There’s a lot that feels unprecedented about today’s electoral crisis in Georgia, and there’s earnest concern that we may never recover from Donald Trump’s damage to democracy. On December 5, the president went to Valdosta to engorge his ego, prattling on for close to two hours before a crowd of roughly 10,000 fans about imaginary voter fraud. […]
It’s significant that Trump’s campaign to subvert democracy, by invalidating so basic a precept as a citizen’s right to have their vote counted, is unfolding in a place where basic rights for Black people are already invalidated as a matter of routine. What is the history of Black Georgia but a testament to the precariousness of Black people’s ability to participate in public life? What are the ways they have been selectively punished in their efforts to secure those rights but a brand of racial fascism, a slow-burn coup unfolding across centuries? […]
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES
QUOTATION
“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.” ~~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—President Obama making recess appointments to labor board, against braving GOP outrage:
President Obama is making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board in addition to his appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. […]
This is huge: Without these appointments, the NLRB would have been down to two members; it cannot make decisions without a three-member quorum. Republicans were determined to block Obama’s NLRB nominations to shut down the board and prevent it from being able to pass rules like its recent moves streamlining union elections and requiring employers to put up posters informing workers of their existing legal rights.
Obama’s decision to recess appoint both these NLRB members and Cordray to the CFPB doesn’t just put qualified people into the government—it enables the government agencies themselves to function.