The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3647 - Racist Conservative Attack on the Second Founding of America w/ Adam Serwer

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

It's News Day Tuesday on The Majority Report. On today's program: Donald Trump has secured an illegal $1.7B slush fund from the Treasury that can be used however the president chooses and comes with ZERO oversight. At a Senate Budget Hearing for the DOJ, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) gets under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's skin simply by pointing out that he was Donald Trump's personal lawyer less than two years ago. Adam Serwer, author and staff writer at The Atlantic, joins the program to discuss the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. In the Fun Half: More from Senator Chris Van Hollen's exchange with acting AG Todd Blanche at the Senate Budget Hearing. Carl Quintanilla mentions that Donald Trump has been day trading which sends Jim Cramer in to an apoplectic shock, I guess out of fear of reprimand from his Supreme Leader. Donald Trump claims the requested $1B for his ballroom is actually not for the ballroom, it's for the security around the ballroom. The ballroom is of course at no expense to the taxpayer, unless you count the $1B of tax dollars that are being used to build the ballroom. Zohran Mamdani takes a jab at Ronald Reagan during his speech announcing the construction of a city-run grocery store in the south Bronx. It appears that Artificial Intelligence is really doing a number on Jim Breuer's brain. Meghan McCain proves again that she is an awful person as she attacks Nicholas Kristoff's piece in the New York Times on the horrible abuse that Palestinian prisoners were subjected to at the hands of Israeli guards. All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: WILD GRAIN: Get $30 off your first box + free Croissants in every box. Go to Wildgrain.com/MAJORITY to start your subscription. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Starting today, you can save 35% on your favorite CBD Oil Tinctures with the coupon code Memorial26 at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.

Hey folks. That's weird. Hey folks. Memorial Day is coming up. It is the unofficial start of summer. When is the official start of summer? I don't know. It doesn't matter.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the start of summer. Although today is 93 degrees, and we don't have an air conditioner in here. Yay! Here's the point. Memorial Day is right around the corner, and that means summer travel season. And for people who have friends, wedding season. season. I've been to like one wedding in my entire life. Was it mine?

Two, three. Actually, now three. Whether you rely on Sebaday for sharper focus, when vacation planning, better sleep when on the road, or easing general travel anxieties. Now is a great time to stock up on sabad day tinctures. Starting today, you can get 35% off your favorite sabaday oil tinctures with the coupon code Memorial 26. That's Memorial 26. I will tell you right now, the pet tincture, awesome. For your pets, not for your people. And the good night oil. Those two are my go-tos. And then actually, what's the matter? Brian's chair is so loud. It's unbelievable. I had the switch chair. See, now a couple of shots of some Sebadet tincture, just the normal stuff, and maybe you'd have a little bit

anxiety about that. I didn't hear it at all. Don't miss out. Sunset Lake Sebeda tincture sale ends on May 26th at 1159 p.m. 35% off with the coupon code Memorial 26. Remember, you're buying direct from the farmers with Seba Day that has been grown without any pesticides. Check them out. See their site for terms and conditions. We'll, of course, put a link in the podcast and YouTube description description and now time for the show it is tuesday may 19th 2006 my name is sam cedar this is the five-time award-winning majority report we are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged gowanus canal in the heartland of america downtown brooklyn u s a on the program today adam surwer

author and staff writer at the Atlantic magazine on the total assault on voting rights in this country. Also on the program today, Taco Tuesday. Trump postpones today's planned attack on Iran. No. We'll see. I decided to temporarily postpone. U.S. grants another sanction waiver to Russia for oil sales as, the world gets dangerously close to expending its total oil reserves.

DOJ sets up that $1.776 billion slush fund for Trump, causing the top lawyer at Treasury to resign. Long Island Railroad reaches a deal with its union. The strike on the largest commuter rail in the U.S. ends with a union victory. report more than 100,000 American children have had a parent detained by ICE. Trump looking to admit 10,000 more, this is a great story of America opening its arms to refugees. Incidentally, Trump looking to admit 10,000 more white South Africans as refugees. Trump demands John Thune fires the parliamentarian after her ruling that,

The ballroom funding is not fit for the reconciliation bill. It's primary day in Alabama, in Georgia, in Idaho, in Kentucky, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in the street campaign in Pennsylvania's third congressional district send illegal anonymous tax in an attempt to defeat Chris Robb. Get out there and vote for him today in Pennsylvania's third CD. Speaking of polling, new polling is very bad news for Republicans. Meanwhile, the EPA is looking to rescind limits on four different forever chemicals in your water. Let's reintroduce those guys. Oh, God.

Two teenage gunmen kill three at a San Diego mosque, then themselves. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is Newsday, Tuesday. You already started laughing. What's going on? Nothing is going on. I'm excited to be talking to you.

We're not on the same screen together. Are we? Oh, I don't see it. Oh, we don't see the internal camera right now. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that. Matt's out sick today. But Brian's back after his illness. Caused by me, most likely.

I'm all hopped up on coffee and dayquil and Matt not being here. So my heart rate's about 640 right now. All right. I'm trying to figure out how to fix this internal camera-ish. Yeah, well, we work on that. That's fine. We're all here. So I think as long as it's getting out there, that's not a absolute tragedy.

A lot to get to in the news today. We've been covering this potential for Donald Trump's slush fund for days now. And as I reported yesterday, Trump withdrew his suit a day or two before there was a deadline for the parties to justify this suit. And by withdrawing the suit, essentially took the authority to oversee any. type of deal out of the hands of the court. And the DOJ has the authority to settle potential suits before they go to trial. Of course, we want that ability. This is just a clear abuse of that power.

