to be older guys. Men are raised in a church and they see the ministers driving a Rolls-Royce while they are still in a hooptie struggling, and they start to get turned off and they stop going.“But their wives continue to go. That’s what the Democratic party is becoming: a party of Black women and a sprinkling of Black men, because Black men are going to Trump, they’re not going to the Republican party – and it’s a big difference.”Wynter argues that many have come view to Trump’s racism as a myth, empathise with his legal troubles and dismiss dire warnings that he would behave like a dictator in a second term. “It’s like, ‘I’m already living in a dictatorship, I’m already oppressed as a Black man, so all those things that they’re saying about Trump don’t resonate because I’m already there.“‘So now let me pay attention to the things that I really care about, which is my money, and this guy allows me to keep my money in my pocket. Tax cuts, less regulations for the entrepreneurial-spirited guy.’ That’s what they see. It’s a real tangible thing. ‘In 2019, I had X amount of money after I got paid every two weeks. Now I have less. It’s very tangible. I can see it, I can feel it. You telling me he’s evil? I can’t see or feel that. But I can see more money in my pocket.’”Democrats acknowledge the work that must be done to rebuild Biden’s 2020 coalition. Earlier this month his election campaign released a new ad, “List”, making the case that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are helping people in African American communities. Despite worrying polls and signs of donor fatigue, the party is on a winning streak in recent elections and ballot measures on issues such as abortion rights.Back at Morehouse, there are still plenty of students keeping faith with the president. Damarion King, 18, studying political science, said: “I believe Joe Biden is doing a fantastic job, passing so many bipartisan bills. I don’t think his age is a factor in this election, at least for me. He’s doing the job. He’s doing his work for the people of America and I strongly support him.”King is sceptical that Black men who voted for Biden in 2020 will defect to Trump next year, not least because of the former president’s 91 criminal charges. “Anybody in the Black working class who’s saying that Trump is a better businessman is wrong. He’s gone bankrupt multiple times. He can’t be that great of a businessman.” More

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      Georgia Republicans finalize district maps to comply with judge’s order

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      Republican state lawmakers in Georgia have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order, though Democrats and advocacy groups say the new maps create one majority-Black district at the expense of another diverse district.US district judge Steve Jones ordered Georgia lawmakers to redo their redistricted maps in October after a lawsuit claimed they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black people.He gave lawmakers until 8 December to redraw maps to create “an additional majority-Black district” in west metro Atlanta. He warned “the state cannot remedy the section 2 violations found herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans”.Georgia lawmakers did not appear to heed that instruction. They created the additional majority-Black district in west Atlanta, but dismantled another district where Black voters had been joining with other racial minorities to elect the candidate of their choosing. The dismantled district is now represented by Lucy McBath, a Democrat. The plan ensures that Republicans are able to maintain a 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.It’s not legally settled whether districts with a collection of voters from various minority groups are protected under the Voting Rights Act in the way Black voters are, though critics of the Republican plan say it doesn’t fix the problem of diluting the Black vote.State representative Sam Park, Georgia’s Democratic caucus whip, said on the statehouse floor today that “it’s self-evident that the Republican party’s primary goal is to maintain political power at all costs – even to the detriment of Georgia voters’ freedoms, our representative democracy and the rule of law”.The new maps will require court approval. With candidates finalizing plans to run in these new districts next year, there’s a time crunch on the case. A 20 December hearing is scheduled to go over the new maps.Georgia Republicans planned to appeal the case while also working in a special session to comply with Jones’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Georgia redistricting case comes as several other southern states contend with similar rulings to redo their maps after facing lawsuits over Black voting power. While redistricting happens every decade and maps are usually finalized in a year or two, some of these states have slowed the process to try to keep their preferred maps for the 2024 cycle. More

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      Longstreet: the Confederate general who switched sides on race

