The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Verdict Is What Accountability Is Supposed to Look Like

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy react to the guilty verdict of Donald Trump in his election interference case. Plus! Princeton University law professor Kevin Kruse talks about the latest tactic being voted on by the Texas Republican Party. Then, historian and author Kellie Carter Jackson joins the show to talk about her latest book, “We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedinan, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. Oh, my fucking God. Like, let me tell you something. I'm looking outside right now to see,

if in fact hell has frozen over in New York, because all 34 counts Donald Trump has been found guilty of in the money laundering election interference, aka hush money case in New York. And the jury instructions alone, I think, were over 50 pages. The jurors asked Judge Mershan a few times to re-explain certain sections as they deliberated for what was it? I think it was nine hours between yesterday

and the time of this recording, holy shit. I know that there will be appeal upon appeal, upon appeal. But 34 guilty counts, like they did not hesitate at all to mix and mingle this batch for Donald Trump. Like, it was so fucking clear. Wow. Yeah, this is kind of like his perfect phone call. Perfect verdict.

34 for 34 batting a thousand. That's Hall of Fame territory. I mean, Donald Trump likes to say he's the best at everything and he is absolutely the best at being an ex-president getting convicted of crimes by a jury. And I'm a little worried. The last I heard, Justice Alito's wife is heavy into the flag drawer right now. I'm told that she actually is pulling out 34 flags. So it's just going to be a fucking night. mayor at the Alito residents. So I would advise people to stay clear. But look, this was one of those things. And I think, you know, we've sort of talked about it. Like, who knew? Like, who knew what was going to happen? It felt like it could go so many different ways and you only needed one juror to not be sure beyond a reasonable doubt. And then you have a hung jury. I'm a cable news conscientious objector. But I threw on MSNBC and they had a little number tracker as the verdicts were coming in. And it just kept creeping up to 34 guilty. And I was like, holy shit, they did it. Like, I can't believe they actually did it. And yeah, like you said, there's going to be appeals and we still have to have a

sentencing hearing and all of that stuff. But whatever, man, this is just honestly a great day for America. And I say that. And I know that we make jokes when we say those things. But like, in all honesty, this is what accountability is supposed to look like. It is not supposed to look like, oh, you're the former president of the United States. And although you've been on a crime spree, your entire fucking adult life, that because you were president for four years, that then you are above the law. And we know that this is a case that was not brought by Sy Vance, that this is a case that was not brought by the fucking sloth attorney general because they believe in

institution more than they believe in the actual law. And so, you know, these 12 jurors, like, my God, hats off to you, I am grateful at this moment, I was pissed off that this trial was not televised. Yeah. Because I thought that people really did need to see Donald Trump on trial, that they really did need to look at him, not with the fucking Hollywood tan and craftsmanship that he puts together on social media, but actually see him in an environment in which he is humbled and not empower. Yeah. And look, I'll just close out by saying that I know I have been found guilty of sort of downplaying this trial. I remember when the charges were first filed and talking about it with legal experts on this show and whatever and be like,

ah, this seems like the weakest case. Like, what's the big deal? But then the more I learned about it, it's like, no, this actually was a big deal because it was election tampering and election fraud, whatever you want to call it. And we'll see where it goes from here. But like I said before, there's no way to look at that. this and not be extremely happy. Happy day. We'll be right back.

We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today. Princeton University Professor of Law, and author of the Campaign Trail Substack, Kevin Cruz is here to break down the new platform being voted on by the Texas Republican Party why it sounds like history repeating itself.

Then we'll talk to Kelly Carter Jackson, who's a historian, author, and chair of Africana at Wellesley College. And she'll tell us all about her new book, We Refuse a Forceful History of Black Resistance. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, I know you were surprised at this news, but Justice Samuel Alito says he will not recuse himself from January 6th related cases, even though the upside-down American flag was flown at his house and the appeal to heaven flag was flown at his other house. He is putting this all on his wife, as he's been doing from the start. He said in a letter to Congress, one of my new favorite quotes of all time, my wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. So I really enjoyed that quote. He went on about how his wife has First Amendment rights, and it's okay if she decides to fly these flags on their property, and he cannot stop her.

And as many people pointed out, including Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, he seems to believe in women's rights for one woman and one woman only, and that is his wife. So anyway, he will not recuse himself. So the question is, where do we go from here, Daniel? I continue to say that the hypocrisy here is so disturbing and disgusting. Because I've said this before that if any of the quote unquote liberal justices were to fly any flag other than the American flag outside of their home, if they were to fly the Black Lives Matter flag or a Latino celebration flag or a feminist flag, hell would open up, right, in terms of. of media coverage. Oh, my goodness. They must rescind. They must recuse. They must, you know, leave the bench altogether. And I feel like the uproar around this is more mocking than it is with the indignation and the looking into in the way that Representative Raskin did in his

recent op-ed, the solution to this problem. The solution to this problem is not just to fucking shrug it off. And let Alito and let Clarenceau. Thomas and let their wives just run amok. As long as it's decorating and has nothing to do with your uterus, apparently women can do whatever they want. I feel that there is a lack of outrage and a lack of like honest indignation from Democrats to just kind of shrug this off and let it go. And Raskin, to his merit, wrote a piece in the New York Times entitled

