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      Charges Dropped Against Pamela Moses, Who Was Jailed Over Voter Fraud

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      Pamela Moses, who was sentenced in January to six years in a case that outraged voting rights supporters, will not face a new trial, a district attorney said.A Tennessee prosecutor dropped all criminal charges on Friday against Pamela Moses, a Memphis woman with a previous felony conviction who was sentenced to six years and one day in prison in January after she tried to restore her right to vote in 2019.The voter fraud conviction from her trial was thrown out in February after a judge ruled that the Tennessee Department of Correction had improperly withheld evidence that was later uncovered by The Guardian. Ms. Moses had been set to appear in court on Monday to find out whether prosecutors would pursue a retrial.But Ms. Moses will no longer face a second trial “in the interest of judicial economy,” Amy Weirich, the district attorney of Shelby County, said in a statement. Ms. Moses spent 82 days in custody on this case, “which is sufficient,” Ms. Weirich said. Ms. Moses is also permanently barred from registering to vote or voting in Tennessee. Ms. Weirich declined to comment further on the case.The sentencing of Ms. Moses, who is Black, had spurred outrage among voting rights supporters who said that the case highlighted racial disparities in the criminal prosecution of voting fraud cases and opaque voting restoration rights laws that sow confusion and leave many people with felony convictions unsure of their rights.In the summer of 2019, Ms. Moses, a Black Lives Matter activist, decided she wanted to run for mayor of Memphis, or at the very least vote in the upcoming election.She knew that she couldn’t do either while she was on probation for prior felony convictions, including a 2015 conviction for tampering with evidence. But she believed her probation was over, according to her lawyer, Bede Anyanwu. Overall, Ms. Moses had 16 prior criminal convictions, including misdemeanor counts from 2015 of perjury, stalking and theft under $500, according to the district attorney’s office. In September 2019, a judge told Ms. Moses that she was still on probation. But when she went to the probation office to confirm, a probation officer told her she was actually done with her felony probation, records show. The probation officer signed off on her certificate of restoration to vote and Ms. Moses then submitted it to election officials.A day later, the Department of Correction sent a letter to the Shelby County Election Commission informing it that the probation officer had made a mistake and that Ms. Moses could not vote because she was in fact still on probation.Video from a January hearing shows Ms. Moses telling Judge W. Mark Ward of the Shelby County Criminal Court, “All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me.”Judge Ward responded, “You tricked the probation department into giving you a document saying that you were off probation.”Ms. Moses was charged with perjury on a registration form and consenting to a false entry on official election documents. The first charge was dropped, but she was convicted of the second charge in November and sentenced in January. Ultimately, Ms. Moses’ felony conviction in 2015 for tampering made her permanently ineligible to vote under Tennessee law regardless of her probation status.“The case should not have been prosecuted right from the beginning because there was no trickery,” Mr. Anyanwu said. Ms. Moses declined to comment on Saturday.In recent years, Republican officials have moved to crack down on voter fraud, despite the fact that the crime remains a very rare and often accidental occurrence. Florida election officials made just 75 referrals to law enforcement agencies regarding potential fraud during the 2020 election, out of more than 11 million votes cast, according to data from the Florida secretary of state’s office. Of those investigations, only four cases have been prosecuted as voter fraud.Still, legislators in some states have stiffened penalties for voting-related crimes, and district attorneys and state attorneys general have pursued aggressive felony prosecutions in cases that might have been deemed legitimate mistakes.Voting rights advocates interpret these actions as a voter suppression tactic.“These prosecutions are intended to scare people who have prior convictions from even trying to register to vote,” said Blair Bowie, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., who has been assisting Ms. Moses and Mr. Anyanwu with the case since October.These prosecutions also unfairly blame individuals for failing to navigate a voter restoration process that is unclear, she said, adding that state officials are responsible for putting adequate procedures in place for that process.Ms. Bowie is representing the Tennessee N.A.A.C.P. in a lawsuit against Gov. Bill Lee and other officials that accuses them of failing to establish clearer procedures for individuals with felony convictions, “leading to a rights restoration process that is unequal, inaccessible, opaque and inaccurate.”Nearly 80 percent of the disenfranchised people in the state have completed probation and parole and are potentially eligible to restore their voting rights, but fewer than 5 percent of potentially eligible Tennesseans have been able to acquire a completed certificate of restoration of voting rights and have tried to register to vote, according to the lawsuit.Voting rights advocates say that the case also highlights the racial disparity in the prosecution of voter fraud cases.“What we see consistently is honest mistakes made by returning citizens are penalized to the max, and true bad intentions are not being penalized to the same extent,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “And usually in those cases the defendants are white.”In October, Donald Kirk Hartle, a white Republican voter, was charged with two counts of voter fraud in Las Vegas after he forged his dead wife’s signature to vote with her ballot. He was sentenced in November to one year of probation, The Associated Press reported.Edward Snodgrass, a white Republican official in Ohio, forged his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot in 2020 and was charged with illegal voting, NBC News reported. As part of a plea agreement, he served three days in jail last year, The Delaware Gazette reported.Ms. Moses is still pursuing the restoration of her civil rights, which include voting rights, through a lawsuit in Shelby County Circuit Court, according to Ms. Bowie. That lawsuit presents a constitutional challenge to the state statute that permanently bars people convicted of tampering with evidence from voting in Tennessee. More