And it is unclear who has standing to sue against it. Congress could pass a law that's probably not going to happen. but this slush fund has absolutely no guardrails. It is just a total giveaway. It is very much like what like Jimmy Hoffa would have done back in the day or, well, I mean, it's sort of what Trump's been doing with just tax dollars when it comes to like, oh, I'm going to give my pool guy a huge contract to paint the reflecting pool. And then for the rest of Mar-Lago's days,

there won't be any charges, who knows. Well, it looks also like he's going to be forced to drop his BS $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which is essentially him. Right, right. And so like the Treasury Department slush fund thing, though, I do think that it's like even bigger than that. It's it's as corrupt as we're talking about. But he's also trying to send a message where if you break the law on my behalf from the brown shirts on January 6th to the corrupt billionaire oligarchs who have funded my campaign, you'll be rewarded as long as I'm in power, so you better keep me in power.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that he's going to pay out that money to anybody based on any other. But I think that's the message he's sending, and he's been consistent with that throughout his presidency. It's a mob situation. Understand that that $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, it's clear now, was always just a scam. It was to build a predicate as to why there needed to be a settlement. It was never intended to actually go to court, and that's where this settlement derives from. Here is ABC News reporting on Trump's now DOJ affirmed $1.7 billion slush fund. This morning, a potentially unprecedented settlement.

between President Trump and the government he runs. Sources tell ABC News the president is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for potential financial compensation for allies that claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration. The deal, which sources caution is not finalized, would use taxpayer dollars to establish a $1.7 billion fund used to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration's so-called weaponization. of the legal system.

Sources say one group that would be eligible to tap into that are the nearly 1,600 people charged after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Pause it for one second. You know who else? Based upon this vague notion of who was hurt by the Biden administration lawfare is Donald Trump. That's such a weird coincidence. It is shocking. In fact, there's no one in Trump's orbit who he couldn't make an argument.

And here's the thing is that based upon the original outlines of the settlement, all we have now is a two-page reference to the settlement agreement that it established a fund. But according to documents that were sort of reported on in the past, Blanche will appoint these people, but Trump can fire them at will, presumably reappoint them, and there is no questioning of who they give the money to. There is no requirement they release names of people they have given money to, or in what amounts, or for what reason, but continue. Attack on the Capitol.

This comes as President Trump is suing the Treasury Department and the IRS for $10 billion in damages over the least. of his tax returns during his first term in office. And after sources told ABC News, he was pressing his Justice Department to pay roughly $230 million for the investigations he faced during the Biden administration. It's interesting because I'm the one that makes a decision, right? And, you know, that decision would have to go across my desk. And it's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself.

According to sources, the commission that would oversee the fund would have total authority on who they hand the money out to, which could amount to an unparalleled. paralleled use of taxpayer dollars with little oversight. Shores say the president would have the authority to remove members of the commission without cause and that the commission would not be required to disclose how it runs or its decision-making process. The proposed fund, which could face legal hurdles, would draw its money from a Treasury Department judgment fund, a permanent bucket of federal dollars used to pay court judgments in settlement, sources said. The settlement terms are expected to bar the president from directly receiving payments related to the claims of his lawsuits.

But it does not explicitly prohibit entities associated with him from doing so. And this morning, Democrats slamming the potential settlement. Senator Elizabeth Warren calling it an insane level of corruption and dubbing it a slush fund for Trump's handpicked stuges to hand money to January 6 intersectionists and his political allies. And former FBI director James Comey. We don't need to hear more of this. I mean, the money is going to go to Trump.

I imagine the J6 people will get a little cash bonus. But let's be clear. This is Donald Trump's slush fund. He might as well have this money in his pocket. Let's play this clip that Emma just did. We're in the middle right now of these hearings in the Senate for Todd Blanche, who is currently acting Attorney General. And he and Van Hollen have been going at it all day.

Van Hollen, one of our better senators. And it appears like based on the all caps of them seeing that Asin captioned this, a great account that people should follow holding the Trump. Trump administration accountable that Blanche maybe got a little testy and lost it. You're not going to submit this proposal to any federal judge or independent. There is no judge. Any independent authority? What does that mean an independent authority?

It means not somebody who's getting to pick five of the members who was the president's former personal attorney. That would be somebody who would be independent. I'm the acting attorney general. Okay. The fact that I used to be President Trump's lawyer is just a. fact, but I'm the acting attorney general. So don't say the president's former personal lawyer will do something. The acting attorney general will do something. Mr. Attorney General, you are acting

today like the president's personal attorney. And that's the whole problem. You've got his whole, you have a whole banner of his face hanging over the Department of Justice and you and everybody else walks under it. And you are acting like you're his current personal attorney. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions. I want to also remind people, and I think Van Hollen should have brought this up. Todd Blanche was specifically told by the DOJ's ethics advisor, lawyer, internal system that you are to recuse yourself

on every case that has to do with Donald Trump. He did not do that before he was acting Attorney General and he's not doing it now that he is acting Attorney General. The idea that the former defense attorney attorney for Donald Trump is now deciding whether to give Donald Trump control over $1.7 billion. Doesn't have to go into Donald Trump's pocket. If somebody gives me $1.7 billion and says, you know, pay your employees. I got news for you. I pay the employees. But guess where the money that would normally go to paying the employees goes into my pocket? I mean, it's just such an incredible joke.

I mean, the settlement stuff, it's supposed to be after these cases are litigated. I bet you. I bet you. Well, not necessarily. No, you have settlements. This is the thing. Right. But you come to a determination.

That is, there is, the only way to stop this is for Congress to pass. Yes. And it should be brought up. The Democrats should be bringing up a bill over and over and over again. Because I don't know that there's anybody who has standing to sue against this. Certainly, this is a practice. that happens the DOJ will settle in you know before now usually it's under the auspices of the court but sometimes they'll settle just because it's not worth taking it to court this is obviously

a complete bastardization of that but it's conceivable that if Donald Trump still owes Todd Blanche money from defending him against his charges that were a associated with, you know, the Biden era that money could go into this fund and then get paid to Todd Blanche. I mean, that's probably why it hits a little bit of a nerve when he's, it, uh, Van Hollen brings up how close he is to Trump in that way. I mean, it's so nakedly corrupt. And another point in that exchange, like they're, we'll play it later.

but Galane Maxwell comes up. Do we remember what happened with Galane Maxwell? We'll see if she gets her pardon. All right, well, in a moment, we're going to be talking to Adam Serwer, author and staff writer at the Atlantic. But first, a word from our sponsor. We'll have a lot more to say about that slush fund.

