In addition to his comments about Russia in Ukraine, Trump said something else in Thursday’s CNN presentation that should be called out for its embrace of one of the darkest moments in U.S. history. In response to a question about what the presidential candidates would say to a Black voter disappointed with racial progress in the United States, President Joe Biden pointed out that, while there was still far to go, more Black businesses were started under his administration than at any other time in U.S. history, that black unemployment is at a historic low, and that the administration has relieved student debt, invested in historically Black colleges and universities, and is working to provide for childcare costs, all issues that affect Black Americans. In contrast, Trump said: “As sure as you’re sitting there, the fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border. They're taking Black jobs now and it could be 18. It could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.” Trump was obviously falling back on the point he had prepared to rely on in this election: that immigration is destroying our country. He exaggerated the numbers of incoming migrants and warned that there is worse to come. But what jumped out is his phrase: “They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs.” In U.S. history it has been commonplace for political leaders to try to garner power by warning their voters that some minority group is coming for their jobs. In the 1840s, Know-Nothings in Boston warned native-born voters about Irish immigrants; in 1862 and 1864, Democrats tried to whip up support by warning Irish immigrants that after Republicans fought to end enslavement, Black Americans would move north and take their jobs. In the 1870s, Californian Denis Kearney of the Workingman’s Party drew voters to his standard by warning that Chinese immigrants were taking their jobs and insisted: “The Chinese Must Go!” And those were just the early days. But while they are related, there is a key difference between these racist appeals and the racism that Trump exhibited on Thursday. Politicians have often tried to get votes by warning that outsiders would draw from a pool of jobs that potential voters wanted themselves. Trump’s comments the other night drew on that racism but reached back much further to the idea that there are certain jobs that are “Black” or “Hispanic.” This is not a new idea in the United States. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond told his colleagues in 1858. “That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.” Capital produced by the labor of mudsills would concentrate in the hands of the upper class, who would use it efficiently and intelligently to develop society. Their guidance elevated those weak-minded but strong-muscled people in the mudsill class, who were “happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations.” Southern leaders were smart enough to have designated a different race as their society’s mudsills, Hammond said, but in the North the “whole hireling class of manual laborers and ‘operatives,’ as you call them, are essentially slaves.” This created a political problem for northerners, for the majority of the population made up that lower class. “If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be?” Hammond asked his colleagues who insisted that all people were created equal. “Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided.” The only true way to look at the world was to understand that some people were better than others and had the right and maybe the duty, to rule. “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal’” Hammond wrote, and it was on this theory that some people are better than others that southern enslavers based their proposed new nation. “Our new government is founded…upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth,” Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, told supporters. Not everyone agreed. For his part, rising politician Abraham Lincoln stood on the Declaration of Independence. Months after Hammond’s speech, Lincoln addressed German immigrants in Chicago. Arguments that some races are “inferior,” he said, would “rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and…transform this Government into a government of some other form.” The idea that it is beneficial for some people to be dominated by others, he said, is the argument “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” According to the mudsill theory, he said the following year, “a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be—all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous.” He disagreed. “[T]here is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life.” He went on to tie the mudsill theory to the larger principles of the United States. “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it, where will it stop,” he said. “If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!” To cries of “No, no,” he concluded to cheers: “Let us stick to it then. Let us stand firmly by it.” One hundred and sixty-six years later, Black and Hispanic social media users have answered Trump’s statement about “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” with photos of themselves in highly skilled professional positions. But while they did so with good humor, they were illustrating for the modern world the principle Lincoln articulated: in the United States there should be no such thing as “Black jobs” or “Hispanic jobs.” Such a construction directly contradicts the principles of the Declaration of Independence and ignores the victory of the United States in the Civil War. Anyone who sees the world through such a lens is on the wrong side of history. — Notes: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html You’re currently a free subscriber to Letters from an American. If you need help receiving Letters, changing your email address, or unsubscribing, please visit our Support FAQ. You can also submit a help request directly. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Sunday, June 30, 2024
June 30, 2024
The Week Ahead
Here’s what’s happening in the week ahead: The Supreme Court Still Isn’t Finished Monday is, hopefully, the Court’s last opinion day for this term. We’ll be focused at 10:00 a.m. ET on whether we’ll finally learn the Court’s decision on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity from prosecution. The Court agreed to hear the case last February. Oral argument took place in late April. The case has been lingering ever since then. We don’t know for certain that the opinion will be handed down on Monday, but it is the last day the Court currently has scheduled for issuing opinions. Hopefully, we’re finally there.
If you want to follow along as the Court rules on Monday, you have two choices:
Once they’re finished, the Justices are free to leave on summer vacation.