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      On 14 September 1874, less than a decade after the end of the US civil war, the former Confederate general James Longstreet was back in arms. This time, he was seeking to prevent an insurrection: a white supremacist bid to take over New Orleans.Once seen by northerners as among the three most notorious Confederates – with his commander, Robert E Lee, and president, Jefferson Davis – Longstreet now led state militia and city police. His troops were Black and white, reflecting an unlikely commitment to post-war civil rights that would waver in later years. His complex life is the subject of a new biography, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South, by Elizabeth R Varon, a history professor at the University of Virginia, currently the visiting Harmsworth professor of history at Oxford.“This turnabout is so fascinating,” Varon marvels. “I pitched the book as the story of the most remarkable political about-face in American history.”An enslaver, Longstreet directed Confederate forces to capture Black people and take them south to slavery or imprisonment. He fought until the surrender at Appomattox, then allied himself with those who had brought about his defeat: Ulysses S Grant and the Republican party.“He was not the only one,” Varon says of white southern Republicans who made such moves, “but [he was] the highest-ranking Confederate. He was a lightning rod for critics.”Prominent figures such as Lee were honored with monuments, some of which have recently been pulled down. Longstreet never had this problem, because you’d be hard-pressed to find such tributes to him.“It’s quite astounding,” Varon reflects. “Longstreet endorses Reconstruction at a time when the vast majority of white southern former Confederates pledged themselves to resist at all costs.”The author is interested in such dissenters. A previous book chronicled Elizabeth Van Lew, a resident of the Confederate capital, Richmond, who spied for the Union. Varon hopes a future scholar will write about another dissenter, Longstreet’s much younger second wife, Helen Longstreet, née Dortch, who outlived her husband by 58 years. By the 20th century, she was also an outspoken voice for civil rights in the south.Dissent characterized Longstreet’s war years as much as his later life did. The 1993 film Gettysburg dramatizes his dispute with Lee at that famous battle. Longstreet argued for a defensive approach. Lee took the offense and the result was a disaster, a turning point in the war. Transferred west, Longstreet led an assault credited for the victory at Chickamauga, then lambasted his new commander, Braxton Bragg, for his failure to capitalize. Longstreet would later suffer for daring to criticize Lee.Although Varon addresses Longstreet’s war years, she is more interested in his postwar career, which stretched for nearly four decades and included leadership positions in Louisiana and Georgia. He even became the US minister to the Ottoman empire, where he met Sultan Abdul Hamid II and defended American missionaries.He owed much of his success to an improbable allegiance to the abolitionist Republican party of Abraham Lincoln and a lasting friendship with Grant.Varon details an unconventional but unsuccessful peace initiative involving the Grant and Longstreet families near the end of the civil war. (The war years had been hard for Longstreet and his first wife, Louise Longstreet. They lost three children to scarlet fever in 1862, and two years later, the general was grievously wounded by his own men.) At Appomattox, Longstreet was impressed by Grant’s lenient terms, which helped convince him it was time to change. He explained his stance in a series of 1867 letters that were poorly received by many.As Varon explains: “Longstreet said, ‘Yes, let’s give the Republican party a chance, try to make this work, we appealed to arms and the sword to arbitrate the political conflict with the north, they won, now it … requires me to try to make the best of it.’”She adds: “He was absolutely thrown back on his heels by the backlash by ex-Confederates. For his willingness to work with the Republicans, he was called anathema, a Judas, Lucifer, Benedict Arnold, they wished he’d died during the war.”A new battle began, a war of words with fellow former commanders such as Jubal Early, over who was responsible for the defeat. Yet Longstreet was committed to Reconstruction and the Republicans and to his postwar home, New Orleans, a racially diverse city where he held political positions following Grant’s election as president in 1868, beginning at the customs house. Through such positions, which extended to militia and police leadership, Longstreet advocated some degree of civil rights. Allies included PBS Pinchback, who in 1872 became the first sworn-in Black governor of a US state.In addition to Longstreet’s personal life and recognition of the flawed rebel war effort, Varon identifies “the last element” in his turnaround as “New Orleans itself – a unique political environment”. She cites the city’s Afro-Creole male leadership class, many of whom served as officers in the Union army.