Gerrymandering: Racist or political?

I believe all this gerrymandering started because the republicans are fearful of losing the House in the midterms and wanted to limit the damage. The northern democrats had shown the way. What limited the southerners was that the Supreme Court had allowed political gerrymanders and the Voters Rights Act granted racial ones. The Voter Rights Act created majority minority districts – mainly in the south – to give blacks a larger voice in their states. Now that this Court has ruled racial gerrymanders unconstitutional there is a legitimate concern that many southern black congressmen who represent majority minority districts will go the way of the dodo. 

It seems that when republicans carve up the majority black district is that the democrat representative will lose. To guarantee this in the state of Tennessee, Nashville has been carved up into five separate districts while Memphis is now in three. Ironically, in both cases the democrat representative was white – Jim Cooper in Nashville and Steve Cohen in Memphis. This gave the legislature cover in saying that the gerrymander was political (which is allowed) not racial. Incidentally, the same can be said for Virginia. In its quest to get rid of its republican representatives, the state’s democrats foisted a map on the voters that changed the political composition of the state’s delegation from six democrats and five republicans to ten democrats and one republican. To accomplish that the democrats carved up the two districts with the greatest percentage of black voters. Although neither district is over 50 percent black, both have black representatives. However, the new map dilutes the black percentages and one new district is over 50 percent white. Both black representatives might find themselves replaced by whites. So the liberals in Virginia should be accused of trying to get rid of the black congressmen – but they won’t.

I was amazed, but not surprised, that this point was missed by the media and seemingly by national black politicians as well. Hakeem Jeffries had the democrats committed an astounding $40 million to flip the seats in Virginia. Jeffries who is black was not accused of racism because it endangered two black Virginia congressmen. Instead, he went all out to insure that Viriginia’s seats in the House were democrat rather than republican indicating that party affiliation not race was the deciding motivation. When the republicans in Tennessee did the same, they were called racists even though that sole democrat representative was white. Truth be told, since the overwhelming majority of blacks are democrat any gerrymander will be considered racist but If blacks were republicans, the district would still have been broken up. 

Jeffries went to Alabama to protest redistricting by that state’s republican majorities. Of course, he yelled “racism” when he was doing exactly the same thing in Virginia. Jeffries has vowed a democrat redistricting offensive aimed at creating 12 new democrat districts – race be damned. After the loss in Virginia he said “We remain undeterred. Our effort to forcefully push back against the Republican redistricting scheme will not slow down. We are just getting started.” He then said “We will ensure the people decide who controls the Congress not MAGA extremists desperate to rig the midterm elections.” Of course this is BS. Through his gerrymander attempts he is trying to do exactly the same thing. But it is ok for the democrats to do it – so say the democrats. 

One of my closest friends is a staunch democrat and hates Trump with a passion calling him “racist” at every opportunity. He told me with a straight face that he favored the redistricting in Virginia even though it eliminated the two majority minority districts. He also called the Tennessee gerrymander racist because it diluted the black vote. Well didn’t Virginia dilute the black vote? No he said because they are democrats and the new map actually enhanced their vote since it would diminish the chance of a republican winning. He also said that he hoped the two black Virginia representatives would be savvy enough to be re-elected. But if they were replaced by white democrats, then it was too bad. I could not persuade him to see the contradiction.

What I find interesting is that in at least two states, Mississippi and South Carolina, the two black congressmen that are threatened with gerrymandering are veterans, Bennie Thompson in Mississippi and Jim Clyburn in South Carolina. It is apparent from statements by the republicans in both states, that they want them gone. Even Tim Scott has said “The Black person—yes, look at me, I’m still Black—who ideologically is aligned with their state or their district can win anywhere.” The same can be said of Byron Donalds in Florida. It not whether

Thompson or Clyburn has ingratiated themselves with white voters in their districts. On the national level both are loyal democrats. Take Sanford Bishop in Georgia. Bishop is known for delivering constituent service to all in his district which has been both majority minority and majority majority. He gets praise for being the congressman for all in his district. Yet he too is a loyal democrat and votes with his party leadership the vast majority of the time. So when the Georgia legislature seeks to redistrict him out of his seat, it will probably succeed because the bottom line is that his voters want a representative that is serving their needs both on the local and the national scenes – not just one or the other.

I admit that I am ashamed of my state for carving up Memphis for political gain and disenfranchising its black voters. I am in favor of compact districts that do not split up counties. I wish that all congressional districts everywhere would be drawn like the AI Tennessee map I posted before. But that is not to be. 

My daughter, who lives in Northern Virginia, asked me if all this gerrymandering was political or racist? It is obviously political when we look at democrat states like Massachusetts. But in her state of Virginia, it is apparent that the democrats are willing to sacrifice minority representatives if it means increasing democrat congressional seats. So Virginia has altered my perception of what is going on. Tim Scott sounds like he would get rid of Clyburn in order to get one more republican representative – and Tim Scott is no racist. I answered my daughter by saying that even if it is racist, it is political.

Miles Dewey Davis III

May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991

The Giant Among Giants

To call Miles Davis brilliant would be a gross understatement. He was a giant among giants in the bebop era, standing apart from an extraordinary generation of trumpet players that included Dizzy Gillespie, Freddy Hubbard, Blue Mitchell, Lee Morgan, Dizzy Reece, Eddie Henderson, Donald Byrd, Fats Navarro, and Kenny Dorham — not to mention my own high school band director, the great Louis Smith. All of those men were exceptional. Miles was transcendent.

My introduction to his world came through Steamin’, released in 1956 — an album I still return to today. It featured his first great quintet: Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums, and the immortal John Coltrane on tenor saxophone. Garland, a former prize fighter who recorded prolifically on his own, nonetheless deferred entirely to Davis. Midway through a solo on “Something I Dreamed Last Night,” Miles called out “block chords, Red” — and Garland shifted instantly, without missing a beat. Coltrane, characteristically, did not bend so easily. When Miles once asked him why his solos ran so long, Coltrane replied simply, “It takes a while for it to come out of the horn.” Being a clarinet player, I take particular delight in knowing that even the immortal Coltrane squeaked on “Diane.”

A Sound Unlike Any Other

My father’s reaction when I first played that album stays with me. He was a big band man — Count Basie, Duke Ellington — and he had no patience for what he heard. “How can you listen to that noise?” he said. “They’re all playing different things at the same time!” His measure of worth was simple: if you couldn’t dance to it, it wasn’t worth your time. I can only imagine what he would have made of Thelonious Monk.

Miles was cut from different cloth entirely. The son of a dentist, he enrolled at Juilliard in 1944 only to abandon it for Charlie Parker’s quintet — a decision that said everything about where his ambitions lay. He stayed with Parker until 1948, then formed his own group. Album after album followed. He collaborated with arranger Gil Evans on landmark records, including Sketches of Spain. Then came Kind of Blue.

