"Deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life" -Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

 

[Yesterday] the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Students for Fair Admissions is an organization designed to fight against affirmative action in college admissions, and [yesterday] it achieved its goal: the Supreme Court decided that policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina that consider race as a factor in admissions are unconstitutional because they violate the guarantee of equal protection before the law, established by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

The deciding votes were 6 to 2 in the case of Harvard—Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself because she had been a member of Harvard’s board of overseers—and 6 to 3 in the case of the University of North Carolina. 

In the case of the two schools at the center of this Supreme Court decision, admissions officers initially evaluated students on a number of categories. Harvard used six: academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal, and overall. Then, after the officers identified an initial pool of applicants who were all qualified for admission, they cut down the list to a final class. At Harvard, those on the list to be cut were evaluated on four criteria: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race. [Yesterday], the Supreme Court ruled that considering race as a factor in that categorical fashion is unconstitutional. 

The court did not rule that race could not be considered at all. In the majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

How much this will matter for colleges and universities is unclear. Journalist James Fallows pointed out that there are between 3,500 and 5,500 colleges in the U.S. and all but 100 of them admit more than 50% of the students who apply. Only about 70 admit fewer than a third of all applicants. That is, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, “the great majority of schools, where most Americans get their postsecondary education, admit most of the people who apply to them.” 

The changing demographics of the country are also changing student populations. As an example, in 2022, more than 33% of the students at the University of Texas at Austin, which automatically admits any Texas high school student in the top 6% of their class, were from historically underrepresented populations. And universities that value diversity may continue to try to create a diverse student body.

But in the past, when schools have eliminated affirmative action, Black student numbers have dropped off, both because of changes in admission policies and because Black students have felt unwelcome in those schools. This matters to the larger pattern of American society. As Black and Brown students are cut off from elite universities, they are also cut off from the pipeline to elite graduate schools and jobs. 

More is at stake in this case than affirmative action in university admissions. The decision involves the central question of whether the law is colorblind or whether it can be used to fix long-standing racial inequality. Does the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 to enable the federal government to overrule state laws that discriminated against Black Americans, allow the courts to enforce measures to address historic discrimination? 

Those joining the majority in the decision say no. They insist that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War intended only that it would make men of all races equal before the law, and that considering race in college admissions undermines that principle by using race in a negative manner, involving racial stereotyping (by considering race by category), and lacking an endpoint. “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” the majority opinion reads. 

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that affirmative action actually made racial tensions worse because it “highlights our racial differences with pernicious effect,” prolonging “the asserted need for racial discrimination.” He wrote: “under our Constitution, race is irrelevant.” “The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny,” Thomas wrote. “And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments.” 

Those justices who dissented—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—pointed to the profound racial discrimination that continued after the Civil War and insist that the law has the power to address that discrimination in order to achieve the equality promised by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

“The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality,” Sotomayor’s opinion begins. “The Court long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind.” 

In her concurring opinion concerning the UNC case, Jackson noted that “[g]ulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles—the ‘self-evident’ truth that all of us are created equal.” 

If this fight sounds political, it should. It mirrors the current political climate in which right-wing activists reject the idea of systemic racism that the U.S. has acknowledged and addressed in the law since the 1950s. They do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment supports the civil rights legislation that tries to guarantee equality for historically marginalized populations, and in [yesterday's] decision the current right-wing majority on the court demonstrated that it is willing to push that political agenda at the expense of settled law. As recently as 2016, the court reaffirmed that affirmative action, used since the 1960s, is constitutional. [Yesterday's] court just threw that out.  

The split in the court focused on history, and the participants’ anger was palpable and personal. Thomas claimed that “[a]s [Jackson] sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today.” Her solution, he writes, “is to unquestioningly accede to the view of elite experts and reallocate society’s riches by racial means as necessary to ‘level the playing field,’ all as judged by racial metrics…. I strongly disagree.” 

Jackson responded that “Justice Thomas’s prolonged attack…responds to a dissent I did not write in order to assail an admissions program that is not the one UNC has crafted.” 

She noted that Black Americans had always simply wanted the same right to take care of themselves that white Americans had enjoyed, but it had been denied them. She recounted the nation’s long history of racial discrimination and excoriated the majority for pretending it didn’t exist. 