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They were politically savvy, assertive men,” Varon says, “really pushing for votes and full civil, economic and social rights for Blacks in Louisiana.” Regarding Longstreet, she notes: “I don’t think it would have turned out the same if [he] was somewhere else in the postwar south. This particular setting was uniquely positioned to change his views on race.”By 1874, that change was profound. On George Washington’s birthday, Longstreet participated in a review of interracial troops. Racist white discontent was simmering, in part over a disputed election two years earlier: after the Republicans were declared to have won, Democrats set up a rival government, followed by a takeover attempt and a massacre of Black people at Colfax. Another slaughter of Black people followed, in Coushatta in the summer of 1874. That fall, a group called the White League led a march on New Orleans.The insurrectionists targeted government property and overwhelmed authorities. Longstreet was wounded in the so-called Battle of Liberty Place, which ended with the rioters in control of the city. Their three-day takeover ceased with the approach of federal forces but the riot spelled doom for Reconstruction in Louisiana, presaging the demise of the policy throughout the southern states.Longstreet’s subsequent life brought something of a retrenchment on civil rights. Relocating to Georgia, he maintained ties to the Republican party but focused on cultivating white support. He also pursued two significant projects – restoring national bonds ruptured in the civil war, and defending his Confederate career, in part through a near 700-page autobiography.“He focuses on setting the record straight and answering charges as he gets older,” Varon says. “He claws back some of his lost popularity among white southerners. He reinvents himself as a herald of reconciliation. Both sides are going to have to make concessions.”As a US marshal, Longstreet did prosecute white supremacists and continue to back voting rights for all eligible citizens.“He remains kind of enigmatic,” Varon reflects. “In the last years of his life, he tries to reconcile his Confederate and Republican identities. It was not possible to ever fully do that.”
      Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      ‘It has to be done’: can Reconstruction-era laws hold Trump and allies accountable?

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      In attempts to hold former president Donald Trump and his allies accountable for election subversion, attorneys are reaching back to laws created in the wake of the civil war in the 1860s.Beyond Trump, too, lawsuits using these Reconstruction-era laws seek to enforce voting rights and prevent discrimination in modern-era elections.The laws from this time period were designed, in part, to reintegrate the Confederate states back into the country and ensure that they did not yet again attempt to overthrow the government or pass laws to restrict newly freed Black citizens.But the Reconstruction Congress created laws that were “flexible and responsive to modern-day threats”, making them applicable today and worth trying to enforce, said Jessica Marsden, an attorney with Protect Democracy, which has filed lawsuits using such laws.In recent years, the use of laws originally designed to crack down on the Ku Klux Klan and its allies in government after the civil war has grown. This set of laws bans political intimidation and violence, including insurrection, and has been used in legal claims from Charlottesville, to the January 6 insurrection, to the federal government’s charges against Trump.Section 3 of the 14th amendment, recently making headlines as various lawsuits attempt to use it to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot, makes it illegal for someone who was an officer of the US government to hold office again if they engaged in “insurrection or rebellion”.One novel approach also seeks to use a law that dealt with readmitting Virginia into the union to protect the voting rights of people with felonies.The resurgence of these laws in recent years has surprised some observers, but proponents say they are strong tools to fight back against anti-democratic movements happening today. And there aren’t more recent laws that deal directly with insurrection since the last major one happened during the civil war.“We have been compelled to use tools that we didn’t use in the past or didn’t need to use because we didn’t have the kind of threat and the kind of character prepared to break norms as we do now with Mr Trump and his confederates,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, a civil rights attorney who is opening a center focused on the 14th amendment at Howard University School of Law.Under Ifill’s leadership, in 2020 the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Trump and the Republican National Committee using Ku Klux Klan Act statutes, alleging Trump’s campaign and the RNC were systematically trying to disfranchise Black voters by disrupting vote counting and trying to delay results. It’s “never easy to sue a president under the KKK Act,” Ifill said, “but it has to be done”.“We are in a moment of democratic crisis,” Ifill said. “Trump and his agenda and Trumpism is a unique threat to the core of American democracy. And I think that has sent everyone into the space that we have to use all of the tools that are available to us.”The Reconstruction Congress understood the threat of insurrection and the kinds of disfranchisement and violence that came from giving rights to Black men after the civil war because these activities had just happened or were still happening then, so they created a strong set of laws to prevent further violence and to hold accountable those who perpetuated it.Since then, these threats haven’t been as direct as they are now, those filing lawsuits under these laws say, rendering the historic tools both useful and necessary.