In 15 days America goes to the polls to choose a new Congress. At stake are Governor-ships and elect­ed offices down the line to dog-catch­er.
The num­ber one issue fac­ing African-Americans, Native ‑Americans and oth­er peo­ple of col­or today dur­ing this cru­cial time are the road­blocks to vot­ing placed in their way by Republicans.

The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act. A 2016 report from the civ­il rights coali­tion Leadership Conference on CHR found local offi­cials had shut­tered 868 polling places in the 3 years after the rul­ing.
Since the rul­ing, a flood­gate of vot­er sup­pres­sion activ­i­ty has been unleashed almost sole­ly in states and munic­i­pal­i­ties with large African-American, Native ‑American and Latino communities.

In Georgia, the sit­ting sec­re­tary of state Brian Kemp is on the bal­lot as the GOP can­di­date for gov­er­nor against the Democrats Stacy Abrams a black woman who would become the nation’s first black female gov­er­nor.
That prospect may have to wait as Hillary Clinton found out, get­ting more than three mil­lion votes than your oppo­nent does not mean you have won.

In his role as ref­er­ee, and as Candidate, Brian Kemp has report­ed­ly purged more almost a mil­lion peo­ple from the state’s vot­ing rolls.
This purge for sim­ple things like infre­quent vot­ing, and what is called “exact match a law Kemp and his Republican friends cre­at­ed demands gives them the right to remove or at least pre­vent peo­ple from vot­ing for a sim­ple miss­ing hyphen in a name, or a mis­spelled name.

The most basic right of a cit­i­zen in a democ­ra­cy is the right to vote. Without this right, peo­ple can be eas­i­ly ignored and even abused by their gov­ern­ment. This, in fact, is what hap­pened to African-American cit­i­zens liv­ing in the South fol­low­ing Civil War Reconstruction. Despite the 14^th and 15^th Amendments guar­an­tee­ing the civ­il rights of black Americans, their right to vote was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tak­en away by white suprema­cist state gov­ern­ments.
So said: http://​www​.crf​-usa​.org

African-Americans have always faced hur­dles when try­ing to vote, this nation has a sor­did lega­cy of oppres­sion and sup­pres­sion.

In 1890, Mississippi held a con­ven­tion to write a new state con­sti­tu­tion to replace the one in force since Reconstruction. The white lead­ers of the con­ven­tion were clear about their inten­tions. “We came here to exclude the Negro,” declared the con­ven­tion pres­i­dent. Because of the 15^th Amendment, they could not ban blacks from vot­ing. Instead, they wrote into the state con­sti­tu­tion a num­ber of vot­er restric­tions mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for most blacks to reg­is­ter to vote. 

The imped­i­ments placed in the way of blacks are lurid and dis­grace­ful. Doctoral the­ses are writ­ten on the details of those tac­tics from being required to guess the num­ber of jel­ly-beans in a jar to violence.

Violence

In 1873, a gang of whites in Colfax, Louisiana mur­dered more than 100 blacks who were assem­bled to defend Republican office­hold­ers — this was, of course, back when Republicans had some sense. Federal pros­e­cu­tors indict­ed three of them, but the U.S. Supreme Court dis­missed the indict­ments in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)
Source: 
The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Literacy Tests

Perhaps the first lit­er­a­cy test aimed at keep­ing blacks away from the bal­lot box was South Carolina’s noto­ri­ous “eight-box” bal­lot, adopt­ed in 1882. The test, as explained in “The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South” by J. Morgan Kousser and “The Law of Democracy,” by Samual Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan and Richard Pildeswent as follows:

