“The government under President Donald Trump is bending the arc of U.S. history in a new direction, away from the civil rights focus of the past 60 plus years,” CNN reports.
“The Department of Justice division created by the landmark 1957 Civil Rights Act to defend American’s rights has a new mission: rooting out anti-Christian bias, antisemitism and ‘woke ideology,’ the head of the division, Harmeet Dhillon, recently told conservative commentator Glenn Beck.”
“President Trump has embarked on a systematic effort to unravel Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights legacy, rolling back protections that have shaped American life for nearly six decades,” Axios reports.
“Backlash to the racial justice movement of 2020 has overshadowed a more fundamental, long-standing conservative goal: Turning back the clock on the sweeping societal changes of 1965.”
“The Trump administration’s aggressive push to reverse LBJ’s signature achievements could radically alter how communities of color confront discrimination in a diversifying America.”
Adam Serwer: “If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy.”
“Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
Jerel Ezell: “The 2024 presidential election left the Democrats’ multiracial coalition in tatters. Nonwhite people voted in higher percentages for Trump in 2024 than they did in 2020, in some cases by double-digit increases.”
“Democrats are now in the thick of a come-to-Jesus reckoning over these losses, and it should begin with this obvious truth: There is no deep cultural, social, economic or political linkage between Black, Latino, Indigenous and Asian Americans — at least not one that can be leveraged by the party for votes.”
Jamelle Bouie: “Trump’s war on DEI is a war on the civil rights era itself, an attempt to turn back the clock on equal rights. Working under the guise of fairness and meritocracy, Trump and his allies want to restore a world where the first and most important qualification for any job of note was whether you were white and male, where merit is a product of your identity and not of your ability.”
“As is true in so many other areas, the right’s accusation that diversity means unfair preferences masks a confession of its own intentions.”
“At his annual Super Bowl news conference Monday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell strongly supported the league’s policies designed to promote diversity at the club-employment level and said they would continue,” the New York Times reports.
“But during Super Bowl LIX, and with President Donald Trump apparently planning to attend on Sunday, the NFL might be making another kind of statement on the Caesars Superdome field itself. According to two league sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, league officials recently changed one of the slogans expected to be stenciled in the back of an end zone from ‘End Racism’ to ‘Choose Love.’”
Seth Masket: “A substantial chunk — let’s say 90% — of the story about the working class leaving the Democratic Party over the past 50 years is a story about race. To simplify, it’s about working class whites starting in the 1970s, and Latinos more recently, being mobilized against the Democratic Party due to resentment toward Blacks.”
Also: “We have never had a consensus definition of ‘working class.’ It could mean people without a college education, or lower-income people, or people in specific types of jobs like manufacture or service, or something else. It is also a populist cultural designation — one that Donald Trump has exploited well — signifying the tastes of “regular” people (often somehow rural whites) who might have money but still want to stick it to elites. Just who has left the Democratic Party and when is highly contingent on one’s conception of ‘working class.’”
Conor Friedersdorf: “Most Americans agree with progressives that racism and sexism are still problems. But supporters of identity politics were mistaken in assuming that the same majority would sign on to pursuing equity instead of equality. So there is promise in a reckoning: It is necessary to get the Democratic Party back in sync with everyday voters. And America will benefit if either of its major parties rejects politics that treat race, sex, and other identities as the most important things about a person.”
“But there is peril too: Identity politics is vague and rarely defined. When pressed to say what they’re objecting to, most critics of identity politics can cite examples. But mocking specific excesses––unpopular neologisms such as Latinx, racial litmus tests, the push to shift from LGBTQ to the comically untenable LGBTQIA2S+––doesn’t clarify how to stop them without giving up on worthy political efforts to help identity groups.”
New York Times: “Flash displays of hate and white power are happening more frequently in the United States, a trend that experts say is a reaction to changing demographics, political turmoil and social catalysts. More than 750 such incidents have taken place since 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League, with more than half of them occurring in the last 18 months.”
“National experts describe a familiar pattern: Small groups of mostly masked men chant and wave swastika or white power flags in public and yell racial slurs at targets as varied as immigrants, Black people, Jews and L.G.B.T.Q. people. They unfurl offensive banners over highways or post racist fliers in communities. The demonstrations are typically captured on video and ricochet across social media to large audiences.”
