Democrats, Biden look to accelerate Southern political shift

From Mississippi retiring its state flag to local governments removing Confederate statues from public spaces, a bipartisan push across the South is chipping away at reminders of the Civil War and Jim Crow segregation. Now, during a national reckoning on racism, Democratic Party leaders want those symbolic changes to become […] Read more »

Trump turned July Fourth into a partisan event. The damage could be long-lasting.

President Trump, with two speeches in two days, has turned the Fourth of July from a joyful and unifying patriotic celebration of America’s founding values into a partisan political event. The damage could outlast his presidency. From near the base of Mount Rushmore on Friday night and from the South […] Read more »

Trump’s views — bleak about the U.S., rosy about coronavirus — put Republicans on the spot

White House surrogates and GOP lawmakers struggled Sunday to defend President Trump after he spent the Fourth of July holiday weekend denigrating the racial-justice movement galvanized by George Floyd’s killing and playing down a deadly pandemic by claiming that 99% of coronavirus cases are “completely harmless.” … At a time […] Read more »

Trump’s push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him

President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore, has unnerved Republicans who have long enabled him but now fear losing power and forever associating their party with his racial […] Read more »

A massive repudiation of Trump’s racist politics is building

… Trump has accelerated a decades-old trend toward parties redefining themselves by race and racial attitudes. Racial resentment is now the single most important factor driving Republicans and Republican-leaning movers, according to extensive research, most recently by Nicholas Valentino and Kirill Zhirkov at the University of Michigan — more than […] Read more »