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, [yesterday], the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”

“[Yesterday], the Supreme Court upended decades of precedent that enabled America’s colleges and universities to build vibrant diverse environments where students are prepared to lead and learn from one another,” the Biden administration said in a statement, warning that “the Court’s decision threatens to move the country backwards.” In a speech to reporters, Biden called for new standards that take into consideration the adversity—including poverty—a student has overcome when selecting among qualified candidates, a system that would work “for everyone… from Appalachia to Atlanta and far beyond.”

“While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/college-selectivity/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/

https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/03/jackson-says-shell-recuse-herself-from-case-challenging-affirmative-action-at-harvard/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/29/affirmative-action-scotus-decision-full-text-pdf/

https://news.utexas.edu/2022/09/22/ut-austin-enrolls-largest-ever-student-body-sets-all-time-highs-for-graduation-rates/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/29/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-actions-to-promote-educational-opportunity-and-diversity-in-colleges-and-universities/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/06/29/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-supreme-courts I’ll-decision-on-affirmative-action/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/06/john-roberts-supreme-court-brown-v-board-of-education.html

Twitter:

AshaRangappa_/status/1674437450851049472

neal_katyal/status/1674422760519659520

JamesFallows/status/1674472046464475138

"Today's decisions by an out-of-touch and hyper-conservative Supreme Court are yet more evidence that the court is not working for all of us" Becky Pringle, NEA President

 

Why Canada’s wildfires will affect air quality for weeks to come (Vox)

 

US cities are again experiencing air quality issues this week as wildfires continue to burn in Canada and smoke drifts south. That smoke includes contaminants, which can exacerbate respiratory conditions and make breathing generally difficult, and it could well spread for weeks to come.

Typically, Canada’s wildfire season runs through the spring and summer, so there’s some expectation of blazes taking place around this time. Because Canada has experienced an exceptionally hot and dry spell this year, however, it’s seeing the most destructive fire season in decades, resulting in a record amount of acreage burned and smoke emissions released.

Here are answers to five questions about the impact the wildfires have had, how lawmakers have responded, and what to expect in the coming weeks.

1) How are the Canadian wildfires affecting US air quality?

The wildfires have had a significant impact on the air quality in multiple US states. In the past few months, they’ve affected different parts of the country due to the locations of the fires as well as weather patterns that have carried smoke southward.

In May, western states including Montana and Colorado issued air quality warnings as fires in British Columbia and Alberta contributed to smoke in those areas. In early June, East Coast states and cities including New York and Philadelphia also put forth air quality alerts due to severe smoke and haze in the region. 

Early this week, Midwestern states bore the brunt of the latest wave of wildfire smoke, with Detroit and Chicago listed as having the worst air quality in the world. On Wednesday, however, East Coast states also began issuing new alerts as the smoke — which has traveled as far as Europe — moves in that direction.

Currently, more than a dozen US states have issued some form of air quality alert as the wildfires in Canada have continued. All told, more than a third of Americans live somewhere that has a warning in place.

Smoke from the fires has increased the pollutants, like particulate matter, in the air, which can disproportionately affect people who have respiratory conditions and make breathing more difficult generally. According to CNN, the inhalation of particulate matter can contribute to health problems including heart disease and asthma.

The Environmental Protection Agency measures air quality using what’s known as the Air Quality Index, or AQI, which effectively tracks how many pollutants are in the air. The lower a place’s AQI is, the better. Places with an AQI that’s 100 or lower have satisfactory air quality, according to the EPA.

 Meanwhile, a place with an AQI from 101-150 has air quality that’s harmful to sensitive individuals, and a place with an AQI from 151-200 has air quality that’s harmful to a broader population.

When the East Coast was dealing with heavy wildfire smoke in early June, there were areas with an AQI above 400. This week, Detroit’s AQI came in as high as 306.

US residents can check the air quality of their town or city at this link.

2) How big are the wildfires in Canada?

As of Thursday morning, there were 500 active wildfires across different provinces in Canada, with the highest number — roughly 112 — concentrated in the eastern province of Quebec, and 104 concentrated in the western province of British Columbia. 

Of these fires, about 256 were deemed “out of control” by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which means that they haven’t yet responded “to fire suppression efforts and [are] expected to grow.”

The number of fires in the eastern provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Ontario has been especially high this year compared to past years, displacing tens of thousands of people. Collectively, the Canadian fires have burned about 20 million acres this year, which far surpasses the scale of the 2021 and 2022 fire seasons.