How to Force Justice Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in the judge. January 6 cases. And he's like, while begging, I guess, is a tactic, right? But there are actual statutes that say that they must be removed from these cases because of their spouse's involvement. I'm at a loss to understand where the actual pressure is other than just in bad press. Yeah. And that's exactly the thing. I mean, and absolutely full credit to Jamie Raskin for actually putting himself out there and explaining why Alito should recuse himself and explaining how the process should work. I wish we saw that same kind of thing from Senator, for example, Dick Durbin on the Judiciary Committee and Sheldon White House. And I wish that they would do more

than just maybe send out some tweets saying that they're not thrilled with the fact that these flags were flown on Alito's property. Because this is, this, this is a huge deal. And everything Alito has done in his career, he is just so obviously a Republican first and a constitutional arbiter second. And you really have to look no further than the fact that when this story first broke, where did he run to tell his side? He ran to Fox News. That is not exactly where an impartial justice, an umpire, as Chief Justice John Roberts likes to say the court is full of, that's not where you go to make your case to the American people if you're an impartial person. It's so obvious. The thing that just makes me the angriest is he knows we know. And he also knows, and by we, I mean the American

people, but I also mean the people on the judiciary committees and his fellow justices. He knows that we know that he is as partial as it comes. He is the furthest thing from impartial. And whatever supposed constitutional philosophy he has is not really a constitutional philosophy. It's a philosophy in service of his political philosophy and his religious beliefs, let's be honest. And that's why you have an appeal to heaven flag flying on your property, whether you want to blame it on your wife or not. But he knows that we all know this. And he knows that we know he is straight up lying. But he also knows that absolutely nothing is going to happen to him. He knows he can get away with it.

This is in the tradition of Donald Trump. Maybe before Trump, he had to be a little more cautious. But he now knows because he looks at the country we live in and he says, I can do or say whatever I want. And then I can go on Fox News and give my bullshit side of the story where the timeline doesn't even work out as the New York Times did some, I think it was Jody Cantor, did some great reporting on. But he knows it doesn't matter. And that's the thing that makes me even angrier about all of this because he's right.

And I just want to lift up the statutes that Raskin pointed to in his op-ed. But the fact is, is that regardless of what Democrats ever choose to do, ever, right, on any issue, Republicans will always say that they're weaponizing the judiciary, that they're weaponizing this, that, and the other thing. because any avenue to a monocum of responsibility and accountability on the part of the Republican Party, they're always cry foul. So if that is going to be the outcome all the time, then why the fuck don't Democrats put their foot on the gas and just keep pushing forward? Because regardless, the same things are going to be louded against you. And so in this piece, Raskin says, look, quote, the Constitution of the United States,

specifically the due process clause and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality 28 USC section 455. He says can be used here by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland to invoke those two statutes. And he says the Constitution has to come into play in several recent Supreme Court decisions striking down rulings by stubborn judges in lower courts, whose political impartiality has been reasonably questioned, but who threw caution to the wind to hear a case anyway? What the fuck do we have a Constitution for if it is not enforceable?

I'm tired of just this idea. Danielle, I just want to point out that that last sentence was you, not Jamie Ruskin. Oh, that was me. Yes, sorry. What the fuck do we have a gun? Yes, that's it. He put that in italics. In the New York Times.

Yeah. In the New York Times. But it's just like, why do we have a constitution? If the only part of the constitution that we're ever interested in enforcing in this country is the Second Amendment. It's like every other part is up for debate that we continue to like hope and pray on the better angels of people like Alito and Thomas as if just our appeal to them to do the right thing is somehow going to get them to do the right thing.

We don't have to appeal to their better angels that don't exist. you can just look at the fucking law and use that. It's like I say this and I haven't said it in a while. But like if by the grace of God, Joe Biden gets another fucking term and we don't end up in Dante's inferno in a Trump just, you know, until his end of days administration, Merritt Garland has got to fucking go. This has been the most ineffective, the most spineless fucking attorney general in the most critical times of our justice system in this country that I think I've ever seen. He is horrific.

And if my God, Biden wins, he needs to go. He has got to be replaced. This man is an utter and abject failure. Just thinking that like if you hope and pray that the institution stays intact, I guess that'll be enough. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say that when you brought up that, you know, Republicans are always going to claim that, you know, you're weaponizing the court. or you're weaponizing the Justice Department. I was like, if they think Merrick Garland is a weapon, because at best he's like a broken BB gun. But like you said, they still manage to every day get out there

and talk about the weaponization of the Justice Department. And by the way, I am not suggesting that the Justice Department should be weaponized for political purposes. It absolutely should not be. But your point is absolutely correct. And we've said this a lot on this show. You know, you can't nominate Bernie Sanders because they'll call him a socialist. So you nominate Joe Biden.

And they call Joe Biden a social. list. Like, it doesn't matter. So that shit needs to stop. I wanted to point out, there was a thing that Raskin did in his New York Times piece that I thought was really smart. And it gets back to, again, John Roberts referring to the court and saying that judges are like umpires. And Raskin writes, but professional baseball would never allow an umpire to continue to officiate the World Series after learning that the pennant of one of the two teams competing was flying in the front yard of the umpire's home. Nor would an umpire be allowed to. call balls and strikes in a World Series game after the umpire's wife tried to get the official

score of a prior game in the series overthrown and canceled out to benefit the losing team. And he's absolutely right. At best, if the Supreme Court is umpires, they're Angel Hernandez, which won't make any sense as a reference to you or Jesse, I know, but people who actually follow sports will get what I'm saying. Angel Hernandez is an umpire who is notorious for making unbelievably bad calls and he just retired and literally every baseball fan on the planet rejoiced. So that's what that references. Oh, thank you.

Yes. But the point is that this language, it needs to be thrown back in John Roberts's face. And John Roberts talks a lot about the legacy of the court, of his court. This is the Roberts court. He's the chief justice. And he needs to be told in no uncertain terms that the legacy of his court is going to be absolute shit. The more he lets this stuff go on.

There reaches a point, as Raskin points out, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, says she wants to convince people, quote, that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks. Well, if that's what you want, Justice Barrett, I think she's sincere in that. I don't like her much in terms of her constitutional philosophy or anything like that. But at least so far, she does seem like an honest broker as far as that goes. So I really do think that she means that. But then she needs to sit there and she needs to, you know, know, get a little face time with the chief justice and say, look, this guy, Alito, and, you know, don't get me started on Thomas, they are ruining the reputation of this court and you need to do

something about it. And Sotomayor needs to say something and Elena Kagan needs to say something. And every other justice on that court, including Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, they need to start speaking up and they need to make it clear that this shit needs to stop because that is literally the only way that something might happen. The Democrats have made it fairly clear, at least to this point, that they're not going to even hold hearings. That's where my anger comes in because Alito knows that ain't shit going to happen to him. And the only way anything maybe happens to him is if his fellow justices rise up. And that's what needs to happen here. And I don't have any real faith that it's going to happen, but that's what they need to do. Basically, Alito and Thomas can do whatever the fuck they want.