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      The Tennessee Law Making School Board Culture Wars Even Worse

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      FRANKLIN, Tenn. — “What happens when a child sounds out the word ‘lesbian’ and turns to their teacher and asks, ‘What is a lesbian?’”Trisha Lucente, the mom of a local kindergartner, has come before the Williamson County school board to voice her distress over the district’s continued use of Epic, a digital library app containing more than 40,000 children’s books and videos. Ms. Lucente and like-minded parents have complained about several titles that they consider inappropriate. Anything touching on race, gender or sexuality can set off alarms in conservative circles here. (A book on sea horses came under fire recently. The fact that male sea horses get pregnant was seen as promoting the idea of gender fluidity.)In response, the school system temporarily shut down access to the library to conduct a review — prompting an outcry from supporters of the app — then reinstated it while allowing parents to opt out their kids.Ms. Lucente finds the compromise unacceptable. What happens when a child who has been opted out overhears the lesbian question, she demands. “What position does that put our teachers in? What are they supposed to say to that?” The Epic situation, she contends, is just another example of how the board and administration are dividing the community and “failing our children and our teachers.”Ms. Lucente is not the only one with strong feelings on the matter. Multiple parents and teachers at the meeting rise to praise Epic. One teenager, a junior at Franklin High School, asserts that “censorship is stupid” and scolds adults who would “shield” students from learning about racism, antisemitism and other uncomfortable aspects of history and humanity.Welcome to Williamson County, a hot spot in the ongoing culture war engulfing America’s public schools. An affluent, highly educated, politically conservative enclave just south of Nashville, Williamson has seen its share of school-related drama over the years. In 2015, for instance, conservatives here were fired up about a seventh-grade social studies unit that some viewed as Islamic indoctrination.The trauma of the Covid pandemic has driven tensions to a new level. Last August, the district drew national attention after a mob of parents, protesting the board’s vote to impose a temporary mask mandate, turned feral. One pro-mask dad was swarmed, cursed at and threatened as he made his way from the meeting back to his car. “You can leave freely, but we will find you!” a protester raged in a video that went viral.The district has since sought to curtail the hostilities. The 25 residents who signed up to speak at this month’s meeting were allowed precisely one minute each, with a timer keeping everyone on track. Officials warned at the outset that disruptive speakers would have their remarks terminated and that those who felt unsafe could have a sheriff’s deputy escort them to their vehicles.Williamson County is obviously not the only community dealing with such frictions. School boards across the nation are being dragged onto the front lines of partisan battles. Vaccination requirements, diversity and inclusion efforts, books that make certain people feel icky — these issues and more have prompted ugly, overheated confrontations, some of them violent. Outside groups are fanning the flames, as are cynical politicians looking to juice their careers. (See: DeSantis, Ron, governor of Florida.) The day-to-day concerns of running a school district (boring stuff like budgeting and approving contracts for vendors) are increasingly being overshadowed by partisan agendas.Many people would look at the spiraling circus and think: This is bad. Low-level, nonpartisan school boards are not where these radioactive political issues should be hashed out. Someone should find a way to reduce the heat on these public servants.Instead, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature went the other way: passing a law last fall that allows for partisan school board elections, setting up a system that not only codifies the existing toxicity but also promises to exacerbate it. So much for putting students first.The overwhelming majority of school board races around the country are nonpartisan. This was the case in Tennessee until Republican lawmakers, during an emergency session called to deal with Covid-related issues, rammed through legislation permitting county parties to hold primary elections to select school board nominees, who can then list their party affiliations on the general election ballots. It was a controversial move, and the opposition included state Democrats, droves of educators and school board officials and even some Republicans.The law’s supporters insist that partisan contests will give voters a clearer sense of school board candidates and their values and, more broadly, that they will increase involvement and public interest in what are typically low-profile races.Critics of the new system counter that the law will change the fundamental nature of the position — and not in a good way. Among their biggest fears: To win their party’s primaries, candidates will need to focus more on hot-button issues that appeal to base voters, leading to more and fiercer culture clashes. Campaigns will require more money and more partisan brawling, discouraging many people from running. Those who skip the primaries and run in general elections as independents will be at a disadvantage. (America’s two-party system is not kind to independent candidates at any political level.) And as time goes on, the pool of people who choose to run will be composed less of civic-minded parents than of partisan warriors and careerist politicians.Not all of the county parties opted to hold school board primaries this cycle, and many voters are likely not yet aware of the change. But even at this early stage, there are signs that the new law’s supporters and its detractors