“The FBI has arrested alleged members of a white supremacist group on federal gun charges and other alleged crimes,” the Washington Post reports.
“The charges grew from an investigation of a somewhat new effort among online extremists who refer to themselves as ‘the Base,’ the English translation of ‘al Qaida.'”
The New York Times says the three men “had weapons and discussed traveling to a pro-gun rally next week in Richmond, Va., in anticipation of a possible race war.”
Washington Post: “Hispanics are increasingly influential in the Democratic Party and in general election contests, but leaders and activists say they feel ignored and misunderstood by candidates who have spent much of their time focusing on Iowa and New Hampshire, predominantly white states at the top of the nominating calendar. They are bluntly calling on party leaders to reconsider the voting order of the states in four years.”
“A measure in the National Defense Authorization Act meant to keep white nationalists out of the U.S. military no longer mentions ‘white nationalists’ after Congress quietly altered the text after it initially passed the House,” the HuffPost reports.
Politico: “Having failed to gain traction with African American voters so far this campaign, Buttigieg’s campaign is taking a different approach to his three-day swing through South Carolina: Keep it small. The South Bend, Ind., mayor opted for largely invitation-only roundtables and private sit-downs with African American leaders in the state, where the Democratic electorate is majority-black.”
“It’s a strikingly different approach to the one Buttigieg takes in the first two early states, where he has surged into a group of four frontrunners in recent polling — and where he has seven public town halls scheduled over four days later this week, for example. But as Buttigieg tries to break in with African American voters, he’s leaning on ‘very, very intimate’ settings, said Matt Bowman, who hosted Buttigieg at his vineyard in Round O, S.C., for a conversation on black entrepreneurship with two dozen people.”
Axios: 2020 Democrats turn focus to black men.
“In case there were any doubts over his White House standing, Stephen Miller offered his critics the ultimate power move Tuesday as he boarded Air Force One to accompany President Trump to a campaign rally in South Florida,” the Washington Post reports.
“Miller’s reserved seat was another sign that the White House senior adviser has suffered no internal consequences in the two weeks since a social justice website published a trove of his old emails that showed him promoting political material and talking points linked to white-supremacist groups.”
“President Trump’s political appointees inappropriately retaliated against a career civil servant at the State Department in part because of her ethnic background, her perceived political views, and the fact that she was in government during prior administrations, a federal watchdog says,” Politico reports.
“The report has been in the works for more than a year. It covers five cases, and overall its findings are mixed, in part because the inspector general says he was ‘unable to obtain essential information from key decision-makers.'”
“In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage,” according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.
“The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) told the Late Show with Stephen Colbert that his Republican colleagues in the Senate privately admit that President Trump is “racist” and “misogynist.”
Said Brown: “Most Republican senators, when you talk to them individually, quietly, will acknowledge that Trump is a racist. They’ll acknowledge that Trump is a misogynist, they’ll acknowledge he has trouble telling the truth.”
He added: “It’s pretty clear that Republican senators, I mean they’re not going to go down as profiles in courage. It’s pretty clear that they like the tax cuts that Trump gave them. They like the attacks on the environment and on labor rights, and they like the young right-wing judges. And they’re all scared of their base. They’re all scared of a Republican primary from a Trump supporter that could take them out.”
Georgia Republicans blamed last night’s humiliating playoff defeat for the Atlanta Braves because of their efforts to ban the “tomahawk chop” chant, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
The team didn’t distribute the trademark foam tomahawks to fans at the decisive National League Division series game after St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, called the chop disrespectful.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wore brownface makeup to a party at the private school where he was teaching in the spring of 2001, Time reports.
“A photo shows Trudeau, then the 29-year-old son of the late former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, wearing a turban and robes with his face, neck and hands completely darkened. The photograph appears in the 2000-2001 yearbook of West Point Grey Academy, a private day school where Trudeau was a teacher.”
“Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics? He says the country, I don’t know. I may have to go with the Hispanics to be honest with you. we’ve got a lot of Hispanics.”
— President Trump, quoted by The Week, at a rally in New Mexico last night
New York Times: “At the Democratic primary debate last week, Joseph Biden prompted some distress within the party with a rambling, discordant answer to a question about the legacy of slavery, a moment that highlighted his unsteady instincts, and mixed record, on matters of race. Three days later, a heavily African-American crowd gave Mr. Biden a warm welcome as he delivered a passionate address at the 16th Street Baptist Church, a symbol of the civil rights struggle, where he denounced institutional racism to mark the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four young black girls here in 1963.”
“The divergent responses underscore the uncertainty surrounding whether Mr. Biden can translate his longstanding connection to black voters into votes next year. His deep ties to black leaders, his service as Barack Obama’s vice president and his popularity among older, more conservative African Americans have given him a commanding lead in the polls among a constituency that is crucial to any Democratic candidate seeking the nomination.”
“But that support has never been rigorously tested at the ballot box outside of his home state of Delaware, and missteps like his meandering debate answer on slavery, as well as his legislative record on issues like busing and criminal justice, have intensified questions among progressive activists, and some party leaders, about whether he is the best standard-bearer for African-American priorities.”
Newly acquired e-mails and records reveal that Republican Party operative Thomas Hofeller may have unconstitutionally used race data to draw congressional districts in 2016, the New Yorker reports.
“Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race.”
“Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.”
In his upcoming memoir, newly appointed Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch describes the private tour he gave President Trump of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, recalling that Trump’s reaction to the Dutch role in the global slave trade was, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands,” the Washington Post reports.
Before the president-elect arrived, his aides told Bunch that Trump “was in a foul mood” and did not want to see anything “difficult.”
Nevertheless, Bunch writes he started the tour in the history galleries, which begin with the global slave trade: “It was not my job to make the rough edges of history smooth, even for the president.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) “is contacting state legislators, and apologizing for her role in a racist student skit from her time as an Auburn student,” the Birmingham News reports.
“Ivey was president of her Alpha Gamma Delta pledge class at Auburn. Photos of her sorority sisters in blackface emerged earlier this year. None showed the governor.”
Joe Biden said that racism in America is institutional and it is a “white man’s problem visited on people of color,” arguing that the way to attack the issue is to defeat President Trump and shame the racists he has emboldened, the AP reports.
Taking aim at incendiary racial appeals by Trump, Biden said that a president’s words can “appeal to the worst damn instincts of human nature,” just as they can move markets or take a nation into war.
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who launched a primary challenge against President Trump, told MSNBC that he wasn’t a racist but had said “racist things.”
Said Walsh: “I wouldn’t call myself a racist, but I would say I’ve said racist things on Twitter. There’s no doubt about it. And an apology is not enough.”
“The office of an African American employee of the U.S. Department of Education was vandalized earlier this week, and other employees have expressed concern that the attack may have been racially motivated,” NBC News reports.
“African art figurines were found beheaded, with their limbs removed, and a school desegregation poster was damaged.”
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.