A Regional Reign of Terror

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [A Regional Reign of Terror]( A Regional Reign of Terror, Eric Foner, The New York Review of Books While statistics can reveal the scope of racist terror, it is the individual stories uncovered by Burnham and her students that make for the most powerful reading. Some truly boggle the mind. In 1941 John Jackson, a Birmingham steelworker, was waiting with other African Americans to gain access to a movie theater through the “Negro entrance.” Police ordered them to clear a path for passersby. Evidently Jackson did not hear the directive and laughed at something said by his female companion. “What are you laughing at, boy?” a policeman yelled. Jackson replied, “Can’t I laugh?” With that, he was thrown into a patrol car, shot, and beaten by an officer. He died on the way to the station house. (In this case, unusually for Birmingham, the culprit was dismissed from the police force, though not otherwise charged.) Being in the wrong place at the wrong time could be dangerous. In 1950, much like Trayvon Martin six decades later, Robert Sands, a fifteen-year-old Black youth, was shot and fatally wounded as he walked through a segregated Birmingham neighborhood, where he was employed by a white family. Sands’s presence had led a white woman to express alarm to her husband. Within minutes he shot the teenager in the back. The local prosecutor refused to assemble a grand jury to consider criminal charges. [...] Burnham reports that at least twenty-eight active duty Black soldiers were murdered between 1941 and 1946 for refusing to submit silently to Jim Crow. Hundreds more suffered gunshot wounds or imprisonment. As Thurgood Marshall complained in 1944 to the Department of Justice, “There have been numerous killings of Negro soldiers by civilians and police,” but he was “not aware of a single instance of prosecution.” These experiences, Burnham writes, “never made it into the sagas about the ‘Greatest Generation.’” - [Whatever justice Donald Trump may face, America will need a reckoning]( Whatever justice Donald Trump may face, America will need a reckoning, Chauncey DeVega, Salon Donald Trump has spent the last seven years emotionally, physically, mentally, financially, and politically abusing the American people. The groups targeted as enemies by Trump and his movement have felt the abuse even more severely, where their literal safety is imperiled. For the LGBTQ community, these fears are especially acute because the forces on the right are publicly targeting them for eliminationism and other forms of mass violence. Abuse victims often share how the worst part of their experience is the feeling that one's sense of being grounded and certain in the world has been taken away. Normalcy is gone because life is shaped by the moods and whims of the abuser and what he or she may do next. Of all of the many horrible things that Donald Trump has done to the American people, that may be the worst of his crimes. Now Trump may finally be facing some consequences for his political crime spree and years of abusing the American people. It is widely anticipated that a grand jury in Manhattan is going to indict Donald Trump for crimes connected to hush money payments that he made to his former mistress Stormy Daniels. It is the least serious of the many other charges that Trump may soon face for election fraud, concealing top secret documents, financial fraud, and other crimes connected to the Jan. 6 coup attempt and beyond. This is a very dangerous moment in Donald Trump's abusive relationship with the American people. When abusers are held accountable for their wrongdoing they often react with great violence. It is not uncommon for the victim to be killed when they tell finally tell their abusers "no!" and then try to leave the relationship. Donald Trump is no different. - [Daily Kos revenue is down, and we may not be able to continue producing the quality of work you have come to expect from us. Donations from our readers and activists is our largest source of income. Please donate $5 to support independent, progressive news.]( - [Following recent collapses, Americans’ trust in banking industry sharply declines: poll]( Following recent collapses, Americans’ trust in banking industry sharply declines: poll, Jared Gans, The Hill A poll released Wednesday from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago found only 10 percent of respondents said they have a “great deal” of confidence in banking and financial institutions. That’s down from the 22 percent who said they did in a 2020 poll. Almost 60 percent of respondents said in the recent poll that they had “only some” confidence in banking, while 30 percent said they had “hardly any.” In a breakdown of responses from various industries included in the survey, only Congress had a lower percentage say they have a great deal of confidence in the institution. The lack of trust in banking was bipartisan, as only 10 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of Republicans said they have a great deal of confidence. [...] Pollsters also found bipartisan agreement that government regulation of financial institutions is inadequate. Just more than half of Republicans said so, and 63 percent