are both right.Pretty much everyone plugged into this drama acknowledges that the newly partisan contests have increased interest and participation in school board races.Jim Garrett is the chair of the Davidson County Republican Party, which is holding primaries for its candidates running for the Metropolitan Nashville school board. Nashville is among Tennessee’s bluer regions, where Democrats have an electoral edge. Even so, with the new system, he says, more Republicans are running, and they are raising more money. “It looks like the cost of a campaign is going to be about double what it used to be,” he estimates.The local G.O.P. is also investing more in these races. For the first time, Davidson Republicans are arranging training sessions for school board candidates. These races weren’t a focus in previous elections, says Mr. Garrett. “They are a focus now.”There hasn’t yet been special training on the Democratic side. But the county party is happy to connect candidates to campaign vendors and other resources, says its chairwoman, Tara Houston. The party has also tasked a special committee to come up with a platform outlining its basic values on public education, which Democratic school board hopefuls will be expected to support.In Williamson County, where having a D next to one’s name is a scarlet letter of sorts, most of the primary action has been on the Republican side. In multiple districts, more conventional conservatives are facing off against contenders from the party’s Trumpier wing. Outside groups have lined up behind their champions, providing financial and other support. The most prominent of these is Williamson Families, a political action committee dedicated to protecting the county’s “conservative roots” and “Judeo-Christian values.” The PAC is led by Robin Steenman, who also heads the local branch of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit based in Florida that champions parental rights and “liberty-minded” leaders nationwide. Williamson Families has endorsed a slate of superconservatives — after weeding out the RINOs, of course.Multiple parents and teachers in Williamson complain that, as predicted, some of the campaigns and contenders seem focused less on concrete education issues than on culture-war talking points. One middle-school teacher vents to me that some candidates are bragging about their love of Donald Trump and decrying the decline of traditional families and the godlessness of today’s youth.Meagan Gillis, whose two young daughters attend county schools, says the whole situation has turned to “chaos.” She points to a social media post by a conservative candidate promoting the child furries myth: the wacky online claim that teachers are being forced to cater to students who identify as cats, to the point of putting litter boxes in classrooms and meowing at the children. “I’m like, are you kidding me?” Ms. Gillis marvels. Things are getting so absurd, she says, that her family is seriously considering moving out of the area.Similar concerns and complaints can be heard from other corners of the state. Virginia Babb has loved her time on the Knox County school board and was planning to run for re-election — until the shift to partisan races. Now she will step down at the end of her term rather than get sucked into the slime. She initially ran for the board as “a very involved parent” without strong partisan leanings, she tells me, noting: “I don’t like either party. They are too much controlled by their extremes.”So down the partisan rabbit hole Tennessee school boards are being nudged — with other states possibly to follow. Missouri, Arizona, Florida and South Carolina are among the states where lawmakers toyed less successfully with similar legislation this year. Some bills made it farther than others, and the idea is likely to keep popping up. The conservative American Enterprise Institute favors listing school board candidates’ party affiliations on ballots. A collection of conservative leaders has been exploring other ways to bring school board races more into line with other types of elections, according to Politico.All of which would indeed most likely earn school board campaigns more attention and resources and make candidates easier to ideologically sort. But at what cost to America’s children?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting error

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      Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting errorMoses, convicted last year, was granted new trial in February after Guardian revealed files that had not been given to her defense A Memphis prosecutor has dropped all criminal charges against Pamela Moses, the Memphis woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote.Moses was convicted last year and sentenced in January. She was granted a new trial in February after the Guardian published a document showing that had not been given to her defense ahead of the trial.Moses was set to appear in court on Monday to find out whether prosecutors would pursue a retrial.The central issue in her case was whether she had known she was ineligible to vote when a probation officer filled out and signed a form indicating she was done with probation for a 2015 felony conviction and eligible to cast a ballot. Even though the probation officer admitted he had made a mistake, and Moses said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, prosecutors said she knew she was ineligible and had deceived him. Moses stood in the lobby of the probation office while the officer went to his office to research her case for about an hour, he said at trial.The case stirred national outrage because it underscored disparities in the way Black people are punished for voting errors. Several white defendants elsewhere have been sentenced to probation for impersonating family members and voting on their behalf.Reached by telephone, Moses declined to comment on Friday, saying she was still processing the news. She said she planned to hold a press conference on Monday in Memphis.Amy Weirich, the Shelby county district attorney, who prosecuted the case, noted Moses had spent 82 days in jail before she was granted a new trial, “which is sufficient”.