“Faggot,” “Nigger,” “Baby-Killer,” “Boo!” Welcome To The New GOP.
Welcome to the New GOP, and to the New America. It’s not your father’s GOP, it’s not your father’s America. It’s your grandfather’s.
Let’s take a quick walk through American history. Not the American history that will be taught in Texas’ schools, and many other schools in the U.S., now that Texas has removed Thomas Jefferson from its history books, and replaced him with a religious leader. Not the American history that includes core American values, like separation of church and state — because in Texas, that will no longer be taught.
This American history does include, however, Strom Thurmond. You remember Senator Thurmond, and his protege, Trent Lott? Trent Lott (R-MS) was forced to resign his Senate Majority Leadership post in 2002 after making this racist comment at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday:
“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.â€
“All these problems,” of course, means “all these problems” with African-Americans. Thurmond was a Dixicrat, and ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform. That’s what “all these problems” meant. And today, “all these problems” with African-Americans includes Barack Obama, America’s first black president. It’s driving some folks crazy.
Today we have a new breed espousing old, bigoted beliefs. Under the guise of the health care reform debates, the past year of town halls and tea parties empowered them. They were there all along, but had the good sense to stay quiet. But, thanks to Michelle Malkin, Michele Bachmann, Fox News, and the Internet, the Tea Party — the latest incarnation of the GOP — has brought them all out of the closet. Time was, it was OK to quietly call someone a “nigger,” or a “faggot.” Then, America, for a time, grew a bit more mature, and those bigots had to segregate themselves and their beliefs. But those days, it seems, are over.
Today, it seems, it’s OK to yell, “nigger” at members of the Congressional Black Caucus, if you’re a Tea Partier who was just riled up and stirred up by the Republican Leadership (even when doing so is “kind of fun,”) as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) experienced this weekend. It’s OK to spit on a black member of Congress, as Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) experienced this weekend. And it’s OK to be called a “faggot,” as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) experienced this weekend.
Those were attacks by a (mostly) faceless mob. That’s what the Tea Party essentially is — a mob. In fact, they are proud of that. On Twitter, they often sign their most threatening tweets with the hashtag #iamthemob — “I am the mob,” as if that’s a good thing. (The man who spat at Congressman Cleaver was arrested but the Congressman refused to press charges.)
But we’ve also seen equally offensive behavior from members of Congress. Recently, at the President’s address to a joint session of Congress on the health care legislation, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted at the president those now infamous words,”You lie!” And again this weekend another verbal assault within Congress. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) shouted at Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MO) “Baby Killer!”
Yes, Baby Killer.
The following day he admitted it, but claimed he was referring to the health care bill, not the Representative. But no one in the GOP admitted to the booing — massive booing — just minutes earlier when President Obama’s name was mentioned on the House floor. Bigotry, to the GOP and the Tea Party is acceptable when they all do it. Or when they can’t get caught.
Some, like The Nation’s Melissa Harris-Lacewell, go back a little bit further, and suggest this is not your father’s or your grandfather’s GOP, but, perhaps your great grandfather’s GOP.
Commentators and observers need to move their historical lens back a little further. The relevant comparison here is not the mid-20th century civil rights movement. The better analogy is the mid-19th century period of Reconstruction. From the end of the Civil War in 1865 until the unholy Hayes-Tilden compromise of 1877, black Americans enjoyed a brief experiment with full citizenship and political power sharing.
During this decade black men voted, held office and organized as laborers and farmers. It was a fragile political equality made possible only by the determined and powerful presence of the federal government. Then in 1877 the federal government abdicated its responsibilities to new black citizens and withdrew from the South. When it did so it allowed local governments and racial terrorist organizations like the KKK to have the monopoly on violence, force and coercion in the South for nearly 100 years.
As I watch the rising tide of racial anxiety and secessionist sentiment I am not so much reminded of the Bloody Sunday protests as I am reminded of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of Nation. This 1915 film depicts the racist imagination currently at work in our nation as a black president first appoints a Latina Supreme Court Justice and then works with a woman Speaker of the House to pass sweeping national legislation. This bigotry assumes no such government could possibly be legitimate and therefore frames resistance against this government as a patriotic responsibility.
There are historic lessons to be learned. But they are the lessons of the 19th century not the 20th. We must now guard against the end of our new Reconstruction and the descent of a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism.
The New York Times’ Bob Herbert, in “An Absence of Class,” today adds,
It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.
For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.
This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.
The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.
Today, as I write this, I am watching Barack Obama, our nation’s first black President, sign historic health reform legislation into law. Yesterday, David Frum acknowledged that Jim DeMint’s cry of “Waterloo!” backfired and became a self-imposed sentence.