Kind of Blue may be the most beloved jazz album ever recorded. It featured Coltrane, Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, and two pianists: Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans. Evans had briefly replaced Red Garland, making the group one of the first racially integrated bands in jazz. Kelly replaced Evans as the permanent pianist, yet both appear on the album. Davis told Kelly to study Evans — not to imitate him, but to better understand how to play alongside Miles. The session itself was famously spontaneous. Davis sketched out the songs beforehand and most were captured in a single take.

The Second Great Quintet

A second great quintet followed, featuring Kelly, Chambers, Cobb, and the formidable Sonny Rollins. When Rollins departed, he was replaced first by George Coleman, then by Wayne Shorter — who would become the band’s principal composer. The final lineup, with Herbie Hancock on piano, seventeen-year-old Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on bass, and Shorter on saxophone, was something else entirely. Williams, with characteristic bluntness, reportedly pushed Coleman out, feeling his playing had grown repetitive. With Shorter’s arrival, everything shifted.

This band still played many of the same songs as earlier Miles groups, yet made them sound entirely new. The texture, phrasing, and rhythmic sensibility had been transformed. Listen to Four and More or My Funny Valentine, then put on E.S.P. or Nefertiti — Davis’s last fully acoustic album — and the evolution is unmistakable. I once heard a live recording of “Joshua” played at a breathtaking tempo from inside my SUV, and the quintet was simply at the top of its powers. Hancock and Williams were electric — the drumming frenetic, blistering, and utterly alive. It was stunning.

Going Electric

When Miles went electric with In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, he shed most of his traditional jazz audience without hesitation. The expanded ensemble — adding pianists Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul, bassist Dave Holland, and others — had been shaped by Davis’s obsessive listening to Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix. He even recorded with Prince. This era culminated in Agharta, where Davis also took up the organ.

Agharta is one of only two Davis albums I struggle with — Decoy is the other. But Miles never seemed to register the alienation of traditionalists, or if he did, he didn’t care. In truth, he had been alienating purists even in his acoustic years. His stage presence was famously cold: back to the audience, rarely a word spoken, prone to walking off mid-set while his bandmates continued playing, and just as likely to barrel back onstage and cut short a colleague’s solo. And yet — I have a recording of Davis accompanying the magnificent Shirley Horn on “You Won’t Forget Me,” and in that setting he is the model sideman: restrained, attentive, adding precisely the right touch at the right moment to support her poignant voice.

Legacy and the Road That Led Here

Davis was brilliant through it all — through heroin addiction, a hip replacement, and a five-year absence from music between 1975 and 1980, during which he later wrote that “sex and drugs took the place music had occupied in my life.” When he returned, Decoy is the only album of real substance before his death in 1991. Like many of his contemporaries, he lived surrounded by temptation. My band director, Louis Smith, was the trumpet player in the celebrated Horace Silver Quintet — his dazzling work is on display in Silver’s Live at Newport ’58. Mr. Smith told us that his wife had issued an ultimatum: leave the band or lose the marriage. His first “real job” landed him at Atlanta’s Booker T. Washington High School in 1958, and I was one of only three eighth graders in the varsity band that year. I was twelve years old. Sitting in the band room, my feet did not reach the floor.

It was Mr. Smith who put Steamin’ in my hands and made me a Miles Davis fan for life — through all the transformations, all the controversies, all the years. We have had other great players. But there has been only one Miles Davis.

Happy Birthday and rest in peace.

Are Trump’s tariffs smart? More stupidity on the left. And breaking news?

Memorial Day, 2026

Happy Memorial Day and thanks to all those who have served and thanks to their families and friends for their support. My brother flew B-52s over Viet Nam. A cousin who I considered my other brother has a bronze star. My Dad was never drafted into WWII because of being the principal of the black elementary school in Madison, GA. Dad half-jokingly said it was because he couldn’t cook. But my mother’s brother-in-law was a mechanic in the Navy in the Pacific theatre and was haunted from being below decks when his destroyer was rocking and rolling during encounters with the Japanese. My other half’s father was a Bedford Boy and landed at Omaha Beach. The D-Day Memorial is in Bedford, VA. https://www.stripes.com/special-reports/featured/d-day/2024-06-02/bedford-boys-dday-wwii-virginia-army-normandy-14056070.html

People ask me if I am a veteran and I say that I served in the southern campaign, University of Georgia 1962-1966. I would have gone through ROTC, like my brother at Purdue, had it not been for a bigoted colonel commanding Georgia’s Air Force ROTC. But that is another story for another day. Today – and every day – I am grateful for all of those who wore the uniform and all of those who supported them.

Are Trump’s tariffs smart?

I have said it a dozen times before: Trump’s tariffs are not erudite – just the opposite. The president loves universal tariffs. Those are not smart because he puts tariffs on countries with whom we run a surplus even though he rails about trade deficits. He says that his tariffs are to protect US manufacturing when half of our imports are inputs making manufacturing more costly. US automobile companies are facing losses because of tariffs on their components (see aluminum and steel). Then puts tariffs on stuff we don’t make or grow ourselves. Again, not very smart. Goodyear is closing its Fayetteville, North Carolina tire plant and laying off 1,700 workers because we don’t grow rubber trees. Goodyear is losing buckets of money – $249 million in the first three months of this year because of the high cost of materiel inputs. Translation: we don’t grow rubber trees. Even with an anticipated refund on the first round of the president’s illegal tariffs, the company will still face increased costs of $420 million this year due to tariffs and inflation. A smarter tariff – if there is such a thing – would exempt stuff we don’t make or grow. Goodyear gets rubber from Thailand to make its tires. Trump probably thinks rubber trees grow in North Carolina. But they don’t. 

Remember that Trump’s trade representative said that the new tariffs are based on “excess supply” beyond a country’s needs. So since obviously Thailand produces more rubber than it can consume locally, it must be exploiting all the countries to which it exports, thereby driving out the competition of local rubber. Growers Only problem is that there are no local (US) rubber growers. No matter trumpets Trump. No soup for you! Just like denying the automobile companies relief, no relief in sight for Goodyear either. That means more tires from China as domestic producers are cutting back production due to this tariff madness. And higher prices. Raise your hands if Trump’s tariffs on stuff we don’t produce makes sense to you.

The fourth part of this madness is the tariffs in the name of national defense. It seems to me that if some important goods are vital to national defense then we should have zero tariffs on them to get them as cheaply as possible. Isn’t it stupid to make us pay more for something that is deemed “vital”? Rather, if they are so vital then instead of placing a tariff on them, why not start to heavily subsidize American manufactures to produce those products while charging a zero tariff on imports? Although I am certainly no fan of subsidies this seems a more efficient way of doing things. 