They are above the rules. They are beyond reproach. Democrats have no fight or fire inside them to do anything because they're afraid of being labeled as people on a witch hunt. And the fact is, is that this Republican Party, these Republican fucking radicalized justices, will continue to do whatever it is that they want and flood the zone with all of their shit

because no one is, going to hold them accountable out of fear. The Justice Department isn't going to do anything, but we know exactly what would be happening if there was even half of this kind of shit that was happening and it was on the Democrat side. And so like, Republicans keep doing dirt because they know that they can't, because there's no accountability at all. All there is are a couple of bad headlines that, you know, in a few days, we'll be cycled onto something else. Oh, what's the big deal about flags, right? There's no big deal here. There was no big deal that people build a gallows on the steps of the Capitol either. No big deal. Nothing to see here. And so we just let it go. And I'm like,

and that's how we continue to be inside of this shitstorm of their creation because no one has spine enough to like seek accountability and use the constitution for what the fuck it was created for. And speaking of people who just feel like they can do anything and get away with it, they have yet to be proven wrong. I think we talked about on a prior episode, we talked about Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardoning the killer of a Black Lives Matter protester, Daniel Perry. This despite numerous text messages from Perry that were shown at trial that were racist and murderous. And so he went ahead and pardoned him after he was found guilty. And a group of Attorney's General, Democrat Attorney's General, I should say, have now addressed a letter to Merrick Garland,

our favorite. The letter basically says they are very concerned about stand your ground laws, and that's what Abbott used when he announced Perry's pardon. And in the letter, according to the hill.com, they say the underside attorneys general are concerned that the stand your ground laws encourage vigilantes to attend protests armed and ready to shoot and kill those who exercise their First Amendment rights. So they are calling for an investigation into these laws and into Governor Abbott's pardon of Daniel Perry. Danielle, I suspect that you have a lot of faith that Merrick Garland will jump right on this.

No, Andy. I don't have any fucking faith. Well, that is shocking. That is shocking to me. going to jump on this, even if it was like a trampoline full of like puppies and daisies. I don't think you fucking jump on it. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't think it's possible for him to do any jumping at all.

I don't think sloths do that. I don't think that it can go overlooked. How invested and intertwined the Republicans are with violence. That this pardoning of Daniel Perry goes in a long way of, Donald Trump's pardoning of the murderous Navy SEAL. It goes in the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse for murder and him turning into a MAGA star. When we look at these things and understand that in, I think it was a report that was done back in 2022 that talked about the rise in white domestic terrorism and violence in this country that is all

carried out like almost 80% by right wing. politically aligned people. The media doesn't ever report this. It doesn't ever talk about the ways in which Donald Trump's stand back and stand by was only the wink and the nod that white supremac and violent domestic terrorist groups needed in this country to come out from their shadows and come into broad daylight marching down streets. When Donald Trump was asked to denounce these people, he didn't.

And so why are we shocked that then you would have these governors like. Abbott saying, oh yeah, well, you know, these people should be shot and killed. Because again, the only part of the Constitution they believe in and or red was the Second Amendment. Not the other one that said that people have a right to protest and to assemble. So I wish that we would have deeper conversations about how there is no separating the Republican Party from white domestic terrorism. Not only do they refuse to separate themselves, they have embraced it open-hearted And that's the conversation that we should be having. Like, this is not just about Daniel Perry.

Right. This is about how they turn these murderers into MAGA stars. Like, I'm certain that Daniel Perry will have a prime spot at the fucking Republican National Convention. Why? Because the McCloskey's did those folks that drew out their guns and pointed them at Black Lives Matter protesters that were marching in their neighborhood. They went from being charged with the crime right.

to center stage at the RNC in 2020. Kyle Rittenhouse went from trial right to Fox News. So I'm like, the conversation needs to be about the just open armed posture and loving embrace that the Republican party has with white violence. And that given the opportunity for Donald Trump to win in 2024, if you think that that is something that is not going to rise exponentially, you're crazy. Because not only will it rise, but it will be backed by the military and what we refer to as the police departments in all of these countries, these little mini armies, that he will deputize to do their worst. It's sickening and it needs more conversation and attention than just the absolvement of one killer because it's about their ideology that is readily violent. Couldn't agree more. I don't know if

you remember. I was thinking about this the other day. Back in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on right-wing extremism, it got savaged by Republicans. Basically, Janet Napolitano, who was, I guess the DHS secretary at the time, had to apologize for certain things in the report. And they basically buried, the Obama administration buried the report because conservatives were so mad about it. Everything in that report was completely accurate and has been borne out in the 15 years since. And like you said, it's only getting worse.

because we're now at the point where the Republican Party in states, in localities, and if Donald Trump gets back into office, is taking these terrorists and these terroristic acts and basically codifying them as part of the way they think things should be done. So you are absolutely right. We need to stop burying reports like this. We need to get our head out of the sand and look at what the Republican Party has become. this report in 2009 was about lone wolves. Okay, fine. They ain't lone wolves anymore. They are a pack.

They are a pack of wolves being directed, being protected by Republican office holders. And like you said, this ain't going to get any better. It's only going to get worse unless we do something to stop it. Amen. This week, the Texas Republican Party voted on its new platform, and we're still waiting for the votes to be tallied. as we record this. But as the Texas Tribune reported, among the planks of the 50-page document is one requiring the Bible be taught in public schools, along with declarations that abortion is not

health care, it is homicide, and that gender transition treatment for children is child abuse. There's also a demand that the U.S. government disclose all pertinent information and knowledge of UFOs, but my next guest, suspiciously, in my opinion, refuses to talk about that. So instead, we're going to talk about the plank that the Tribune correctly describes as perhaps the most consequential of all of them in the 50-page document, which is a call for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas's 254 counties to win an election. Here to explain exactly why that's such a big deal, and the historical antecedents it builds off of is historian and professor of history at Princeton University, Kevin Cruz.

