The segregationists' game

In the summer of 1961, Black and white activists, who became known as the Freedom Riders, boarded Greyhound buses and crisscrossed the South with the goal of integrating interstate buses and bus terminals. When the buses pulled into Southern cities, they were greeted by mobs armed with bats and firebombs.

Southern segregationists, who were still furious over the school desegregation fights that dominated the 1950s, saw the Freedom Riders as sanctimonious provocateurs. In a television interview from the time, Ned Touchstone of Louisiana—a spokesperson for a local segregationist group—said the North was "sending down busloads of people here with the express purpose of violating our laws, fomenting confusion, trying to destroy 100 years of workable tradition and good relations between the races."

Touchstone and other segregationists thought there was no way the Freedom Riders or their fellow Northern liberals actually cared about integrating interstate transit or advancing civil rights. Instead, they were convinced it was a strategy to embarrass the South and capture Black votes for the Democratic party.

The segregationists decided to answer the Freedom Rides with the "Reverse Freedom Rides." They would use the same weapon—Greyhound buses—and send Black southerners to Northern cities.

"For many years, certain politicians, educators and certain religious leaders have used the white people of the South as a whipping boy, to put it mildly, to further their own ends and their political campaigns," said Amis Guthridge, a lawyer from Arkansas who helped spearhead the Reverse Freedom Rides. "We're going to find out if people like Ted Kennedy ... and the Kennedys, all of them, really do have an interest in the Negro people, really do have a love for the Negro."

The segregationists tapped into a network of local groups called Citizens' Councils. Despite the sanitized name, the councils were essentially "the Ku Klux Klan without the hoods and the masks," said historian Clive Webb.

A man claiming he sought to “restore Trump to president of the United States,” and would “kill all Democrats” to do so was arrested in a Pennsylvania Dairy Queen after entering the establishment armed with a handgun.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1569864620801753090

According to an affidavit obtained by WTAJ, Jan Stawovy of Hunker, Pennsylvania, allegedly entered the Dairy Queen last Saturday, placing $120 on the counter and telling the manager it was a “tip” for “non-Democrats.” Police were alerted later in the day to an erratic driver, and reached the Dairy Queen after Stawovy returned to the location. Police found additional weapons in Stawovy’s vehicle.

Stawovy, dressed in what witnesses say was a rainbow clown wig and a bright yellow safety vest, attempted to convince police officers at the scene that he was “undercover with Pennsylvania State Police” and there “working on a major drug sting.”

According to the affidavit, Stawovy went on to claim that he was a prophet who had “talked to God” and needed to “kill all the Democrats because Trump was still president.”

Emotions ranging from outrage to panic and fear were felt by immigrants across South Florida in response to news that Gov. Ron DeSantis had taken responsibility for flying 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a resort island near Cape Cod known as a playground for the rich.

“They felt they were finally going to be able to live the American Dream,” said Juan Correa Villalonga, a 34-year-old Sunrise resident who fled Venezuela with his family at age 11. “Little did they know they were being sent to an island of millionaires. They can’t stay there. It was all a political stunt.”

Villalonga knows what it’s like to hope for a new life then be sent back to the country you thought you’d left behind. He was deported in 2009, then later allowed to return to the United States.

“There’s a lot of fear out there,” he said. “When people see this, there’s a great sense of panic in the immigrant communities. But people are outraged. We feel lied to. We’ve sat across the table from DeSantis and he has told us he would support immigrant communities. We feel used and manipulated.”

Raiza Perrault, a Hollywood resident born in Venezuela, had a different take.

She said of DeSantis: “He chartered two planes to take them to Martha’s Vineyard of all places. Imagine arriving here and then being put on a plane, not being told where they’re going. Who in their right mind would do something like that? It shows no compassion to take people like that and ship them out.”

Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, a Colombian-American political strategist from Weston, had sharp words for the governor, saying he used people who are escaping dictatorships as pawns for his political future.

“It shows why he is so dangerous,” she said. “Because he treats human beings as if they were not human. There is no time to cry. It’s not about crying. It’s about doing something about this. This should embolden our Latino communities to get involved and vote for people who are going to treat them with respect.”

The Supreme Court handed down a brief and highly unusual order Wednesday evening that set the stage for more legal wrangling over the line between religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws.

The order itself is very narrow, giving lawyers for an orthodox Jewish university very specific instructions on which motions they must file to ask New York’s appeals courts to reconsider a decision against the university.

A state trial court ordered the university to recognize an LGBTQ student group, something the school refused to do on religious grounds. The school sought relief on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” a process for obtaining expedited relief from the justices without invoking the Court’s ordinary processes. And the university actually had a strong case that the state court was at least partly in the wrong, under longstanding Supreme Court precedents.