This episode of Majority Report brought to you by Wildgrain. Wild grain is the first baked from frozen subscription box for artisanal bread's seasonal pastries and fresh pastas. Literally, when I read those words, I am thinking about the smell in my apartment this weekend when I made Saul his croissant. They are so good, those croissons. It is amazing what the smell of fresh baked bread does to your just whole demeanor. Didn't you try to bring him one to his bedroom and ate it before you got to the... That happened the first time. Yeah.

You don't live in a Hampton estate, do you? No, it's literally like 12 feet. I was literally a came in with crumbs in my beard. And I'm like, buddy, I got some bad news. I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is I figured out how to really bake them well. The bad news is I'm going to make you another one. The thing with this, though, is that not only do you get that smell,

it is incredibly easy wild grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box i did i say this already for artisanal bread seasonal pastries and fresh pastas i did unlike many store bought options wild green uses simple ingredients you can pronounce and a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly and richer in nutrients and antioxidants there's no preservatives there's no shortcuts plus all items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less no thine required this is so easy i made him chocolate chip cookies the other night. 16 to 20 minutes, I've already memorized this, 375 degrees.

You've got to preheat the oven. You put one of these frozen cookies on a, you know, I use parchment paper or you put it right on the baking pan. And the whole house smells like chocolate chip cookies. They're delicious. Honestly, it couldn't be easier. It couldn't be more tasty.

But they have things like ham and cheese croissants, chocolate croissant, full loaves of bread, sourdough bread, biscuits, they've got pasta. I mean, all of it is fantastic. Imagine having fresh bakery quality bread, pastries, and pasta at home without any trips to the store. And don't just take my word for it. They have over 40,000 five-star reviews and have been voted Best Food Subscription Box by USA Today for three years in a row for limited time, Wild Grain offering you $30 off your first box. Plus, you ready for this?

Free croissant for life. When you go to wildgrain.com slash majority to start your subscription today, that's $30 off your first box. And free croissants for life when you visit wildgrain.com slash majority. Or you can use the promo code majority at checkout. We'll put the description in the, or the link I should say, in the podcast and YouTube description. And at majority.fm. We got a quick break. And when we come back, Adam Serwer, author and staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine.

We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on The Majority Report. Pleasure to welcome back to the program, Adam, Surwer, author, staff writer at the Atlantic Adam. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having. So I have been, on one hand, very surprised at how little attention. relatively speaking, the Calais ruling has gotten in the implications of it. On one hand, surprised. On the other hand, this has been sort of like telegraphed by the Supreme Court for over a decade. Let's go back, though, before we get there, we walk us through a little bit the sort

of reconstruction routes of what we're seeing today. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, You write in your piece about the 15th Amendment and how it's being, how the interpretation of the 15th Amendment by the Supreme Court today is completely wrong based upon how it was created. Well, it's really an inversion of what the amendment was supposed to do. You know, at the time, you know, the South is, black people in the South are being terrorized by racist Democrats. Democrats are making some headway arguing against black. black suffrage in the north. So the idea is to solve the problem by simply enfranchising everybody everywhere by, you know, by making sure that you cannot deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

Now, the radicals at the time had critiques of the 15th Amendment because they feared it was not broad enough. And they correctly perceived that there were loopholes in the amendment that reactionaries would use to disenfranchise the very people they were trying to protect. And that's unfortunately what happened. So after reconstruction, the Supreme Court, which is made up of largely Republican appointees, some union veterans even, basically says as long as, you know, the disenfranchisement devices are not explicitly racial, they're constitutional.

So that's how you end up with these sort of superficially race-neutral laws that, the purpose of which are to disenfranchised black people, you know, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, poll taxes, stuff like that. The explicit purpose is to get around the 15th Amendment Prohibition so that you can disenfranchise black people. Now, it ends up disenfranchising some poor whites as well. But, you know, the purpose is to reestablish white supremacy in a way that will pass legal muster.

And the post-Reconstruction court essentially allows this interpreting the Civil War amendments in as narrow a way as possible. And this is because, we should say, the 15th Amendment says it establishes the right to vote can't be denied on account of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude, and then grants Congress power to enforce through legislation. And so, but the explicit idea of the 15th Amendment is to enfranchise black people. In other words, that it was racial in its intent. It was racial and partisan. And, you know, there was, there were people who object to it. Explain how it was partisan, too, because, you know, I'm not sure, like, people are fully aware of, like, sort of

the dynamic, Democrats at that time, of course, more associated with the Confederacy, Republicans more associated with the Union, and they were the party of Lincoln at that time. And you knew that Lincoln was a Republican, right? To be to clarify, like, there's almost nobody at this time who you would recognize as, like, you know, a modern liberal, you'd have to go to someone like Charles Sumner or Thadius Stevens to get someone who like even approaches sort of that combination of economic and social liberalism. But so at the time, you know, the Republican Party is the party of the union. And they realized that, you know, their political project is not viable without black suffrage in the South.

And so a lot of guys who are pretty conservative go along with the Civil War amendments, not just abolishing slavery, but the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment precisely because they understand that the Republican Party, if it's going to have voters in the South, at this point, it's going to be black people. And, like, maybe some white people, but mostly black people. And they also understand that, you know, up north, it's not the most popular idea. So the easiest way to ensure that, you know, black suffrage is placed beyond sort of political machination is to amend the Constitution in order to make sure that black people can't be denied the vote on the basis of race.

And there are some nativist Republicans at this time who are like, well, you're like, well, you're going to give, you know, Chinese people the right to vote. And, you know, the radicals are like, yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. It doesn't matter. Everybody, you know, people like Representative John Bingham are saying, you know, we are going to rid the country of the horrid blasphemy that this is a white man's country. And, of course, at the time, the Democrats, you know, they're essentially running on white supremacy explicitly.