Voters had to put bal­lots for sep­a­rate offices in sep­a­rate box­es. A bal­lot for the governor’s race put in the box for the sen­ate seat would be thrown out. The order of the box­es was con­tin­u­ous­ly shuf­fled, so that lit­er­ate peo­ple could not assist illit­er­ate vot­ers by arrang­ing their bal­lots in the prop­er order. The adop­tion of the secret bal­lot con­sti­tut­ed anoth­er implic­it lit­er­a­cy test, since it pro­hib­it­ed any­one from assist­ing an illit­er­ate vot­er in cast­ing his vote. In 1890, Southern states began to adopt explic­it lit­er­a­cy tests to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. This had a large dif­fer­en­tial racial impact, since 40 – 60% of blacks were illit­er­ate, com­pared to 8 – 18% of whites. Poor, illit­er­ate whites opposed the tests, real­iz­ing that they too would be dis­en­fran­chised.
Source:
 The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Poll Taxes

If you didn’t have mon­ey, you didn’t have a vote:

Georgia ini­ti­at­ed the poll tax in 1871, and made it cumu­la­tive in 1877 (requir­ing cit­i­zens to pay all back tax­es before being per­mit­ted to vote). Every for­mer Confederate state fol­lowed its lead by 1904. Although these tax­es of $1-$2 per year may seem small, it was beyond the reach of many poor black and white share­crop­pers, who rarely dealt in cash. The Georgia poll tax prob­a­bly reduced over­all turnout by 16 – 28%, and black turnout in half (Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 67 – 8). The pur­pose of the tax was plain­ly to dis­en­fran­chise, not to col­lect rev­enue, since no state brought pros­e­cu­tions against any indi­vid­ual for fail­ure to pay the tax.



Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.


Sources: Voting Rights: The Poll Tax, Marion Butts Collection, Dallas Public Library and The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Ridiculous Registration Practices

Even if blacks could read or had mon­ey, racist reg­is­tra­tion prac­tices were cre­at­ed to make their efforts to vote mis­er­able:
Southern states made reg­is­tra­tion dif­fi­cult, by requir­ing fre­quent re-reg­is­tra­tion, long terms of res­i­dence in a dis­trict, reg­is­tra­tion at incon­ve­nient times (e.g., plant­i­ng sea­son), pro­vi­sion of infor­ma­tion unavail­able to many blacks (e.g. street address­es, when black neigh­bor­hoods lacked street names and num­bers), and so forth. When blacks man­aged to qual­i­fy for the vote even under these mea­sures, reg­is­trars would use their dis­cre­tion to deny them the vote any­way. Alabama’s con­sti­tu­tion of 1901 was explic­it­ly designed to dis­en­fran­chise blacks by such restric­tive and fraud­u­lent means. Despite this, Jackson Giles, a black jan­i­tor, qual­i­fied for the vote under Alabama’s con­sti­tu­tion. He brought suit against Alabama on behalf of him­self and 75,000 sim­i­lar­ly qual­i­fied blacks who had been arbi­trar­i­ly denied the right to reg­is­ter. The Supreme Court reject­ed his claim in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903).

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.
Today’s tac­tics are a dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, more sophis­ti­cat­ed but no less obvious.

Voter ID

Some states, like Wisconsin for exam­ple, are try­ing to pass laws that are requir­ing peo­ple to present birth cer­tifi­cates to cer­ti­fy their eli­gi­bil­i­ty to vote when they nev­er had to before. Take, for exam­ple, how this will hurt one senior cit­i­zen as report­ed by the Center for American Progress Action Fund:
For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though par­a­lyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” vot­ed in every elec­tion since 1948 and even got elect­ed her­self as a mem­ber of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new vot­er ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a dif­fi­cult birth at her home in 1927, Frank nev­er received an offi­cial birth cer­tifi­cate. Her moth­er record­ed it in her fam­i­ly Bible and Frank has a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of bap­tism from a few months lat­er, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare state­ment, and a check­book. But with­out the offi­cial doc­u­ment, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.
“It’s real­ly crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. cit­i­zen?” But state offi­cials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth cer­tifi­cate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:
Though Frank nev­er had a birth cer­tifi­cate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can gen­er­ate a birth cer­tifi­cate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.