He's the author of books, including One Nation Under God, How Corporate America Invented Christian America and White Flight, Atlanta, and the making of modern conservatism. He's also the co-editor of this past year's Myth America historians take on their biggest legends and lives about our past, and he has a super informative substack called Campaign Trails, where he wrote about this Texas GOP Party platform plank. Kevin, thanks so much for coming back on. Always a pleasure to be here. We might be out of time after that intro. You've got to write that up, man. I know, I know. Okay. So when I need someone to explain, the historical antecedents of something. You are my go-to guy. So you could say I make an appeal to Kevin.

Oh. There it is. There it is. That's a good pun. So let's talk about this proposed plank. And before we get to what it echoes, let's quickly explain what it is and what it means right now. The Texas Tribune compares it to the Electoral College, but I think it seems even worse. Under the Electoral College, you could lose the popular vote and still win the election, but at least the states have a somewhat proportional number of electoral votes. What the Texas GOP is calling for is basically one county one vote, meaning a huge county, say, an urban one that might tend to go Democratic, would have the exact same importance as a tiny rural county that might tend to go Republican. And that's the point of this plank, isn't it, to prevent basically Democrats from ever winning another statewide election?

Yeah, it fits in perfectly with a trim that I think has been really well captured in a new book by Ari Berman called Minority Rule. Yep. Is that the Republican Party is more and more committed to a rule by a very small faction of them and rejecting larger Democratic pressures. Right. So we see this in how does Trump get elected? He doesn't win the popular vote.

He wins the electoral college. He gets in through that back way. How do Republicans exert tremendous control in Washington, D.C.? It's through the power of the Senate, where the number of voters they represent is less of the number of voters that the Democrats represent, but because of the way in which the Senate is set up, that minority actually has the edge. And so this Texas proposal is an effort to extend that to the state level. And as you note, it looks on the surface a little like the Electoral College. But the Electoral College, big states like California and Texas and New York have a lot

more votes in the Electoral College than a small state like Wyoming with its three, right? And so there's some sort of portionality there. What this measure in Texas does is instead you've just got to get a bare majority of a number of counties. And if that county has, as some Texas counties do, if that county has less than 100 people and you win it, that counts. If that county has 4.3 million people like the county of a Houston sits in, has, well, that's one county too, right? So you can see it gives an incentive, or it would give an incentive to politicians to completely ignore the urban centers, right? It is much easier. You could meet every voter in one of those small counties, right?

Literally everyone's home and probably a day. Win them all over and sew that county up. And so you just write off those big counties and you win by appealing to these areas which are not just largely rural, but overwhelmingly white. One of these very small counties, I think, has literally no black residents in it, whereas the big ones are not majority African American, but 45% or so. They're a bit more diverse, it's fair to say. Yeah, a little more diverse than all the white.

Yeah. And so you can see what that sets up. is an incentive to appeal to these kind of rural white voters and to appeal to their sense of grievance that they've been overshadowed by these big cities, right? And that sets up a politics in which it's not just wildly unequal, but it's wildly adversarial, right? You're starting to pit these different parts of a state against each other, whereas in a normal statewide race, you try to appeal to all people in the state or as many people as possible. Okay, so let's get into why this all sounds familiar to historians such as you and probably to a lot of Americans,

particularly of a certain age. If I were to say that this sounds like a throwback to the decidedly undemocratic systems that Southern States had before the civil rights era, would I be exactly right? You would be quoting me, and therefore you would be exactly right. Yeah, I mean, look, as I wrote about in my substack last week, this Texas proposal sounds a lot like something I wrote about in my first book. Georgia had a thing called the County Unit System. And it's created in 1917, but as part of a series of retrenchments, maybe, that Southern Conservatives made in Georgia, to limit access to the ballot, right? And it starts their first targeting the people they don't want to vote the most African-Americans.

So you get the white primary, literacy test, the grandfather clause, poll taxes, things like that, which are very specifically aimed at black voters. That doesn't get rid of all the problem, though. And so they decide that to marginalize urban voters, who in this period are largely white, but a little less conservative, they're going to institute this thing called the county unit system. It gets passed in 1917. Georgia's got 159 counties. Texas has, I guess, what, 254?

They've got 159 counties. And what they do is they go through and they give every single county a designation of either two, four, or six county unit votes. Bear with me. I know this is boring. I'm making you do math in your head. No, no, this is good. Two, four, or six county votes.

And the smallest ones get two and the biggest ones get six. And in any statewide election, whoever wins a plurality of a county's popular vote gets all of that county's unit votes. And then whoever has the most unit votes across the state. wins. And so it's not that bad in 1917. It's roughly corresponds with the population distribution of the state. The problem is they never changed this. And so as cities like Atlanta and Savannah and Columbus balloon in size over the 20th century, the number of save the same. And so not even getting into civil rights here, but around World War II, right. A single vote in China Chattahoochee County,

a very rural overwhelmingly white county, a single vote there had the exact same weight in in statewide elections as 35,000 votes from Fulton County, which is where it landing. Wow. Right? Why not pitch your politics to these voters, right? And that's why, in its classic study of Southern politics, the political scientist, V. O'Kee, is called Georgia's system, the rule of the rustics. The rural people are in charge.

So these systems were ones that propped up a white, conservative, rural-dominated politics, but they get challenged in the civil rights here. And they get challenged in a couple of southern states. These systems were, some are common across the country, but they come into real relief in the South where it's tying with segregation just makes it untenable. Yeah. And there's a case out of Tennessee called Baker v. Carr. And if you don't know Baker v. Carr, when Earl Warren, when he retired and he was asked, what was the single biggest decision of his entire time on the court, he didn't say Brown versus Board of Education. He said Baker v. Carr.