3) How long have the wildfires been burning and how long is the wildfire smoke expected to last?

Canada’s annual wildfire season typically goes from May to October, though it’s rarely this destructive this early. Some of this year’s earliest wildfires began at the start of May and have kept burning in the months since.

Historically, the wildfire season peaks in July and August and is over by the end of October. Experts have warned that the rest of the season could prove just as damaging as the first part.

“The images that we have seen so far this season are some of the most severe we have ever witnessed in Canada, and the current forecast for the next few months indicates the potential for continued higher-than-normal fire activity,” 

Canada’s emergency-preparedness minister Bill Blair told the Associated Press. That means the US is likely to continue to see the effects of these fires for months, including the ongoing presence of smoke and haze.

4) What have the US and Canada done in response?

The Canadian federal government has deployed its military to help with firefighting efforts in multiple provinces. Additionally, the US and several other countries around the globe including Costa Rica, France, and Australia have sent over 1,100 supplemental firefighters.

The wildfires have raised questions about whether Canada needs to establish a more centralized federal agency to address natural disasters, akin to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the US. 

Currently, each province is responsible for the front-line response to wildfires in their region, though they’re able to request additional aid and support from the federal government.

Both Canadian and US officials have also faced critiques for the lack of timely information and response to air quality problems these wildfires have posed. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was criticized, for example, for failing to provide clear updates about the state of air quality in the region and making resources like masks and shelter available to vulnerable populations.

States and cities have been working to issue air quality alerts to their residents so that people can better prepare for these developments. Authorities in both countries have also issued guidance encouraging people to run air conditioning while they’re inside and use an N95 mask outdoors in order to make sure they’re protecting themselves from hazardous chemicals in the air.

5) Is climate change to blame for Canada’s wildfires?

It’s not abnormal for Canada to have a wildfire season, but climate change has played a role in exacerbating the magnitude and frequency of the fires. 

As the Earth has warmed, it’s gotten hotter and drier. Because of that, there’s been more available kindling in Canadian forests, and there’s also been more lightning, which contributes to many of the country’s wildfires.

“Most fires in the boreal forest of northern Canada are started by lightning. A one-degree Celsius increase in temperature amounts to about 12% more lightning. So the warmer it gets as the climate heats up, the more triggers there are for fires to burn,” Edward Struzik, a fellow at Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, told CBS News.

Additionally, as climate change worsens, so will fires and air quality, according to Morgan Crowley, a fire scientist with Canada’s forest service who spoke with Vox’s Benji Jones:

Climate change is going to impact Canada more than other regions because it’s closer to the poles. In the west, we expect longer fire seasons. And across Canada in general, we expect fire seasons to get more extreme. The annual area of burned regions is expected to increase — some predictions suggest it could as much as double by 2100.

With climate change, it’s hotter. So our forests are drier. That means they’re more stressed out, and there’s more dead fuel. They’re basically a tinderbox when lightning strikes.

Update, June 29, 9:10 am ET: This story was originally published on June 28 and has been updated with new data about wildfires in Canada. -VOX

RELATED

Smoky air puts everyone at risk — but it’s worse for some

Canada's Wildfires

 

 

Tropical Forest Loss Generated 2.7 Gigatonnes of Carbon Pollution in 2022

 

Despite world leaders' pledge to halt and reverse global deforestation by 2030, the tropics lost 10% more primary forest in 2022 than in 2021. That's the latest update from the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Global Forest Watch, released Tuesday, which found that tropical forests had lost 4.1 million hectares, generating as much carbon dioxide as India emits from fossil fuels in a year at 2.7 gigatonnes.

"One thing is clear: What happens in the forest, doesn't stay in the forest," Frances Seymour, a distinguished senior fellow in WRI's forests program, said, as Mongabay reported. Seymour said that the data, gathered by the University of Maryland, was "particularly disheartening" because of its timing.

At the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, 145 nations signed the "Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use" that included a promise to work "collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation."

"We had hoped by now to see signals in the data that we were turning the corner on forest loss," Seymour said, as Mongabay reported. "We don't see that signal yet, and in fact, we're heading in the wrong direction."

The analysis focuses on tropical forests because more than 96% of human-caused deforestation takes place there and because primary tropical rainforests are especially important for protecting biodiversity and regulating both the global climate and local temperature and weather patterns—temperatures near newly deforested areas can increase by twice the amount forced upward by the climate crisis alone.