You know, this is a white man's country let white man rule. And so, you know, the 15th Amendment is adopted. at a time of vicious, you know, racially motivated partisan disenfranchisement. Black people in the South are dealing with terrorism and violence from the Ku Klux Klan. You know, they're dealing with the Democratic Party that is explicitly stating its mission is to reassert white supremacy. And so if the 15th Amendment didn't bar, you know, partisan motivated racist disenfranchisement, it wouldn't have done anything at all.

So it doesn't make any sense to say, well, you can't disentangle race and party. and therefore, you know, we just sort of have to let these racist restrictions go through. The Republican Party, the cause of the 15th Amendment was a partisan cause. It was an ideological cause. It was a principal cause. You know, some of these guys in the, you know, the radicals like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, Frederick Douglass, these people obviously are expressing moral views about race that we would recognize as very enlightened. They knew exactly what they were doing. and they also understood that the Republican Party

was the only vehicle for doing this because the Democratic Party at the time was an explicitly white supremacist organization. And, you know, the idea is just to say, you know, whether you're in the Republican Party, whether you're the Republican Party in the 21st century or the Democratic Party in the 19th century, the Constitution bars, you know,

writing black people out of the Constitution so that you don't have to appeal to them at all. It feels like the, the the the the the justification in the minds like if you could just go back to what sclia wrote in shelby in 2013 and um uh alito's attitude today um that the idea is well um they did it for partisan they did it the 15th amendment was was may have like sort of uh um born out of a partisan sentiment that involved racial

enfranchisement. So why can't we say it's okay for partisan sentiment that disenfranchises people? It's almost the same. I mean, that's sort of what it is, right? I mean, they think

like, you did it to help win elections so we can do it to help win elections, completely ignoring the idea that, well, there's also this other principle of, like we have a democracy. Yes. I mean, look, the, I think you can, you know, we talk, it starts earlier than Shelby County, right? So, you know, in the 1980s, you know, the Reagan administration is opposing a reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act because it adds an effects test to the Voting Rights Act that says

any voting changes that have the purpose or effect of discriminating are illegal. And the reason why I did that was because there was a case that was involved, you know, that involved over racial discriminating, or what was clearly racial discrimination, but you couldn't prove intent. And so in the end, what happened was that black people were being denied the right to vote, even if you didn't have like a smoking gun where someone's using the M word or something. Right. This is like a de facto test. Right. And so Roberts, you know, he's a young lawyer in the justice department, and he writes, you know, this is terrible, like this is a justification for the most intrusive interference imaginable. And so I think, you know, from an ideological point of view, Roberts has always seen efforts to alleviate

racism as worse than racism itself, especially because, and you can see this, every time they gut a piece of the Voting Rights Act, they congratulate themselves on how not racist the country is anymore. Right. But what we're seeing, you know, with these, you know, with Republican efforts to sort of redraw their districts to get rid of all their plurality minority or majority minority minority districts is that the thing that was holding back explicit races in the United States wasn't like sort of that we are so much better than our ancestors, but it was the explicit prohibitions on that kind of discrimination. And it just illustrates why it was so important.

And, you know, at the time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Shelby County, she's like, it's like throwing away your umbrella when it stops raining because you're no longer getting wet. And, you know, obviously we still need the umbrella and we always needed it. But they simply didn't care because from an ideological point of view, they saw, you know, this is a kind of unconstitutional federal government interference that was unjustifiable. And I think to some extent, it really goes back to the whole like state's rights issue. And again, this is, you know, I really do think that some of the justices on the court have this idea that the civil war amendments to the Constitution are sort of illegitimate and that they ruin the real.

antebellum constitution that was written by the founders. And so as a result, these amendments need to be narrowed because they're simply too expansive. They give the federal government too much power to interfere in the authority of the states. And you can see this in the Shelby County ruling when, you know, John Roberts says that the voting rights act as it was written interferes with the quote unquote equal sovereignty of the states as though that's more important than people's constitutional right to vote. So, and I think, you know, for that reason, they've simply approached any, any, like, federal effort to deal with racism as morally equivalent to racism itself. And this is something that the, the professor Ian Haney Lopez calls, you know, reactionary colorblindness. So it's saying affirmative action is the same thing as Jim Crow.

Yeah, I mean, this is just, but this ideology, when you distill it to that, Adam, I hadn't heard it described that way about those amendments and the illegitimacy of it. But it really does color, I think, the conservative ideology quite well and what this court represents, which is a court of Confederates. I think if we speak about it in those terms, it strips away a lot of the, I guess, highfalutin, fancy ways, the priests-like ways that these, the justices believe that they, you know, that that's how they operate. They are just trying to reify almost the Confederacy to a degree. Well, look, I mean, again, you know, the Civil War amendments were explicitly meant to, you know, make sure that America was not a white man's government. That was their purpose. I know that sounds like quote unquote woke, but this is what the guys who wrote these amendments thought.

They were trying to correct the original flaw of the Constitution, which was that it made it possible for there to be, you know, an overclass as a result of its implicit protections for slavery. And so, you know, in a way, it really is, you know, the historian Eric Foner calls the Civil War Amendments in Reconstruction, the second founding. and it really is the second founding because it takes that first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence about everybody being created equal very seriously and it tries to make that a reality. And immediately,

within 10 years of those amendments being adopted, a big chunk of the country says, well, we don't like that. We don't want that. We want an explicitly, a country that is explicitly, you know, you know, sort of class-based and the class is based on race. And so, you know, unfortunately, this is just something that is a part of, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it's inevitable because I don't think it is.

But it is something that's like very deeply rooted in our history. And it's something we've been battling, you know, since the founding of the country and arguably before. I mean, I mean, I do think this is really just a battle as to what constitutes the founding of the country. And I mean, the past 100 years plus at this point, 150 years nearly have been the overwhelming majority of our of like Supreme Court rulings, I think are probably somewhere between 13, 14th, 15th amendments. And what do you think it is? Are we just really just sort of like seeing this low motion backlash from the Voting Rights Act in 65? Like the, let me just add one thing. I mean, this is the thing is that, you know, Johnson famously said, you know, we're going to lose this out for two generations.