I only hope that the next administration sees things differently, however unlikely. The democrats have always embraced restraint of trade thinking it benefits their labor union constituents. Republicans – before the RINO Trump – generally supported free trade because it lowered input costs. There is a high probability that the next democrat in the White House will keep whatever tariffs deemed legal in place. What will the next republican president do?

The Met gala: More leftist stupidity

We just were subjected to the Met Gala (and no that is not where a baseball team from New York is sitting around eating apples). This year’s attendees were highlighted in the press showing their outrageous tasteless attire. Missing this year was AOC attending the $30,000 per ticket event in a high dollar designer dress saying “Tax the Rich.” Can you imagine someone doing something that stupid? Oh. It was AOC so the answer is obviously “yes.”

This year’s occasion became the latest in which the progressives have taken the opportunity to assail the rich. Whoever it is that writes the progressive playbook has deemed it is “tax the rich even more week.” All of a sudden the left is attacking billionaires, reading out of the same playbook. Jeff Bezos was one of the sponsors of the Gala and was promptly attacked by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Warren pompously intoned “If Jeff Bezos can drop $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala, he can afford to pay his fair share in taxes.” Bernie Sanders tweeted “The reality of American life today: Jeff Bezos, worth $290 billion, spent: $10 million on the Met Gala, $120 million on a penthouse $500 million on a yacht. Meanwhile, he‘s planning to throw 600,000 Amazon workers out on the streets and replace them with robots. Unacceptable.”

Are they saying that Bezos hasn’t added value and can’t do what he wants with his own money? I guess Liz and Bernie don’t use Amazon and they don’t employ 1.58 million people – but Bezos does. But this is now the left’s playbook. I think AOC started it with saying that no one is worth a billion dollars and if they got it they must have cheated, stole, or ripped people off. She said “You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.” This is the Marxist notion that the economic pie is fixed and to get more for yourself you have to take from others. Ted Cruz called AOC and “idiot” and “a little Marxist.” He was being kind. I would have called her a fool. My Dad used to tell us that envy was a wasted emotion. He would always say “Don’t ever be jealous of anyone. Make them be jealous of you.” 

Even the left must realize that this pillorying of billionaires is a lie. If it were true then there would be no economic growth and we would all be impoverished as an increasing population would fight over a stagnant GDP. But the billionaires create wealth – not only for themselves –  and add value. The economic pie is only fixed if you are a Marxist. Look at all the Teslas running around, Starlink and Space X. You may not like Elon Musk but he may soon be the world’s first trillionaire.  Did he add value? Look at all the employees and wealth created. Steve Jobs didn’t add value? Google didn’t add value? What about Bill Gates?

The left knows that what they are spewing is BS yet they persist. You have got to be really blind and really stupid to believe this nonsense. Mamdani wants to increase taxes on the rich who have second homes in New York. The mayor of Seattle has told the rich that if they don’t like more taxes then they can leave. And they are. Didn’t New York governor Hochul tell the rich “we don’t want you” and now she is begging them to come back? 

The left conveniently ignores the fact that many of those dastardly billionaires create jobs and are major contributors to charities in their states and cities. Is AOC critical of Bezos giving $100 million to a charity funding early childhood education in New York or Ken Griffin – recently the subject of Mamdani’s ire – giving billions in philanthropy? But what I find interesting is why are the left’s billionaires allowing their subjects to sharply criticize them as well? Soros is a billionaire as are Steyer, Bloomberg, Linkedin’s Hoffman, Google’s Schmidt, Illinois governor Pritzker among others. All in all there were 28 billionaires who backed Kamala Harris. So why don’t they tell their wayward children to just shut the you-know-what up?

Breaking news?

Word is that we are close to a memorandum of understanding with whoever it is that is negotiating for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard with our crack (no not Hunter Biden) negotiators Jared Kurshner and Steve Witkoff. They are promising to de-mine the Strait of Hormuz. (Make them send the first boats through just to show its safe.) We are going to let them sell some oil because they are running out of places to store it. We have promised to tell Netanyahu to stop assassinating their leaders – if they can find them. They will dig up all the buried enriched uranium and since Israel has assassinated all their nuclear scientists they will give it to us so we can make them a bomb. Trump, reportedly said no to all of this until they offered to rename the country the Islamic Republic of Trump. That sealed the deal! (Apologies to the Babylon Bee).

Kevin Warsh, Fed Chairman

The next Federal Open Market Committee meets June 17-19. It may well be the most closely watched meeting in recent history. It will be the first presided over by new Fed chair Kevin Warsh. Although the president will likely still be agitating for a cut in the Fed funds target rate, the minutes of the last FOMC meeting indicate that there will be considerable resistance to doing so. The market is actually saying that the probability is greater for an increase rather than a decrease in the rate. At the last meeting three reserve bank presidents famously dissented not in the decision to hold rates steady but in the wording that retained the so-called easing bias in the Fed’s statement. 

The Fed only targets short term rates. But the long term Treasurys are already showing that investors expect inflation to persist or even rise. The yields on the 10-year Treasury note have risen from a low of about 4% in early March to around 4.6%, a move that has rippled into mortgage and corporate borrowing costs. “A lot of what’s driving long-term rates is a repricing of the Fed path—away from cuts and toward hikes,” said one analyst. Remember when Janet Yellen and Powell said that the inflation under Biden would be “temporary?” Well Treasury secretary Bessent and Trump have said the same thing, that the runup in prices caused by energy spikes will be “temporary.” Haven’t we been down this path before?

What about Warsh’s desire to sell off much of the Fed’s balance sheet acquired during Quantitative Easing (QE)? This then would be Quantitative Tightening (QT) which would result in a rise in rates and a reduction in bank liquidity as well. With Trump in the White House, you would think that would be a no-no even under the best of conditions. But Warsh could say that the FOMC has decided to hold rates steady on the Fed funds rate when in fact it could raise short term market rates by selling off some of its portfolio. So as to not incur the wrath of Trump, he could do a QT instead, causing rates to rise without raising them!