“In the interest of judicial economy, we are dismissing her illegal registration case and her violation of probation,” she said in a statement.She noted that Moses is permanently barred from voting in Tennessee. One of the crimes she pleaded guilty to in 2015, tampering with evidence, causes people to permanently lose their voting rights in Tennessee. During Moses’s trial, the judge overseeing the case and the two probation officers said they were unaware that was a crime that caused people to permanently lose the right to vote.Tennessee has some of the harshest policies regarding the restoration of voting rights in the US. People with felonies cannot vote until they have completed all terms of their sentence, including probation and parole. They must have paid off all fines and fees and be up to date on their child support. They must also go through a process in which they get a probation or criminal justice official to sign off on their eligibility, and there is often confusion about the requirements. There is continuing litigation challenging the process.More than one in five otherwise eligible Black voters – 175,000 people – cannot vote in Tennessee because of a felony conviction, according to an estimate by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit organization.TopicsTennesseeThe fight to voteUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The woman jailed for a voting mistake

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      Pamela Moses, a Black Lives Matter activist , was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote. Sam Levine tells the remarkable story

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      In 2015 Pamela Moses was convicted of a felony crime in the US state of Tennessee. She pleaded guilty to charges of stalking, tampering with evidence, theft and perjury, although she later said she bitterly regretted accepting those charges. Her punishment was not a prison sentence but a period of probation. But it was the beginning of a chain of events that led to her being sent to jail years later for voter fraud. The Guardian’s Sam Levine tells Nosheen Iqbal that people convicted of certain crimes in Tennessee are automatically disbarred from voting while serving out their sentence, but a bureaucratic mistake in the probation office led to Moses being given the impression that she was once again eligible to cast her ballot. When she began an unlikely run for elected office, it came to light that she was in fact not allowed to vote and she was arrested and charged with voter fraud, and later sentenced to six years in jail. When Levine published a story about this in the Guardian, it was picked up elsewhere and became a huge national story. And one that at the time of recording still has a final act yet to play out. More

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      ‘It’s a scare tactic’: Pamela Moses, the Black woman jailed over voting error, speaks out

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      ‘It’s a scare tactic’: Pamela Moses, the Black woman jailed over voting error, speaks outExclusive: Longtime activist who still faces the possibility of a retrial tells the Guardian she believes she’s being ‘persecuted’ for being outspoken Pamela Moses, the Memphis woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote, says she is grateful to be released – but believes the case against her was a “scare tactic” to discourage other people from casting a ballot.Moses was released from prison on bond on 25 February after a judge unexpectedly granted her request for a new trial, citing evidence, obtained by the Guardian, that had not been disclosed to Moses’ defense.New evidence undermines case against Black US woman jailed for voting error | The fight to voteRead moreIn her first interview since being freed Moses recalled the moment in the courtroom when Judge W Mark Ward decided to grant her a new trial – and said she was “overwhelmed with joy”. Video shows Moses nearly in tears and screaming in excitement when Ward ruled he was granting her a new trial.She knew that judges rarely reverse themselves and grant requests for new trials, but she had been praying Ward would see beyond her criminal record. “I was very grateful that God had allowed him to correct his own mistake, and that’s what you need in the criminal justice system.”But Moses, a longtime activist who founded the Memphis chapter of Black Lives Matter, still faces the possibility of a retrial. Moses says she was unaware she was ineligible to vote, and state officials acknowledged they made an error in indicating to her that she was eligible. Her case has brought renewed focus to the practice, common in many US states, of depriving people convicted of certain felonies of their voting rights for widely varying lengths of time, but sometimes for life.“It’s a scare tactic, what they did to me,” Moses told the Guardian. She thinks other people with criminal convictions will think twice before seeking to cast a ballot in elections. “It’s like, ‘if she went to jail for that, we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to follow her because we’re going to be in jail for six years too.’ I would say it sends a confusing message to people who want to vote.“Why should people be worried if they’re going to be prosecuted for doing their civic duty?”Moses is a well-known activist in Memphis who has filed numerous cases in local and federal courts, often representing herself. She has been outspoken against a number of local officials, including the local election commission, judges and Amy Weirich, the local district attorney who is prosecuting her case. She said she believes she’s being “persecuted” for being so outspoken.“If you silence the loudest person that’s screaming, ‘hey Black people, go vote, don’t vote for her, remove her from office’ then you eliminate the opposition,” she said. “I believe, not only if I wasn’t Black, but if my name wasn’t Pamela Moses, this probably never would have been a case.”Moses’ case attracted national attention because of the harshness of her sentence, which seemed at odds with the evidence in the case. Before the trial, election officials in Memphis conceded that they erroneously never removed her from the voter rolls after she pleaded guilty to felony charges in 2015.In 2019, Moses launched a campaign for mayor of Memphis and sought clarification from court officials about whether she had completed her felony probation and could appear on the ballot. A judge told her she was still on probation, but Moses still believed she was eligible and went to a probation office and asked them to verify her eligibility and sign a certificate saying she could vote. After about an hour of investigating, the probation officer did so.Prosecutors blamed Moses for this. In their request for an indictment, they wrote she “convinced” the officer to sign off on the document. And during her sentencing hearing, Ward, the judge overseeing her case, accused her of deceiving the probation officer into signing off on the eligibility certificate. Moses said she didn’t trick anyone and was stunned to hear such an assertion.