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MAGA's Quest to Sanitize Slavery

At the moment the nation finds itself with the Felon, an overt racist, occupying the White House who is pushing to implement Project 2025, a white "Christian" nationalist agenda that seeks restore white supremacy and minimize the contributions of non-whites to America's history. Part of this agenda is to re-write history to delete any inconvenient truths about cruel and ugly chapters of the nation's history that purportedly offend white supremacist sensibilities or are deemed to diminish claimed white superiority.  Meanwhile, the ICE operations are engaged in racial profiling to target non-whites for deportation, frequently seizing U.S. citizens who are non-white or who speak Spanish.  The result of the Felon's regime's efforts is that monuments and museums that portray accurate history are under attack and/or forced removal of exhibits and an effort to sanitize slavery and the horrors it all too often entailed.  Joining in this effort are MAGA propagandists and faux historians who seek to minimize the ugliness and inhumanity of slavery and to excuse whites from any sense of guilt for the actions of ancestors.  Just as none of us got to choose where we were born, our skin color, or sexual orientation, we cannot undo the history that proceeded us.  That does not mean that it is important to know true and accurate history.  My own ancestry is complicated, with one line of ancestry tracing to South Carolina slave holders descended from European nobility, while another line traces to English ancestors who arrived during the earliest days of Massachusetts and eventually to those who sought slavery's abolition and participated in the Civil War to end slavery.  I cannot change any of that history, but I do benefit from knowing the truth.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at MAGA's effort to erase the truth:

Matt Walsh would like you to know you’ve been lied to. Last month, the right-wing provocateur appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show to discuss his new video series, Real History With Matt Walsh. “When you really start getting into it,” Walsh told Kelly, “you realize that, wow, they really lied about everything.”

He begins the series by examining the practice of chattel slavery, he said to Kelly, “because this is, we’re told, the original sin” of the United States. In Walsh’s account, the left believes that “America was built on slavery, and it has no right to exist, and every white American carries, somehow, that legacy, that guilt in their blood”; therefore progressives feel they have the “moral justification to just do whatever they want” to white people. Walsh intends to stop this. So in Real History, he relentlessly downplays the brutality of slavery in the United States.

Sanitizing slavery has become a core objective of the reactionary right under [the Felon] Donald Trump—a malignant response to the progressive left’s oversimplification of American history for their own present-day ends. But the truest understanding of slavery doesn’t serve any political faction. Rather, it acknowledges the horrors of racial oppression while still allowing us to see beyond them.

In 2019, Dean Baquet, then the executive editor of The New York Times, reportedly described “The 1619 Project” to his staff as “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken” by a newspaper.

At the end of [the Felon's] Trump’s first term, the White House released The 1776 Report in response to the Times initiative. As the Princeton historian Matthew Karp noted in Harper’s, the document contains a “range of pseudo-patriotic distortions about slavery and the founding era.” Nonetheless, Karp observed, “the report’s authors celebrated Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, praised Reconstruction, and condemned the postbellum South’s descent into Jim Crow, ‘a system that was hardly better than slavery.’”

Whatever modicum of analytical balance that report exhibits is absent in Trump’s second term. Reinterpreting the history of slavery has given way to suppressing its memorialization entirely.

The [Felon's] Trump administration has viewed Juneteenth with particular disdain. Last year, the president used the occasion not to remember emancipation but to complain that America had too many holidays. In December, he ordered the National Park Service to stop allowing free entry on Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Trump added Flag Day in their place, which falls on his own birthday.

Back in March, he strong-armed a host of institutions by issuing an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directs federally funded museums, monuments, and parks to remove materials that promote “corrosive ideology.” Last month, the park service obliged, eliminating an outdoor exhibit at Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia, where George Washington’s house once stood. The exhibit honored nine slaves who toiled at the residence—part of an effort to explore “the paradox between slavery and freedom.” Such nuance appears to have violated the more patriotic version of history that the government seeks to instill.