So Warsh has a perilous tightrope to walk. He has Trump insisting on lowering rates while members of the Open Market Committee may push for higher rates. He wants to sell off much of the Fed’s balance sheet but some reserve bank presidents, joined by the financial markets caution about the impact on bank reserves and systemwide liquidity. One analysis said “In a market that relies upon liquidity and leverage, that would inject an unnecessary risk into an economy that is over-reliant upon the financial sector.” However, Warsh can offset this decrease in liquidity by lowering or stop paying the 3.65% interest that the Fed pays on banks excess reserves. By lowing the rate or eliminating it the banks will be motivated to expand lending or purchasing Treasurys to make up for the loss in interest earnings. Warsh quoted Paul Volcker often at his confirmation hearing. Warsh also thinks that an increase in productivity spurred by AI will help grow the economy and mitigate the burgeoning deficit. Increased lending of their reserves by the banks coupled with increased productivity is a Reagan throwback to counter congress’s deficit spending. Can Warsh pull the rest of the Fed to help him out? We will see.

Warsh was previously at the Fed during Bernanke’s runup of the Fed’s balance sheet with all the QEs. As only one vote on the Open Market Committee he could do little to deter the Fed from moving from monetary policy to be actively engaged in support of fiscal policy initiatives. As chairman, he will still have only one vote. It will be interesting to see if he can coalesce support for his positions. Warsh testified that he wants to “reform” the Fed. A starting point will be the conduct of monetary policy. 

Warsh has claimed to be a devotee of the sainted Milton Friedman (one of my several living heroes who are now dead). Freidman’s research and recommendations were for use of a monetary rule with steady growth in monetary aggregates while basically ignoring interest rate changes. Friedman was an opponent of discretionary monetary policy where the central bank constantly fiddles with its policy tools. Friedman said that this caused uncertainty in the financial marketplace and hindered rational decision making. Freidman famously said that inflation was everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon caused by excessive monetary expansion. But Fed economists since Bernanke have effectively ignored monetary aggregates in efforts to have interest rate control. Indeed Powell told a Senate hearing in 2021″When you and I studied economics a million years ago…monetary aggregates seemed to have a relationship to economic growth. Right now, I would say the growth of M2, which is quite substantial, doesn’t really have important implications for the economic outlook. Monetarism is something we have to unlearn.” 

Warsh at his hearing essentially said that Powell was wrong. As I learned in graduate school under Karl Brunner, if you try to control interest rates, you lose control of monetary aggregates. This has been the case, especially in 1991 moving forward. If the Fed had not exploded the money supply, the Biden inflation and now the Trump inflation could well have been avoided. Warsh seems to believe this too. He has aligned himself with positions similar to Milton Friedman’s monetarist theories, where price stability and rules-based credibility are pre-requisites for growth. He is skeptical of the idea that central banks can fine-tune outcomes without distorting the economy. He has repeatedly warned that prolonged monetary activism does not support the economy but reshapes it rewarding speculation and leverage over productivity and technological improvement. For me this is incredibly uplifting.

This is decidedly out-of-the-box thinking for a central banker whose counterparts – regardless of country revel in fiddling around with things just to show their importance at being god-like. I recall a cartoon depicting Paul Volcker and Jimmy Carter sitting on a stage. The moderator said “Now ladies and gentlemen, I give you the most powerful person in the world!” And they both stood up.

Warsh at his senate hearing quoted Volcker in saying that monetary aggregates were a useful indicator of the effects of monetary policy on inflation and chided today’s Fed for ignoring control of the money supply. Warsh in his desire to “reform” the Fed is not going to be able to change that entrenched establishment overnight. What really will be interesting is whether the establishment will eventually change him. 

Wrong for Texas? Wrong for Kentucky?

Wrong for Texas?

The president just endorsed Ken Paxton for the Senate from Texas spurning the incumbent John Cornyn. The democrats are rejoicing. Now there have a better chance of flipping the seat with their weird ball candidate. Trump apparently hasn’t forgotten that Cornyn was late to endorse him and initially resisted ending the filibuster to vote for the SAVE act. But Paxton is a sleezeball of dubious repute. Cornyn seems like an honorable man. Cornyn desperate for the president’s support finally came around and said that in some instances, waiver of the filibuster might be warranted. I guess that was not enough. The president tweeted “Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate.” He added that Paxton “has gone through a lot, in many cases, very unfairly, but he is a Fighter, and knows how to WIN. Our Country needs Fighters, and also Loyalty to the Cause of Greatness.”

Trump posted that “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.” Trump went against the Senate leadership that had spent more than $10 million in support of Cornyn who spent months highlighting the controversial state attorney general’s many scandals, including an investigation into misuse of his office that resulted in an effort by state Republicans to impeach him. He’s also in the middle of a messy divorce and has been accused of adultery by his wife. No matter. He’s Trump’s guy.

Now Texas voters have a choice – assuming Paxton wins his primary runoff against Corryn – between a scandal ridden sleezeball and democrat James Talarico whose views are weird to say the least. Talarico is a progressive Presbyterian seminary student who says that God is non-binary. Talarico is not opposed to boys playing in girls’ sports. He is pro abortion and favors gender surgeries on children. And the democrats actually think he might win. Paxton is so bad that this guy is polling within single digits of him. Now when the campaign gets going in earnest you can bet that the republicans will highlight all of Talarico’s views and label his “wrong for Texas.” But isn’t Paxton “wrong for Texas, too?” BTW, all that progressive money has been flowing into Texas giving Talarico a war chest of $27 million in the first three months of this year. The last time this much money came to a candidate was when Jaime Harrison raised a stunning $57 million to lose to Lindsey Graham.

Poor Texas.

Massie loses

Was Tom Massie wrong for Kentucky’s fourth congressional district? Massie seemed to be the perfect embodiment of the 4^th. A son of the dirt who worked the farm on his wife’s family land. He also had that independent streak that is famous and admired in his state. He voted with the president 90 percent of the time and only deviated where his conscience demanded. But Trump demands 100 percent fealty and wanted him gone. 

Well Trump reigned supreme in Kentucky 4 with Massie losing to Trump backed Ed Gallrein in the most expensive House race in history. It wasn’t particularly close with Massie losing by 9 points. Again was it the president or the avalanche of PAC money against Massie? Probably both. As per usual, the president was his old courteous self, tweeting  Massie “is the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman in History, voting against Tax Cuts, the Wall, Law Enforcement, and in favor of the Transgender Mutilization of our Children, Men playing in Women’s Sports, and so many more horrible things.The Great People of Kentucky are wise to Massie — He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left, The incredible people of Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District gave us a ma.date to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. And the person that will help us do that is Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Fifth Generation Kentucky Farmer, Captain Ed Gallrein, a true America First Patriot.” 

Trump continued “Thomas Massie is a terrible congressman, he’s been a terrible congressman from day one. Dealing with him is just horrible. I don’t think he’s a Republican, I think he’s actually a Dumbocrat, he’s not a libertarian, you know, sometimes they say he’s a, he’s really a Dumbocrat. He votes against us all the time.” BTW, remember Massie voted with the president 90 percent of the time.

