Louisiana v. Callais et al. was the last nail in the all-but-hammered-shut coffin of the “Party of Lincoln and Liberty.”
Six rightwing justices recently neutered the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Going on 13 years ago, five rightwing justices mortally wounded the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder. Republican presidents nominated every one of them.
For going on half a century, the GOP has been devolving into what Democrats were in Lincoln’s day and many decades thereafter — the white supremacist party. “Beginning in the Reagan Administration, when white backlash met genuine political power in a radicalized Republican party, the achievements of the civil rights movement were whittled away,” wrote Charles P. Pierce in Esquire. “Now, the Voting Rights Act is a dead letter, and it is open season for gerrymanders.”
Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where in 1964, Ku Klux Klan members murdered and buried the bodies of three civil rights workers. In his stump speech, Reagan thrilled the white crowd when he said he was for “states’ rights.” They recognized the old Southern code words for slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and Black voter suppression.
According to the Zinn Education Project online, the candidate “did not acknowledge the murders, which had been investigated by the FBI and were just one instance of violent assaults on local Black civil rights advocates and white allies in recent history.”
Trump is the most overtly racist president since white supremacist Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who sanctioned the segregation of federal workers and showed Birth of a Nation in the White House. When Trump, who invites comparisons to George Wallace, promised to “Make America Great Again,” he meant for whites to hear “Make America White Again.” His MAGA movement is overwhelmingly white and deeply rooted in Dixie.
Callais echoes Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in which another white supremacist Supreme Court majority upheld segregation. Plessy opened the door for Jim Crow laws that created an American apartheid in the old Confederacy, which had been founded on slavery and white supremacy. Black voter suppression went hand-in-hand with segregation.
Callais prompted Republican-majority Southern legislatures — six so far — to follow in the footsteps of the old Southern Democrats by quickly moving to eliminate Black-majority Congressional districts, most of them represented by Black Democrats. The Jim Crow Dems would be giddy at what’s become of the “Black Republican Party” they despised.
On the other hand, Callais has left Democrats and their allies scrambling to figure out ways to overcome the death knell for the VRA. They’re mulling term-limiting justices or expanding the court to counter its Jim Crow majority. Either proposal would require a Democratic president and a Democratic-majority House and Senate.
Even if the predicted Blue Tsunami sweeps away the GOP’s House majority come November, it probably won’t produce a filibuster-proof Senate. Even if it did, Trump would veto any legislation aimed at restoring the Voting Rights Act.
But in the here-and-now, Democrats can “STAND UP SPEAK UP SHOW UP,” the challenge printed on the back of the bright red tee-shirt United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain wore when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention going on two years ago: (The front of his shirt said, “TRUMP IS A SCAB VOTE HARRIS.”)
Stand up, speak out, and show up at the next protest against Trumpian bigotry, greed, and militarism where you live. Protests are usually announced well in advance in local papers, on social media and online.
If you’re not already a member, join your local branch of Indivisible (which is Four Rivers Indivisible and Murray Indivisible in my neck of the far western Kentucky woods).
My native Jackson Purchase is Trump territory. Nonetheless, since the start of 2025, Four Rivers has sponsored 22 rallies in Paducah, including one on May Day, according to co-leader Karla Johnston.
Going to rallies, especially in Republican Red regions, is great. But it’s most important to stand up, speak up, and show up at the polls on Nov. 3.
Let your ballot speak for you. Vote against every incumbent Republican and Republican office seeker in Washington, Frankfort, county courthouses and city halls, including Republicans who profess to be non-MAGA. I’ve heard a lot of them call themselves “Reagan Republicans.” Reagan was the proto-Trump.
This is Code Red. Defcon 1. Vote like the future of our republic is at stake in this our 250th birthday year. Because it is.
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