While the Supreme Court’s decision in Yeshiva University v. YU Pride Alliance is technically a loss for the university, because it leaves the trial court’s order in place, the decision reads like an implicit threat to New York’s appeals courts. It is very likely that, if New York’s appeals courts do not step in to permit Yeshiva University to deny recognition to the pride group, the Supreme Court will do so in the near future.

Meanwhile, the four most conservative members of the Court dissented. They also joined an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito which, if it became law, would seriously damage many civil rights litigants’ ability to bring an anti-discrimination lawsuit against someone who claims that their discrimination is motivated by their religious faith. And Alito’s approach could quite easily pick up the fifth vote it needs to become a majority opinion if the Yeshiva University case does return to the justices.

Democratic lawmakers and their allies increasingly see a Joe Biden victory in November as an opening to expand and rebalance the Supreme Court.

Republicans cast “court-packing” as a radical change that would politicize the court, while many Democrats counter that it’s a proportionate response to GOP refusals to confirm President Barack Obama’s federal court picks, particularly his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Biden himself hasn’t been eager to discuss the issue but recently said he’s “not a fan” of court-packing. Either way, the issue takes center stage during confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whose selection would cement a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the nation’s highest court.

In a study published earlier this year, well before the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Levy documented court-packing attempts in at least 11 states in recent years. Most of those efforts were initiated by Republicans, including the two that succeeded. Moreover, compared to earlier decades court packing attempts are now more common and more explicitly partisan.
“The norm against court packing might be more vulnerable than some have thought — at least as it concerns the state courts,” Levy wrote. “If court packing and unpacking were considered strictly verboten, one would not expect to see over twenty different bills to pack and unpack the highest court in eleven different states.”

Here’s a state-by-state rundown of the court packing attempts Levy documented.

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As Democrats weigh whether to increase the size of the U.S. Supreme Court should they win the White House and control of the Senate, state Republicans might want to think twice about criticizing the effort.


“You know, the Republicans in Georgia packed the Georgia Supreme Court and Court of Appeals during the Deal administration,” said state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Decatur.

She’s right. And Gov. Nathan Deal did so without much of a fight. The Legislature overwhelmingly approved his plan to expand the Georgia Supreme Court from seven justices to nine in 2016, and a year earlier he pushed an expansion of the appeals court from 12 to 15.

By the time he left office, Deal had the rare distinction of having appointed a majority of judges on the state’s two highest courts. He tapped five of the Supreme Court’s nine justices and nine of the Court of Appeals' 15 judges.

The former governor’s mark on the court is partly a matter of longevity and partly shrewd political maneuvering. Two-term governors often get an opportunity for multiple appointments, but they seldom get the chance to expand the court’s size. And he used it to stock the court system with young conservatives who are likely to be serving for decades to come.

One of the more glaring problems with Sen. Lindsey Graham introducing a national abortion ban yesterday was the degree to which it was at odds with his stated principles. After all, it was just five weeks ago when the South Carolina Republican boasted on CNN about how “consistent” he’s been in arguing that “states should decide the issue of abortion.”

sked specifically about a possible federal ban on abortion, Rubio added, “Well, I think that right now this issue is appropriately before the states. That’s where it should’ve always been; that’s where it is now; and I think that’s where it’ll be for the foreseeable future. ... Frankly, I think this issue is better decided at the state level.”

This isn’t ancient history. I didn’t dig up an obscure quote Rubio uttered as a college student. This was 20 days ago, and the on-air comments generated some national attention.

And yet, The Miami Herald published this report a couple of hours ago:

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is co-sponsoring a bill that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, an aide confirmed Wednesday, throwing support behind a measure that both aligns with his longstanding desire to restrict access to abortion and risks complicating his reelection bid less than two months before Election Day.

One of the more glaring problems with Sen. Lindsey Graham introducing a national abortion ban yesterday was the degree to which it was at odds with his stated principles. After all, it was just five weeks ago when the South Carolina Republican boasted on CNN about how “consistent” he’s been in arguing that “states should decide the issue of abortion.”

sked specifically about a possible federal ban on abortion, Rubio added, “Well, I think that right now this issue is appropriately before the states. That’s where it should’ve always been; that’s where it is now; and I think that’s where it’ll be for the foreseeable future. ... Frankly, I think this issue is better decided at the state level.”

This isn’t ancient history. I didn’t dig up an obscure quote Rubio uttered as a college student. This was 20 days ago, and the on-air comments generated some national attention.

And yet, The Miami Herald published this report a couple of hours ago:

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is co-sponsoring a bill that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, an aide confirmed Wednesday, throwing support behind a measure that both aligns with his longstanding desire to restrict access to abortion and risks complicating his reelection bid less than two months before Election Day.