Yet, on Frum’s own site, in “Tea Party Racists Steal the Spotlight,” Noah Kristula-Green misses the wider slice of past and present. Discussing Congresswoman Maxine Waters being booed at a healthcare rally Sunday, he writes, “Whether the fact they are African-American makes the booing easier is hard to know, people at the rally booed anyone who supported the bill irrespective of their skin color.” It’s not hard to know. Perhaps, just hard to accept. He continues, “The main goal of the rally was not to target representatives based on their skin color or sexual orientation, it was to get vulnerable and targeted House members to change their votes.” I’d have to call that hard to accept. Kristula-Green then writes, “Several members of media have chosen to focus in on the racism and homophobia of the Tea Party.” Because, as Keith Olbermann, in “GOP Self-Destruction Imminent,” commented just last night, it is at their very core.
But the tide has turned. As President Obama just uttered, “All the overheated rhetoric of reform will confront the reality of reform.” The Democrats, the liberals, the progressives, as a whole have, literally overnight, grown a backbone. And I see everywhere a new sense of pride, and a new sense that the Republican stranglehold on America has slipped even more. Decent Americans, to paraphrase Bob Herbert, all of a sudden, ARE rising up against this kind of garbage. Many ignorant and mis-informed Americans are about to realize the bigots and bigotry that created the Tea Party and today’s GOP are just plain wrong and immoral. They will move away from these relics. Some already have.
Our job today is to keep fighting the good fight, to keep the truth in front of us, and realize that America is too great to go down in flames of hate and bigotry. Let’s use today’s success to spur momentum for more: repeal of DADT and DOMA, enactment of ENDA, and equality for all.
For an extensive report on the latest bigotry we saw this weekend, visit The Joshua Blog.
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Just hours after President Donald Trump declared in a newly published interview that he believes Pete Hegseth is “gonna get it together” and described his embattled Defense Secretary’s job as “safe,” the U.S. Navy accidentally lost a $60 million fighter jet when it fell into the Red Sea.
“A US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet has been ‘lost’ at sea after it fell overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier while it was being towed on board, the Navy said in a statement on Monday,” according to CNN. Reports also indicate that “the Truman made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire, which contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard.”
The jet is said to have sunk.
In their interview, The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker told Trump, “You’re a big supporter of Pete Hegseth’s, but he’s fired three top advisers in recent weeks, he rotated out his chief of staff, he installed a makeup studio at the Pentagon, he put attack plans in two different Signal chats, including one with his wife and personal attorney. Have you had a talk with him about getting things together?”
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“Yeah, I have,” the Commander-in-Chief replied.
Asked, “What did you say?” Trump replied: “Pete’s gone through a hard time. I think he’s gonna get it together. I think he’s a smart guy. He is a talented guy. He’s got a lot of energy. He’s been beat up by this, very much so. But I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.”
And when asked if, “for now, you think Hegseth stays?” Trump replied: “Yeah, he’s safe.”
Critics were quick to weigh in.
“This is why I said @petehegseth’s rank incompetence needs closer scrutiny here,” wrote national security and civil liberties journalist Marcy Wheeler. “He keeps claiming his half-a—- campaign against the Houthis is having success. But s— like this keeps happening, planes dropping off aircraft carriers.”
“These are the sailors Whiskey Pete put at risk with his reckless treatment of classified information,” Wheeler added.
“Another win for this super competent national security team,” mocked U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT). “I thought our strikes in Yemen were ‘restoring deterrence’.”
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Democratic political strategist Chris D. Jackson adds, “This is what happens when Trump and Pete Hegseth treated military leadership like a frat house. Unqualified leadership has real-world consequences.”
Barbara Starr, the former CNN national security reporter for more than two decades, strongly suggested there is more here than may appear.
“IMPORTANT: IF [the] Truman had to make a sudden hard turn to avoid enemy fire this is extremely significant. The goal for US troops is to always bring down the enemy as far away as possible NOT close in. And this potentially suggests further improvements in Houthi guidance and targeting. Def more to learn here.”
“Moreover,” Starr continued, “and equally important why does the military press statement not disclose this possibility?”
HuffPost’s White House correspondent S.V. Dáte commented, “Back when the Navy was woke I don’t recall them dropping an F-18 overboard.”
READ MORE: Trump Calls to ‘Immediately’ Eject ‘Disruptors’ as GOP Congressman Faces Boos, Backlash
Image via Reuters
The Trump White House is under fire after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a video showing lawn signs lining the White House driveway, bearing the photos of allegedly undocumented immigrants, the charges against them, and the word “ARRESTED” in bold, capital letters.
The posters do not indicate the immigrants were convicted, only arrested, for various major crimes.
ABC News described them as “100 posters of alleged criminal migrants.” Axios, which first reported on the posters, called it “a provocative, sure-to-be-controversial move.”
“This morning,” the White House said in a statement, “images of the worst of the worst criminal illegal immigrants arrested since President Donald J. Trump took office were placed on the lawn of the White House for the world to see — highlighting the Trump Administration’s unprecedented effort to secure our homeland and send these vicious criminals back where they belong.”
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Leavitt posted the video gleefully declaring, “Good Morning from The White House!”
Critics blasted her and the administration.
“These are fake charges with out due process you are lying karoline! 99% of immigrants are law abiding, loving, family oriented members of society! Stop spreading hate!” wrote actor and activist John Leguizamo.