“A wave of racist text messages summoning Black people to report for slavery showed up on phones across the United States, prompting the scrutiny of the FBI,” the New York Times reports.
“The NAACP said that messages were received in nine states, and attorneys general in two other states reported the same on Thursday.”
Adam Serwer: “The theory is that by supercharging the salience of race—a reliable winner with huge swaths of the electorate—they can compensate for the unpopularity of the Trump campaign’s actual policy agenda: its plans to ban abortion, repeal protections for preexisting conditions in the Affordable Care Act, deregulate Big Business, and cut taxes on the wealthy while raising them on everyone else.”
“The campaign wants people—white people in particular—thinking about race, and hopes that these kinds of appeals will activate the necessary number of voters in the key swing states where the electorate is more conservative than the country as a whole. As Molly Ball reported in 2017, based on polling from the former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, another former Trump stalwart, Steve Bannon, developed a plan to galvanize white voters with race-baiting on immigration.”
“The belief that demagoguery on immigration is politically potent is why conservative media erupt with saturation coverage of the perennial migrant caravans every election season. The right sees as its most effective message the argument that immigrants, particularly nonwhite immigrants, are going to come to America and take or be given that which belongs to you.”
“Kamala Harris doesn’t talk often about her Black and South Asian American identity. She’s not talking to Latino voters about theirs either,” Politico reports.
“It’s a major shift in how Democrats are targeting Latino voters this cycle — and a rebuke of the belief long held by many Democrats that overt appeals on race and progressive policies on immigration are key to winning Latino votes.”
“President Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump over his record on race on Wednesday, targeting the former president for his past comments before a crowd of Black voters in Philadelphia,” Politico reports.
Said Biden: “What would’ve happened if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol? I don’t think he’d be talking about pardons. This is the same guy who wanted to tear gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder. It’s the same guy who still calls the ‘Central Park Five’ guilty, even though they were exonerated. He’s that landlord who denies housing applications because of the color of your skin. He’s that guy who won’t say Black lives matter and invokes neo-Nazi, Third Reich terms.”
He added: “We all remember, Trump is the same guy who unleashed the birtherism lie against Barack.”
President Biden declared on Tuesday that hatred of Jews “continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people,” saying there has been a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the United States following the attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, the New York Times reports.
Interestingly, Biden did not mention the plight of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Israel began the war in response to the Hamas attack.
“If Donald Trump returns to the White House, close allies want to dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color,” Axios reports.
“Trump’s Justice Department would push to eliminate or upend programs in government and corporate America that are designed to counter racism that has favored whites.
Targets would range from decades-old policies aimed at giving minorities economic opportunities, to more recent programs that began in response to the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd.”
Nate Silver: “As you can see, Biden’s margin against Donald Trump has basically not moved an inch among white voters; he’s losing them by 12 percentage points, as he did in 2020. However, Biden is now only winning Hispanics by 7 percentage points — down from 24 points in 2020 — and Black voters by ‘only’ 55 points, as compared with 83 points in 2020.”
“I’m not going to cover every possible difficulty when surveying non-white voters, who generally have lower response rates to polls than white voters do. I’m just saying this has been a consistent pattern; Split Ticket has been doing the same analysis for months now, and they’re finding the same thing every time. So at the very least, Democrats can’t wish this problem away by complaining about small sample sizes, although that doesn’t mean they won’t try.”
John Burn-Murdoch: “American politics is in the midst of a racial realignment. I think this is simultaneously one of the most important social trends in the U.S. today, and one of the most poorly understood.”
“New data shows that Democrats’ longtime advantage with Black, Latino and Asian American voters has shrunk to its lowest point in more than 60 years — creating a massive vulnerability for President Biden and congressional Democrats,” Axios reports.
“One of the most loyal parts of the Democratic coalition is suddenly in danger. Black and Hispanic men could vote Republican in numbers not seen since President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in the 1950s.”
“I’ve been a senator since ’72. I’ve served with real racists. I’ve served with Strom Thurmond. But guess what? These guys are worse. These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles.”
— President Biden, quoted by Axios, on Republicans in Congress.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.