Redistricting

Every ten years, coun­ty com­mis­sions, state House and Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are redrawn based on pop­u­la­tion changes report­ed in the U.S. Census, the Detroit Free Press reports. The prob­lem with this is that GOP lead­ers see pop­u­la­tion growth in black and Latino com­mu­ni­ties that vote heav­i­ly for Democrats and want to spit these Democratic vot­ing bases. Take the state of Michigan for exam­ple, as report­ed by the Detroit Free Press:
Several groups rep­re­sent­ing African-American and Latino vot­ers have filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing the new maps that define the 110 dis­tricts for the state House of Representatives.


The state Legislative Black Caucus, the NAACP, UAW and the Latino Americans for Social and Economic Development, along with sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als filed suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit today. They’re ask­ing for a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order, halt­ing the new dis­tricts from tak­ing effect while a new map is drawn and approved.
“This is a coör­di­nat­ed assault on our vot­ing rights,” said Wendell Anthony, pres­i­dent of the NAACP Detroit branch.
The groups have two main com­plaints: the new map will force eight Detroit incum­bent leg­is­la­tors to run against each oth­er; and a dis­trict that now encom­pass­es most of the pri­mar­i­ly Latino pop­u­la­tion in south­west Detroit has been split into two dis­tricts.
The game is the same, but the tac­tics have changed.



As you con­tem­plate these points and try to make sense of it all, be remind­ed, how­ev­er, that the faith you may have had in the Supreme court may be unfound­ed or mis­placed. Much of what has tran­spired through­out America’s his­to­ry has hap­pened with the acqui­es­cence of the Supreme Court.
Much of the assault being waged on vot­ing rights by Republicans this cycle, is made pos­si­ble because the Supreme Court evis­cer­at­ed the vot­ing rights act. 
For no rea­son oth­er than it worked well.
In her dis­sent in Shelby County Vs Holder, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg argued, the court’s deci­sion is tan­ta­mount to throw­ing away one’s umbrel­la in a rain­storm because he isn’t get­ting wet.
Such was the absur­di­ty and bla­tant naked par­ti­san­ship by the Robert’s court.
That Justice Ginsberg’s dis­sent stands as a scathing reminder of what Republicans are doing to Democracy in America.





 

Previous elec­tion cycles have gen­er­at­ed excite­ment for some Americans, for oth­ers elec­tions are noth­ing spe­cial, just anoth­er cycle of polit­i­cal ads and lying pan­der­ing politi­cians mak­ing the rounds.
In this cycle, how­ev­er, there is pal­pa­ble fear and a sense of dread, even fore­bod­ing.
Never before in mod­ern his­to­ry has so much rid­den on a sin­gle elec­tion.
On Immigration. Women’s Rights. Civil Rights. Voting Rights. Decency. The rule of law. How we treat the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble. And even whether we will have a democ­ra­cy after November 6^th, 2018.


This cycle the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that many peo­ple who are able to vote will sit at home and not vote.
What this means is that they will effec­tive­ly sur­ren­der their deci­sion mak­ing to oth­ers. Those [oth­ers] usu­al­ly do not share their inter­est or val­ues.
Not vot­ing means that one has sur­ren­dered his or her right to self-deter­mi­na­tion. Nevertheless, they are among the first to com­plain when the inter­est of those who vot­ed take prece­dence over theirs.
Others would like to vote but can­not, and for those two groups, the results of the com­ing elec­tions will be the most con­se­quen­tial.


The Election of Donald J Trump to the pres­i­den­cy of the United States may have come as a shock to many, for oth­ers who were able to read the tea-leaves, not so much.
The medi­a’s fas­ci­na­tion with a two-bit con artiste and it’s inces­sant flir­ta­tions with him gave him the foun­da­tion and to a cer­tain degree, the legit­i­ma­cy he need­ed to enter politics.

The polit­i­cal class too was caught by sur­prise. One by one he dec­i­mat­ed them in 2016 until only he was left stand­ing.
Even then, the com­plic­it media con­tin­ued to give him wall-to-wall cov­er­age which enabled him to run his un-pres­i­den­tial cam­paign on a shoe­string bud­get and pull of the great­est polit­i­cal upset in our life­time.
Whether he did it all through is own devices or the Russians helped is almost imma­te­r­i­al at this point.
He has the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that’s what counts.