The administration has applied perhaps the most pressure on the Smithsonian Institution. In August, the White House ordered the Smithsonian to implement “corrections” to any public-facing materials whose “tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals” the administration deemed unacceptable. On Truth Social, [the Felon] Trump made clear what he thought needed fixing: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

In its campaign over the past year, the MAGA movement has squandered what might have been a reasonable position. David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University and a biographer of the civil-rights leader John Lewis, told me that the right could have made a persuasive case against the excessive preoccupation with slavery and racial politics that some on the left have shown. Instead, Trump and his allies seem unwilling to tolerate virtually any acknowledgment that America subjugated Black people. Rather than making a dispassionate case against the idea that the country was founded to enslave Africans, MAGA is taking down plaques commemorating basic facts, such as Washington’s slaveholding. “That’s not turning back the last 10 years,” Greenberg said. “That’s turning back historical understanding to the 1960s, if not further.”

In Real History, Walsh turns the clock back further still. One of his principal aims is to show that slavery was the norm across human history, and that American slavery was hardly the most extreme version. (Among other oversights, he fails to acknowledge that the link America forged between bondage and racial identity had little precedent in antiquity.) Walsh appears to think this lets American slaveholders off the hook. When all are guilty, he seems to suggest, no one is.

Walsh also notes that the descendants of Africans trafficked to what became the United States are now in better socioeconomic shape than those whose ancestors remained in the Old World or were transported to Latin America or the Caribbean. He draws an odious conclusion from this—American slavery wasn’t that bad—yet the point is not entirely incorrect.

When recounted accurately, from beginning to end, the story of slavery is the most inspirational and unifying narrative that the country has. Today’s multiethnic society is deeply flawed, of course, but the fact that it emerged from such cruel beginnings should be a source of pride for Americans of every background.

“The destruction of slavery is one of the great American achievements,” Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton and critic of “The 1619 Project,” told me. “Taking slavery seriously in American history is not anti-American. The story of slavery in the U.S. is about an ancient institution that was planted here, thrived here, and then was confronted and ultimately attacked in the 19th century through enormous sacrifice, including military conflict. That’s an extraordinary American story.”

The story of slavery and its abolition is ultimately one of irrepressible human dignity. Properly told, it makes reconciliation possible and future injustice avoidable.

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America Is Being Governed By the "Epstein Class"

During yesterday's fiery hearing before the House Oversight Committee , one thing became clear: the Felon's Attorney General Pam Bondi (who should never have been confirmed by the Senate) has one mission: protecting the Felon and his circle of fellow friends and visitors of the late Jeffrey Epstein.  Despite many of Epstein's victims in attendance, Bondi and her minions have failed to interview the victims and follow up on matters that need investigation.  Like her boss, Bondi is arrogant, lied constantly, insulted her questioners, and /or refused to answer simple yes or no questions. But Bondi is but one of many liars in the Felon's regime populated by a circle of lying billionaires who have denied ties to Epstein and/or claimed to have long ago severed ties. Except, of course, in reality, they never fully severed ties and have lied about their involvement. With the release of millions of new pages from the "Epstein files" these lies have now been exposed perhaps more in Congress are belatedly realizing what a cesspool the Felon's regime is and that the ones seeking to protect Epstein's co-conspirators are not the so-called "liberal elites" but rather much of the rightwing media and the Felon's regime.   A piece in The Atlantic looks at some of the lies and efforts to hide the truth. Here are excerpts:

“I have nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee yesterday. Perhaps that’s true—but given his recent history, don’t bet on it.

During a podcast interview this past fall, Lutnick talked about an unsettling encounter he and his wife had with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who used to be his next-door neighbor, in 2005. After Epstein offered them a house tour and showed them his infamous massage table, Lutnick recalled, he was creeped out and left.

Only that wasn’t true at all. Documents in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department show repeated, if more cordial than chummy, conversation between the two men, as well as some shared business dealings. That’s okay, you might think—they never hung out socially again. Right? He seemed to confirm that, recently telling The New York Times, “I spent zero time with him.”

