At the time, the state senator falsely claimed that an “African American Confederate soldier” had designed the flag. “I can only imagine how proud he was that his art, his flag design was chosen to represent our State and now we want to strip him of his pride, his hard work. I’m sure he put a lot of thought into this design,” Chism wrote in a June 2020 Facebook post.
In fact, a white supremacist lawmaker, Sen. Edward N. Scudder of Issaquena County, designed the 1894 flag. In a 1924 speech to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, his daughter Fayssoux Scudder Corneil explained his motives for designing the flag: “My father loved the memory of the valor and courage of those brave men who wore the gray … and has always taken keen interest in the reunions where he could meet and mingle with those of the Lost Cause. He told me that it was a simple matter for him to design the flag because he wanted to perpetuate in a legal and lasting way that dear battle flag under which so many of our people had so gloriously fought.”
Mississippi entered the Civil War in an effort to protect the institution of slavery, as the the state’s Declaration of Secession explains. Chism’s county, Union County, was formed in 1870—the same year Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.
The Nobles of Iowa moved to blue Minnesota. The Huckinses of Oregon moved to red Missouri. Their separate journeys, five weeks apart, illustrate the fracturing of America.
Mr. Huckins and his wife, Ginger, were leaving Portland, Ore., one of the most progressive cities in the United States. They said Portland’s tolerance of homeless encampments, along with the open use of hard drugs and rising crime, had filled them with despair. So they headed 2,000 miles east, to deep-red rural Missouri.
Driving around their new hometown in June, about an hour outside St. Louis, they admired the old Victorians and a tractor defying the minimum speed limit on a state road.
“One thing I do like about Missouri, there’s lots of American flags,” Mr. Huckins said as he steered around a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes flapped crisply on a pole. “In Portland, the American flag was offensive.”
One day earlier, in a neighboring state, another couple making a politically motivated move had a different flag on display — a Pride flag on a T-shirt.
Jennie and Jeff Noble were packing their possessions into a 26-foot U-Haul truck in suburban Iowa. Ms. Noble, 37, who was wearing the Pride T-shirt, and her husband were leaving Iowa for Minnesota.
Their only child, Julien, came out as transgender at age 11. Now 16, Julien uses prescription testosterone. After Iowa banned gender-affirming medical care for minors, criminalizing their son’s treatments, the Nobles — lifelong Iowans — concluded they had to get out.
John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, testified on Monday that Google’s power in online search was so ubiquitous that even his company found it difficult to compete on the internet, becoming the government’s highest-profile witness in its landmark antitrust trial against the search giant.
In more than three hours of testimony in federal court in Washington, Mr. Nadella was often direct and sometimes combative as he laid out how Microsoft could not overcome Google’s use of multibillion-dollar deals to be the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers.
The internet was really the “Google web,” Mr. Nadella told the packed courtroom, adding that Google could now use its advantage and scale to build tools to dominate the emerging artificial intelligence industry.
The image of the chief executive of a leading tech rival — Microsoft is one of the world’s biggest public companies, valued at $2.4 trillion — saying it could not easily fight Google was striking. Mr. Nadella’s testimony underscored how entrenched Google has become in online search as the government seeks to prove that the company broke monopoly laws by striking anticompetitive deals to crush rivals.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a major test of his leadership in the days ahead, after one of his loudest Republican critics in the House reiterated a promise to try to remove him from his post.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a momentous challenge to his leadership after one of his most outspoken Republican critics repeated a threat on Monday to try to remove him as retribution for working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.
Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said he planned to move ahead with a resolution to oust Mr. McCarthy, which would prompt a snap vote on whether to remove him as speaker. In an appeal from the House floor, Mr. Gaetz accused the speaker of partnering with President Biden to advance Democratic policies.
“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Mr. Gaetz said. He added later that Mr. McCarthy had allowed Mr. Biden to take his “lunch money in every negotiation.”