Trump nev­er hid the fact that he hat­ed Muslims. He talked about insti­tut­ing a Muslim ban if he was elect­ed.
He nev­er hid his hatred for Immigrants, he railed inces­sant­ly about what he called chain migra­tion and the visa lot­tery. Strawmen he cre­at­ed with­out a sin­gle iota knowl­edge how those pro­grams work. 
Like the absolute dunce he is, he spoke about the [visa lot­tery] and explains how the names of bad actors from oth­er coun­tries are placed in a bowl and win­ners drawn.

In his infan­tile mind, that is the only way he rec­on­ciles the idea of a [lot­tery], not the com­plex process in which peo­ple apply to the American Government and pay astro­nom­i­cal fees, whether they are suc­cess­ful or not and the American Government decides who comes in and who does­n’t. 


He nev­er hid his dis­dain for Mexicans. On the day he launched his cam­paign he glid­ed down that tacky gild­ed ele­va­tor berat­ing Mexicans as rapists, mur­der­ers, and drug deal­ers.
He nev­er hid his utter dis­re­spect for women, when con­front­ed by the FOX pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tive Megan Kelly about his dis­re­spect for women he flip­pant­ly said he was dis­re­spect­ful only to Rosie Odonell.
The next day he went on to talk about how Megan Kelly had blood com­ing from parts of her body in the most dis­gust­ing man­ner. 


He would lat­er be exposed in his own words, at his most dis­gust­ing­ly misog­y­nis­tic self, on the Hollywood access bus, telling Billy Bush how he delights in grab­bing women by the pussy.[sic]Trump nev­er hid his dis­dain for African Americans he asked Black Americans what did they have to lose, he told them how their lives were mis­er­able as they were get­ting mur­dered dai­ly, and their schools and their neigh­bor­hoods were shit­ty.

He nev­er both­ered to avail him­self to the real­i­ty that not all black peo­ple lived in depressed com­mu­ni­ties, are poor, or une­d­u­cat­ed.
He did not hide his desire to enact tax cuts for the rich, he said he want­ed to pass tax cuts and he want­ed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
On issue, after issue, Donald Trump told the nation his inten­tions, on the envi­ron­ment, on allow­ing the Dakota pipeline to pro­ceed he placed crit­i­cal water sources at risk all for the sake of oil derived from dirty tar sands which America does not even have exclu­sive rights to pur­chase.

Even as he dis­re­spects Native Americans by derid­ing them and plac­ing their inter­est and exis­tence in per­il, he has in the oval office, a por­trait of Andrew Jackson, the pres­i­dent who may have sin­gle-hand­ed­ly done the most harm to native Americans.

Trump is moti­vat­ed by hatred of Obama and his poli­cies but prob­a­bly, even more so, Donald Trump is moti­vat­ed by greed and the desire to acquire wealth.
His shal­low world­view has been shaped by priv­i­lege and enti­tle­ment, his poli­cies, where they may exist, are nar­row fly by night ideas he culls from oth­ers. Simply put, Trump lacks the intel­lect or the capac­i­ty to think through or artic­u­late a point of view out­side his nar­row, rapa­cious self-interest.

The cost of Donald Trump’s elec­tion to the Presidency of the United States has been vast­ly con­se­quen­tial in ways that I can­not begin to artic­u­late here, the dam­age will be gar­gan­tu­an far and wide out­side the United States.
The American Presidency always had some neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the rest of the world, even when a sit­ting pres­i­dent means well. It is the nature of the beast, big pow­er­ful coun­tries look after their inter­est and some­times those inter­est does not exact­ly line up with the inter­est of small­er less pow­er­ful ones.
Donald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy will leave deep cav­ernous fis­sures which will chal­lenge our plan­et’s resilience, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, far into the future.