But congratulations to the president. Despite all his negative press and the dismal polling, the president remains popular where he is popular. The voters in Kentucky 4 are still MAGA-folk.

Bob Woodson, April 8, 1937 – May 19, 2026

My dear friend Bob Woodson just died. He was 89. Bob who? Most of you have never heard of him even though Bob was a towering forceful leader. He chose not to exploit his fame. You might say that Bob was the most famous person that no one had heard of. Yet presidents knew him as did the conservative media. He was often on Fox News as a counterweight to more famous folk like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Although he has been recognized with a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, a Presidential Citizens Medal and other awards, Bob never sought publicity. Instead he sought results. He was a contributing editor to The Hill, The Washington Examiner and The Wall Street Journal. He was published in influential newspapers and journals such as Forbes, National Review, the Washington Post, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the Vanderbilt Law Review.

Bob was a counselor to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and helped Ryan develop his Better Way agenda. Woodson was influential in helping the George W. Bush administration develop its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. And before that, Bob served as an advisor to Jack Kemp when he was HUD Secretary. He was instrumental in Kemp’s famous Enterprise Zone initiative. Bob and his board met annually with President Reagan who wanted Bob to search as an undersecretary at HUD – hence my picture with the president.  President Trump also wanted Bob to be HUD secretary in his first administration. But Bob demurred believing that he served best outside the confines of the political theatre.

Here is a photo of one of those meetings with President Reagan.

Bob was a different civil rights icon, loved and admired by those who were touched by him. Why wasn’t he better known? This statement says it all when he wrote in reference to the Southern Poverty Law center: entitled “Wake up America. Excellence is our inheritance.” He wrote: “Let me be clear. The cause of civil rights remains one of the noblest defenses of human dignity in American history. But the movement has, more often than we admit, been commodified. What began as a mission rooted in sacrifice has, in some quarters, hardened into an industry rooted in exploitation. When the suffering of a people becomes a fundraising hook, the incentive shifts from solving problems to sustaining grievances. Our communities are being exploited from multiple directions. By outsiders who turn our pain into their profits. By self-proclaimed leaders who monetize resentment instead of producing results. And by the enemy within, who perpetuates violence and corruption, we’re too eager to ignore because it wears a black face. We must stop being the “product” for these groups and start being the “judges” of their integrity. We have never suffered from a lack of excellence. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/4552542/bob-woodson-wake-up-black-america-excellence-is-our-inheritance/. 

Bob used to say that when white folk were at their worse, black folk were at their best. Ponder this statistic: during the Depression, when racism was enshrined in law and black unemployment was 40%, the black community had the highest marriage rate of any group in America.” Bob was fond of telling audiences that if you didn’t want to be poor then you should do this in this order: graduate from high school, get a job, get married, have children – in that order. Then you won’t be poor.

Bob founderdthe National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in 1981 and asked me to serve on its board of directors. I did so for a number of years until other obligations had me leave his board but continue to contribute whenever he asked. I recall when as a board member I went with him to a meeting in a black church in Alabama where a local group had just received a grant from the 
Center – later to be renamed the Woodson Center. Bob spoke to the group and said that the first thing was no to cast blame on anyone else for whatever ails them, to take it upon themselves to address their issues and to solve them. Bob reminded me of my Dad when he said that black folk were victims only if they allowed themselves to be so. Bob was an inspiration.

Bob’s approach was one of self-help. He described the function of the Woodson Center as to rejuvenate indigenous civil society in impoverished neighborhoods. The group’s signature approach is to look for people in a community whom others “turn to in times of crisis” and “try to resource them so that they can scale up,” thereby strengthening “informal networks” responding to problems of crime, addiction and family breakdown. The Woodson Center’s mission is to empower community-based leaders to promote solutions that reduce crime and violence, restore families, revitalize underserved communities, and assist in the creation of economic enterprise.

One of Bob’s best initiatives was the Violence-Free Zone (VFZ), a school-based model that employs a mix of mentoring services, youth development programs and young adult “advisors” who work full-time in area schools. A Baylor University evaluation of the initiative found significant improvement in academic performance and lower rates of behavioral incidents and suspensions. At one Richmond high school, arrests of students dropped 38 percent and there was a 73 percent drop in motor vehicle thefts that Bob said police had attributed to VFZ helping keep kids in school. In Dallas, Bob said one high school recorded 133 gang incidents before bringing in VFZ and zero the following year. 

One of his latest projects was Voices of Black Mothers United where he sought to help those mothers who had suffered the loss of a child by murder. The organization links those bereaved mothers with law enforcement in their communities to promote positive policing. https://woodsoncenter.org/how-we-help/voices-of-black-mothers-united/

Bob was mortified by the 1619 Project and started his 1776 Unites that published its own set of essays counter to those in the 1619 Project. Bob wrote that “1776 Unites is an assembly of independent voices who uphold our country’s authentic founding virtues and values and challenge those who assert America is forever defined by its past failures, such as slavery.”

He asked me to write one of those essays and I did so gladly. Appropriately it was entitled “The Cult of Victimhood.” https://1776unites.org/the-cult-of-victimhood/. 1776 Unites also has classroom instruction that counters that of the 1619 Project. Schools can integrate the curriculum into their classroom instruction. https://1776unites.org/#theMarbleheadMen

Later Bob edited two books: “Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers. Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers” and “A Pathway to American Renewal: Red, White, and Black Volume II.” Again I have an essay in each volume. “The Cult of Victimhood” in the first and “Bring Back the Rosenwald Schools” in the second.  

Bob was a Korean War veteran and his father served with the famed Harlem Hellfighters in World War I. Bob’s father died when he was only 9 but credits growing up in a strong community with strong values. I guess it really does take a village. 

With Bob’s passing the Woodson Center will carry on his good works, doing great things in a quiet manner that gets things done. But Bob will be missed. 

May he rest in peace.

 

Keisha Lance Bottoms. Trump’s social media posts.

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Keisha Lance Bottoms won the democrat primary for governor in Georgia. She is a former judge and former mayor of Atlanta, my hometown. With President Trump’s falling popularity and the republicans in a mudslinging contest between healthcare executive Rick Jackson and lieutenant governor Burt Jones, the democrats think that they may have the rare opportunity to win back the governor’s mansion. Bottoms has her distractors and some say that the main one is simply that she was mayor of Atlanta. They will attack her record. But serving as Atlanta’s mayor maybe why is why she won over my favorite Michael Thurmond. The polls also show her ahead – for now – of whoever wins the republican primary. However, I find it curious that none of the news stories mention one salient fact – to me. She is Major Lance’s daughter. Remember Monkey Time? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMRLrf4pNn4&list=RDxMRLrf4pNn4&start_radio=1

The President’s social media posts

Does Trump’s vulgarity and coarseness shock anymore? Or have we just inured ourselves having accustomed ourselves to all his shock and awe? I am reminded of Chicken Little running around yelling “the sky is falling!” But becoming less sensitive to the barrage of tweets does not make Trump more presidential. So when he tweeted on Truth Social regarding Iran did anyone believe him? “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen but it probably will.” Or “Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!” And on Easter Sunday, “Open the f— Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” He tweeted that the U.S. would “massively blow up” its South Pars gas field, the largest in the world, if Tehran continued to retaliate against energy infrastructure in the Middle East. He said that the U.S. and Israel had destroyed “100% of Iran’s Military capability” while Tehran continued to counterattack.