The update found that the world lost an area of these essential forests the size of Switzerland at a rate of 11 soccer fields per minute. That's over 1 million hectares more than it should have to meet the global goal of halting deforestation by 2030, the WRI's Rod Taylor said, as BBC News reported. "Globally, we are far off track and trending in the wrong direction," Taylor said.

This could have serious consequences for both forest communities and efforts to limit global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Already, the world would be around 0.5°C warmer without forests, Mongabay pointed out.

"Since the turn of the century, we have seen a hemorrhaging of some of the world's most important forest ecosystems despite years of efforts to turn that trend around," Global Forest Watch director Mikaela Weisse said at a press briefing reported by AFP. "We are rapidly losing one of our most effective tools for combating climate change, protecting biodiversity, and supporting the health and livelihoods of millions of people."

In some instances, it is possible that policy shifts have not had the time to take root and sprout in the data. Brazil, for example, led the world for deforestation at 43% of the world total. It saw 15% more forest loss in 2022 than 2021 and the highest level of non-fire-caused tree loss since 2005.

However, the 2022 data reflects the last year of the administration of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, whose policies encouraged deforestation by decreasing protections for the environment and Indigenous rights, the report authors noted.

Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who succeeded in significantly curbing deforestation during his previous term. Lula, who was sworn in in early 2023, has now promised to end deforestation by 2030. "This will not be an easy task, with some officials cautioning that there may not be visible progress until 2024 at the earliest as enforcement agencies are re-equipped and re-staffed and illegal activities investigated," the report authors observed.

Catarina Jakovac, a biologist at Brazil's Federal University of Santa Catarina, told DW that Lula—and Brazil—needed support to protect the Amazon. "As a consumer of the products that we export, the international community needs to not be buying products that come from deforested lands," she said.

Seymour also added that, while it may take policies around the world some time to kick in, finance from wealthier countries for anti-deforestation measures is not where it needs to be. "Collectively we don't seem to be addressing the problem as the planetary emergency that it truly represents," Seymour said, according to Mongabay.

Other countries that saw noticeable deforestation in 2022 were DRC and Bolivia, which lost the second and third most after Brazil respectively. In DRC, forest loss is complicated and often driven by poverty as people clear forest for charcoal and subsistence farming. "Investments to lift people out of poverty and reduce reliance on a resource-based economy are urgently needed," the report authors wrote.

In Bolivia, meanwhile, government policy that favors commodity agriculture—especially soy—encourages tree cutting. The government offers land titles to farmers who clear their own plot. "The standing forest isn't seen as fulfilling any social or economic function," Marlene Quintanilla, a research director at nonprofit the Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza, told The New York Times.

Ghana broke records with its deforestation rates, with forest loss increasing in the country by 71%, the highest increase of any nation. The losses were mostly in protected areas and linked to cocoa farming, gold mining, and fires.

One positive data point came from southeast Asia, where government and corporate policy seems to be successfully curbing deforestation. In Indonesia, which led the way for reducing forest loss, the government has promised that its land use will generate a net carbon sink by 2030 and banned new logging in palm oil plantations in 2019, according to the report and BBC News. In Malaysia, rates of forest loss have also stayed low in recent years, with a majority of the palm oil industry signing on to No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation (NDPE) commitments.

-Oliva Rosane, Common Dreams

 

"Highly Confidential" -Trump

 

“…CNN published the audiotape of former president Trump talking in July 2021 about a classified document concerning Iran with a writer and others working on a biography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows who did not have security clearances.

“In it, Trump says he cannot declassify the document since he is no longer president– undercutting his argument that he could declassify anything he wished at any time— and made it clear he knew he should not be showing the document to the people in the room, telling them it was ‘off the record’ and ‘highly confidential.’

“Journalist Garrett Graff, who wrote a history of President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the one that led Nixon to resign under threat of impeachment and conviction, listened to the tape and tweeted: ‘Speaking as a Watergate historian, there’s nowhere on thousands of hours of Nixon tapes where Nixon makes any comment as clear, as clearly illegal, and as clearly self-aware as this Trump tape.’” 

-Heather Cox Richardson

Survey: Belief in God Not Necessary To Be Moral

 

"Most Americans say it’s not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values, according to a spring 2022 Pew Research Center survey. About two-thirds of Americans say this, while about a third say belief in God is an essential component of morality (65% vs. 34%).