“I was like wow, I need to go to magic school or something. I’m the new Houdini. I’ve got that much power to trick somebody I’ve never met, never seen in my life into doing something just by walking in the place? You know, no.”But a document obtained by the Guardian last month, after the trial concluded, showed that probation officials investigated the incident and found that the probation officer, identified as Manager Billington, had made an error on his own. Even though Moses’ file said she was still on probation, Billington thought that another person had made a mistake. The official who conducted the investigation ultimately determined that Billington was negligent and to blame for the error.Moses went out of her way to defend Billington. “I don’t like how everybody is portraying that supervisor as a bad person. That man did his job,” she said. “I don’t think that man did anything other than what he could do based on the information that he had in front of him.”But Moses was critical of Weirich, the prosecutor, who has said Moses bears some of the responsibility for her sentence because she declined to accept a plea deal that would not have resulted in additional prison time. “I gave her a chance to plead to a misdemeanor with no prison time,” Weirich said in February “She requested a jury trial instead. She set this unfortunate result in motion and a jury of her peers heard the evidence and convicted her.”Moses pushed back on that characterization. “I haven’t done anything in my mind wrong so why would I plead to anything?” she said.“We have a right to that. But you want me to give it up because you want it to be right? It was about the principle to me. “I hadn’t done anything wrong.”Weirich’s office did not immediately return a request for comment. Weirich has yet to say whether she will pursue a new trial. Moses and her new legal team plan to hold a press conference in Memphis on Friday asking her to drop all of the charges.Her prosecution may already be having a local policy impact. Citing her case, a coalition of civil rights groups is pushing the county commission to conduct a “racial equity audit” to examine whether there is racial discrimination in Weirich’s office.The Moses case is one of several high-profile instances that underscores the disparity between how white and Black defendants can be treated when it comes to election crimes. Several white defendants across the country received minimal punishments, such as probation, for purposefully impersonating family members in order to cast multiple votes – yet Black people who made mere mistakes when attempting to follow complicated processes and procedures received prison sentences.“The reason why Ms Moses’ situation has got the attention of the nation is because this sort of disparate treatment happens all the time,” said Rodney Diggs, one of her attorneys. “The disparate treatment between people of color and non-people of color. You can just see the differences.”Moses had been in jail since December, when the judge overseeing her case abruptly revoked her bond. She said that she contracted Covid-19. She was unaware of the attention her case was getting, except for periodic dispatches from a jail nurse who would mention that she had seen her on the local news.Her incarceration had been particularly hard on Tyler, her 24-year-old son, who she said lost his job and took on tasks like handling her mail and bills.Since she’s been released, she said she has spent time with her 13-year-old son Taj – a “mini me”. The weekend after she was released, they went to a funeral for a relative who had been killed. She has been taking him to school and they watch Netflix together. She hasn’t had to explain her case to him because he’d researched it on the internet. “He asked me certain things. And I just divert,” she said.Still, Moses said she still has a lot of anxiety. On Wednesday, she was at 40% back to normal. On Thursday, she said she was up to 65%.“I’m anxious. I’m worried because these charges haven’t gone away,” she said. “I mean look at how much money they spent on this. Just think about it. They probably could have built a school with all the money they spent prosecuting me over a piece of paper.”TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsRaceTennesseeMemphisfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Holocaust book Maus hits bestseller list after Tennessee school board ban

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      Holocaust book Maus hits bestseller list after Tennessee school board banAuthor Art Spiegelman says decision to ban Pulitzer-winning novel that depicts Jewish people as mice is ‘demented’ The Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale has become a bestseller on Amazon, after a Tennessee school board banned it.Last week, according to meeting minutes, 10 school board members in McMinn county agreed to remove Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum, citing “rough, objectionable language” and sketches of naked women they deemed unsuitable for 13-year-old students.By the American cartoonist Art Spiegelman and first published in 1986, Maus describes the experiences of Spiegelman’s parents in Nazi concentration camps and his mother’s suicide. The book depicts Jewish people as mice and Nazis as cats.“We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff,” McMinn county board member Tony Allman said, adding in reference to the murder of 6 million Jewish people in the second world war: “I am not denying it was horrible, brutal and cruel.“It shows people hanging,” he said. “It shows them killing kids. Why does the education system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.”Another board member, Mike Cochran, said: “If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it. You put this stuff just enough on the edges, so the parents don’t catch it but the kids, they soak it in. I think we need to relook at the entire curriculum.”Spiegelman, 73, told CNBC he was “baffled”.