Was anyone shocked? And more importantly did anyone believe him when so much of what he has said is not true. I have said before that one of my friends shrugged these off saying that this sort of language was the only thing that the Iranians understood. Well maybe they understood but they also didn’t believe, calling Trump’s bluff every time to see him back down (TACO anyone?). But if all of this is just for show then the show has been taken to extremes. I need not mention all the vulgar tweets aimed at foe and former friends alike. Or the ones directed at the media, the bench, “allies”, the Fed and members of Congress. Is the president’s language is to bring us to his side when much of it repels those of us who are not devoted MAGAs? The fact of the matter is that the president loves to be a bully.

The president must win some prize for “politician with the most tweets.” Since the start of his war with Iran he has posted over 240 tweets. But this has comprised only about a quarter of his total postings. The president’s allies have long supported his rants as an unfiltered view of his thinking. One observer wrote “Think of Trump’s approach to social media as recklessness with intention.” One of his White House spokesmen has said “The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a President of the United States.” Yes it is direct but is it authentic? Because if it is authentic then the president really needs help because most of it is unhinged.

Amazingly, the Wall Street Journal has analyzed of thousands of posts that the president uses to spread conspiracy theories and attack his adversaries. In “The Late-Night Truth Social Storms That Offer a Window Into the President’s Mind” the Journal looks at his tweeting routine. https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-truth-social-late-night-posts-167cb47a?mod=Searchresults&pos=1&page=1

It says that on a typical day the president posts 55 messages between 10PM and 1AM. On one atypical day the president posted 150 times. The posts included a video clip of Trump saying that Somalia isn’t a nation “it’s just people walking around killing each other.” In all, “Trump—with the help of staff—has posted at least 8,800 times, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.” 

The Journal reports that Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant brings the president stacks of printed-out draft social-media posts for his approval. Harp doesn’t share draft posts with the chief of staff’s office, communications aides or national-security officials. Harp has told others she works for Trump and only listens to him. Surprise! Roughly 1 in 10 of the account’s text-based posts call a person or group a name, such as “crooked,” “sleazebag,” “loser,” “low IQ,” or “Fake News.”

So the question is what do you think of the president’s tweet machine? Does it serve a purpose other than feeding red meat to his MAGA base? Or does it serve another deeper purpose and if so what might that be?

Trump’s latest slush fund

Breaking news. Donald Trump’s Treasury Department agrees to pay Donald Trump $1.7 billion. Recall that Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion when one of its employees released the president’s tax returns without his authorization. Well Trump’s Treasury Department within which the IRS resides has announced that Trump is dropping the suit and settling with the Treasury which is creating a $1.7 billion fund to compensate Trump’s buds who claim they were mistreated by the Biden Administration. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said (presumably with a straight face) that this “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion is part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s suit over the leak of his tax returns. It will allow for people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes to apply for payouts, creating what Blanche called “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” Blanche went on to say “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

Sure. This is a slush fund and is outrageous. We all knew that Trump has chutzpah but this is beyond the pale. The House democrats immediately filed a legal brief urging a judge to block what they described as an unprecedented resolution that enriches Trump’s buds with taxpayer dollars with meritless claims of political persecution. “This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” Donald Sherman, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. What about the republicans? To date nothing but silence except for Senate majority leader John Thune who said  he was “not a big fan.” “And I’m not sure exactly how they intend to use it, but my understanding is that was just announced. But yeah, I don’t see a purpose for that.” Sort of a milquetoast statement but at least it is slightly critical. What about our congressmen and senators? I bet none of them have the integrity or guts to speak out.

I don’t know of any single act taken by a president that is so in-your-face as this one. Jaime Raskin, one of Trump’s many enemies on Capitol Hill said “This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes.” 

At least one prominent government attorney has appeared to resign due to the impropriety of the “settlement.” Brian Morrissey, the Treasury’s general counsel, stepped down from his position just seven months after being confirmed by the Senate. Morrissey did not make a public statement indicating that he resigned as a result of the billion-dollar fund but he quit just hours after the “settlement” was announced. Although the headlines say that he “resigned in disgust” there is no direct confirmation from Morrissey – and in the vast majority of this instances one should not expect one.

Trump’s attorneys even suggested in their court filing seeking to dismiss the democrat’s suit that the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge! Again more chutzpah. The agreement sets up a commission to oversee the slush fund and would have the total authority to dole out the $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6 riot that Trump has already pardoned. 

In addition to not wanting the “settlement” to be reviewable, the arrangement doles out taxpayer dollars with no oversight. Trump would have the authority to remove members of the commission running the fund without cause, and the commission would be under no obligation to disclose its procedures or decision-making process for awarding the money. The process for awarding money and the identities of the recipients would be kept private. Good grief. 

The arrangement would be an unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars with no oversight. Under the terms of the potential settlement agreement, Trump would even have the authority to remove members of the commission running the fund without cause, and the commission would be under no obligation to disclose its procedures or decision-making process for awarding the $1.7 billion dollars.

The president says that none of the money will be paid to him (ha ha). But people associated with him, specifically his sons, would be entitled to part of the pie. And because of the terms of the “settlement” we will never know how much went to Do Jr and Eric Trump, Can you imagine Trump’s tweets and the collective republican outrage if Biden had created a slush fund for Hunter?

One of Trump’s lawyers said “The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people. President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”

Sure.

What makes this doubly outrageous is that it looked as though Trump was going to lose his suit against the IRS and thus reached the “settlement” instead. No attorney would have agreed to such a settlement given the judge’s ruling. But these are no ordinary attorneys. We had essence Trump’s attorneys on one side versus Trump’s attorneys on the other side.

The judge hearing the case had questioned the justification for the case proceeding. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams questioned whether Trump and the defendants — the Treasury Department and IRS — are “sufficiently adverse” for the case to proceed. “Moreover, although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction. Indeed, President Trump’s own remarks about this matter acknowledge the unique dynamic of this litigation,” she wrote.