As hor­rif­ic as Donald Trump is the Republican par­ty is equal­ly despi­ca­ble. The acts of vio­lence and vot­er sup­pres­sion are only a small part of the rot which has start­ed to take root across the coun­try.
In New York City, mem­bers of a right-wing white Supremacist bunch of thugs con­verged around and beat up a group of 3 men who were protest­ing their pres­ence.
New York City Police stood around and did noth­ing. Yes, New Yor City. 

In Texas, a field oper­a­tive to a Democratic can­di­date who went to a coun­ty office to deliv­er a let­ter on behalf of the can­di­date was ques­tioned about his par­ty affil­i­a­tion and prompt­ly arrest­ed once he revealed he was deliv­er­ing the let­ter on behalf of his boss a Democrat who was on the phone with him and heard the entire chill­ing encounter.

In Georgia, the Republican sec­re­tary of state Brian Kemp who is run­ning against Stacy Abrams an African American woman has lit­er­al­ly removed hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers from the rolls for infre­quent vot­ing and has held count­less oth­er reg­is­tra­tions on the flim­sy excuse that names may miss a hyphen or a name may have been incor­rect­ly spelled. 
Needless to say, the vast major­i­ty of the names were removed from Gwinnett County, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly African-American county.

In this case, the Republican Kemp is allowed to play ref­er­ee in a game in which he is engaged. As such he gets to remove from the vot­er rolls, the peo­ple he knows would be vot­ing for his oppo­nent.
And just in case you for­got we are talk­ing about America a place where some pub­lic offi­cials and many cit­i­zens do not mind throw­ing around the term banana-repub­lic as a pejo­ra­tive in describ­ing oth­er coun­tries.
Republicans have tried to steal elec­tions and stop peo­ple from vot­ing from as a far back as the 1960’s when the Party was tak­en over by white men who ran from the Democratic par­ty after Lyndon Johnson signed the civ­il rights and vot­ing rights acts.

The vot­ing rights act served in some way to quell the onslaught of attacks against African American’s right to vote until the Republican Supreme Court decid­ed in a 5 – 4 deci­sion in Shelby VS Holder, that the law worked too well, as a result, it was no longer nec­es­sary.
In a crush­ing dis­sent Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote:

1. “The sad irony of today’s deci­sion lies in its utter fail­ure to grasp why the [Voting Rights Act] has proven effec­tive … Throwing out pre­clear­ance when it has worked and is con­tin­u­ing to work to stop dis­crim­i­na­to­ry changes is like throw­ing away your umbrel­la in a rain­storm because you are not get­ting wet.”

2. “When con­fronting the most con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly invid­i­ous form of dis­crim­i­na­tion, and the most fun­da­men­tal right in our demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem, Congress’ pow­er to act is at its height.”

3. “Congress approached the 2006 reau­tho­riza­tion of the VRA with great care and seri­ous­ness. The same can­not be said of the Court’s opin­ion today. The Court makes no gen­uine attempt to engage with the mas­sive leg­isla­tive record that Congress assem­bled. Instead, it relies on increas­es in vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and turnout as if that were the whole sto­ry. See supra, at 18 – 19. Without even iden­ti­fy­ing a stan­dard of review, the Court dis­mis­sive­ly brush­es off argu­ments based on “data from the record,” and declines to enter the “debat[e about] what [the] record shows”…One would expect more from an opin­ion strik­ing at the heart of the Nation’s sig­nal piece of civ­il-rights legislation.”

4. “Just as build­ings in California have a greater need to be earthquake­ proofed, places where there is a greater racial polar­iza­tion in vot­ing have a greater need for pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures to pre­vent pur­pose­ful race dis­crim­i­na­tion.
»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

The events I out­lined here does not begin to scratch the sur­face, no arti­cle, or book can ful­ly begin to explain the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty and dys­func­tion which has come to the fore since Donald Trump moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
There is no telling where this will end, nev­er­the­less, those who can vote bet­ter get up and go vote come November 6^th.
The right to vote may very well be on the bal­lot this cycle and I do not mean just for black peo­ple.