“It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” he said, adding that the board was acting in “Orwellian” fashion.“I’ve met so many young people who … have learned things from my book,” he said. “I also understand that Tennessee is obviously demented. There’s something going on very, very haywire there.”As news of the McMinn ban spread, Maus shot on to multiple top 10 lists in Amazon book categories. As of Monday morning, The Complete Maus was second in Amazon’s overall bestseller category. In history, it ranked first. In second world war history, Maus I, the first installment of the novel, also ranked No 1. Variations took the first, second and third spots as bestsellers in literary graphic novels.Efforts have also emerged to make Maus more accessible to students. One professor at a North Carolina college offered eighth-grade and high-school students in McMinn county a free online class.“In response to Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II being removed from the schools by McMinn county, Tennessee school board members, I am offering this free online course for any McMinn county eighth-grade or high school students interested in reading these books with me,” said Scott Denham of Davidson College.“I have taught Spiegelman’s books many times in my courses on the Holocaust over many years,” he added, on his website.Richard Davis, owner of the Nirvana Comics bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, offered to loan The Complete Maus to any student. Davis also set up a GoFundMe campaign to buy additional copies. Created with a target of $20,000, it had raised more than $80,000 by Monday.“Art Spiegelman’s masterpiece is one of the most important, impactful and influential graphic novels of all time,” the page said. “We believe it is a must-read for everyone.”TopicsHolocaustTennesseeUS educationSecond world warUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s Grip on G.O.P. Faces New Strains

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      Shifts in polls of Republicans, disagreements on endorsements and jeers over vaccines hint at daylight between the former president and the right-wing movement he spawned.About halfway into his Texas rally on Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump pivoted toward the teleprompter and away from a meandering set of grievances to rattle off a tightly prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own achievements.“Let’s simply compare the records,” Mr. Trump said, as supporters in “Trump 2024” shirts cheered behind him, framed perfectly in the television shot.Mr. Trump, who later went on to talk about “that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white,” has left increasingly little doubt about his intentions, plotting an influential role in the 2022 midterm elections and another potential White House run. But a fresh round of skirmishes over his endorsements, fissures with the Republican base over vaccines — a word Mr. Trump conspicuously left unsaid at Saturday’s rally — and new polling all show how his longstanding vise grip on the Republican Party is facing growing strains.In Texas, some grass-roots conservatives are vocally frustrated with Mr. Trump’s backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, even booing Mr. Abbott when he took the stage. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shrink the Republican field to help his preferred Senate candidate failed last week. And in Tennessee, a recent Trump endorsement set off an unusually public backlash, even among his most loyal allies, both in Congress and in conservative media.The Tennessee episode, in particular, showed how the Make America Great Again movement that Mr. Trump birthed is maturing to the point where it can, at times, exist separate and apart from — and even at odds with — Mr. Trump himself.Mr. Trump remains, overwhelmingly, the most popular and powerful figure in the Republican Party. He is the polling front-runner in 2024, an unmatched fund-raising force and still able to fill fairgrounds with huge crowds. But after issuing roughly 100 endorsements in races nationwide, Mr. Trump will face a gantlet of proxy tests of his political strength in the coming months, just as public polls show his sway over the G.O.P. electorate is not what it once was.“Things feel like they’ve been shifting,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster who regularly surveys Mr. Trump’s standing in the party. “It’s a strong attachment. It’s one that very likely would win a Republican primary today. But is it the same ironclad, monolithic, Soviet-like attachment that we saw when Donald Trump was the incumbent president? No, it is not.”Monica Trobaugh from Coldspring, Texas, poses for a photo.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesTrump supporters wait for the former president to arrive.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn a recent Associated Press survey, 44 percent of Republicans said they did not want Mr. Trump to run for president again, while a potential G.O.P. rival in 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has narrowed the gap in other way-too-early snapshots of a hypothetical primary — new signs of potential vulnerability for the former president. In a reversal from Mr. Trump’s White House days, an NBC News poll in late January found that 56 percent of Republicans now define themselves more as supporters of the Republican Party, compared to 36 percent who said they are supporters of Mr. Trump first.The Trump-first faction had accounted for 54 percent of Republican voters in October 2020. The erosion since then spanned every demographic: men and women, moderates and conservatives, people of every age.Among the biggest swings was in a group widely seen as Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituency: white Republicans without college degrees, who went from 62 percent identifying first with Mr. Trump to 36 percent.Frank Luntz, a prominent G.O.P. pollster, said Republican support for the former president is moving in complex ways — simultaneously both intensifying and diminishing.