Well, about that: Yesterday, testifying before Congress, Lutnick reiterated, “I barely had anything to do with that person.” Then he admitted to having visited Epstein’s private island in 2012.

Lutnick seems understandably eager to show that he was not involved in sexual misconduct, and as Senator Chris Van Hollen noted, there is no evidence that he was. But he has no answer for his misleading statements about his dealings with Epstein, and his previous lies make it harder to believe him now. So much for having nothing to hide.

The Trump administration has always been tied to the Epstein scandal—the [Felon] president himself was once a close friend of Epstein’s—but these new details drag his allies still further into the spotlight. Even before his testimony, Lutnick was facing calls to resign from Democrats as well as from renegade Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The secretary, whose penchant for putting his foot in his mouth was already well established, seems to have held on to his job this long only because he is personally friendly with Donald Trump and because the president refuses to give his political adversaries satisfaction by firing anyone. (This stands in contrast to many other organizations and institutions that have been eager to create distance from Epstein by separating themselves from individuals who were connected to him.)

But Lutnick isn’t the only top Trump aide to come up in the new tranche of documents. Navy Secretary John Phelan, a reported billionaire Trump donor who was appointed despite lacking any military or naval experience, was listed as a passenger on flights between London and New York on Epstein’s private plane in 2006.

One reason the Epstein files have created such a stir is that they have revealed the elaborate social and financial ties among so many people in positions of power. It’s not that most or even many of the big names who appear in them were pedophiles or sexual predators, but rather that their dealings with him demonstrate that there’s a wealthy, powerful, globe-trotting club, and the rest of us ain’t in it. Lutnick inadvertently reinforced this image with his mentions of his “nannies,” plural. These glaring markers of privilege are what Senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, was talking about this past weekend when he called the Trump administration “a government of, by, and for the ultrarich. It is the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country.”

The defense that people connected to Epstein—from the billionaire financier Lutnick to the leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky and his wife—have offered is that they didn’t grasp Epstein’s abuses when they socialized with him and were appalled once they did. One problem is that this is sometimes demonstrably false: Lutnick visited the island four years after Epstein’s conviction for sex crimes, and emails show Chomsky offering Epstein public-relations advice after accusations became public.

Another problem is that many of them should have known. You don’t have to take my word for it. Take Trump’s. In 2019, he declared his surprise at the Epstein allegations: “No, I had no idea. I had no idea.” But the Palm Beach police chief at the time recalled that Trump commended him in July 2006, when charges first became public. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him; everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump said, as reported by Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald.

The Epstein revelations are starting to sink in for members of Congress. “Well, initially, my reaction to all this was, ‘I don’t care. I don’t know what the big deal is.’ But now I see what the big deal is, and it was worth investigating,” Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, told NewsNation. (One reason Lummis may be willing to say so is that she is retiring, which insulates her from Trump’s wrath.)

These revelations about [the Felon's] Trump’s close allies could affect the GOP’s electoral chances if enough voters become aware of them, but at the same time that members of the Trump administration are popping up in the newly released files, coverage in conservative media outlets has dropped significantly, CNN’s Aaron Blake reports. The result is that Democratic voters, who already dislike and distrust the president, are hearing a great deal about Epstein, but Republican ones, who might be swayed, are not. When MAGA pundits such as Dan Bongino talked about a media cover-up of the Epstein scandal, they were onto something—they were just wrong about the media outlets in question.

The whole right wing universe with few exceptions is all about protecting Epstein's co-conspirators, particularly the Felon.