Even a mas­sive turnout will not guar­an­tee a Democratic vic­to­ry, thanks to ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts which all but guar­an­tees Republican wins.
This was made pos­si­ble because Democratic vot­ers seem to believe all they have to do is vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.
Older Republican white peo­ple vote, so even in Blue Democratic states, it is not out of the ordi­nary to see state and coun­ty leg­is­la­tures dom­i­nat­ed by Republicans.
That is the way house dis­tricts get sliced and diced by Republicans to ensure they stay in office and enact their rev­o­lu­tion­ary racist ideas.
The choice is clear vote and change some of the tox­i­c­i­ty. 
Stay­ing home?
Do not complain.

He has defend­ed the Three-Fifths Compromise around slav­ery and said ISIS may be recruit­ing from Black Lives Matter.

By Amanda Terkel

The morn­ing after Florida’s pri­maries, Rep. Ron DeSantis ― the state’s new­ly cho­sen GOP can­di­date for gov­er­nor ― went on nation­al tele­vi­sion and used a racist dog-whis­tle to com­ment on his opponent.

“The last thing we need to do is to mon­key this up by try­ing to embrace a social­ist agen­da with huge tax increas­es and bank­rupt­ing the state,” DeSantis said of his Democratic chal­lenger, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who is black. 

The com­ment shouldn’t have been that sur­pris­ing. DeSantis tried to be the most pro-Trump can­di­date in the GOP pri­ma­ry, even run­ning an ad about how he teach­es his kids to love every­thing about Donald Trump, and the pres­i­dent has used plen­ty of his own racist dog-whis­tles. 

But beyond his embrace of the pres­i­dent, DeSantis has made a name for him­self by pro­mot­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that are trum­pet­ed by the rad­i­cal right and play into racial stereo­types. On four occa­sions, he has spo­ken at con­fer­ences orga­nized by a con­ser­v­a­tive activist who has tout­ed white Americans’ role in free­ing black peo­ple from slav­ery and said that “the country’s only seri­ous race war” is against white people.

“Liberal media are doing every­thing that can to help Andrew Gillum win this race and that includes writ­ing sto­ries that elic­it racial­ly charged fears and emo­tions. We not only reject your sto­ry­line, we con­demn your entire nar­ra­tive,” said Stephen Lawson, DeSantis’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions director.

Here are some oth­er con­spir­a­cies DeSantis has embraced:

ISIS may recruit from Black Lives Matter protests. 

In 2016, DeSantis agreed with Fox Business host Neil Cavuto that he was wor­ried the ter­ror­ist group ISIS could be recruit­ing from Black Lives Matter protests. 

“I do wor­ry about it, in the sense that reach­ing out to them doesn’t even have to involve bro­ker­ing a meet­ing between some ter­ror­ist recruiter and some­body who’s dis­af­fect­ed,” DeSantis said on Sept. 22, 2016. “It could sim­ply be expos­ing peo­ple to dif­fer­ent pro­pa­gan­da that you see on the inter­net, on social media sites. … So it’s def­i­nite­ly a prob­lem, and ISIS I think has proven them­selves to be pret­ty sophis­ti­cat­ed at cap­i­tal­iz­ing on some peo­ple who have some under­ly­ing issues.”

The Founding Fathers weren’t racist. 

In 2011, DeSantis wrote a book called Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama. In it, he excus­es­the Three-Fifths Compromise, which count­ed a black per­son as only three-fifths of a whole per­son to deter­mine con­gres­sion­al representation.

DeSantis defends the Founding Fathers for agree­ing to the com­pro­mise because “count­ing slaves as less than a full per­son for pur­pos­es of rep­re­sen­ta­tion ben­e­fit­ted anti-slav­ery states.” 

Allowing slaves to be count­ed as three-fifths of a white per­son gave slave states extra rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­out hav­ing to actu­al­ly allow black peo­ple to vote. 

Islamophobic conspiracy groups have merit.