Steven Bannon Will Finally Have To Report To Prison On June 21, Bannon filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court, a last desperate attempt to avoid serving his four-month prison sentence following a conviction for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena. The court told him no only a week later.
That means Bannon has to report on Monday, or risk having the U.S. Marshal sent out to arrest him. That’s an unlikely scenario. Defendants who can afford it, and presumably Bannon can, prefer to report to the facility where they will serve their sentence rather than turning themself in at a U.S. Marshal’s office to be transported to their designated facility.
CNN reported that Bannon has been designated to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Danbury, a low security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp in Connecticut. The report indicated Bannon would be housed in the low security portion of the prison, but given the short sentence he’s serving, it’s possible he could be sent to the adjacent minimum security camp. The prison camps are the least confining option among the federal prisons. They have dormitory-style housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing. Inmates are focused on work and other rehabilitation programs. Once he arrives, Bannon will be interviewed and screened by case management staff and by medical and mental health professionals. He’ll be assigned to his orientation program. The theory at the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is that the plans for an inmate to reenter the community begin on the first day of incarceration, so he will learn about the institution and the plan to prepare him to return home. Bannon will be issued clothing, hygiene items, and bedding. He can purchase other things like items for personal care, shoes, and some food, from the commissary. You can peruse the list of available items at FCI Danbury on the prison’s commissary list.
Last June, Bannon told Time Magazine that insofar as the prospect of serving his prison sentence went, “I don’t fear this at all … I’m a political prisoner.” But it turns out he fought tooth and nail to avoid going to prison. Now, time’s up, and Bannon won’t be released from prison until just a few days before the election in November. The School Police Chief In Uvalde, Texas, Is Being Prosecuted Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the former chief of the school police force in Uvalde has been charged by a Texas grand jury. His team waited 77 minutes to confront the active shooter in the 2022 mass killing of school children at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead. Arredondo is currently out on bail. He is charged under state law with 10 felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child, one for each of the 10 children who survived the attack. Former school officer Adrian Gonzales, who was one of the first officers to enter the building after the shooting started, was also indicted. He faces 29 charges of abandoning his training and failing to confront the shooter. It is unclear if more officers will be charged. It’s likely we’ll learn more in the weeks ahead, including whether these two are on track to plead guilty. If not, the community faces the prospect of reliving the events of the shooting when the case goes to trial. Survivors may have to testify if that takes place. The charges follow the January report issued by the Justice Department that concluded local police commanders and state law enforcement were at fault for not immediately entering the classroom and killing the gunman, which would have saved lives. A jury acquitted the school resource officer who remained outside of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 while a shooter killed 17 people, 14 of them students. That officer was charged with similar crimes under Florida law, seven counts of felony child neglect and three counts of culpable negligence. In the Florida case, there was testimony from students and others that the situation was confusing and it wasn’t entirely clear where shots were coming from, although the prosecution vigorously disputed those accounts. In the Uvalde case, the Justice Department report and relative unanimity of those involved that officers remained outside for over an hour while a mass shooter was stalking students may have led authorities to believe that this prosecution is more likely to succeed. Where Are You On Project 2025? Heading into Independence Day, we are reminded of the importance of protecting the Republic. That means continuing to read Project 2025 and sharing information about it with others. A surprising number of people are still unaware of Project 2025 and of the plan to revamp the federal government so as to remove checks that would prevent Trump from implementing an extremist, far-right agenda if he becomes president again.
The explicit goal of Project 2025 is to remake America into a conservative nation by focusing on “broad fronts that will decide America’s future.” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts identified those fronts as:
Lest folks be tempted to think there will be time to sort this out if Trump is reelected, the Project 2025 website makes clear that is not the case. One of the key “pillars” of the project is a plan to implement it in the first 180 days of the administration; in other words, the battle plan is ready to go. The website says, “The time is short, and conservatives need a plan. The project will create a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.” The Project 2025 website emphasizes that implementation of the Project begins on day one, “Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.” It also touts a “Presidential Administration Academy,” whose mission is “Preparing Political Appointees to be Ready on Day One.” The claim on the website that Project 2025 is about “Building now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training” isn’t empty political rhetoric. The plan is detailed and organized, down to sign-ups for people interested in working in the new administration. The only way to make sure Project 2025 doesn’t become the new American reality is to prevent Trump from taking office again. That means making sure as many American voters as possible are aware of it so they can understand what is at stake in this election. We can help to make that happen. Special thanks to those of you whose paid subscriptions help me devote the necessary time and resources to putting the newsletter together in crazy weeks like the ones we’ve been experiencing lately. I’m deeply appreciative. But everyone is welcome here, and except for our “Five Questions” segments, the newsletter remains available to paid and unpaid subscribers alike. We’re in this together, Joyce You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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