Immigration attorney Allen Orr, Jr. added, “Arrests are not convictions. In addition, how much does this cost, and for what purpose does it serve?”
Alexander Aviña, an associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University commented, “historically not a good sign when governments start doing this.”
Former U.S. Ambassador Luis Moreno observed, “The Romans, and others throughout history, used to mount their enemies heads on pikes. This is the 2025 version.”
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“The Trump Administration’s response to deporting a 4 year old American with cancer? Put up yard signs!” commented Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov.
“Well this is vaguely fascist,” remarked MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen.
“And here comes the 100 lawsuits based on the liberty clause. This is disgusting behavior by our chief executive,” wrote Washburn University School of Law Professor Joseph Mastrosimone.
“Reminder that 90% of those supposed criminal deportees to El Salvador had no criminal record at all and the rest were mostly for immigration violations,” noted Virginia Commonwealth University Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Paarlberg.
Legal reporter Amy Miller wrote, “fear mongering works, and they know it.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Good Morning from The White House! pic.twitter.com/1fhjzMU2gR
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) April 28, 2025
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Image via Reuters
The New York Times Opinion editors have gathered responses from nearly three dozen top legal scholars assessing what the paper calls President Donald Trump’s “first 100 days of lawlessness,” with many warning—one bluntly—that “no U.S. citizen is safe” if Trump can act “in violation of the law.”
These top legal minds—and the Times’ editors—use phrases about Trump and his administration’s actions such as “disregard for law,” “flagrantly lawless,” “anti-constitutional,” “quasi-authoritarian,” and “unconstrained by the Constitution.”
Columbia University Professor David Pozen warned: “More important than any specific example of unconstitutional conduct is the overall pattern. The depth and breadth of this administration’s disregard for civil liberties, political pluralism, the separation of powers and legal constraints of all kinds mark it as an authoritarian regime. That is the crucial thing to see.”
“The disregard for law is itself part of the agenda,” offered Harvard Law School Professor Jody Freeman. “They do not seem to care whether they violate the Constitution and statutes, make mistakes, do irreparable harm. That recklessness itself sends a message.”
READ MORE: Trump Calls to ‘Immediately’ Eject ‘Disruptors’ as GOP Congressman Faces Boos, Backlash
The Times editors noted that many of the scholars first flagged the Trump administration’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, calling the move, “a direct assault on the Constitution,” and “an extraordinary thing” done in “his first hours back as president.”
“From there,” the editors noted, “it’s a straight shot to deporting people without due process.”
“Due process dates back to Magna Carta,” wrote one expert, Professor Kim Wehle of the University of Baltimore School of Law, “it is the essence of liberty. Without it, America is not a democracy as freedom itself is at the arbitrary whims of a malevolent ruler.”
Stanford University Law School Professor Shirin Sinnar added, “If the administration can simply spirit people outside the United States in violation of the law and then disclaim any power to bring them back, then no U.S. citizen is safe from similar actions.”
Experts also sounded alarms over Trump and his administration attacking law firms, universities, and the Associated Press, and the firings at independent agencies. Also, the “defiance of our judiciary and constitutional system; the undermining of First Amendment freedoms,” and, “the impoundment of federal funds authorized by Congress; the erosion of immigrant rights; and the drive to consolidate power.”
The Times notes also that there are “concerns about whether court orders will be ignored by the Trump administration or the courts will be undercut by Congress, which controls their budgets and can, under the Constitution, largely dictate which cases federal courts can hear — and can’t.”
The Times, and the experts, suggested Trump’s use of tariffs is suspect.
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“Most important is the coming showdown over the president’s asserted power to impose, rescind, raise and delay tariffs on imports,” wrote Stanford Law School Professor Michael McConnell. “The administration can point to broad statutory language authorizing specific import restrictions under emergency circumstances, but the president has no inherent constitutional authority to tax imports. No statute expressly authorizes the president to impose tariffs for the nonemergency purposes of raising revenue, improving our long-term balance of trade or winning unrelated concessions on miscellaneous issues.”
And on the “Big Picture,” Rutgers Law School Professor Katie Eyer added: “The use of the levers of government to exact retaliation for private vendettas — sending people to foreign prisons without due process, dismantling agencies and refusing to spend appropriated funds, and pervasive retaliation for the exercise of First Amendment rights … are the actions of an authoritarian government, not a liberal democracy.”
Professor David Pozen concluded “that the U.S. constitutional system is on the verge of an authoritarian takeover. ‘Authoritarian constitutionalism’ is not an oxymoron; unless the Trump takeover is repelled, our system will retain the familiar constitutional forms while becoming ever more illiberal, undemocratic and corrupt.”
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Image via Reuters
Trump Calls to ‘Immediately’ Eject ‘Disruptors’ as GOP Congressman Faces Boos, Backlash
‘Authoritarian Takeover’: Legal Scholars Warn of Trump’s ‘100 Days of Lawlessness’
‘Heads on Pikes’: Trump White House Accused of ‘Vaguely Fascist’ Display
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