Over the years, DeSantis has pro­mot­ed him­self with the help of fig­ures who ped­dle Islamophobic rhetoric and poli­cies. In 2014, he did an inter­view on Frank Gaffney’s radio pro­gram. Gaffney found­ed the Center for Security Policy, which the Southern Poverty Law Center char­ac­ter­izes as “a con­spir­a­cy-ori­ent­ed mouth­piece for the grow­ing anti-Muslim move­ment in the United States.” In 2017, DeSantis spoke at the annu­al con­fer­ence of ACT for America, anoth­er group that push­es anti-Muslim con­spir­a­cy theories. 

DeSantis has also pushed to des­ig­nate the Muslim Brotherhood a ter­ror­ist group, an idea the Trump admin­is­tra­tion sup­ports and peo­ple like Gaffney champion.

As Shadi Hamid at the Brookings Institution has not­ed, “There is quite lit­er­al­ly not a sin­gle American expert on the Muslim Brotherhood who sup­ports des­ig­na­tion. Moreover, there is no plau­si­ble argu­ment to be made for label­ing the group a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, at least accord­ing to the rel­e­vant legal cri­te­ria, as Will McCants and Benjamin Wittes lay out. They sum it up quite well: des­ig­na­tion ‘would be illegal.”

American values are declining in the “age of Obama.”

In 2008, con­ser­v­a­tives seized on a clip of a black woman named Peggy Joseph say­ing that if then-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama won, “I won’t have to wor­ry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to wor­ry about pay­ing my mort­gage. You know, if I help him, he’s going to help me.” 

There’s noth­ing remark­able about Joseph’s com­ments. People always vote for politi­cians because they believe they will make the coun­try ― and often, their own per­son­al lives ― bet­ter. Certain can­di­dates may have poli­cies that could put more mon­ey in their pock­ets or lead to bet­ter representation.

But DeSantis talked about Joseph ― and Obama’s cam­paign ― as if they were rad­i­cal depar­tures from “the prin­ci­ples that the coun­try was found­ed on.”

In a 2011 speech, he said that with the Founding Fathers, “you think of things like, ‘Give me lib­er­ty or give me death’” and “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

But, he added, in the “age of Obama … you have peo­ple like that woman who vot­ed for Obama, who said since Obama was pres­i­dent, she wouldn’t have to wor­ry about putting gas in her car or pay­ing her mortgage.”

The right wing has long tried to claim that Obama secret­ly sup­ports com­mu­nism ― an un-American val­ue, of course. In his 2011 book, DeSantis gives cre­dence to some of these the­o­ries. He writes that Obama had a “men­tor­ship” with “Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American com­mu­nist writer with bit­ter­ly anti-American views.” 

“He cer­tain­ly would not have dis­cussed Davis in Dreams From My Father had Davis’ coun­cil failed to make an impact on him,” DeSantis wrote.

The Washington Post looked at Davis and his rela­tion­ship with Obama, and wrote that Davis “was indeed asso­ci­at­ed with the Communist Party” but was not a “hard-core Communist who spied for Soviet lead­ers. He was crit­i­cal of American soci­ety, but not America as a country.”

DeSantis, in his book, also implied that Obama’s moth­er was a com­mu­nist. He notes that one of her high school teach­ers said she would ask ques­tions around the Cold War like “What’s so good about cap­i­tal­ism? What’s wrong with com­mu­nism? What’s good about com­mu­nism?” He also cit­ed the fact that one of her class­mates referred to her as a “fel­low trav­el­er,” which is some­times used to describe some­one who is com­mu­nist. There’s no proof Obama’s moth­er was a com­mu­nist either. sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed here: https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​r​o​n​-​d​e​s​a​n​t​i​s​-​r​a​c​i​s​t​-​i​s​l​a​m​o​p​h​o​b​i​c​-​c​o​n​s​p​i​r​a​c​y​-​t​h​e​o​r​i​e​s​_​u​s​_​5​b​c​4​c​a​8​0​e​4​b​0​1​a​0​1​d​6​8​d​4​daa