“The Trump group is smaller today than it has been in five years, but it is even more intense, more passionate and more unforgiving of his critics,” Mr. Luntz said. “As people slowly drift away — which they are — those who are still with him are even stronger in their support.”Mr. Trump said that if he were elected to a new term as president, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMr. Trump faces further complications to a comeback, including an ongoing investigation in Georgia over his attempt to pressure state officials to overturn the election and an inquiry in New York into his business practices.Betting against Mr. Trump’s hold on the G.O.P. has been a losing proposition, both for pundits and Republican rivals, for the better part of a decade, and he retains broad support in the party apparatus itself. As the Republican National Committee holds its winter meeting in the coming days in Salt Lake City, the party’s executive committee is expected to discuss behind closed doors whether to continue paying some of the former president’s personal legal bills.Even some Trump-skeptical Republican strategists note that any softening of support has come after a year in which Mr. Trump did not seek to command public attention as thoroughly as he can.He was back in the spotlight at Saturday’s Texas rally, an event that had the feel of a music festival, with anti-Biden chants of “Let’s go Brandon!” breaking out spontaneously. Amid the “Trump Won” flags, however, some conservative activists grumbled about the endorsement of Mr. Abbott, criticizing the governor’s early Covid-19 lockdowns and management of the border.On stage, Mr. Abbott himself faced shouts of “RINO” — for “Republican in name only” — and some boos, which he overwhelmed by leading the crowd in a chant of “Let’s go Trump!” As Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas greeted the crowd, one attendee gave him a thumbs-down sign.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesDon Huffines, a former state senator who is challenging Mr. Abbott in the Republican primary, courted Trump supporters.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn his remarks, Mr. Trump seemed to be guarding his far-right flank when he declared that, “if I run and I win,” he would consider pardoning people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year.One key split that has emerged between Mr. Trump and his base is over vaccines. He has been jeered at past appearances — both when urging supporters to get vaccinated and after he said he got a booster shot himself — and he now focuses on opposing federal mandates, while simultaneously trying to take credit for the speed of the vaccines’ arrival.Mr. Trump notably avoided the word “vaccine” on Saturday, referring only to “Operation Warp Speed” — his administration’s effort to produce a vaccine.Jennifer Winterbauer, who has “We the People” tattooed on her forearm, got to the Trump rally — her sixth — days in advance, sleeping in her truck to be among the first in line. She said she believed Mr. Trump was “sent by God to save this country.” Still, she disagrees with him on the vaccine.Jennifer Winterbauer arrived days before the rally began and secured a spot among the very first in line so she could be up front when Mr. Trump began his speech. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times“I don’t think he should be promoting it at all,” she said. “I’ve had Covid and I’ve had the flu, and the flu was much worse.”Vaccine and Covid policies have also been the subject of simmering tensions with Mr. DeSantis, who has declined to say if he received a vaccine booster. Mr. Trump said “gutless” politicians dodge such questions.Mr. Ruffini polled Mr. Trump vs. Mr. DeSantis last October and again this month. Then, Mr. Trump led by 40 percentage points; now, the margin is 25. But among Republicans familiar with both men, the gap was just 16 points, and narrower still, only nine points, among those who liked them both.“His voters are looking at alternatives,” Mr. Ruffini said of Mr. Trump. While there is scant evidence of any desire for an anti-Trump Republican, Mr. Ruffini said, there is openness to what he called a “next-generation Trump candidate.”At the Texas rally, David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor in a cowboy hat, described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a Republican. But if he were not to run in 2024?David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor, described himself as “more of a Trump guy” than a devoted Republican.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times“Probably Ron DeSantis would be my next choice,” Mr. Merritt said. Because he was the most like Mr. Trump of the Republican candidates.In Washington, Republican congressional leaders have diverged sharply in their approaches to Mr. Trump.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, has been solicitous, huddling with Mr. Trump for roughly an hour last Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago to talk over House races and the political landscape, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. McCarthy is seen as keeping Mr. Trump close as he seeks to win the majority for his party this fall and the speakership for himself.In the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, is not on speaking terms with Mr. Trump, and his allies continue to court Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, an outspoken anti-Trump Republican, to run for Senate.Beyond polling, Mr. Trump has repeatedly held up his “almost unblemished record” of primary endorsements as a barometer of his power. When Lou Dobbs, the pro-Trump media personality, asked Mr. Trump last week if the G.O.P. was still united behind him, he replied, “Well, I think so. Everybody I endorse just about wins.”In North Carolina, Mr. Trump has promoted the Senate candidate he endorsed, Representative Ted Budd, by trying to convince Representative Mark Walker to abandon the primary and run for the House again. Mr. Walker threatens to divide the pro-Trump vote and help a third candidate, former Gov. Pat McCrory, a more traditional Republican.On Thursday, Mr. Walker announced he was staying in the Senate race anyway.Though Mr. Trump’s endorsements have sometimes been haphazard, despite ongoing efforts to formalize the process, few have drawn pushback more swiftly than his backing of Morgan Ortagus, who was an aide to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and was once floated as a possible White House press secretary.Saturday’s rally was in deep-red Montgomery County, Texas. Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMs. Ortagus, with her family in tow, met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago last Monday and discussed a Tennessee House seat for which she is not even an official candidate yet, according to three people familiar with the meeting; by the next evening, Mr. Trump had endorsed her unannounced run.“Trump has this completely wrong,” Candace Owens, a prominent figure in pro-Trump media, wrote on Twitter.Ms. Owens threw her support to Robby Starbuck, a rival candidate with ties to the Trump activist movement. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia quickly endorsed Mr. Starbuck, too, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, typically a staunch Trump ally, promoted one of Mr. Starbuck’s videos.Gavin Wax, an outspoken pro-Trump activist and president of the New York Young Republican Club, who criticized the Ortagus and Abbott endorsements, said the political environment now made it possible to air such grievances. “It’s a lot easier to have these divisions begin to brew when he’s out of office,” Mr. Wax said of Mr. Trump.“He still remains the top dog by a long shot, but who knows,” Mr. Wax said. “It’s one of those things where, a million cuts — it will eventually start to do damage.”J. David Goodman More

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      Republicans just wiped out a Democratic district. Here’s how | The fight to vote

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      Republicans just wiped out a Democratic district. Here’s howThe Tennessee legislature’s splintering of Nashville is just one example of the gerrymandering taking place across the US Hello, and happy Thursday,On Tuesday afternoon, Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat who has been in Congress for more than three decades, announced he was retiring. The timing was not a coincidence.Less than 24 hours earlier, the Tennessee legislature had approved a map with new boundaries for the state’s eight congressional districts. Since 2003, Cooper has represented a district that includes all of Nashville, and it has been reliably Democratic (Joe Biden carried it by 24 points in 2020). But the legislature’s new plan erased his district. Republicans sliced up Nashville into three different districts, attaching a sliver of Democratic voters in each to rural and deeply Republican areas. Donald Trump would have easily won all three of the new districts in 2020.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterCooper was blunt in his assessment of what had happened. Republicans, he said in a statement, had made it impossible for him to win re-election to Congress. Despite his best efforts, he said, he could not stop Republicans from “dismembering Nashville”.The map doesn’t just weaken the voice of Democrats, it also dilutes the influence of Black voters and other voters of color in Nashville. In Cooper’s current district, Black voters make up about a quarter of the voting-age population. They will comprise a much smaller share of the voting age population in the new districts, making it harder for them to make their voices heard.A masterclass in election-rigging: how Republicans ‘dismembered’ a Democratic strongholdRead moreAndrew Witherspoon, my colleague on our visuals team, and I put together an interactive map that shows exactly how Republicans transformed Cooper’s district. It’s one of the clearest examples of how politicians can essentially rig elections in their favor just by moving district lines. It underscores how gerrymandering is a remarkably powerful and efficient method of voter suppression – the influence of certain people’s votes matter less before a single ballot is even cast.Tennessee isn’t the only place this is happening. In Kansas, Republican lawmakers are advancing a plan that would similarly crack Kansas City, making it more difficult for the Democrat Sharice Davids, the first Native American woman elected to Congress, to get re-elected. In North Carolina, Republicans cracked the city of Greensboro in order to dismantle the state’s sixth congressional district, currently represented by a Democrat.Democrats have also shown a willingness to engage in this kind of distortion where they have control of the redistricting process, in places such as Illinois, Maryland and probably New York. Democrats will have complete control over drawing 75 congressional districts, compared with 187 for Republicans.The day before he announced his retirement, I spoke with Cooper about why he thought this was happening and what he thought the consequences would be for Nashville voters. What’s happening now is just “raw politics”, Cooper said.“In two previous redistricting cycles, none of the politicians in the state knew that I existed as a candidate. That made it easier – they weren’t trying to get Jim Cooper. And then in cycles where they did know I existed, it was either too difficult to rearrange the counties, or they were gentler,” he told me. Politico reported recently that after Republicans weren’t as aggressive as they could have been in states such as Texas and Georgia, there is some pressure to be even more aggressive in places like Tennessee.The Nashville constituents who are being sliced up into each of the three districts are likely to have much less importance to their new, Republican representatives, Cooper said. Any input they have, “at most, it will be tokenism”.“This is not a majority-minority community, but it will limit the ability for them to be heard. Because they’ll become essentially a rounding error in much larger districts that are dominated by the surrounding towns,” he said. “The center of gravity will shift.”Also worth watching …
      A federal court told Alabama to redraw its congressional districts after finding Republican lawmakers had discriminated against Black voters. Alabama is appealing the ruling.
      Arizona Republicans are proposing a suite of new voting restrictions after a widely criticized review of the 2020 election results.
      Texas continues to face significant problems after implementing sweeping new voting restrictions ahead of its 1 March primary.
      Ohio Republicans are redrawing state legislative and congressional maps after the state supreme court struck down earlier efforts as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. There are still concerns the new state legislative maps are severely gerrymandered.
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