Mr. Gaetz cited Mr. McCarthy’s reliance on Democratic votes to push through the funding bill — a move that was necessary to avert a shutdown because Mr. Gaetz and 20 of his colleagues had opposed a temporary spending bill that was written by Republicans.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced on Sunday night that he has chosen Laphonza Butler, the president of Emily’s List and a former labor leader, to fill the vacancy left in the Senate by the death of Dianne Feinstein.
Ms. Butler, 44, has been a fixture in California politics for nearly 15 years as a former leader of the state’s largest labor union and an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2021, she became the first Black woman to take the helm at Emily’s List, the fund-raising powerhouse dedicated to electing female candidates and supporters of reproductive rights.
Senator Feinstein died at 90 on Thursday in Washington, D.C., and her body was flown over the weekend back to San Francisco, where a memorial service has been scheduled for this Thursday.
“As we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for — reproductive freedom, equal protection and safety from gun violence — have never been under greater assault,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “Laphonza will carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings and fight for all Californians in Washington, D.C.”
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain took a swipe at former President Trump, saying he serves a “billionaire class,” a day ahead of Trump’s visit to Detroit, where he wi…
“All you have to do is look at his track record,” Fain said. “His track record speaks for itself. In 2008, during the Great Recession, he blamed UAW members, he blamed our contracts for everything that was wrong with these companies — that’s a complete lie.”
Fain pointed to Trump’s discussion during his 2016 presidential campaign to move jobs in the Midwest to the South, which he said would “make people beg for their jobs back at lower wages.”
“And the ultimate show of…how much he cares about our workers was in 2019 when he was the president of the United States,” Fain said. ‘Where was he then? Our workers at GM [General Motors] were on strike for 60 days, for two months. They were out there on the picket lines, I didn’t see him hold a rally. I didn’t see him stand up at the picket line.”
Meanwhile, President Biden joined the picket line with union autoworkers on Tuesday, becoming the first sitting president to do so. The move was seen by some as a likely offense against Trump, who is likely to be his 2024 presidential opponent.
The president spoke to a group at a General Motors facility in Belleville, Mich., alongside Fain, who has yet to endorse Biden’s reelection bid, citing concerns over the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles (EVs), which put autoworkers’ jobs at risk.
If you care about labor rights, you are voting for Biden and the Democratic Party next year. Anything less is surrendering our country to the billionaire class.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency bid from Alabama, setting the stage for a new congressional map likely to include a second Black majority district to account for the state’s 27% Black population....
This is great news! For anyone reading, but especially those in Alabama, make sure to join one of your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus to help organize change at the local level and better influence the direction the Democratic Party takes locally and nationally!
Early voting has begun in Virginia's costly, high-stakes and closely watched legislative elections after a week in which elected officials and candidates rallied their supporters across the state.
A GOP trifecta would clear the way for Youngkin to move swiftly on what he calls his “commonsense” conservative priorities — boosting pay and funding for law enforcement, protecting parental rights in education, overhauling the mental health system, and enacting additional tax cuts and greater restrictions on abortion.
While he has notched some successes on taxes and education through bipartisan support during his first two legislative sessions, many of his priorities have been blocked — with great fanfare — by the Democratic majority in the Senate, which prides itself on being a “brick wall” against Republicans’ agenda.
Democrats, who held news conferences around the state this week, warned that total Republican control would lead to the repeal of legislation enacted in 2020 and 2021 while they ran the state government, including measures that mandated a transition to cleaner cars and electric generation, greatly expanded voting access, and added restrictions to firearms purchases and ownership.
Many Democratic candidates are also making abortion rights a top campaign issue, arguing that Youngkin’s proposed ban on abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother, would endanger women’s health and infringe on their bodily autonomy. Virginia is the only state in the South that has not enacted new restrictions since Roe v. Wade fell.
Virginians, make sure to vote Democratic today if you haven’t already and join your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus to stay organized both during this election and afterwards.
Donald Trump went over the edge over the weekend and began calling for his detractors to be prosecuted or even put to death.
“They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason,’” he wrote on Truth Social Sunday night.
“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States … the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events,” he said. “They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!”
Trump’s threat to the news media was actually his second attempt to menace detractors this past weekend alone. On Friday, he slammed Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggesting that perhaps he also committed treason.