“Congress in the 1860s and 70s gave us a toolkit that is surprisingly well-suited to this moment,” Marsden, of Protect Democracy, said.The laws from that time period were written with an understanding that opponents of democracy would be “quite creative” in how they’d try to deter people from participating in the democratic process, leaving open what kinds of actions can be considered voter intimidation, Marsden said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat has made the KKK Act, for instance, a valuable tool when addressing modern technology, like a successful lawsuit against robocalls with threatening messages targeting Black voters about voting by mail. Another KKK Act case that recently settled involved a “Trump train” of vehicles that harassed a Biden bus in Texas in 2020, in which Protect Democracy argued that a town’s police force knew of this intimidation but didn’t work to stop it.Protect Democracy is also arguing that the Virginia Readmission Act, which protected the rights of new Black citizens to vote, applies today to disfranchising people with felonies. In a lawsuit believed to be the first making this claim, the group says Virginia’s law that strips people with felonies of their right to vote is illegal because the Reconstruction-era readmission act says only certain felonies can be used to prevent voting.Eric Foner, a historian who specializes in the civil war and the Reconstruction era, said it makes sense to use existing laws from that time period because they haven’t been repealed, despite the lack of use in the many decades since then, and reflect similar ideas to what’s happening today. The recent use of them shows just how strong the laws created by the Reconstruction Congress are, he said.“It’s a political commentary on what is possible politically today,” Foner said. “And it’s an odd thing because it’s considered more possible to resurrect these laws than to pass new ones.”With the resurgence of these laws come some challenges with making the case to judges, who may not have dealt directly with Reconstruction-era statutes beyond scholarly arguments. In the 14th amendment lawsuits, for instance, judges have questioned how to apply this section of law and interpret its provisions. And, given the high-profile and political nature of seeking to boot a former president from the ballot, judges have expressed wariness to wade into what some consider a political question, not a legal one.Already, 14th amendment lawsuits in Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan and Florida have been tossed, though many are still ongoing and those bringing the lawsuits are likely to appeal, with the question expected to go before the US supreme court at some point.In one smaller case, though, which didn’t involve someone as high-profile as Trump, a judge in New Mexico ruled that a county commissioner who had participated in the January 6 riots couldn’t hold office any more because of the 14th amendment.Despite their discomfort with the politics of the issue, Ifill argues that judges need to show courage to enforce the amendment’s provisions.“They may not want to do it any more than I wanted to sue a president under the KKK Act, but their job is to apply the law to the facts and issue a ruling that is consistent with what the law demands,” she said. 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      ‘People who are just like me will not be able to vote. That’s nuts’: Virginia to see first Black speaker of the house

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      Five years ago, while working on a high-profile case, the trial lawyer Don L Scott Jr received a call from a reporter. “Hey, is it true that you had gone to prison?” Scott remembers them asking. “I said, ‘It is, and if you want the entire story, before you print it, I hope that you will sit down and talk to me.’”On 10 January 2024, Scott will be sworn in as Virginia’s first Black speaker of the house in the commonwealth’s 400-year-plus history. His rise to the position started in 2018, when that reporter called him. Scott said that although he hadn’t hidden his past before, “it’s not something you put on your résumé either”. That call was a pivotal moment for him, empowering him to share his story widely, and helping him realize that he had the potential to be a politician.After the story was published in the Virginian-Pilot, everyone knew his past, and Scott said he was then able to discuss it more freely, even as an attorney. He thinks the impetus behind the piece might have come from a politician who was concerned Scott would run against him, or from the opposing attorneys on the case, but at this point it doesn’t matter.“They were thinking they were going to drop it on me to hurt me, but what they really did was free me up,” he said. “I got such positive feedback from my community and other folks that I knew that I said, ‘Heck, I’m free now. If I decide I want to run, I can run.’”Eventually, Scott, who’s 58, did run for election to the Virginia house of delegates – and won. Then he won again and again. In his new role as speaker of the house, Scott plans to help lead Virginia Democrats in following through on their campaign promises: namely, codifying Roe v Wade, banning assault weapons and increasing teacher pay.