Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
DeSantis rocked by Black Republican revolt over slavery comments
“It raises eyebrows,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation, who is supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. “Ron DeSantis is not the candidate for Black conservatives and that’s what [he] constantly, constantly exhibits to us.”
At issue are the new education standards for how Black history is taught in Florida schools that DeSantis signed into law last year. The revised guidelines, released this month, require educators to instruct middle schoolers that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Republicans Around the Country Are Trying to Rob Democrats of the Right to Govern
It’s happening all over. A few weeks before Zephyr learned her fate, Republicans in Tennessee voted to expel two Black state representatives, from Memphis and Nashville, for staging a protest in support of gun reform. Republican lawmakers in Georgia, who have already taken steps to disempower county election boards, are laying the groundwork to fire the democratically-elected district attorney in Fulton County, just as Republicans in Pennsylvania previously pushed to oust the recently reelected chief prosecutor in Philadelphia.
What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán Understand About Your Brain
My research analyzes real speeches made by politicians past and present, including those of Trump, Orbán and Putin, using cognitive linguistics — a branch of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and the mind. What I have found is that throughout history, speeches by dictators and autocrats have one thing in common: they use dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others.
It is well-documented that for example words like “reptiles” and “parasites” were used by the Nazi regime to compare outsiders and minorities to animals. Strongmen throughout history have referred to targeted social groups as “rats” or “pests” or “a plague.” And it’s effective regardless of whether the people who hear this language are predisposed to jump to extreme conclusions. Once someone is tuned into these metaphors, their brain actually changes in ways that make them more likely to believe bigger lies, even conspiracy theories.
Fulton County DA says work is done in Trump probe and ‘we’re ready to go’
“The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event over the weekend. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”
Willis has previously signaled in letters to local officials and those providing security that she would make any charging announcements between July 31 and the end of August. She laid out a variety of security provisions her team plans to take beginning Monday.
Did a New York Court Just Hand Democrats Control of Congress in 2024?
The five-judge panel held that the once-in-a-decade redistricting process, bungled so profoundly by the state’s Democrat-dominated government in 2022, can start over from scratch, returning the process to the state Legislature, where Democrats maintain supermajority control. Critically, the composition of the Court of Appeals—the state’s highest court, which will eventually have to hear the case—has shifted in the past two years, such that it’s likely any Democratic-led redistricting effort will be upheld. There is now every expectation that that will allow for new districts to be drawn and implemented before the all-important 2024 elections.
Trump IndictmentJan. 6 Riot Was ‘Fueled by Lies’ From Trump, Special Counsel Says
The indictment, filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington, accuses Mr. Trump of three conspiracies: one to defraud the United States; a second to obstruct an official government proceeding, the certification of the Electoral College vote; and a third to deprive people of a civil right, the right to have their votes counted. Mr. Trump was also charged with a fourth count of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.
“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election,” the indictment said.
Why ‘school choice’ was doomed when it became a cover for segregation
School choice was always a Trojan horse, a rebuke of the Brown decision. It was a system designed to use taxpayer dollars to fund “separate but unequal” schooling in the name of God.
The reason Betsy DeVos wanted to be secretary of Education under President Trump was to push school choice nationally. Her family has used its wealth to promote a conservative Judeo-Christian theocracy in the schools and the government for decades. When her husband ran for the GOP nomination for governor in their home state of Michigan, school vouchers were key to his platform.
Proponents will tell parents it’s about moving kids from failing schools, but the history shows it’s about moving kids from integrated schools.
Here are the four Jan. 6 charges against Trump and what they mean
Former president Donald Trump has been charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights in connection with what prosecutors allege was a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Here’s what that means.
Trump is charged under civil rights law used to prosecute KKK violence
When Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday and accused of trying to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, he found himself in the unenviable company of defendants charged under a criminal statute dating to the Reconstruction era.
The statute, Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, was originally adopted as part of the Enforcement Act of 1870. It was the first in a series of measures known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts designed to protect rights guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, collectively called the Reconstruction Amendments. Section 241 makes it a crime to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” exercising a right protected by the Constitution or federal law.