"However, responses to this question differ dramatically depending on whether Americans see religion as important in their lives. Roughly nine-in-ten who say religion is not too or not at all important to them believe it is possible to be moral without believing in God, compared with only about half of Americans to whom religion is very or somewhat important (92% vs. 51%). Catholics are also more likely than Protestants to hold this view (63% vs. 49%), though views vary across Protestant groups.

"There are also divisions along political lines: Democrats and those who lean Democratic are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral (71% vs. 59%). Liberal Democrats are particularly likely to say this (84%), whereas only about half of conservative Republicans (53%) say the same.

"In addition, Americans under 50 are somewhat more likely than older adults to say that believing in God is not necessary to have good values (71% vs. 59%). Those with a college degree or higher are also more likely to believe this than those with a high school education or less (76% vs. 58%).

"Views of the link between religion and morality differ along similar lines in 16 other countries surveyed. Across those countries, a median of about two-in-three adults say that people can be moral without believing in God, just slightly higher than the share in the United States.

"In European and North American countries, at least six-in-ten respondents believe that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral. That includes nine-in-ten Swedes, the highest share of any country surveyed. In contrast, Israelis are nearly evenly split over whether belief in God is necessary to be moral: 47% say such a belief is necessary, while 50% say it is not...

"Differences in responses by political affiliation, age and education level also align with results in the U.S. In nearly every country where political ideology is measured, people who place themselves on the political left are more likely than those on the political right to say that belief in God is not necessary to have good values. Sweden is the only country where roughly the same shares on the left and right agree that you can have good values without believing in God..."

Note: Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and the survey methodology and full dataset.

Janell Fetterolf  is a senior researcher focusing on global attitudes at Pew Research Center.

Sarah Austin  is a research assistant focusing on global attitudes research at Pew Research Center.

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. We do not take policy positions.

Commentary

The Basis of Morality:

 Do we need a belief in God in order to be moral? Of course not. According to anthropological studies and archaeological evidence, morality evolved as a form of in-group social control several thousand years ago. As claimed by historian and science writer Michael Shermer: "Morality originated when people came to live together and devised various rules of conduct for living peacefully and cooperatively" -- a sort of quid pro quo long before the inception of organized religion -- where eventually "moral sentiments and behaviors were initially codified into ethical systems" (The Science of Good and Evil).

 Reciprocation makes biological, evolutionary and sociological sense. It seems sensible to believe that morality is the product of genetic transmission, human interaction and cultural influence, and that it is expedient for us to cooperate with one another in order to survive. 

 Unfortunately, many religious believers reinforce enmity toward those with different convictions, instead of offering good will. These conclusions are empirically substantiated: the cultural genocide of the Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilizations; the genocide of Yazidis and Christians by ISIL; the destruction caused by the Byzantine-Muslim Wars, the Crusades, the French Religious Wars, the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church's burnings and executions for heresy and its history of torture and terrorizing of Jews and Muslims and the Trail of Tears; the Vatican's illicit financial partnership with Adolf Hitler and indifference to the Holocaust; the Thirty Year's War; the Lebanese Civil War; the Northern Ireland conflict; the Sunni and Shia Muslim conflict, to name just a few historical examples.

 In addition to mass violence, "we must add the weight of oppression: all the religious acts that ban, censor, excommunicate, shun, denounce, repudiate, persecute, and execute. The targets are those who believe otherwise, those who are different, and those who do something forbidden by doctrine" (DeNicola). Though religion has also been a positive life force for millions of people, there are millions of people who believe it is God's will to engage in radical, mass brutality and ruthlessness. 

DeNicola, Daniel R. "Morality and Religion." Moral Philosophy. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2019.

Shermer, Michael. The Science of Good and Evil. New York: Holt & Co., 2004.

-Glen Brown

https://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2020/01/what-really-matters.html

 

MAGA Authoritarian Rule or Third Reconstruction?

 

Thirty years after its publication, The Age of Extremes by Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm still stands as the best history of the “short twentieth century (1914-1991).” Every chapter of this pro-socialist “story of a victory from the point of view of the vanquished” holds important lessons for those of us fighting for working-class power. In the U.S. today the chapter on the rise of fascism holds particular relevance.