And I think he just like overestimated how quickly. these, what had happened would filter through to the American people. I can't remember the name of the professor. I cite this all the time. We had them on years ago. But the most interesting statistic I've ever heard, I think, was that up until 2008, 50% of non-college educated white people thought the Republicans were to the left of Democrats on race. Up until Obama gets elected, there is still a massive cohort of people who think,

the Democratic Party is is the Democratic Party from 150 years ago. And it's almost as of like, it's just, it's just catching up now to where people are like, wait a second, when did black people get the right to vote? Or, you know, like, this is, there's a certain cohort that the, the Republican Party has, it's almost caught up with them. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, the, the, the backlash to the Warren court. And, and, and keep it. mind, you know, we had a liberal court for like a couple years and it completely, you know, it completely radicalized the conservative movement into like developing its own alternate legal movement for the purpose.

Powell Doctrine, you get the federal society, get the Heritage Foundation on it. All that stuff. And, you know, National Review is publishing, you know, criticisms of Brownbee Board, criticisms of the Civil Rights Act, criticisms of the Voting Rights Act, you know, Barry Goldwater, is, you know, objecting in a moral sense to racism, but also saying, you know, the federal government banning discrimination is, like, you know, even worse. So, you know, this is, like, a core, I think, you know, is like really core to the 20th century modern conservative movement and the conservative legal movement in particular. And I think, you know, part of the issue here is, is that

I think it's really the reaction to Barack Obama that provides. it with this sort of momentum, because then they can start saying, well, the racism issue is really solved now. We have a black president, you know, who he opposed tooth and nail. And we said, you know, his health care bill was reparations or a civil rights bill, which is what Rush Limbaugh called it. You know, and they could say, well, you know, this racism problem has been solved. And I think to some extent, that's literally what Scalia said, incidentally. One of the attorneys who is, the attorneys for Shelby County said it's an old disease and the disease has been cured, which is like an absurd thing to say, you know, especially like at that moment where there was

like a racist backlash to the black president happening. But I think, you know, one of the things that happened was that there was this, you know, particularly in the Obama era, Obama had such a massive cultural impact on like public facing jobs. So in media and entertainment, and particularly Congress got more diverse than it had ever been, you know, there was this, there was this integration of sort of elite America that occurred as a result of, you know, so the cultural currents that were swirling around Barack Obama. And that gave people the perception of a more integrated America that didn't really exist because occupational segregation, for example, has not budged since the 90s. You know, we, the, even though Eric Holder was DO was attorney general.

I mean, you had that. That was real. Like, you know, you had black people in positions of leadership. You had, like, more black shows on television. You had more black actors being cast in movies and TV shows. Not, like, overwhelmingly, but there was, like, you know, a significant change. And there was this sort of, you know, this incredible reactionary backlash to it. I mean, whenever you see people complaining about, like, the Little Mermaid is Black or something like that, it seems silly.

But that kind of stuff is actually. about labor. It's actually saying we don't think black people should have those jobs. And now, you know, we're saying something like that when it comes to Congress. Like this decision is most likely going to result in fewer, in a less diverse Congress because 50% of the black American population lives in the South. So if Republican-controlled states can simply wipe out all their black districts because technically it's partisan gerrymandering, not racial gerrymandering, it doesn't violate the 15th Amendment, then you're going to see, you know,

a lot of black representatives lose their districts. Now, I don't know how that plays out in the long term. I think stuff like this is sometimes difficult to game out because, you know, again, like who knew that Donald Trump was going to crack the blue wall in 2016? You know, I think that, you know, some people did. Some people anticipated that, but very few people, I think, really were anticipated.

I mean, things happen that we do not expect. So, you know, I don't necessarily know that this is going to go the way that they're planning for it to go, but it's certainly motivated by a feeling of being threatened by, you know, the rise of black people in elite places, in elite places where, you know, these people feel like they don't really belong. I mean, you could see that now with the way Heggseth is running the military, with the way the civil rights division is being run, you know, suing schools for having too many black students like Yale Medical School for having too many.

But I mean, like, this is, you know, I think the voting rights act as part of a broader agenda of elite resegregation that is itself a backlash to, you know, not just Barack Obama, but the more diverse elite class that emerged as a result of his election. Do you think, I'm just curious about the idea of, because we spent a lot of time on this program in the wake of Trump in 2016. And I want to say like a lot of time as in like four or five years, talking about the sort of the notion of this racial backlash. and how much of that do you think was just a function of like they shouldn't have this job that it was economic as much as like you have some form of and not necessarily you know across the board but there was an animus about not being centered in the same way in culture yeah i mean my example is just like you know i'm turning on the tv and all of a sudden like Why is this black guy on the Seattle's commercial? That should be me.

You know, who's getting that? Or, you know, because as a white kid you're growing up in 1975, 1980, and literally everything you see, you are centered. It's either you as a dad and it's either you in the future or it's your future, it's your mom or it's your future wife or, you know, whether it's a commercial or a TV show, it's like almost all of them. and then all of a sudden that goes away. I mean, you can see it right now with this whole stupid controversy over the Odyssey

and like having black people in the Odyssey. Like, you know, it's simply the idea, you know, it is a sort of like reverse cultural appropriation discourse almost. Like nobody's mad that Mad Damon is in grief, but they're mad that Lupida Nyango is black. And it's really, it's just, it's explicit. racism. It's like, this is our stuff. This belongs to us. And you should be a part of it. And also, you know, it extends. I mean, and I think the absurd thing about the Odyssey in particular is like

when you start talking about like Shakespeare or antiquity, like these are, these are materials that have been put on by diverse cast for generations. They've all, you know, like Paul Robson did Macbeth in Haiti. You know what I mean? Like this is like a very old thing. This, you know, the idea that the Odyssey explicitly only belongs to like white guys who are. You know, born between 1960 and today is sort of absurd. But I do think there is, you know, again, I don't want to say that everybody who voted for Trump was motivated by that, but I do think that this ideological vanguard that surrounds Trump, when you look at their preoccupations and what they use as propaganda to sort of get

people riled up and motivate people, it is this kind of like explicitly culture war stuff that has like a sort of serious economic undertone of like black people shouldn't have those kinds of jobs. Black people shouldn't be in Congress. Black people shouldn't be in movies. Black people shouldn't be directing movies. They shouldn't be showrunners. They shouldn't be in writers' rooms. This kind of stuff, it seems silly.

