Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black Republicans are finding out the hard way what the rest of the party thinks of Black folk, and they're not liking the answer they are getting.

 

Rep. John James (R-Mich.) criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday for his response to Republican lawmakers who called him out on his state’s new Black history education standards Friday.

“@RonDeSantis, #1: slavery was not CTE!” James posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Nothing about that 400 years of evil was a ‘net benefit’ to my ancestors. #2: there are only five black Republicans in Congress and you’re attacking two of them.”

Both Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have criticized the new standards, which indicate that American slavery helped enslaved people develop “skills” that benefited them, in the past few days.

Scott rebuked the language during a campaign stop in Iowa on Thursday, claiming “there is no silver lining in slavery.”

“Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives,” he said. “It was just devastating.”

DeSantis responded to the lawmakers by saying they were falling in line with Vice President Kamala Harris, who called the guidelines “propaganda.”

“They dare to push propaganda to our children,” Harris said earlier this week in Jacksonville, Fla. “Adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother.”

James pleaded with DeSantis to change course.

“My brother in Christ… if you find yourself in a deep hole put the shovel down,” he wrote. “You are now so far from the Party of Lincoln that your Ed. board is re-writing history and you’re personally attacking conservatives like [Scott] and [Donalds] on the topic of slavery.”

“You’ve gone too far. Stop,” he added.

 

That was Friday. Today,  it was former GOP Rep. Will Hurd who found out.

A dozen of the Republican White House contenders who want to keep former President Donald Trump from winning the 2024 presidential nomination joined him here Friday for a dinner with hundreds of influential activists in the state that holds the first caucuses.

But as has been the case for months in a race in which Trump polls as the comfortable front-runner, few dared to take even an indirect shot at him. And the one who delivered the night’s most slashing attack, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, was booed as he left the stage.

“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again,” Hurd said, invoking Trump's slogan before bringing up the legal troubles cascading around him, including a superseding indictment approved by a grand jury this week. “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.”

The loud jeers that rang out inside the Iowa Events Center ballroom at the state party's Lincoln Dinner were at once illustrative of the power and loyalty Trump still commands and the challenges faced by those trying to beat him.

“Listen, I know the truth,” Hurd said, talking over the crowd as he neared the 10-minute time limit given to all candidates. “The truth is hard. But if we elect Donald Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House and America can’t handle that.”

 

Black Republicans, "My brothers and sisters in Christ", as it were, I have a message for you.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

But not to Republicans. You will never be more than a second-class citizen in the GOP. They want that for the rest of us Black folk, including you. The question is, will you help them destroy the Black community for your own gain?

Not that I expect many Black Republicans to be ZVTS readers, but you still have a choice.

Supreme Crooks, Cads, And Creeps, Con't

Donald Trump isn't the only right-wing fascist who believes he is above the law, and the difference is Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is already in power, and will be for the rest of his life.

 

Justice Samuel Alito said Congress has “no authority” to regulate the Supreme Court in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section published Friday, pushing back against Democrats’ attempt to mandate stronger ethics rules.

Alito, one of the high court’s leading conservatives, is just one of multiple justices who have come under recent scrutiny for ethics controversies that have fueled the renewed push.

“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito told the Journal. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

Although the Constitution enables Congress to structure the lower federal courts, it explicitly vests judicial power within a singular Supreme Court.

Alito and some legal observers argue that means Congress can’t prescribe certain regulations for the high court without running afoul of separation of powers issues.

Chief Justice John Roberts has also questioned Congress’s ability to act, but not as definitive as Alito’s new remarks. Many court watchers who disagree with the premise believe that Roberts’ questioning has given fodder to Republican objections.

“I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t think I should say,” Alito told the paper. “But I think it is something we have all thought about.”

 

Even if the current effort by Democrats in the Senate to regulate SCOTUS ethics, Alito is essentially warning that he won't be the only justice who simply deems any legislation to be unconstitutional. THe law doesn't apply to him because he's the one who says whether it applies or not.

Impeachment and removal of Alito and Thomas can't happen quickly enough, but we all know it never will.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump's support for 2024 might be going down, but he's still the clear majority favorite as the GOP candidate.

 

The pile-on effect of mounting legal charges against former President Trump may be starting to take a toll, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they believe Trump has done "nothing wrong" dropped 9 points in the last month, from 50% to 41%.

Trump also dropped 6 points in support with that same group when asked whether they were more likely to support Trump or another candidate, if he continues to run for president.

Still, a solid majority — 58% — continue to say they would support Trump as their standard-bearer, so more polling and time would be necessary to see if this is a trend, if it continues and if it has a real effect on his chances in the GOP primary. He continues to lead the field by wide margins.

At the same time, though, Trump has become increasingly toxic with the political middle, and this survey bears that out. A slim majority — 51% — of respondents overall said they think Trump did something illegal, including 52% of independents.

The findings come as Trump is likely set to face yet another indictment, his third, for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and potentially a fourth in a Georgia election interference case.

 

The crosstabs show Trump retains majority support among Republican voters, although he's finally losing among Republican-leaning independents. But until that group can coalesce around a single non-Trump candidate, nothing's going to happen. Trump will easily win every primary.

 

This isn't a Bernie vs. Biden moment like in 2020, either. Trump has 20-30 point leads or more in every major primary state, and there's no reason to believe things will be different in SC or Arizona vs. Iowa and New Hampshire, not for the GOP outlook anyway.

 

No, Republican voters are going to put an indicted criminal on the ticket, and if rule of law doesn't matter to them, well, rule of law won't matter when they go after the rest of us, either. The law will offer no protection, and it will mean whatever Trump and his voters say it means.

 

Don't think a conviction will make a difference with tens of millions of Americans.