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Unlike in America, British Politicians Still Have Shame

Numerous European nations now have their own Epstein investigations underway, some with particular focus on whether Jeffrey Epstein was working with Vladimir Putin and passing on compromising information that Putin could use to blackmail the Felon - issues the Felon's DOJ is striving to keep hidden - and others. One other notable difference between the European approach to Epstein is that European politicians, especially those in the United Kingdom still have a sense of shame and seemingly more accountability to their electorate.  Hence the pressure being visited on British Prime Minister Starmer who has no direct contacts with Epstein himself but who allowed a apparent member of Epstein's circle to be appointed ambassador to the USA. Besides mainstreaming overt racism and misogyny, the Felon has ushered in a level of shamelessness once unknown in American politics. Admittedly, the Felon has been aided in this endeavor by Congressional Republicans who refuse to hold the Felon accountable even when he launched an insurrection on January 6, 2021.  Indeed, the Felon's cabinet appointees such has Howard Lutnick and others feel free to lie on all subjects, especially ties to Epstein.  The more morally compromised, the higher one stands in the Felon's orbit.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the stark contrast between shame in the UK and shamelessness in the Felon's regime. Here are highlights:

There is an irony to the undying Jeffrey Epstein scandal: It may never be more than an annoyance for President Trump, who knew Epstein well, but it could topple British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who never met the sex-offender financier. . . . . The reasons for the Labour Party leader’s deepening plight are moral, because decency and shame still matter in British politics. But they are also institutional. An American president is less democratically accountable than the British prime minister, because partisanship has disabled the checks that the Founders placed on the chief executive.

Starmer’s troubles stem from appointing Peter Mandelson, a Labour politician known as the “Prince of Darkness,” to be his ambassador to the United States. Mandelson was long known to have been friendly to Epstein but got the job anyway, replacing Karen Pierce, an effective career diplomat with warm ties to MAGA-land who did not particularly want to leave. Mandelson’s term lasted only eight months, ending in September when it was revealed that he was even closer to Epstein than previously realized. He had expressed fury at Epstein’s prosecution for sex crimes in a Florida court in 2008, writing to Epstein, “I think the world of you.” In addition, he’d signed an infamous “birthday book” for Epstein’s 50th birthday that also featured a lewd entry allegedly signed by Trump . . . . Like most of the fiascos of Starmer’s premiership, the Mandelson error was unforced.

But the revelations contained in the tranche of 3.5 million files released late last month by the Justice Department worsened the crisis. The records seem to show Mandelson giving Epstein confidential information about the European Union’s bailout. They show direct payments for unspecified purposes from Epstein to Mandelson and his now-husband (Mandelson has said he has no recollection of receiving the money). There is even a photo of Mandelson in his underwear. This is Mandelson’s third disgraceful exit from public life over his long political career, but it appears to be his final one. He is no longer a member of the privy council (which advises the king), the House of Lords, or the Labour Party. But even such a thorough torching of Mandelson’s political career might not be enough to save Starmer’s.

Though voters gave Labour a large parliamentary majority in 2024, Starmer has seemed befuddled about how to wield it. Little has been accomplished, and Labour’s woes seem likely to benefit the Reform Party, a new nationalist, populist outfit led by the Brexit instigator Nigel Farage. A crisis over Labour Party leadership is now expected.

The contrast with America is striking. For many American political figures, having palled around with Epstein is barely grounds for embarrassment. “It’s really time for the country to maybe get onto something else, now that nothing came out about me,” Trump said in the Oval Office on February 3 (he is mentioned thousands of times in the latest documents released, but there is no damning evidence of misconduct). Two billionaires in Trump’s orbit—Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Elon Musk, the Republican super-donor and onetime special government employee—both shrugged off correspondence showing plans to visit Epstein on his island years after his conviction.

The United States is supposed to be a puritanical country in comparison with godless Europe, but in reality it is so saturated in scandal that new ones elicit little outrage. A single dodgy ambassador—Trump has appointed many, almost all unnoticed by the public—could hardly bring down a presidency.

The controversies that have embroiled recent British prime ministers look quaint by recent American standards. . . . You would think that the British prime minister—who definitionally has a parliamentary majority behind him in a country in which Parliament is supreme—would be able to behave more like an elected monarch than the American president, who is supposed to be constrained by checks and balances. In the modern day, the opposite looks to be true. Parliamentary systems encourage palace coups because if you remove your party’s leader, you might be able to claim the job.