And the reason he did was that what Baker v. Carr did is it struck down a system like this in Tennessee. And it essentially ushered in what came to be known as the one-person, one-vote. rule. And in this Tennessee case, they force the state to reapportion. There's a later case that targets Georgia, but does the same there. There are cases about a congressional appointment. But basically what these cases do is they essentially tackle that idea of a state-level electoral college, and they tear it down as fundamentally anti-democratic. Now, the next question you have is, why didn't they go after the electoral college? Well, the electoral college is written into the Constitution. And as long as it's there, the court has to go by what's there. But it's very

clear that the court thinks the electoral college is an abomination. So I guess the good news is that if Texas does try to implement this, the Supreme Court will just put a stop to it, right, Kevin? Right, Kevin? Kevin? Kevin? I got to cry for a little bit. Kevin, are you still there? No, I'm crying. Normally, that would have been the case. In fact, we've seen proposals like this come up to the court in the past. Mississippi had one, I think, statewide candidates had to get every congressional district. They had to win every congressional district. That got struck down. But these days, this court is entirely off the rails, right? For all of John Roberts' stage performance about being a humble empire who only calls balls and strikes, they've been rewriting the rulebook as they go. And we've seen this with Citizens United, with a Heller case on gun rights, Shelby County on voting rights, and most prominently recently, with the Dobbs reversal of Roe v. Wade. So there is nothing in the current court that shows any kind of deference to a precedent. And they've especially been overturning Warren court rulings. And again, this is the one that Earl Warren himself thought was his biggest accomplishment. And if they're coming to roll back to Warren court, they're coming for Baker v. Carr.

coming for these issues. So are you suggesting that this court would seek to weaken the Voting Rights Act? Because I, for one, find it hard to believe that they would, hang on, I'm now being told that they've in in fact already started down that path. Yeah, I've got some beachfront property too. Yeah, look, I mean, they've eviscerated this. This has really been, for all of his genial facade, this has been John Roberts' mission since he worked in a Department of Justice under the Reagan administration in the 80s to really roll back the Voting Rights Act, which for a long time had widespread bipartisan support. Its last renewal during the Georgia W. Bush administration, I think, was virtually unanimous, if not unanimous. But legal activist on the right have singled it out as something

reprehensible. I believe before he died, Scalia even called it, called the Voting Rights Act, a form of reparations for black America, and that it wasn't establishing free and fair democracy in this country for the first time, but rather was some kind of special handout that wasn't warranted. So they've steadily eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. They've left it standing in a name. but they've gutted it. And this kind of case, again, which would have probably been struck down under the old preclearance rules, which they also struck away, will probably make its way to the Supreme Court if it's enacted and will be their pretense, I think, to undo Baker v. Carr and essentially

to roll back the only period of true democracy this country's ever had since the Voting Rights Act. And I guess we should point out that this is, first of all, as of this recording, as I said, this, the party platform hasn't been, you know, officially ratified yet by the Texas GOP. And even if it is, this is then calling for a constitutional amendment to be proposed to do this. So we're a bit of ways from this actually happening. But I also think it's important to point out that even if the platform between now and when this drops or in the next week, even if this plank doesn't make it into the party platform, I think it's safe to say that if it doesn't, it's because someone thought it was bad optics, not because this is not what they want. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

And that goes to a thing, but really got me thinking about this issue. I got contacted a couple of weeks ago by a New York Times columnist who will remain nameless still, basically asking me, hey, isn't it weird? The Republican Party is embracing so many deeply unpopular measures. Aren't they going to face a blowback at the polls? No, this is why they're trying to eviscerate voting rights and shrink the electorate. Rather than say, these policies are unpopular, we're going to take a beating at the polls. say, well, these policies aren't popular. We better make sure that fewer people are able to vote

so they can go through, right? And that's the real push that we're seeing here, right? And so, yeah, this is going to be a constitutional amendment if the party embraces it. But I think they've got the wheels grease pretty well enough to get it through at the state level. And once it's there, it'll be sealed off from any kind of action by the voters. Back in the old days of Twitter, you used to spend a fair amount of time yelling at people who kept saying that the GOP Southern strategy was a myth, which, obviously was not. Could we say that there's almost something similar going on here, but just call it like a county strategy? Yeah, I mean, it's the same sort of valorization and empowerment of a white rural constituency that sees itself as aggrieved, right?

And so the Southern strategy was an effort to get them to a band of a Democrats who those voters thought now favored African Americans over them. That was the classic George Wallace pitch. George Wallace didn't hate anything the Democrats did until they started doing it for African Americans rather than more. less whites. And so it's the same thing here, right? They're identifying these people and rather than saying they're not trying to recruit them to their side. They know they're on their side. They know they're their safest supporters. So why not give them an effective veto over any statewide election? Yeah. And there was something you said in the piece you wrote that was especially chilling. You say if Texas Republicans embrace this return to a county unit type of system, they'll actually have created something even more unequal than this scheme conducted by segregationists of a century ago.

And this, I assume, is because of the numbers. Yeah. When these systems were struck down, the imbalance was really stark. This is, you know, 1960, after the initial cusp of suburbanization. But you still had some fairly solid concentrated areas. Metropolitan areas have grown much bigger and much more populous, right? So, you know, when this thing went down in Georgia, the population of Atlanta had just crested over a million.

