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New York Times
Tom Cotton’s war on the 1619 Project is the real ‘cancel culture’
Malaika Jabali
Conservatives like Cotton prefer we avoid looking critically at the US at all, and anyone that falls out of line must be cancelled More
Whether or not Donald Trump wins re-election in November, Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, predicts the Republican party will finally do some soul searching.That’s the core of the thinking behind Hogan, a popular two-term Republican governor in a reliably Democratic state, strongly floating the idea of running for president himself.“A big part of what I’ve been focusing on for six years is a kind of a bigger tent message and avoiding the divisive rhetoric and avoiding the extremes of either party,” Hogan told the Guardian.“That’s why I’ve been so successful as a Republican in one of the bluest states in the country and have had the ability to reach a lot of swing voters and constituencies that Republicans have had a [hard] time reaching.”Hogan considered a White House run this year, but he would have had to beat a Republican president with an iron grip on the party. In 2024, however, Trump will not be a factor.I’ll be one and maybe I’ll be the only one that’ll be arguing for a Republican party that’s going to be more inclusiveHogan is not the only name being floated. The former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and Vice-President Mike Pence are all in the mix too.But Hogan is the one most eager to highlight his disagreements with the president, openly admitting that Trump’s circle is “not very happy with me at the moment”.As chairman of the bipartisan National Governors Association (NGA), he has issued worried statements about Trump’s handling of coronavirus relief funds. In general, he has criticized Trump’s response to the pandemic.At the same time, he has checked the boxes any statewide politician does ahead of a White House run. He has visited early primary states. He has chaired the NGA. He has reached high approval levels in his state. And he has written a book, laying out his background and knocking the current president. Still Standing comes out on Tuesday. It details how Hogan thought about challenging Trump this year.He does not hesitate to admit that he is open to running in 2024, which is usually as far as any potential candidate goes this far out from an election. But he does keep some distance from other anti-Trump Republicans, such as the increasingly prominent Lincoln Project.Asked about the former Ohio governor John Kasich, a prominent member of the anti-Trump wing of the Republican party who is expected to participate in the Democratic national convention, Hogan demurred.“I’ve got to continue to govern my state in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of the worst economic collapse in our lifetime and I’ve got a job as governor of Maryland until January of 2023,” he said.“So I’m in a different place than John Kasich. I mean, I haven’t spoken to him about it so I don’t know what his position is. But he’s certainly a Republican who’s frustrated with the direction of the party.” More
The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, made the comment in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.He was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.Cotton’s Saving American History Act of 2020 and “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts”, according to a statement from the senator’s office.“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette.“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, said on Friday that Cotton’s bill “speaks to the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career”.On Sunday, she tweeted: “If chattel slavery – heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit – were a ‘necessary evil’ as Tom Cotton says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end.“Imagine thinking a non-divisive curriculum is one that tells black children the buying and selling of their ancestors, the rape, torture, and forced labor of their ancestors for PROFIT, was just a ‘necessary evil’ for the creation of the ‘noblest’ country the world has ever seen.“So, was slavery foundational to the Union on which it was built, or nah? You heard it from Tom Cotton himself.”Cotton responded: “More lies from the debunked 1619 Project. Describing the views of the Founders and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery. No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton and entitled “Send in the troops”. The article, which drew widespread criticism, advocated for the deployment of the military to protests against police brutality toward black Americans.Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.But the Times subsequently issued a statement saying the op-ed fell short of its editorial standards, leading to the resignation of editorial page director James Bennet. More
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One hundred days before the presidential election, Joe Biden has built a commanding and enduring lead over Donald Trump, whose path to victory has narrowed considerably in the months since the coronavirus pandemic began.The president’s fortunes appear increasingly tied to the trajectory of a public health crisis he has failed to contain, with the death toll past 145,000 and the economy in turmoil.A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month showed Biden far ahead of Trump, 55% to 40% among registered voters. That contrasted with March, when Biden and Trump were locked in a near tie as the virus was just beginning to spread.The same poll found Trump’s approval ratings had crumbled to 39%, roughly the same share of the electorate that approved of his response to the outbreak while 60% disapproved. Especially troubling for the president are a new spate of polls that suggest he is losing his edge on the economy, formerly Biden’s greatest vulnerability.“It is very hard to envision a scenario where you can make an argument for the president’s re-election if unemployment is well over 10% and there’s no sign that the pandemic is under control,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who was an adviser for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.“The political environment and the economic situation could look very different 100 days from now, but if the election were held today, it is very likely that the former vice-president would win – and pretty substantially.”Surveys show Biden ahead in a clutch of battleground states that secured Trump’s victory in 2016, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. A Quinnipiac University poll of Florida, seen as crucial for Trump, found Biden up by 13 points.Biden’s campaign is now eyeing an expanded electoral map that could also deliver control of the Senate, challenging Trump in traditionally Republican states like Arizona, where the president has consistently led in statewide polls, as well as in conservative strongholds like Texas, where a new Quinnipiac poll found the candidates neck-and-neck.Trump has dismissed polling that shows him losing as “fake”, adamant that he defied Beltway prognosticators in 2016 and is poised to do it again. “I’m not losing,” he insisted during a recent Fox News Sunday interview, when presented with the network’s latest poll showing him trailing Biden by eight points.Political strategists caution that much can – and almost certainly will – change in the coming months, especially in a race shaped so profoundly by the pandemic. There is a general expectation the contest will be closely fought, as presidential elections have been for decades in a deeply polarized climate.At the same time, widespread uncertainty hangs over the security and administration of an election again threatened by foreign interference and disinformation. The pandemic has raised new concerns about voting procedures, amid Trump’s escalating attacks on mail-in ballots and unprecedented efforts to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the result in November.Trump’s prospects likely hinge on his ability to persuade Americans he deserves a second term. Yet he remains almost-singularly focused on rallying a loyal but shrinking core of supporters. In recent weeks, he has sought to stoke white fear and cultural backlash with an aggressive response to anti-racism protests, a defense of Confederate monuments and a dark Fourth of July speech in which he claimed children are being taught to “hate” America. More
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