But then when you when you dig underneath, what we're really talking about is, you know, to some extent, economic segregation in elite professions. Yeah. And I mean, like it still rings in my head. and this isn't specifically about the white supremacy piece, but it feeds into it, is when Trump won, there was some anonymous banker that gave a quote to the Financial Times about how we get to say the R word again.

And, you know, that's about another marginalized community, but it's about a feeling of empowerment. And they wanted to say, we're allowed to say the N word again. Exactly. But they just said R word. It's like a limited hangout. But that bank,

is maybe a little bit not the base of his support, although maybe the base of his financial support, but the people, the evangelical base, the base of Christian conservatives that was always there and, you know, was Bush's base as well. That's why we shouldn't treat Trump as such an anomaly. Like he, his blondness, his whiteness and the kind of prosperity gospel that he embodies is very much, even if he's from New York, a, like, cultural product of the South, the Confederacy and white supremacy. I mean, if you look, I mean, the politics of, you know, if you go like sort of antebellum politics, the Democratic Party is very much about this idea of, like, equality between white men, you know, who are the head of their households, you know, you are in charge, you know, your wife and your slaves obey you.

and this sort of elevates all white men regardless of economic status to, you know, a tier of status above everybody else. And when you look at sort of, again, it's not everybody. I think a lot of people, you know, sort of normal people with conservative views are put off by it. But when you look at sort of this ideological vanguard of the American right, they're really obsessed with this stuff, with this kind of nostalgia. of, you know, this era when, you know, white men's, you know, enhanced status in American society was unquestioned. And that's not wholly an economic thing.

But, you know, obviously there is sort of an economic base for it. I mean, it comes out of the culture of chattel slavery. But, you know, people, the way that economics interacts with people's ideological views is more complicated than a one-to-one. And I do think that, you know, as, you know, that banker who you were talking about, that guy is probably not suffering economically. But he was suffering from a sense that he wasn't allowed to denigrate the people who he considers beneath him without suffering some kind of social stigma. And I think there are a lot of people who voted for that. I don't know that everybody did. I mean, you look at like the sort of broader economic trends across the world, you know, incumbent.

parties suffered similar setbacks as a result of, you know, the post-COVID inflation. But, you know, there were people who absolutely voted for Trump because they felt like he was going to bring, and you saw this immediately after he won, this sort of cultural vibe shift, where it was kind of cool to be a racist asshole again. Yes. And, you know, the way that they wanted it to. As Elon Musk said, comedy is. legal again. And so that let's talk. I want to talk about sort of like the the backlash to what

we're seeing in both in terms of like, you know, what ultimately is going to be solutions are on the table. But I've seen, I think I've read something to the effect that John Lewis, when it came to those rulings in the 80s, had some hesitation because there was a sense that it would undermine, perhaps, the white progressive, whatever you would have called it in that era, and black progressive coalitions that would form. And I wonder if, like, what your thoughts are, both on the potential for that in the wake of this but also um you know as i read that uh in in 2012 i think i i think it was i had glenn ford on who is the late glenn ford from the black agenda report who was arguing to me that that obama was in fact the the greater of of two evils

um and that he the the the problem he had with obama or one of the large ones was that obama was undercutting the black radical tradition that uh and and i think you know radicalism being on a spectrum in terms of like uh um and i wonder if um if it was just obama or if like the um the cbc which is like surprisingly i don't know what you want to call it moderate corporate-cortist establishment-oriented, not radical, but not even on the spectrum towards radicalism in the way that we understand it today. I wonder if that's going to change the nature of black representation of the CBC or, you know, if there is like a situation where, you know, I think we could have surprises in the wake of this gerrymandering because of the nature of this

cycle. Right. I'm talking. I think the serious, the serious critique of the majority minority district stuff was that these districts allowed Republicans to keep their districts redder and to, you know, segregate off, you know, not in a racial sense, but to make blue districts in Republican states safe blue so they can make the rest of the state red. And, and, you know, Democrats in those states were fine with it because then they had these safe seats that they, that were sort of like fiefdoms that they could keep getting elected to. And I think that is the reason why, actually, that we don't know, you know, what the outcome of this is going to be in terms of, you know,

I think Republicans think that this is going to lessen the power of black voters, and as a result, they're going to be fewer. It will insulate them from the consequences of the Trump-era politics they've embraced, which is one of, like, overt racial discrimination. I mean, I'm looking at, you know, I live in Texas here in San Antonio, And, you know, I'm looking at ads and it's like, you know, Chip Roy supports surreal law. It's like really like lowest common denominator gutter racist stuff. And, you know, I'm not sure that that's going to work out precisely the way they want because as long as black people can vote, people are going to try to get those votes, right?

And so in a close contest, you may find some Republican politicians thinking, well, maybe if I appeal to black voters, that'll give me an end. edge over my opponent, especially in states, you know, like Louisiana, like Mississippi, where those populations are really are substantial. So, you know, I don't know what the, the, So do you think that it could, could end up moderating the Republican Party in some fashion? I mean, one of the problems we have now is that- I think that's a possible outcome. I think the problem with that possibility or the thing that would, you know, that would prevent that possibility is that if this snowballs, further than it already has because what happened, you know, after Reconstruction was that, you know,

black people were not immediately completely disenfranchised. That, you know, that full disenfranchisement happens almost impartially as a reaction to the coalitions that black people are making with working class white people and the populace. This really freaks the Democrats out. And they, you know, they go on like a total rampage campaign of terror that ends in like total black. literal South Carolina. They're killing politicians because they're trying to get Appalachian, you know, the idea of like Appalachian whites, you know, more progressive and more populist, I should say, too, economically forming a coalition with blacks. They literally end up killing people in South Carolina driving these politicians out of town. It is an existential threat to the Democratic Party at that moment, and they respond to it, you know, with the tools that they, and that the Democratic Party at the time is equipped with, which is violence and terrorism.