Congress has, over the past half century, also turned over more and more of its authority to the personal discretion of the president and the executive branch. When Thomas Jefferson was writing on the demerits of parliamentary government, he observed that “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits.” When there is no separation of powers, but merely a separation of parties, this intricate system breaks down, leaving an imperial presidency with exactly the concentrated power that the Founders feared.

They might also be saddened that 250 years after declaring independence from a tyrannical British king, the American system of government has arguably less democratic accountability for its leaders than the British one. But perhaps they would not be entirely shocked: The idea that there was something intrinsic to America that immunized it from autocracy was anticipated and deemed not credible. “Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic,” Jefferson wrote, adding, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us.”

Corruption and tyranny are currently unleashed in the USA.

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Racism: What Motivates the Felon

In addition to overwhelming greed and a total lack of morality, perhaps  nothing motivates the Felon more than racism.   This bigotry was on display when the Felon posted a late night video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes - part of a centuries long effort to depict blacks (and by extension other non-whites) as inferior and little more than animals.  Even the historically racist Southern Baptist Convention has condemned the racist video. The Felon's racism is nothing new: his companies settled a DOJ lawsuit in Norfolk in the early 1970's for discrimination against blacks and he ran a full page call for the execution of young blacks who later were exonerated of any crime.  Sadly, I believe that this overt racism of the Felon is what attracts much of the MAGA base which is increasingly comprised of uneducated, lower class whites. Yes, members of the media continue to push the meme that financial insecurity is the real motivator for this demographic, but post-election studies have shown that the Felon's blatant racism is also attractive to these voters as well as white Christian nationalists who have an overweening need to be able to feel superior if for no other reason than skin color.  A column in the New York Times looks at this latest overt racism which in many ways defines the Felon.  Here are column excerpts:

The best way to understand the [Felon's] president’s motivations is to find him at his most unfiltered, which is to say, on social media, late at night. And Thursday night, Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account that depicted President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. The clip, which runs for roughly a minute and shows the Obamas at the end, is set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

I try to avoid superlatives in my writing, but there is simply no question that this is the most flagrant display of presidential racism since Woodrow Wilson screened D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” in the White House in 1915. And for a sense of the racism of Griffith’s film, recall that it both reinvigorated the Ku Klux Klan and gave the organization its modern iconography.

I doubt that [the Felon's] Trump’s video — less a creative product than half-baked agitprop — will have the same effect. But it carries many of the same messages. It uses an old white supremacist trope to denigrate the Obamas and, by extension, every American who shares their racial background. It presents people of African descent as little removed from beasts, an insult used to great effect in “The Birth of a Nation,” as you can see in this clip from the film.

Initially, the White House defended the video as a joke. “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.” . . . .But then Republicans began to speak out.

Here, I should probably note that Barack and Michelle Obama are among the most popular political figures in the United States. Trump, on the other hand, is barely treading water with the public, and majorities of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. It makes sense, then, that some Republicans would use this as an opportunity to distance themselves from an unpopular incumbent.

Let’s walk back to where we started. What motivates [the Felon] Trump? The answer is simple: racism. You might also say ego and raw self-interest, but the two are connected. Racism, among other things, is a kind of chauvinism, a belief in one’s inherent superiority, based on nothing other than a meaningless accident of birth. It’s an ideology that papers over feelings of inadequacy, that tells you that — no matter what you have or have not accomplished in your life — you’re still better than someone, some group.

For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career — from his embrace of birtherism to his hatred of birthright citizenship — cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism.

Trump is not profound. He has been the same person this whole time. The question is why so many others have refused to see what he has never bothered to hide. . . . . I wrote about the ways that the president has rejected his responsibility to the whole country in favor of governing for a select few.

A hallmark of the president’s language since he stepped onto the national political stage is that some Americans are just a little more American than others, and that this is a function of race, nationality and, above all, allegiance to Trump. 

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Did GOP Book Bans Flip a Texas District Blue?