of Democrats agreed. - [Trump seizes on likely indictment to pass begging bowl for 2024 campaign]( Trump seizes on likely indictment to pass begging bowl for 2024 campaign , Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian The emails paint Trump as the victim of a political agenda of a varying cast of “globalist power brokers”, the “deep state” and “witch hunt-crazed radicals”. Each ends with a plea for donations, the language used changing slightly each time. [...] Trump’s pleas for money could make sense given his relatively poor fundraising so far. Between 15 November 2022, when Trump announced his run for president, and 31 December 2022 Trump’s campaign said he had raised $9.5m, or $201,600 a day. The New York Times reported that the total paled in comparison to the amounts raised by previous presidential frontrunners like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. In his 2016 campaign Bush, who entered the race as the favorite, raised an average of $762,000 a day after announcing his candidacy, the New York Times reported. Clinton averaged $594,400 a day following her 2016 announcement. On Tuesday, as barriers were placed around the Manhattan criminal courthouse in New York City, an email from Trump’s re-election campaign shared a photo of the scene in another fundraising email, asking supporters to: “Please make a contribution to stand with President Trump at this critical moment.” The email again contained links to donate to the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, Trump’s principal campaign arm. The committee had just $3.8m cash on hand at the end of 2022, according to its filings with the Federal Election Commission, despite having raised more than $151m over the previous two years. - [Want to show your support for progressive, independent media? Click here to get your Daily Kos t-shirt now]( [Fox News: The invention of reality]( Fox News: The invention of reality, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, El País In the 2019 miniseries The Loudest Voice, Roger Ailes – the former chairman of Fox News, portrayed by Russell Crowe – shares a pearl of wisdom to a disciple: “If you tell them what to think, you lose them. If you tell them what to feel, they’re yours.” [...] I haven’t taken it upon myself to find out if he ever said those exact words… but it’s not hard to imagine. This was Roger Ailes, after all: a man of humble beginnings who sensed the power of television during the Nixon administration, understood it under Reagan, tamed it with the Bushes and, later, during the Obama administration, turned Fox News into the most powerful ultra-conservative propaganda organ our century has ever seen. The channel is capable of turning clowns into presidents, the truth into a lie… and a lie into the truth. “If you tell them what to think, you lose them. If you tell them what to feel, they’re yours.” In less than 20 words, this is an instruction manual for any of the various populist movements that have surged over the past decade. The replacement of reason with emotions – that trick, performed by a conjurer or street swindler – is as old as Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Yet, the citizens of today’s democracies have seen it wreak havoc in some of the most stable countries in what we call the West. - [Trump May Face Prosecution. America Faces a Test.]( Trump May Face Prosecution. America Faces a Test., Charles Blow, The New York Times It’s impossible to completely game out the legal and political ramifications of a Trump indictment, but because the public is hungry for theories and pundits are champing at the bit to provide them, we’re awash in takes about what happens next. But I challenge you to tune all of that out. We know Trump and how he operates. He tries — and often succeeds — to spin his negatives into positives, to deny his misdeeds while charging that those trying to hold him accountable are the real culprits. Trump’s strategy from the very beginning of his political foray has been to discredit or destroy the gatekeepers, in politics and the media, who might one day be called upon to expose him. (“Low-energy” Jeb Bush, anyone?) He continues to brand them as weak, dishonest and out to get anyone who supports him. And every time an attempt to hold him accountable falls short of delivering the most fitting consequences, he counts that as a victory, and the effort’s “failure” as proof of its illegitimacy. Then he rolls all this together in his rhetoric to bolster his contention that all investigations of him and members of his inner circle amount to a campaign of political harassment. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [A billboard truck is driving around Mar-a-Lago showing Tucker Carlson's text about Trump]( - [After Trump's online prayer session glitches out, he weirdly blames the 'radical left']( - [New judge to oversee Trump grand jury investigations]( Want even more Daily Kos? Check out our podcasts: - [The Brief: A one-hour weekly political conversation hosted by Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld]( - [The Downballot: Daily Kos' podcast devoted to downballot elections. New episodes every Thursday]( Want to write your own stories? 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