It works for a period of time. But I think, again, there's a couple of things, you know, I don't think that they know what the long-term effects of this will be, both on either part, to be honest. you know, it's actually possible that the Democratic Party becomes more conservative as a result of, you know, it being, of the influence of black voters being diminished in these areas. You know, that's what happened with the Republican Party when they, you know, no longer had a black constituency in the South to appeal to. But the other, you know, it really depends on, like, how much this snowball is the disenfranchisement, the complete disenfranchisement of black people coincided with a campaign of terror and overt discriminatory. and the imposition of Jim Crow. So I think, like, we don't know how this is going to go. You know, I think it's unjustifiable, but I don't think it necessarily ends in a way

that is, like, easily predictable over the long term. You know, in the short term, obviously, I think it results in, you know, a diminishing of black representation in Congress, which is the goal. But, you know, I just like, the fact is that black people are never going to give up trying to be free and equal. That just, you know, that didn't happen, you know, after Reconstruction. It didn't happen with the, you know, the campaigns of terrorism that followed Reconstruction. It didn't happen after Plessy versus Ferguson.

It did, it's just not going to happen because Alito wrote, you know, a stupid opinion, uh, justifying racial discrimination in voting. It's just, you know, black people are never going to stop fighting for their right to be free and equal. And so, you know, the idea, this is the fight. is simply not over. It's just not the end. What effect it will have on the parties, I don't know, but I know that this is not going to be the end of the story. I would also think that the dynamics in terms of white people voting for black candidates has changed in some very significant ways that both would, I think, both impact Republican voters, but also, you know, like a Democratic voters. I mean,

I think there's just like a greater willingness by white people to vote for a black candidate in ways that we just can't predict in some of those seats. But with that said, obviously there's going to be some type of political pushback or hopefully. What do you think are the solutions to what we're seeing now? I mean, I mean, I think there's a number of solutions. One is that you need to pass another Voting Rights Act and you have to strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear it. And you also have to figure out a, you need to figure out a solution to the Supreme Court problem.

Now, maybe that's a vacancy, maybe that's adding seats to the Supreme Court. My view, and I expressed this years ago, was that the Roberts Court's jurisprudence on voting was interfering with the American people's ability to govern themselves, and therefore, the constitutional harbrawl of adding seats to the court was justified. And this is not unprecedented. Republicans will try to tell you it's unprecedented, even though they have occasionally done it on the state. level. But, you know, during... They've done three times in the past five, ten years or so, I guess. Yes. But, you know, even during Reconstruction, you know, the Republicans take away vacancies on the court.

They shrink the court so that Andrew Johnson can't appoint anybody and then they expand it after he's gone. So the idea that, you know, this is something that has never been done before, it is absolutely not true. And I think the issue here is not, it's not a question of, like, policy differences. Like, it would be one thing if the Supreme Court was simply conservative. But my view is that the Roberts Court is directly interfering with the ability of the American people to govern themselves to exercise self-determination. And that is something that requires a hardball response. How do you fashion a new Voting Rights Act where there's no jurisdiction, like, by the- Congress has the authority to, I mean, jurisdiction.

jurisdiction is stripping the jurisdiction stripping is something. I know they have the ability to do that, but I mean, how does it, how to, in, in reality, how does that end up functioning? I do not. I mean, honestly, I do not know. They're going to be like, there are, there are a number of solutions. There are much smarter people than me who have figured out, or who have, you know, have written up plans to do, to sort of figure out how to get around the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in this area. I mean, you know, when you look back at like Charles Sumner, his argument, he actually didn't think the 15th Amendment didn't, he thought it did not go far enough. And his argument was that the constitutional guarantee of a Republican government in every state already enfranchised all black people, regardless of the amendment anyway.

You know, I think there's a number of routes to do it. I think there is obviously no route that the Roberts, the majority, current majority of the Supreme Court would accept. They have six votes. They could do anything they want with those six votes. And they have shown a complete disregard for the effects of their rulings when it comes to voting. They've just completely ignored the effect that they're removing the Voting Rights Act's protections has resulted in, you know, politicians trying to disenfranchise their black constituents. It just does not seem to bother them at all.

I mean, there was, you know, there were a couple of voting rights activists who objected to Alito's characterization of, you know, black voting turnout increasing since Shelby County, since, you know, that wasn't actually true from Obama going forward. So it's misleading. And it's misleading in a way. He also cited a fact. He also cited a fake fact. I think in his ruling is my understanding as well along those lines. Not only he said two out of the last five elections, you know, But those two were before they got rid of Section 5 pre-clearance. But I believe there was another like sort of like statistic that he cited that came from the brief that was not that was just not factual. I mean, I guess the I mean, I guess we'll we'll see what the what the future brings in terms of this.

It's going to be interesting. but the hostility, oh, I guess I also wanted to add that their complete 180 on Purcell, the doctrine about like interfering with, that seems to totally give up. To those two elections, except, you know, when we want you to. Unless they've already started. Like literally, unless they are, people have already voted. It's, I think it really gives away the game. I mean, they sort of, Alito sort of tiptoes around the idea.