“This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States,” Trump said on Truth Social. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Donald Trump is a danger to society. If you haven’t already, join your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus and organize locally to elect Democrats up and down the ballot in 2024.
For decades, Republicans have had a far more robust network of conservative policy groups to push their legislative agenda. Now the States Project is aiming to fill that void on the left.
Last year, Democrats flipped one or more chambers in several states, including Michigan and Minnesota, and they have acted quickly, passing measures to tighten gun laws, set limits on carbon emissions, increase education funding and protect abortion access.
The States Project has had a central role. The group, founded six years ago by Adam Pritzker, a businessman and major Democratic donor, and Daniel Squadron, a former New York legislator, has sought to focus its ample resources and attention exclusively on state legislators, trying to fill the void on the left.
“Going back to 1972, the right had seen the extent to which state legislatures were a place that they could impose their worldview,” Mr. Squadron said, noting that Heritage and ALEC were both founded the next year. “The fact that there’s no glamour, and you’re not going to get a presidential candidate sitting on your living room couch by doing this work, the fact that you’re not going to be the top rung of the Beltway, didn’t matter to them structurally, because the return was just too good.”
Germany asks forgiveness for Tanzania colonial crimes (www.bbc.co.uk)
German forces killed almost 300,000 people during the Maji Maji rebellion in the early 1900s.
[News] The City of Orlando plans to purchase Pulse nightclub site & finally turn it into a memorial (www.lgbtqnation.com)
There have been several failed attempts to turn the site of the massacre into a space that honors the 49 people who were killed...
[News] Senator Calls For Return of Old Mississippi Flag: ‘Our People Died Under That Flag’ (www.mississippifreepress.org)
Mississippi Sen. Kathy Chism, R-New Albany, said the Legislature should not have retired the Confederate-themed state flag.
[Analysis] Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out. (www.nytimes.com)
The Nobles of Iowa moved to blue Minnesota. The Huckinses of Oregon moved to red Missouri. Their separate journeys, five weeks apart, illustrate the fracturing of America.
[News] John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump | CNN Politics (www.cnn.com)
John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.
Microsoft C.E.O. Testifies That Google’s Power in Search Is Ubiquitous (www.nytimes.com)
Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, is the government’s biggest-name witness in its landmark antitrust case against Google.
[Analysis] McCarthy’s Speakership Is in Jeopardy as Gaetz Renews Threat to Oust Him (www.nytimes.com)
Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a major test of his leadership in the days ahead, after one of his loudest Republican critics in the House reiterated a promise to try to remove him from his post.
[News] Newsom Names Emily’s List President as Feinstein Successor (www.nytimes.com)
Laphonza Butler will fill the Senate vacancy left by the death of Dianne Feinstein, the governor announced Sunday.
[News] UAW boss says Trump works for ‘billionaire class’ ahead of visit (thehill.com)
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain took a swipe at former President Trump, saying he serves a “billionaire class,” a day ahead of Trump’s visit to Detroit, where he wi…
[News] Supreme Court rejects Alabama's defiance in voting case (www.npr.org)
In June, the court ruled that Alabama's Republican-drawn congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act.
Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s attempt to avoid creating a second Black majority congressional district (www.cnn.com)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency bid from Alabama, setting the stage for a new congressional map likely to include a second Black majority district to account for the state’s 27% Black population....
[Analysis] Both parties rally supporters as early voting begins in Virginia's closely watched legislative elections (www.pbs.org)
Early voting has begun in Virginia's costly, high-stakes and closely watched legislative elections after a week in which elected officials and candidates rallied their supporters across the state.
[Opinion] Trump Goes Full Deranged, Suggests Charging People He Doesn’t Like With Treason (newrepublic.com)
This is not a joke. Donald Trump is stating very plainly what he would do if reelected.
[Analysis] How a Little-Known Group Helped Resurgent Democrats Wield Power (www.nytimes.com)
For decades, Republicans have had a far more robust network of conservative policy groups to push their legislative agenda. Now the States Project is aiming to fill that void on the left.