One of the first things now former Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin - who ran a very, very deceptive campaign - did on his first day in office was to seek to censor public school curriculums and white wash history, both that of Virginia and America's, to remove anything that might offend the sensibilities of grievance driven whites and Christofascists and white supremacists. All of this was part of the larger Republican/white Christian nationalists agenda - something still ongoing at the federal level - to erase the existence and contributions of racial minorities and LGBT individuals. Indeed, the Youngkin regime wanted public schools to "out" students to their homophobic/Christofascist parents. Thankfully, Youngkin was term limited and in November Democrats swept all three statewide offices and gained commanding control of the House of Delegates, handing a resounding defeat to those who would have continued policies.  There were many reasons for the Republican defeat in November, but part of it may have been a rejection to the overreach in book bans and censorship. Recent shocking upsets in historically red districts where Democrats have won with commanding margins even though the Felon won them in 2024 by double digits.  A piece at Salon looks at a stunning upset in a red district in Texas which suggests that Democrats may have another winning issues as voters reject GOP efforts to censor and undermine public schools.  Here are article highlights:

It’s rare that a local race can feel like an earthquake on the national political stage, but that’s exactly what happened over the weekend when Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a special election for the Texas state senate. The suburban ninth district, which sits outside Fort Worth and includes a town called White Settlement, is the very definition of a Republican stronghold. Donald Trump carried it by 17% in 2024. This month, although polling was tight, most observers predicted a Wambsganss victory. Instead, Rehmet decimated his opponent by 14 points, representing an eye-popping swing of 31% swing since the presidential election.

In the aftermath, most commentators have pointed to what is looking very much like a national turn away from Republicans and toward Democrats after a year of Trump’s failures and scandals. That’s certainly a big part of the story, but it’s still probably not enough to explain such a shocking result in a district that has been deeply red for decades. To fill out the picture, it’s important to look at that most local of issues: education.

There are strong signs that Rehmet won in no small part because suburban Fort Worth has long been on the frontline in the culture war over book banning. Wambsganss built her political career advocating for strict censorship in schools and libraries, and her loss signals that, even in this very conservative district, people are getting sick of the far-right telling them what they cannot read.

Oscar-nominated director Kim Snyder was not as surprised as the pundits over Rehmet’s win. She has spent a lot of time in Texas in recent years, both to shoot and promote her documentary “The Librarians,” which premieres on PBS on Feb. 9. The film follows the struggles of school librarians who are facing off against Moms for Liberty and other far-right organizations attempting to purge library shelves of books that portray LGBTQ characters or contain historical information about racism or fascism. Snyder told Salon that the screenings of her movie, even in conservative areas, have been selling out.

“It’s showing that people really care about the issue of censorship,” she explained.

Snyder’s film follows the journey of a Courtney Gore, a Texas mom who initially supported Moms for Liberty, believing their falsehoods about “pornography” in school libraries. She “felt hoodwinked,” however, when she educated herself on the books being banned and realized they were not what she’d been led to believe. Soon, Gore discovered that the book banning campaign was the tip of the spear for what was a larger effort to dismantle public education in Texas that was funded by actors like Wambsganss and shady far-right billionaire donors like the Wilks brothers.

Gore is not alone, Snyder suggested. “A lot of moms were finding” they were being tricked into backing groups intent on “tearing down public education” and ending “separation of church and state,” she explained.

Audrey Wilson-Youngblood is a librarian in Rehmet’s district who used to work for a local school district but was driven out after Wambsganss and her political action committee, Patriot Mobile, helped elect a huge swath of pro-book banning candidates to the school board. Wilson-Youngblood is also featured in “The Librarians,” recounting her story of trying to fend off an all-out war of harassment and censorship aimed at the library staff in her district.

She agreed there is a “relationship” between Rehmet’s win and the backlash to the book bans. Wilson-Youngblood told Salon that screenings of “The Librarians” in the north Texas area have turned into de facto community organizing events due to the “conversations and connections that are formed.” At least one screening, she said, “turned into a candidate forum.” And Democrats aren’t the only ones turning out. She has met both moderates and “staunch generational Texas Republicans” who are “coming because they’re unhappy” with the assault on public schools.

