Free Republic

On Aug. 2, I watched as a majority of voters in the county where I grew up (Seward County) in rural Kansas — a county that went for Trump by 29 points in 2020 — voted against the proposed constitutional amendment that would allow for an abortion ban. Statewide, voters rejected the ban by a stunning double-digit margin. I am part of a new generation of Latina leaders in Democratic politics, and there’s buzz in progressive circles about that vote in Kansas. It boosted optimism for the 2022 election, with good reason — if we understand the right lessons.

Historian and archeologist Kelley Fanto Deetz arrived to work at Virginia’s Executive Mansion last month to find her office had been emptied. Items in a historic kitchen in the building’s annex, which had been reimagined to tell the stories of enslaved workers to visitors, had been shoved aside, she said. A planned educational room for schoolchildren was empty except for a TV, leading Deetz to conclude it had been reconverted into a family room for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Deetz is unsure whether she still has a job as the mansion’s director of historic interpretation and education. Deetz’s work updating...

USA Today is raising eyebrows for a report highlighting the "candidates of color" who made history in various election races on Tuesday but left out two of the night's biggest winners. Virginia rocked the political world with Glenn Youngkin leading the Republican ticket to victory in the commonwealth that President Biden won by ten points last year. The two other big winners were Winsome Sears, who will become Virginia's first woman of color lieutenant governor, and Jason Miyares, who will be the state's first Hispanic attorney general. However, neither of them was mentioned in USA Today's roundup of the diverse...

There is plenty of blame to go around for Terry McAuliffe’s loss to Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday night in the race for governor of Virginia—structural electoral factors, the seemingly endless legislative debacle that passes for the White House’s effort to enact its domestic agenda, and McAuliffe’s aimless and generally baffling campaign. Thus far, one person who deserves his fair share of blame has managed to avoid any of the recriminations—Attorney General Merrick Garland. On key issues that appear to have been central to the result on Tuesday, the Department of Justice in recent months has been tone-deaf or listless. The...

'We'll have to see what the Howard students thought,' Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul shouted from an elevator Wednesday afternoon, answering MailOnline's question about whether his foray into winning the hearts and minds of black youths was successful. Paul, a Republican darling who is already laying the groundwork for a 2016 presidential run with a coming appearance in New Hampshire, had just wrapped up a two-hour appearance at the Howard University School of Business.

Are you sick and tired of being called a racist because you don't agree with Barack Obama's policies? If you are, you shouldn't read any further, for Cynthia Tucker this weekend claimed the voter anger that threatens the Democrat majorities in the House and the Senate is all a function of racism.

The Democratic National Committee released a video clip Monday of the president rousing his troops with what Politico, the Capitol Hill political paper, calls with artful euphemism, "unusual demographic frankness." The auguries for November do not look good, the president concedes, and he wants "young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again." Many of these "surge" voters cast their first ballots in 2008 and then ignored pleas to turn out for gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia (or that famous Senate race in Massachusetts) and the Democrats took a licking....

Note: Old archived photo included. PHOTO CAPTION: "Early KKK rally in Florida. Photo courtesy of the National Archives." Note: The following text is a quote: THE FBI VERSUS THE KLAN Part 1: Let the Investigations Begin 02/26/10 Early KKK rally in Florida. Photo courtesy of the National Archives. Ninety-five years ago this month—in February 1915—the D.W. Griffith movie later titled The Birth of a Nation premiered in a Los Angeles theater. Though considered progressive in its technique and style, the film had a decidedly backwards plot that glorified a short-lived, post-Civil War white supremacist group called the Ku Klux Klan....

Black Children Are An Endangered Species  (Read WP posts from John Hawkins) | (Read MT posts from John Hawkins) In 1939 (Margaret) Sanger created the previously mentioned "Negro Project," which aimed to get blacks to adopt birth control. Through the Birth Control Federation, she hired black ministers (including the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr.), doctors, and other leaders to help pare down the supposedly surplus black population. The project's racist intent is beyond doubt. "The mass of significant Negroes," read the project's report, "still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes....in that portion of the...

In 1898, one of the most shameful episodes in American political history occurred. Today called a coup d'etat, it is the only known case in the United States in which a municipal government was overthrown by violence. On May 31, 2006, the state of North Carolina issued a report on this event, which took place in the city of Wilmington. The story begins in the aftermath of the Civil War. During Reconstruction, the federal government guaranteed voting rights for blacks in the South, most of whom became Republicans. This led to the election of many blacks and Republicans to federal...

Republicans have a bad rep when it comes to racism — from Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott’s endorsement of racist former Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., to President George W. Bush’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Now conservative commentator William Bennett is adding fuel to the fire with his comments that aborting black babies will make the crime rate go down. Racism continues to be a divisive topic in America — one Republicans would like to ignore. Bennett, a former U.S. education secretary and national drug policy director under the Reagan administration, said on his nationally syndicated morning radio show Sept. 28,...

It's time to attack the Racism Industry

<p>Lawyer Mark Patrick Flaherty easily defeated County Council President James Simms and four other candidates for Allegheny County controller yesterday as the Democratic Party organization voted on its choices for support in the looming primary campaign.</p> <p>While the victory margin for Flaherty, the son of a former county commissioner and appellate court judge, was decisive, that contest produced the sharpest note of controversy in daylong balloting that determined the party's slate for countywide offices, judgeships and seats on Pittsburgh City Council and Allegheny County Council.</p>