But, you know, the outrage that a lot of people on the left felt when the Supreme Court was allowing, you know, obvious racial gerrymanders to go forward, you know, unconstitutional maps to go forward in elections on the grounds that it would be too confusing. I mean, I think their view is the reverse of that, which is that, you know, the maps that have, you know, like the Louisiana map with two black districts, that was racist. Getting rid of the second black district wasn't racist. It just, you know, adding another black district out of six in a state that is one-third black, that to them was racist. I think Alito in particular. I mean, so the way to look at it and the way to understand it, in my view, is that it's just the old reverse racism canard. That these laws that are meant to prevent racial discrimination are themselves racist against white people,

And therefore, this is like a great injustice that is being righted. And that's why they're allowing these maps to go forward, you know, regardless of their earlier rulings on the Purcell principle. Adam Serwer, author, staff right at the Atlantic. We will link to your piece on the, on this Calais and the just sort of in general, the Voting Rights Act. We really appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having. Thanks, Adam.

All right, folks. We're going to take quick break. Head into the fun half of the show, as we call it. I like this I am, if you don't mind me reading it, because I think it caps off our interview quite well. Carolina Kami says, this conversation is why any left is claiming a material analysis should participate in elections.

The lazy, inane arguments that voting doesn't matter or change anything contributes to the manufactured consent for these Supreme Court decisions. And guess what? These decisions bring us no closer to any sort of Leninist revolution we are left even more powerless with no additional class consciousness to speak of. Lennon participated in elections to underscore their shortcomings. Abstaining altogether is just giving the fascist and unnecessary advantage.

I think that's just really well said. Voting is a defensive measure in that way, and it's defensive on behalf of marginalized communities. It's insufficient and should not be the totality of one's class consciousness, one's political participation, ideally, and I know that's a lot to ask of people, but if you are politically engaged and you're thinking about things in that kind of way, voting is important to just protect people in a small way. All right.

We're going to head into the fun half now. Okay. You can support this program by Become a Member. Join the Majority Report.com. When you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials. But you also get the fun half, is my understanding. Yes, you do. You can IAM us and call the program.

Also, just coffee.coffey. Co-op, Fair Trade Coffee, hot chocolate, using coupon code majority, get 10% off. It's co-op, Madison, Wisconsin. Matt is ill. Do we know what's on his program? Yeah, today at 245 Left Reckoning is premiering on YouTube, and Matt and David discuss AOC's take on the American Revolution before Ron Polconn joins Matt to discuss AI cluelessness,

Zoron and politics in California. Yeah. Very cool. Also just want to plug. I did it yesterday, but if you haven't checked out my episode of A BitFrudy with my dear friend Matt Bernstein, please check it out. He brought me on to interview Mallory McMorrow. And it's making the rounds.

There were some... I have some non-political friends who are like, my God. I know. Matt, like, knows how to market himself on social media. Not Matt, like. Matt Bernstein in ways that... We could probably learn from, although I guess follow Matt on Instagram, right? That's his big plug.

Yeah, follow Matt on Instagram. Right after you follow Mr. Brian Vokey. Yes. Mr. Who? Brian Voki. Oh, Mr. Brian Voki. Well, I mean. And me too.

I've reposted like three things. That's amazing. All of this woodworking? No. I think I reposted one of your things. I mean, I'm not sure. I shouldn't have to realize it. I've done it.

I've done it. But please do check out that interview. I mean, I'm just, I, I love Matt so much. He's so talented and he's so good at, like, making people feel like, because he's so polite and soft-spoken. Takes their guard down. It just takes their guard. And she hated me.

It seemed like she did not like me. And her tone would change when I would do the kind of more bad cop thing. But the thing is, is that Matt's not saying anything different than I'm saying. He's just doing it in the tone. own that's a little bit more, you know. Do you think she hated you more than she hates living in Michigan? I still know. Oh, yeah.

That was her big thing that she didn't like. Yeah. Hey, folks, don't forget. We got merch. Shop dot majority report radio.com. People are talking about the Trump slump stickers. I'm starting to see those more at gas stations. Food aisles in the supermarket.

I don't know. I slapped one on my wallet. There you go. Sorry about that. Brian got docked for yesterday. Also, don't forget, AM Quickie. AMQquicky.com. Get the news in your email inbox every morning at 9 a.m.

Quick read, AM Quickie. Three times a week, it's free. If you want it five times a week, a couple bucks, but it's free. AM Quickie. Don't forget our Discord. We got like, I think, close 20,000 people in there now, maybe more. Majority Discord.com. Hype train.

See you in the fun half. Hype Train for Twitch. I know, poggers. You are in for it. All right, folks, 646, 25, 739, 20. See you in the fun. Are you ready? Who sent us this?

Alpha males are back, back, back, back, boy, boy, and the alpha males are back, back. And the alpha males are back, back, back. Just as delicious as you could imagine. The alpha males are back, back, back, back, back, boys, back. And the alpha males are back, back, back, back. Just want to degrade the white man. Alpha males are back, back, back. I take all of it to my throat.

Alpha males are back, back, back, back, back. Snowflakes has what? The alpha males are back, back, back, back. You are a madman. And the alpha males are back, back. Oh no, Sam Cedar, what a, whoa, what a fucking nightmare. Yeah, or a couple of them, just put them in rotation. DJ dinner.

Well, the problem with those is they're like 45 seconds long, so I don't know if they're enough to break. That's fucking nonsense. You see white people doing drugs. They look worse than normal white people, and all white people look disgusting. And the alpha males are psyched. Fuck them. Fuck them.

Snoblox says what? Have you tried doing an impression on a college campus? I think that there's no reason why reasonable people across the divide can't all agree with this. Psych? And the alpha males are back, back, back, back, back, back, back. And the Africans are black, black, black, black, African. And the alpha males are black, black, black, black, black, black, black, and the Africans are back, back, back, back, black.

Back. When you see Donald Trump out there, doesn't a little party you think that America deserves to be taken over by jihadists? Keeping it 100. Can't knock the hustle. Come up. Fuck them. Fuck them. Things I do for the bigger game plan.

By the way, it's my birthday. Happy birthday to me, Jew boy. I have a thought experiment for you. And the alpha males are back, back. Africa's are black, black. Alpha males are black. Africa's. The price are blast.

Thank you.