It's now 4.3 million in Harris County, which is where Houston is, right? So it's a much bigger phenomenon. And the smaller counties are just as small, right? So the imbalance that was, you know, one rural vote equals 30,000 votes in Atlanta is today one rural vote in Texas equals about 75,000 votes in Houston, right? So it's twice as bad. That's absolutely amazing. I have a couple minutes left and I want to sort of throw you a curveball topic wise. Justice Alito, we've all been sort of, you know, obviously following this whole flag situation. I'm curious, like I said, you're my historical antecedent guy. Is there anything similar to this that we've seen in the history of the Supreme Court or particularly in the, you know, I don't know, 20th century history of the Supreme Court? The comparison that really comes to mind here for both Alito and Thomas is what happened to Abe Fortis. Abe Fortis was a really close personal friend of Lyndon Johnson. Had long been an advisor. Johnson gets him on the court in the 60s. And then when Earl Warren announces he's going to retire, Johnson wants Abe Fortis to be.

his new nominee. Well, a couple things come out. One, as we just learned today, Alito took money from Regent University to give a seminar there. That's something that came out about Abe Fordus. He got a lot more money, 15,000, which would be, you know, probably six figures today, to speak to American University. There were revelations that he had been kept on retainer by a rich philanthropist. It sounds like kind of the Leonard Leo Harlan Crow. And of course, that he was still advising Lyndon Johnson on politics. And that's what Alito's flag, whether he wants to throw his wife under the bus or not, that's what the flag of Alito's household says, but he has a real political sympathy with Trump, especially on the issue of the coup. We know Justice Thompson's wife was actively

promoting the January 6th coup, according to text messages with Mark Meadows and others that she was caught up in the mix of there. So Alito and Thomas are in a lot of ways a lot like Abe Fortis. One way in which they're different is that Abe Fortis had what historians used to call a sense of shame. And he felt badly when these revelations came out. And he felt he had an obligation, not just to withdraw his name, the Chief Justice consideration, but to resign from the court entirely. Now, that's not going to happen today. No way Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito suddenly discovers scruples and decide to resign. But I think the comparison is still apt because it shows how,

far we've fallen in terms of our standards. Just because someone like Alito or Thomas have no apparent personal character doesn't mean we have a country have to lower our standards there as well, right? Whether they'll resign or not, I think Democrats need you everything they can to make sure this issue doesn't fade from view. Because if they're silent on this, it means they think there's no problem, right? That's the lesson voters will take from this. So they've got to, I think, raise a wholly warranted stink over what's going on in the court. Kevin, always such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us. and hopefully we'll have you back soon.

Anytime. Take care. Folks, I am so very excited to welcome to the new abnormal Kelly Carter Jackson, who is the Michael and Denise Kellynne, 1968 Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of a new book that is just Beyond, which is entitled We Refuse, a Forceful History History of Black Resistance. She is also the author of Force and Freedom, which was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award and is the co-host of the Radiotopia podcast This Day in Esoteric Political History, Kelly. Hi.

My goodness. So let me just state to you that you are finding me, and I'm sure finding most black people, most people of color. most people from any, you know, intersection of life in a place of despair, in a place of deep frustration, a sense of hopelessness around our current political state in this country. And this book, your book, we refuse. I couldn't think of a book that is more right on time. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I tell people all the time I wrote this book because I was mad.

I wrote this book because I was frustrated. And as much as I wrote it for others, it has been really good for myself as well. I will just say that digging in, and I want to give you the opportunity to just give the listeners, you're the principles behind we refuse. You dive in in the book into five categories of black response to white supremacy, white domestic terrorism and violence. you unpack so much. And in these five categories that you list are revolution, protection, force, flight, and joy.

And you also go into the unpacking of this kind of what you refer to, and I loved it, perversion of nonviolence. And the perversion there of nonviolence believing that it is the only quote unquote acceptable form of protest and reaction to white violence. So can you talk to us about these categories of black response and why you say this book is not a story about white supremacy, but about black resilience and response to said supremacy? Yeah, black refusal. I, like a lot of people in 2020, felt a bit frustrated, enraged by affairs politically, socially, economically, you name it. And I wanted to also respond to this myth or this idea that black people don't resist or that, you know, you know, that horrible like meme that was on Twitter like, I'm not my ancestors or whatever. This like garbage about all like black people who were enslaved never rebelled.

They never rose up. They just sort of took slavery lying down. I wanted to push back on that idea. But I also wanted to push back on I think what is even more pervasive myth, which is the idea that when people are resisting, that they only have two tools, that is violence or nonviolence. You can be violent, you can be nonviolent. You know, you're going to burn it all down or are you going to say you forgive the perpetrator? Like, those can't be the options.

Those son can't be the only options, I will say. And so I wanted to expand the way that we think about refusal and resistance. And even the categories that I came up with, even I say in the book, they're not exhaustive. There are other chapters. If I had more time, there would be a whole another chapter on arson. But I wanted to think about revolution and force and protection and flight and joy as some of the most useful tools, tools that I have either experienced or used firsthand, tools that I have seen play out all throughout history in which black people are engaged in this practice of resistance. That's not exactly nonviolent and not exactly violent either. And so trying to sort of tease out and flush out how we can make use of this wide array of.

of tools to combat white supremacy is what I wanted people to do because I want people to be empowered and I want people to feel like, no, you have more than a hashtag. You have more than a march. And I'm not saying that those things aren't useful. They have their place. But when we think about what creates structural change or systemic change, I think we need to go further than just what nonviolence has given us on paper. And I have just always felt that the idea of either violence or

or nonviolence was just two binary for a situation and a condition and an ideology that was way more layered and complex. And so what my whitewashed history afforded me throughout my K through 12 education and then college and so on was this idea of either your Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi or you are Malcolm X.

this was the breakdown. Yeah. I mean, there's even been like, holes. Are you a Malcolm X? Are you a Merck and King? You know, like people have these caricatures of who we think these people represent, what ideas these people represent.