“It can feel very lonely sometimes here in Texas,” Wilson-Youngblood said, but learning that large numbers of other Texans share a distaste for Moms for Liberty’s book-banning agenda has been “emboldening” people and driving them to get organized and vote.

Rehmet, a union leader and first time candidate, credited his win to issues like “lowering costs, health care and focusing on working people.” But he also notably told ABC News that “people are tired of campaigns of outrage.”

Wambsganss was every inch the wild-eyed book-banning culture warrior he’s obliquely referring to. When the Republican spoke at the 2023 Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, which Patriot Mobile sponsored, she declared “Our children belong to the Lord, not the government.” Wambsganss added that their school board takeover efforts are “a spiritual war.”

On Steve Bannon’s show in 2022, she argued that all books with LGBTQ characters should be banned on the grounds that it’s “normalizing a lifestyle that is a sexual choice,” even if there’s no sexual content in the books themselves. But Wambsganss’ efforts weren’t just restricted to homophobic censorship. The fear of crossing swords with authoritarian forces in the community got so bad that one school official was recorded saying that if a teacher had a book saying the Holocaust is wrong, they needed to balance it with a book that offered “opposing” views and “other perspectives.” If that sounds paranoid, it’s worth remembering that in 2020, Wambsganss posted that Black Lives Matter protesters “need to die.” With that in mind, it’s not ridiculous for educators to worry that she and her allies would get mad at criticism of historical fascist movements.

Far from running away from so-called “culture war” issues, as overpaid political consultants often prescribe, Rehmet’s victory suggests that anger over MAGA excesses can be harnessed to help Democrats win — including in improbable places. A J. David Goodman of the New York Times wrote before the election, Republicans in Texas have been trying to cede control of local school boards in places like Houston and Fort Worth over to the state. Progressives correctly believe this is part of a larger, radical agenda backed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to decimate public schools entirely, forcing parents to enroll their kids in religious private schools — or go without a decent education altogether. Even a lot of Republican voters do not want to lose robust public education, which is likely why Rehmet got a last minute surge of votes to propel him into a position to protect Texas schools.

A lot of voters, especially those who don’t pay close attention to the news, saw the president’s playboy persona and crassness as reassurance that he’s not on board with the religious right’s book-banning agenda. Trump encouraged the false view that he’s a libertarian with campaign lies about how he would protect “free speech.” In reality, his [the Felon's] first year in office has seen an all-out war on the First Amendment coming from the White House that includes banning books, destroying museum exhibits, trying to push comedians who mock Trump or MAGA off-air, and suing or even arresting journalists for reporting the news. Still, for people who don’t read real news, which unfortunately includes many Republican voters, the president’s loathing of free speech may not penetrate their consciousness.

Wambsganss, though, is a type of woman who is instantly recognizable to anyone who has lived in the Bible Belt: the crazy church lady who wants total control over the lives of her neighbors, dictating what they read, who they socialize with, how they spend their free time and who they have sex with. While most Republicans in the MAGA era either support or at least tolerate giving miserable theocrats that much power, there are still some holdouts who believe in personal liberty and separation of church and state. As Wilson-Youngblood pointed out, some of them out there want Patriot Mobile and Moms for Liberty to go away — and they may have even been willing to cross party lines in this election to make that happen.

The lesson from Texas’ ninth district certainly won’t apply to every Democrat running in this year’s midterms. . . . . But Rehmet’s win shows that, at least in some places, MAGA’s threats to peace and freedom on the local level remain a pressing concern. A lot of voters want the culture war chaos to go away, especially when it comes to schools, so the kids can concentrate on learning. In many places, Democrats can win with a message of protecting the right of kids to learn in peace, instead of being the targets of a mind control project run by Bible-thumpers. If it worked in suburban Fort Worth, it’s a strategy that could rack up Democratic wins in other red districts.

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