No kidding. Again, this is outrageous. Even Trump when asked about the ethics of his filing suit against his own government said the lawsuit “sort of looks bad” but said he would donate any money he receives from the claims to charity. He said “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. It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

Maybe the first time Donald Trump has been given to understatement.

Clarence Thomas on Progressivism 

Congratulations to Justice Clarence Thomas who is now the second longest serving Supreme Court justice. If he hangs in there until 2028, he will eclipse William O. Douglas as the longest serving justice. Thomas is a staunch constitutionalist which is why the left hates him. No living constitution believer is he. I don’t think that any of us thought that he would last this long. Justices in the past either retire or die before reaching this point. We all remember his contentious hearing with the accusations of Anita Hill and the famous Coke bottle. He survived that – remember “a high tech lynching for uppity blacks who dare to think for themselves”? His confirmation vote was strictly among party lines and was 52-48. He got the Supreme Court and Anita Hill got famous and was rewarded with a professorship in the law school at the University of Oklahoma. She is now a law professor at Brandeis University.

For years Thomas – often joined by Antonin Scalia – was a lonely voice at the court. But the composition of the court has changed during his tenure. His previous dissents are now providing the basis of majority votes on the court like in Dobbs and in Callais which reflected his opposition to provisions in the Voter Rights act. Thomas wrote the dissent on the Thornburg versus Gingles (1986) ruling that had paved the way for widespread racial gerrymanders. Thomas wrote that “few devices could be better designed to exacerbate racial tensions than the consciously segregated districting system currently being constructed in the name of the Voting Rights Act.” Joined by Scalia, Thomas said “Our drive to segregate political districts by race can only serve to deepen racial divisions by destroying any need for voters or candidates to build bridges between racial groups or to form voting coalitions.”

I am personally uncomfortable with his broad tolerance for expansive executive power as in Learning Resources versus Trump. Recall Justice Gorsuch admonishing both Thomas and Alito saying that their past votes in similar major questions doctrine cases cannot be reconciled with their present votes in support of Trump’s tariffs. I was disappointed in his vote supporting the tariffs. Regardless, Clarence Thomas along with Thomas Sowell remains the last of my living heroes.

Recently, I explained to my granddaughter who is from Northern Virginia why their recent vote to disenfranchise the state’s republicans was the perfect example of the weakness inherent in democracies. It was tyranny by the majority where 51 percent of the voters could disenfranchise the 49 percent who disagreed with them. The Founding Fathers recognized this flaw and created a represented republic rather thana pure democracy. Without the Electoral College and a senate where each state gets two senators regardless of population, I seriously doubt if the United States would still be united.

Clarence Thomas recognizes this flaw and articulated it eloquently in his speech at the University of Texas. There is much to like and admire about Clarence Thomas – though a couple of my dearest friends would disagree. For me, this speech was one of the finest that I can recall in my lifetime. I cannot do it justice just to relate it so here I reproduce the excerpt from the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/opinion/justice-thomas-progressives-vs-the-declaration-50d5aea4

Justice Thomas: Progressives vs. the Declaration

The Constitution is the means of government; it is the Declaration that announces the ends of government. The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights and liberties from concentrated power and excessive democracy. Our Constitution creates a separation of powers and federalism—truly for the first time in modern history—to prevent the government from becoming so strong that it threatens our natural rights. Federalist No. 10 proposed the idea that the great threat to our rights comes from majority faction. Human history teaches us, alas, that numerical majorities frequently seek to control government, and use the state to violate the rights of the minority. Because man is fallen and the desire for power was, as James Madison described it, “sown in the nature of man,” government had to be limited. For, as Madison said, “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” But men are not angels. The slaveholders used the power of government to deny the fundamental natural rights of the slaves; the segregationists used the state to oppress the freed men and women—including my ancestors.

As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism. Since Wilson’s presidency, progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.

Progressivism was not native to America. Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired. Progressives like Wilson argued that America needed to leave behind the principles of the Founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated people of Europe. Wilson called Germany’s system of relatively unimpeded state power “nearly perfected.” He acknowledged that it was “a foreign science, speaking very little of the language of English or American principle,” which “offers none but what are to our minds alien ideas.” He thus described America, still stuck with its original system of government, as “slow to see” the superiority of the European system.

Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement—with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War—to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration. Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident. To Wilson, the inalienable rights of the individual were “a lot of nonsense.” Wilson redefined “liberty” not as a natural right antecedent to the government, but as “the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs and interests.” In other words, liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God, but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government. The government, as Wilson reconceived of it, would be “beneficent and indispensable.” Progressives such as John Dewey attacked the Framers for believing that “their ideas [were] immutable truths good at all times and places,” when instead they were “historically conditioned, and relevant only to their own time.” Now, Dewey and the progressives argued, those ideas were to be repealed. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.

You will not be surprised to learn that the progressives had a great deal of contempt for us, the American people. Before he entered politics, Wilson would describe the American people as “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn” and “foolish.” He lamented that we “do too much by vote” and too little by expert rule. He proposed that the people be ruled by administrators who use them as “tools.” He once again aspired to be like Germany, where the people, he said admiringly, were “docile and acquiescent.” The century of progressivism did not go well. The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.

It was a terrible mistake to adopt Progressivism’s rejection of the Declaration’s vision of universal, inalienable natural rights. Wilson’s claim that natural rights must give way to historical progress could justify the greatest mistakes in our history. In Plessy v. Ferguson, my court upheld Louisiana’s system of racial segregation because “separate but equal,” it observed, was reasonable in light of “the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order.” It comes as no surprise that the progressives embraced eugenics. Progressives believed that Darwinian science—the idea of ever-advancing progress written into biology itself— had proven the inherent superiority and inferiority of the races. It was only a small step for Wilson to resegregate the federal workforce. It was only another step for the government to launch sterilization programs on those deemed by the experts of the day to be unfit to reproduce—upheld by my court in Buck v. Bell in an opinion written by no less a figure than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

We can argue over whether you believe in immutable, absolute natural rights or the Wilsonian idea of ever-progressing history. . . . But let me ask you to consider the consequences. European thinkers have long criticized America for remaining trapped in a Lockean world, with its weak decentralized government and strong individual rights. They say our 18th-century Declaration has prevented us from progressing to higher forms of government. Why has America never had a socialist party, one German sociologist famously asked. But we were fortunate not to trade our Lockean bounds for the supposedly enlightened world of Hegel, Marx and their followers.

Fascism—which, after all, was a national socialism—triggered wars in Europe and Asia that killed tens of millions. The socialism of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China proceeded to kill more tens of millions of their own people. This is what happens when natural rights give way to the higher good of notions of history, progress, or, as Thomas Sowell has written, the “vision of the anointed.” None of this, of course, was an improvement on the principles of the Declaration. Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” is largely about how America owed its superiority over Europe to its conscious decision to reject central planning and administrative rule root and branch. Progressivism, in other words, is retrogressive.