‘There are people who are just like me’On 30 July 1619, Virginia’s house of burgesses, the colonial predecessor to the commonwealth’s current general assembly, met for the first time. About one month later, enslaved Africans were brought to the Virginia colony, marking what is considered to be the start of chattel slavery in the colonial US. In several interviews since his election as speaker, Scott has referenced the historic importance of his nomination: “I know I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors who built that capitol.”Scott was born in Houston, Texas, and raised in a small town by a single mother who hid the family’s poverty so well that Scott didn’t realize how much she struggled until he was an adult. He grew up with five siblings, including his elder sister, Jeta Lenoir, who taught him to read.After his graduation from Texas A&M University, Scott enlisted in the US navy and served a few years before he was honorably discharged. He went on to obtain a law degree from Louisiana State University Law School, but in 1994, shortly after graduating, Scott was arrested on federal drug charges. He served seven years in prison. (Scott has said previously that he made a “bad decision”, but denies having ever handled any drugs.)In Virginia, citizens’ voting rights are not immediately restored after their release from prison – that decision depends on the governor. For almost a decade after rejoining society, Scott was unable to vote. Once his rights were restored in 2013, he was able to finally sit for the bar exam and become a trial lawyer.During his time as a partner at the Breit Biniazan law firm, Scott joined various civic organizations, including his state’s chapter of the NAACP. He started paying closer attention to the difference between what people around him were experiencing and what he saw and heard in courtrooms as a lawyer. As a result, his first campaign for the house of delegates in 2019 focused on criminal justice reform and alleviating poverty.“I came in saying that there are some things that are wrong, that are unfair in our criminal justice system and need to be fixed,” Scott said. “I think people have a misconception about Black communities that are sometimes having tough times and issues with crime. They don’t want to talk about poverty. They don’t want to talk about all the causes of crime. They don’t want to talk about mental health. They just want to say ‘crime’ and look at the outcome.”Scott’s lived experiences continue to inform how he sees the world. He intimately knows what it means to serve time and still be penalized after leaving prison. “I had a nonviolent drug offense that I was sentenced to 10 years [in prison] for,” he said. “There are people who are just like me who are not voting and can’t vote and are smarter than I am. [They] can’t vote because they’re waiting on somebody like Governor [Glenn] Youngkin to restore their rights. I will be speaker with a felony, while other people who are just like me … will not be able to vote. That’s nuts.”As speaker, Scott plans to help mitigate voter disenfranchisement by taking away the governor’s right to determine whether formerly incarcerated people can vote again. He wants to change the state’s constitution so that people have an automatic restoration of rights after completing their sentences. Earlier this year, in a separate voter-rights issue, about 3,000 Virginians were purged from voter rolls “in error”, according to Youngkin’s administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Personally, this is important to me, that we take the restoration of rights away from the governor,” Scott said. Of the purged voters, he continued: Youngkin “abused that privilege that he has, that privilege that the people have bestowed on him. He used it arbitrarily and capriciously to deny the franchise – that sacred franchise – from people that he deemed unworthy to vote.”‘You have to deliver’Scott understands the historic nature of his impending leadership position. He also knows that his community and Virginians at large are expecting more than him to just be a face in power.Recently, Scott said, he attended a breakfast meeting with a former governor who was energized by his nomination, but who told him that it was time for the real work to begin. “He said, ‘Now you have to go and be great. You have to be competent. You have to deliver.’ And that’s what our community is looking for. They’re not looking for symbolic wins any more,” Scott recalled. “I’m the first Black speaker, but I’m also a speaker who happens to be Black.”Democrats gained control of Virginia’s state legislature this year, as voters opposed Youngkin’s attempt to pass a strict abortion ban. In addition to codifying Roe v Wade, many of the Democrats who ran and won promised to raise the minimum wage, to ban assault weapons, to pass a responsible gun act and to raise teacher pay.“These are the promises that we made … These are not extreme ideas. I think everybody can agree that we need to do these things, and I think we will,” Scott said.But for the moment, he is taking time to soak it all in.“I’m excited,” he said. “It’s the dream of a lifetime. I feel embarrassed of how much I’ve been blessed. I went to jail in ’94; 2004 is 30 years and I’ll be standing taking my oath. That’s a powerful testament to the power of faith, and the power of resilience.” More