Hobsbawm makes the crucial point that, for all their boasting about “capturing the street,” neither the Italian nor the German fascist movements “conquered power” via any kind of violent uprising. Rather, they came to power “in constitutional’ fashion.” He adds: “The novelty of fascism was that, once in power, it refused to play the old political games, and took over completely where it could.”

The savviest operators among those who are now threatening to impose white Christian Nationalist rule on the US learned that history decades ago. They used it to craft a take-and-permanently-hold power strategy  adapted to the specifics of the US constitutional system—and their persistent, think-long-term effort has paid off.

The authoritarian bloc, now operating under the banner of MAGA, has captured the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, and holds trifectas in 22 states, And they are steadily moving ahead with plans to corner complete federal power in 2024.

This is the underlying political dynamic that we must keep in mind amid the media frenzy over Trump’s indictment and how that might affect the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

MAGA can be stopped if we accurately understand the existence and composition of the country’s anti-MAGA majority and can help catalyze it into action. But that will require opponents of authoritarianism to block the specific routes by which MAGA intends to take power, effectively deploy our energies and resources, and gain enough strength to take the offensive.

Trump or no Trump, MAGA is pressing ahead

The strength of the indictment in the “classified documents” case has produced an uptick in contention over who should be the MAGA standard-bearer in 2024. Worries about over-reach—present since the SCOTUS overturned Roe—have been more frequently expressed. But no significant section of the Republican Party is stepping away from the drive toward authoritarian rule. 

Not the presidential hopefuls who are “putting some distance” between themselves and Trump (Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott). Not the Senate leaders who have stayed quiet about Trump being indicted (Mitch McConnell). And not two MAGA Supreme Court Justices, who, out of worry at the Court’s loss of legitimacy, calculated that one ruling upholding Black voting rights will allow them to play a more credible role in MAGA’s drive to power.

And certainly not the MAGA base, which post-indictment is even more convinced that white male Christian conservatives are the most persecuted group in the U.S., with millions believing that using violence to change that is fully justified. 

Electoral College, gerrymandering, voter suppression

In Italy, fascism came to power constitutionally in 1922 when the King appointed Mussolini Prime Minister. In Germany in 1932, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by  President Paul von Hindenburg. The undemocratic features of the U.S. constitutional/electoral system are different from those of 1920s-‘30s Germany and Italy, so aspiring authoritarians have crafted approaches that take advantage of U.S. specifics.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Key to authoritarian strategies here are the racially biased Electoral College in combination with a federal system that gives significant power to individual states; the winner-take-all-two-party structure; and the failure of the Constitution to protect elections in some significant ways. Absent Constitutional limits on money in elections and safeguards for the principle of “one person, one vote,” gerrymandering, voter suppression and the outsize influence of corporate interests have run amok.

White supremacists took advantage of these features to maintain the Jim Crow system in the South for close to a century. (See especially Sarah Churchwell, American Fascism: It Has Happened Here.) Jim Crow was not dismantled until the 1960s upsurge spearheaded by the Black-led Civil Rights Movement forced passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The mass pressure that drove that victory also compelled both legislative and judicial bodies to curb some of the worst gerrymandering and election money abuses.

But the racist right never accepted these as irreversible steps, just as they never accepted the gains of the New Deal era (trade union rights, social programs), or the extension of social programs (Medicare) and women’s rights (Roe) coming out of the 1960s. They knew that these were not explicitly codified in the U.S. Constitution, and to the extent they were implicit, there was a reading of the Constitution (“originalism”) that could render them unenforceable.

Because of this, changing the rules that govern electoral terrain became a top priority for the instigators of the right-wing backlash that began in the late 1960s and became dominant after the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. The Federalist Society, founded in 1982, was the main vehicle for carrying out this strategy.  Legal work (establishing a pipeline for right-wing lawyers to become judges; fleshing out originalist theory; filing suits in carefully chosen cases) was synergized with issue campaigns. “Third Party” efforts were rejected in favor of taking over the Republican Party.

For a recap of the results of their painstaking, well-funded, and ruthless work (gutting the Voting Rights Act, ruling that challenges to partisan gerrymandering could not be made in federal courts, gutting campaign finance reform,  overturning Roe, etc.) see Michael Podhorzer’s article “To the Supreme Court, the 20^th Century Was Wrongly Decided.”