As Calvin Coolidge said on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.”

When Abraham Lincoln addressed the assembled crowd at Gettysburg, they had gathered to memorialize the past. But Lincoln’s address urged them to not do so with complacency. Instead, Lincoln said, they would look to the past as inspiration to take them to greater heights in the future. “It is rather for us,” Lincoln said, “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation . . . shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Trump’s endorsements

The president’s hair is on fire.

Louisiana

Bill Cassidy lost his primary in Louisiana. The president was giddy with joy. Not only did Cassidy lose, he was humiliated. When in history has a sitting senator running for reelection come in third in his party’s primary? Cassidy, a physician, was seeking a third term so Louisiana voters were familiar with him. He became only the second incumbent Louisiana senator ever not to be reelected. Virtually every media outlet says this is because Trump endorsed one of his opponents and Louisiana is MAGA-land. But Cassidy did something dumb. He voted for the president’s impeachment when he knew that there was no way Trump was going to be removed by the Senate.

But did the Louisiana voters turn him out because of Trump’s endorsement of Rep. Julia Letlow as the media types proclaim? That may be true but it is also true that the state’s republican establishment also wanted Cassidy gone and supported Letlow. The state’s governor endorsed Letlow, had big donors support her and closed the state’s open primary system denying Cassidy the democrat votes he got in the past. Not surprisingly the president reveled in Cassidy’s loss calling him a “disloyal disaster” and a “terrible person” on social media and saying “Congratulations to Congresswoman Julia Letlow on a fantastic race, beating an incumbent senator by record numbers.” Letlow will now face a runoff with Louisiana state treasurer John Fleming a former congressman who served in the Trump administration as assistant secretary of Commerce for Economic Development and later as a White House aide. Despite not having Trump’s endorsement, Fleming is running as an “I-am-the-bigger-Maga-candidate.” Trump has even tweeted nice things about him.

Cassidy however could have the last laugh. Like Thom Tillis, he may become a Trump obstacle in his remaining days. He responded to Trump by saying “Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity, I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.” Ouch. Cassidy has already blocked a handful of White House appointees including Casey Means for surgeon general and still chairs the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He has been a critic of Robert Kennedy’s vaccine policies. He also could refuse to fall in line on some key votes as well.

But Cassidy should have known better. He sealed his own fate with his impeachment vote. And Trump never forgets. “For a man with such a formidable intellect, his political strategy was breathtakingly dense,” said Lionel Rainey, a Louisiana GOP strategist. History will remember Bill Cassidy as the absolute smartest guy in the political morgue.” The question is whether Cassidy lost because of the Trump endorsement or because he was not loyal to the party? It may have been a bit of both.

Indiana

The same is true in Indiana where five republican state senators who voted against redistricting were the object of Trump’s wrath. In their primary, four of them lost. Again the media credits Trump. However, one of the state’s republican senators Jim Banks’ PACs poured millions into the races. All told, more than an astounding $13 million was spent in these state races. Most of the ads were paid for by Hoosier Leadership for America and American Leadership PAC, which are both affiliated with Banks. Turning Point Action financed volunteers going door to door. The attack ads followed the theme that the senators opposed “President Trump’s plan to remove liberal Democrats from Congress.” The media seems to have forgotten the role played by all that money injected in the races, an amount over 5,000 times what had been traditionally spent. “Nearly all of the commentary I’ve seen attributes it solely to the Trump endorsement, and I don’t think nearly enough weight is being given to the money side of things,” said Joshua Claybourn, a veteran political advisor in Southern Indiana. 

The bottom line is yes, the president was a factor. But Cassidy was his own worse enemy and the republicans in Indiana might have lost anyway but all that money and the backing of Jim Banks likely played a role in getting his supporters out to the polls to vote against the incumbents. 

Kentucky’s 4^th

The next test is Kentucky’s Thomas Massie who is the only consistent libertarian in the republican House caucus. Massie is from Trump country and Trump hates him. The president endorsed Massie’s opponent Ed Gallrein a retired Navy Seal who leads Massie in some polls while trailing in others. The president even traveled to Kentucky to campaign with Gallrein. He did not go either to Louisiana or to Indiana. As is his wont, the president blasted Massie, calling him a “nutjob” who “will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman.” At the rally for Gallrein Trump said to the crowd “I just can’t stand this guy. We have got to get rid of this loser.”  “Tom Massie of Kentucky, the worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country, is an even bigger insult to our Nation than Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who suffered an unprecedented loss tonight by not even being allowed to run in the Republican Primary. Very disloyal, but Tom Massie, a major Sleazebag, is even worse!” Trump’s scathing post continued. “Kentucky, get this LOSER out of politics in Tuesday’s Election. He is nicknamed Rand Paul, Jr. another real ‘beauty,’ because of his absolutely terrible voting habits. Vote for Ed Gallrein a Successful Kentucky farmer and American War Hero who only ran because he thought that Massie was so disloyal and disrespectful to your President, ME!”

Good grief.

After the Indiana primary a Gallrein supporter tweeted “Hey @RepThomasMassie, you are next.” Massie’s primary is May 19^th.  I have posted before my admiration of Massie, one of our few principled politicians. Massie has consistently voted against increases in federal spending and what he views as violations of the US Constitution. He voted against the Big Beautiful Bill. Again money is playing a role. The race is the most expensive House primary battle in U.S. history with over $25.6 million spent in television, radio and digital advertising, as outside groups and national Republicans flood Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District with bitter attack ads.

Many of the ads are vicious, including several AI-generated “deepfakes.” One pro-Gallrein super PAC released an ad depicting Massie holding hands with Squad members Ilhan Omar and AOC and claimed Massie was “caught in a throuple.” (I wonder if Kentucky voters even know what “throuple” means). Massie’s criticism of Israel is also a key factor in the race, with the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund and the AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project accounting for nearly half of all super PAC spending against him.

Massie’s reaction to all this? “Dogs don’t bark at parked cars. I’m the only car moving.” So has Massie despite his roots in the district and just being one its solidly agrarian people lose his seat buried under Trump’s barrages and $25.6 million of attack ads? We will see. But a Massie loss will be one for the country and not just for Kentucky District 4.

Next up: Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, once a MAGA star and now on the hit list for endorsing Massie. Trump called her “weak minded” saying “Boebert is campaigning for the Worst “Republican” Congressman in the History of our Country, Tom Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky and anybody who can be that dumb deserves a good Primary Fight!”

There he goes again.