Rudy Giuliani Becomes Unhinged in Newsmax Interview Over Trump Indictment
Rudy Giuliani, an unnamed “co-conspirator” in the indictment of Donald Trump over Jan. 6 and its surrounding events, lashed out at Special Counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday while insisting that Trump is being prosecuted for exercising his First Amendment right.
Election security in the spotlight with Trump, Michigan indictments
The first indictment, of Trump himself, stems from the Jan. 6 insurrection and his bid to overturn the 2020 presidential race results. The indictment cites a 2020 declaration from a cyber agency about the election as evidence that he “was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue” and “deliberately disregarded the truth” when he claimed he had won.
The second indictment, of two GOP Michigan politicians, alleges that they tried to access and tamper with voting machines in the state after the 2020 elections.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: You Can Ignore Trump News, God Has A Plan
“It’s important that we put full faith and hope in God and not anything that we see in the headlines and not anything that we see happening in the news,” she went on.
“Our real hope needs to be in God. And Jesus Christ is my savior,” Greene said. “And I know he is yours as well. And God has plans much bigger than this.”
Indictment Mystery: Did Someone Spill About the Trump-McCarthy Jan. 6 Call?
While it’s possible Special Counsel Jack Smith is basing his description of the phone call off Herrera Beutler’s public account, that would be a sharp departure from his normal tactics. Indeed, paragraph 115 appears to be one of the very few instances in the indictment where Smith doesn’t lay out his sourcing for a claim.
By choosing to speak as an omniscient narrator for that paragraph, federal prosecutors have left it entirely unclear how they know what was said on that phone call. And that’s fueling speculation about a number of possibilities: Is there a recording of the call? Did Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows—who is speculated to have been in the room with Trump at the time—provide an account to investigators? Did McCarthy?
Mike Pence Is No Hero. His Actions Might Send Trump to Jail Anyway.
In the 45-page document, Pence makes more than a few cameo appearances. Throughout December 2020 and January 2021, Pence is routinely being brought into meetings with the president and his co-conspirators, and being informed of his evolving role at the center of the attempted coup, when Pence was expected to pull off the ever-changing plan. As co-conspirator 2 put it, “In the end, Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.’”
As we all now know, Pence didn’t do that—nor did he heroically condemn the president and go straight to the press, the police, or much of anywhere. What he did do, though, was take thorough and “contemporaneous notes,” which the Department of Justice seems to have leaned on heavily—and references explicitly and repeatedly—in its case against Trump.
Poll: Donald Trump's legal problems pose threat to his candidacy ahead of 2024 election
The poll found 45% of Republican respondents said they would not support Trump if he were convicted of a felony while 52% of those same respondents said they would not support Trump if he were currently serving time in prison.
States Fights
Texas church firebombed weeks after visit from anti-LGBTQ YouTuber
Authorities in Plano, Texas, are investigating what they call "an intentionally set fire" at a Unitarian Universalist church Sunday, just weeks after it was targeted for criticism in a video by an anti-LGBTQ Christian YouTuber.
Lawsuit aims to halt the opening of nation’s first religious charter school
Critics say the school marks a dangerous breach in the separation of church and state. They worry it will open the door for more publicly-funded charter schools that would be free to promote religion and flout civil rights law.
“When a religious public school is allowed to proceed in one state, it emboldens religious extremists in other states to try the same thing,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
This New Lawsuit Could Restore Democracy in Wisconsin
On Wednesday, voting rights groups filed a new lawsuit challenging the GOP’s gerrymandered maps. The suit claims that the state legislative maps violate the Wisconsin constitution by retaliating against some voters based on their viewpoints and free speech; treating some voters worse than others because of their political views and where they live; and defying the promise of a free government enshrined in the state constitution.
Florida approves PragerU curriculum: Why critics are sounding the alarm on right-wing bias
Civic groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have also criticized PragerU’s videos, describing some as a “dog whistle to the extreme right” and “filled with anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric.”