Red States preview a MAGA-ruled country

The consequences have been devastating. They can be seen most vividly in numerous “Republican trifecta” states,  in both  the conditions imposed by new legislation on inhabitants of those states and the arrangements MAGA has put in place to ensure that they remain in power.

In states they control, Republicans have pushed through extreme curbs on abortion; sweeping restrictions on gender affirming medical care for youths; bans or limits on discussion of sexuality, history and/or race/racism in schools, and loosening already tattered gun control and safety measures. Legislation loosening restrictions on child labor is coming out of the shadows in states where right-to-work laws and other anti-worker, anti-poor people policies hold sway.

GOP governors and legislators are simultaneously putting in place measures that undermine majority rule and make successful electoral challenges to their one-party rule very difficult if not impossible. Voter suppression is now business as usual in Republican-controlled states. Gerrymandering districts is giving Republicans a grip on state legislature majorities (or super-majorities) even in states where the electorate is split close to 50-50 (for example, Wisconsin and North Carolina).

In Ohio and other states, they’re taking aim at direct democracy by trying to limit the initiative process.  And with control over state legislatures, Republicans have moved to silence or reduce the power of elected bodies in cities that include large people of color populations and tend to vote Democratic for example in Mississippi and in Texas.

Essentially the GOP has put in place “authoritarian enclaves” where they can implement their agenda as they pursue the goal of capturing full federal power. And they use the benefits of these enclaves to their advantage in that pursuit – increasing their share of “safe” House seats, suppressing the vote to affect close races for Senate seats or in the contention for that state’s electoral college votes for President. All this will only get worse if the Supreme Court gives them a favorable ruling at some point on the Independent State Legislature Doctrine.

The 2024 election and beyond 

All this shapes the terrain on which the Left has to fight through November 2024 and beyond. Three major imperatives stand out.

One, we need to be as clear-eyed as MAGA’s core on the fundamental political dynamic at work in the US today. The specifics of the DeSantis-Trump contention, the terms of House Speaker McCarthy’s revised deal with the Freedom Caucus, and the twists and turns of each legal case against Trump need to be tracked to produce the most effective messaging and “rapid response” actions.

But we can’t let these things distract us from the main story: An authoritarian bloc with a fascist core is driving for control of all branches of the federal government; the rest is detail.

Second, if MAGA succeeds, not only will most people in the US and across the globe face more dire conditions, but organizing to change the direction of the country will become qualitatively more difficult. Pushing for the deep structural changes it will take to address inequality, climate change, restrictions on democracy and militarism is difficult under an administration over which the growing but still-fragmented progressive world has some influence.

It will be orders of magnitude harder if we are facing a Justice Department that acts as if McCarthyism was too cautious; an administration that lauds “stand your ground” killers and white supremacist militia members as heroes; and a judiciary and NLRB owned and controlled by Charles Koch.

Electoral victory is essential but not sufficient

Third, electoral terrain will be the main battlefront against MAGA at least through 2024. MAGA’s “constitutional” route to permanent minority rule runs through winning or stealing elections. So all candidates of the party MAGA now controls need to be defeated at every level and those results need to be protected.

Across the anti-MAGA spectrum different groups and individuals will pursue different types of work and have different priorities between now and 2024. But some need to give organizing priority to battleground states and congressional districts, and we need to come together to vote anti-MAGA on election day.

At the same time, without a militant and organized base in the millions that makes its weight felt in all aspects of public life, partisans of social justice will not get beyond fighting one defensive election after another.

And catastrophe awaits if we lose just once. Building that kind of base requires deep organizing work, building/rebuilding grassroots participatory organizations, and making a compelling narrative about this country’s history and future the “new common sense” of tens of millions. 

In the 19^th century defeating the Confederacy required the combination of years of abolitionist organizing, the election of Lincoln in 1860s, the power of the U.S. (“union”) Army, and the “general strike” of the enslaved to defeat the Confederacy and bring about Reconstruction.

In the 20^th century, it took a decade of civil rights organizing and militant action combined with electoral repudiation of Barry “desegregation-is-a-states’-rights-issue” Goldwater in 1964 to produce a Second Reconstruction ending Jim Crow.

Will the next chapter of US history be a reprise of the Confederacy and Jim Crow? Or will we be able to achieve a Third Reconstruction?

 

-Max Elbaum is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board and the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (Verso Books, Third Edition, 2018), a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is also a co-editor, with Linda Burnham and María Poblet, of Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections (OR Books, 2022).

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