And I push back on that hard. And I push back on it hard, especially when it comes to MLK, because I think that we have a very diluted and misguided understanding of who King was and what King stood for. But I also think had King lived, longer, you know, that he would have to address some of even his own beliefs and ideas about how nonviolence has been used. And in some senses, how nonviolence has even been weaponized

against black people in a way to keep them sort of confined and constrained to achieving resistance that might actually affect the kind of change that they are pursuing. And so when I think about nonviolence, one of the things we associate with it so much is this idea that that you pull at heartstrings that when people see sort of the brutality or the violence of white supremacy, that they will see the immorality of it, that they will have a pain of conscience. But all throughout history, we have seen that spiritually and secularly, there is no repentance. There is no turning of your ways. There is no, not just an apology, but changed behavior.

When we talk about apologies, you don't just say you're sorry. and change the behavior that required the apology. We have never seen that. And so how can I morally persuade someone that, you know, what they are doing is wrong if they don't believe that I'm a human being, if they don't believe that what they are doing is wrong, or they believe what they're doing is divine. Right.

Like the oppression that I enact against you is God-given. That's even more disastrous in trying to use. those attempts. This idea that is offered up is that nonviolence is centered in a place of love and empathy and meaning that it's almost like the term namaste in yoga. The light within me bows to the light within you. Except we are living at a time and there have been so many points in our history since the first enslaved people were kidnapped and brought to this country and set foot on this land that we have seen and come face to face with pure, unadulterated evil. And so the presumption around nonviolence has been that there is some convincing.

There is some creation in my nonviolent reaction that is going to stir a sense of consciousness inside of another person that is embodying evil. And that is something that I feel like I have not been able to. wrap my mind around when I see, for instance, just this week, a former governor, a former presidential candidate for the Republican Party, go to a war to sign bombs, to sign them with her name. How are we in a place of convincing and creating consciousness when you think that that stunt, this action of violence that is lifted up inside of the Republican Party and unaddressed by Democrats is something that is negotiable. Like we can have a conversation about it. Oh, yeah. This is why in

the preface of the book, I go back to one of my favorite books. It is a classic. It's DeBoise's Black Reconstruction. And in his preface, he's like, I'm going to write this book. Like, black people are just ordinary human beings because we are. But if you don't believe that black people are human beings, then we can't have a conversation. In a lot of ways, we have been trying to have conversations, rational conversations with people that do not believe in the humanity of black people or of oppressed people or people of color or marginalized people or trans people. And that is what has been such a non-starter in a lot of instances, this disbelief. So we almost have to go back to sort of like the basics. So when I'm talking about, you know, all these different ways that we can

think about resistance. For me, it was first and foremost important to talk about refusal, like what refusal is. Because, you know, when I'm teaching in my classrooms, I'm like, resistance is how we combat white supremacy. But refusal is why. Refusal gets to the heart of the issue. Like, no, uh-uh, not doing this. Like that no, or really that never sets the terms for how we understand how humans should engage with one another. And I feel like refusal is something that people have understood, even before they had developed a strategy for resistance, refusal comes first.

And that refusal has to happen almost at every point. I want you also to unpack this idea that somehow, the place that we get stuck in, or the place I would say that mainstream media forces us to get stuck in, is that every time that there is some type of egregious act against a black person, a black child in this country. And the reaction to that may in fact start out as a march, but it may turn into what is perceived, right, the burning of a CVS as violence. And then when those black people are come on television, myself included, are asked to then apologize for said violence, but somehow never, get to the root of what caused that reaction in the first goddamn place. And so I find, I find,

Kelly, that we're in a place of stuckedness where we never actually get to the root of that. How do we do that? I mean, in some ways, this book requires everyone to change the conversation and even change the sort of the terms of the conversation. Because I do think that we are in a terrible place where if a child or a black person is killed and there is not violence, we don't pay attention. So like I think about, you know, Mike Brown in Ferguson and I think about how there was unrest in the streets. And no media outlet was paying attention until they set the quick trip on fire. And then once they set the quick trip on fire and then all the cameras in the world, everyone is descending on to Ferguson to see what's about to pop off and what's about to happen.

And we lost in some sense what it meant to have Mike Brown's body lying in the ground for hours in the summer heat before there was any sort of resolution. We don't spend enough time discussing why black people are angry, why black people are upset. Audrey Lord talks about how anger is energy, it's information, it's useful. we spend a lot of our time discarding people's anger. Oh, she's just mad. She's just angry as though that emotion is meaningless. But I think that emotion is packed full of meaning.

There are reasons why people are enraged and upset. And we ought to get at the heart of that. And so I think, you know, journalists have to do a better job of asking different questions, not the, do you forgive the perpetrator? You know, like, are you going to be nonviolent? The question should be why? did this happen? Why was this allowed to happen? What do you think should be done in response to this sort of, you know, grievance? But we don't ask those questions. We are more concerned about the victimized becoming violent than we are about the perpetrator and their violence. A friend of mine said to me recently, as I was just in one of my, as I call them, tornadoes of emotion, where I'm just outdone with America, right? I'm outdone. with racism. I'm outdone with white supremacy. I'm out done with the Supreme Court. I'm just out done.

And she said, you know what? Regardless of what happens in November, after November, I'm still going to find joy. I'm still going to dance. I'm still going to breathe. And so are you. And it hit me. Talk to me about the act, the revolutionary act of Black Joy. happily. Joy is a weapon. It really is. And I think joy acts as an offensive and defensive mechanism. It protects us from the erosion of racism and white supremacy. And happiness is one thing to be, you know, happy you found a dollar on the street or something like that or, oh, this ice cream is so good, whatever. But joy is something that that often is tethered to harassing. things that out of the midst of oppression, out of the midst of hardship, joy is what is there to ground us and sustain us and feed us. And it is contagious and it uplifts other people. I think about joy oftentimes within a spiritual context. I grew up in the black church. And so joy was something that was sung about and preached about all the time. But even in a more recent context,

I have had to fight to carve out spaces of laughter and joy and reprieve for myself, things that have nothing to do with whiteness and nothing to do with racism or white supremacy. And that has really filled my cup because I do a whole chapter on flight and I talk about how people, you know, can leave. But at the end of the day, flight is sort of the most ineffective of the tool that it will give you like a short term reprieve, but it doesn't require to change. change the reasons why you left in the first place. We can all say like, oh, after this election, I'm going to Ghana or I'm going to Canada

or wherever. But like anti-blackness is global. It really is. And so we have to reckon with it wherever we are. And I think that is where Joy has to come in. And I say in the book that you really can't separate whiteness or certainly white supremacy and violence, but you absolutely can separate blackness from oppression, that we are more than just the history of fighting white people.

that the way we love on each other, the way we interact with each other, our sense of humor, our music, our food, our dance, our ability to turn anything into a joke. I think about all of the means and gifts that came out of the pandemic, you know, just like how horrific it was,

losing a million lives. And yet there is still levity and a balm in humor and memes and gifts and jokes and the way that the community comes together to build each other up is a very powerful thing. I don't want to be black without joy. I need that. That is a huge part of black identity to me.

And I can't understand the black experience. No one can, I think, without it. When you think about what makes America America, it's music, it's food, it's dance, it's culture, it's language. All of that comes from black people and black joy. Oh, Kelly Carter Jackson. Let me tell you something. I could speak to you.

four days. Likewise. Likewise. I need to implore everyone listening to pick up a copy for yourself and for your friends and for your family. The book is We Refuse

A Forceful History of Black Resistance and it is a book for everybody to read and connect with. Kelly Carter Jackson, please come back and join us again on The New Abnormal. Yes, anytime. I would be happy.

Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Oh, I love that. Who's your fuck that guy to close out this week? That turned out to be pretty beautiful after a rough start on Monday. There, fair point. So how much time do we have? Because my fuck that guy to close out this week could be my fuck that guy for the rest of the fucking year,

which is the one and only Nikki. Nimrodda Haley. Now, you would say Danielle, is it because she recently came out and basically did a giant FU to the people that supported her in the primaries and said that she's going to vote for Donald Trump? That could be one reason. But it's another one. Nikki Haley decided to fly to Israel so that she could get a photo op, leaning over and signing bombs. I can't begin to express how fucking depraved you have to be to think that that is somehow a sign of strength. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with these Republican women as of late. I mean, I could go back in history and tell you what is wrong with them.

I could go back to the wives of the enslavers and go back all the way to that place. But why these days do these women think that aligning themselves with violence, whether it's shooting a dog and writing about it in a fucking book, or signing bombs that are blowing people apart, human beings, that that somehow makes you tough. It makes you a sick. Fuck is what it makes you. It should make you unqualified to hold any fucking office ever again. It should disqualify you. It should disqualify you from running for any goddamn thing. It should have you be an entire pariah in your community and in our country. But it doesn't because in the twisted, warped, depraved, inhumane minds of Maga, this is what they love. They love violence. They love oppression. They love despair.

They love death. Nikki Haley, any part of her that I thought maybe still had about an ounce of consciousness, about an ounce of compassion, you're a piece of trash forever and always and will be just, I don't know, carved into our Hall of Fame as the ultimate fuck that guy. You're disgusting. Yeah, this to me is not even like, I don't know. don't care what your thoughts are on what's going on in Gaza right now. It doesn't matter when it comes to something like this. The death toll of civilians, according to the Israelis, is 16,000.

That number is a lot higher in other estimates. But let's take the low estimate that the Israeli government is putting out there. 16,000 civilians. You signed an artillery shell that says finished them on it. An artillery shell that, if fired, is more than likely going to kill civilians. And this is okay with you. That's what you're saying here, Nikki Haley. When you're saying, finish them, you're not talking about Hamas. You're talking about the entire population of Gaza. You're talking about the Palestinian people. You could think Israel is 100% right in what they're doing here. And this is still disgusting. I don't really have anything else to say.

This is so grotesque. It's this classic Republican Trumpish need to show you're the alpha. And on top of the fact that there are civilians, again, 16,000 by the Israeli count, much higher by other accounts. The UN estimates that nearly 50% of the people in Gaza are under 18. So finish them. You're talking about kids. There's nothing more grotesque to me than this. Fuck her.

So, Andy. Can you? I don't know how you top my fuck that guy, but by all means, go ahead and try. Who is your fuck that guy to end this week? Honestly, I don't think it tops what Nikki Haley did. But it's also grotesque. Donald Trump, you may have heard of him. I wanted to squeeze him into fuck that guy because I don't want people to forget about him.

He's still out there. He was speaking earlier in May to a bunch of donors. He said that if he is elected president again, he would deport any student who protested in solidarity with Palestine. By the way, he didn't seem to mean just foreign students, which gets you into some interesting constitutional issues of how you deport a U.S. citizen for exercising their free speech rights. But his quote was, he said, one thing I do. student that protests, I throw them out of the country. Again, we'll set aside the legality of this,

because it's very blatantly not legal, but it's Donald Trump. It's the thought behind this. I just want to say to my fellow Jews out there, this guy is not your friend. Throwing student protesters out of the country is not something that any American should think is a good idea, but particularly it's not something that any minority group in America should think is a good idea. So please, I am begging my co-religionists, do not be taken in by Donald Trump. and by, you know, what seems to be a very large segment of the right wing pretending to support Israel. They are not your friend.

They are not my friend. They are not friends to the Jews. Things will be very much worse for Jews if Donald Trump is reelected. And I worry that there are Jewish people out there who say, well, I don't really like Donald Trump, but he's strong on Israel. So I got to vote for him. My answer to you is, no, you do not. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to Donald Trump.

Fuck that guy. Just a quick plug that this election is not about one fucking issue. It is about every issue. So maybe, just maybe, if you are not a fucking multimillionaire or a billionaire, a white, cis, hetero, Christian flag-loving fake patriot, you will not be safe. Okay? Just everyone get that through your fucking heads. Our institutions are hanging on by a fucking thread at this point. barely after four years of Donald Trump.

So what do you think will happen after the dynasty of Trump? Wake up. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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