On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court delivered a unanimous ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case. It was a landmark decision that declared the segregation of public schools to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. At the heart of this case was a class action lawsuit brought by local families against the Topeka Board of Education for forcing black and white students to attend separate schools. Among the plaintiffs was the Brown family — specifically Linda Brown, who became the face of the movement to desegregate schools. This case is considered to be a watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement, setting the stage for legislative action in the 1960s.
Linda Brown sits in the middle of other students on the bus to the racially segregated Monroe Elementary School
Linda Brown (center) and her sister Terry Lynn (far right) sit on a bus as they ride to the racially segregated Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, March 1953. The Brown family initiated the landmark Civil Rights lawsuit Brown v. Board of Education that led to the beginning of integration in the U.S. education system. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
Attorneys who argued Brown v. Board of Education stand in front of the Supreme Court Building
Attorneys who argued the case against segregation stand together smiling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building after the decision was handed down. From left to right are: George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James Nabrit, Jr. (Getty Images)
Nettie Hunt explains the meaning of the ruling to her daughter Nickie outside the Supreme Court building
Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie sit on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. Nettie explains to her daughter the meaning of the high court’s ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann via Getty Images)
Portrait of the children involved in the landmark lawsuit
A 1953 portrait of the children involved in Brown V. Board of Education. From front, Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown, James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, and Katherine Carper. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
John Davis (left) argued for segregation and Thurgood Marshall argued against
John Davis (left) and Thurgood Marshall argued for and against (respectively) school segregation before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall’s arguments succeeded, and he went on to become a Supreme Court Justice. (Getty Images)
Linda Brown outside Sumner Elementary
Portrait of nine-year-old Linda Brown outside Sumner Elementary School, Topkea, Kansas, 1953. When her enrollment in the racially segregated school was blocked, her family initiated Brown v. Board of Education. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
Nathaniel Steward recites his lesson in a desegregated classroom
A Black student, Nathaniel Steward, 17, recites his lesson in a desegregated classroom at the Saint-Dominique school in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Linda Brown sits with her classmates at the racially segregated Monroe Elementary School
Linda Brown (first desk in second row from right) sits with her classmates at the segregated Monroe Elementary School, Topeka, Kansas, 1953. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
NAACP brochure published on the first anniversary of the Brown v. Board decision
NAACP brochure reading “Remember May 17th!” — a single leaf folded in half as issued — published near the first anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1955. (Photo by Potter and Potter Auctions/Gado/Getty Images)
Students for whom the Brown v. Board case was brought and their parents
1953 portrait of the students for whom Brown v. Board of Education was brought and their parents: (front row L-R) Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown, James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, Katherine Carper; (back row L-R) Zelma Henderson, Oliver Brown, Sadie Emanuel, Lucinda Todd, Lena Carper. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
An adult Linda Brown answering questions from the press regarding her 1954 case against the board of Education
Linda Brown answering questions from the press in 1984. (Photo by Don Hogan Charles/New York Times Co./Getty Images)
White protesters on the anniversary of the Brown v. Board ruling hold signs, 2004
White Revolution chairman Billy Roper unknowingly holds a misspelled sign during an event he organized to protest the anniversary of the Brown v. The Board of Educationruling on May 15, 2004 in Topeka, Kansas. A White Revolution member had made several signs and handed them out to participants as they got off the bus at the protest site. After looking at the sign later Roper realized he had been carrying the sign with an error. (Photo by David S. Holloway/Getty Images)
Linda Brown as she walks past Sumner Elementary
Linda Brown as she walks past Sumner Elementary School, Topkea, Kansas, 1953. (Photo by Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
The Monroe School historic site of Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas
The Monroe Elementary School in 2014, now a historic site commemorating Brown v. Board of Education. (Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
TPM Reader JS responds to TPM Reader JB’s note from last night. As I said with JB, I don’t agree with all of the points. But the overall argument hits at what I do believe JB leaves out, which is that the U.S. is still the great power in the region. And the situation in Gaza is umbilically tied to three or four other major regional tension points. To my mind the real issue is that we cannot bring this episode to a close because of Netanyahu’s intransigence which is one part ideology and one part the need to keep his coalition intact which, in turn, keeps him out of jail. That’s a tough reason for a great power to be consumed by an issue.
JB is a classic dot disconnecter. His assertion that Israel is taking too much bandwidth from Ukraine, for example, completely misses the point. I’m going to pretend the assertion that Bibi was trying to suck us into a war with Iran was hyperbole, because it’s ridiculous, bordering on the conspiratorial (Bibi approved the killing of the Iranian general knowing they would shoot 300 drones at Israel and this bank shot would bring the US in against Iran? Lol, lmao even.)
Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined MAGA Republicans and Trump allies in sounding the non-citizen voting alarms ahead of 2024, announcing a new initiative to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls in Ohio — a solution to a Republican manufactured problem.
Though we certainly didn’t need it, yesterday was a reminder that convicting, defeating, and incarcerating Donald Trump won’t by itself rid us of the lawless insurrectionists that now populate the Republican Party, Congress, and the Supreme Court.
In a breathtaking report from the NYT’s relentless Jodi Kantor, neighbors of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito provided evidence that the American flag was flying upside down outside his Alexandria, Virginia home in the run-up to Jan. 20, 2021 inauguration of Joe Biden – an unmistakeable emblem of protest heavily adopted by the Big Lie/Stop the Steal crowd in the weeks after the 2020 election.
Remarkably, Alito admitted to the NYT via email that the incident had happened but blamed his wife for it, claiming she had been personally offended by a neighbor posting what we are led to believe was a “Fuck Trump” sign or similarly blunt message in their own yard:
I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.
Given how thin-skinned, peevish, and quick to offend Alito himself is, I suppose it would be no surprise if his wife were similarly small-minded. Note how Alito’s statement, while it blames his wife, also obliquely defends her – “objectionable and personally insulting”! – and does nothing to disavow what she did, the message it sent, or the way it undermined his already-compromised position on the high court.
Alito spends much of his time harnessing perceived personal slights to high principle and running around tilting at windmills. I don’t know anything of his spouse, and she has little public profile – so we are left to wonder if they are kindred spirits in that regard. But even the kind of people who get in fights with their neighbors and hold themselves in such high regard that they conflate their own wounded egos with foundational principles don’t usually find themselves defending or touting insurrections.
As things now stand, the wives of two of the Supreme Court justices – Virginia Thomas and Martha-Ann Alito – have either publicly organized, backed, or expressed support for the effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
My only gripe with the NYT story is that it quickly shifts from the facts of what happened to an analysis of the ethical implications for a sitting Supreme Court justice, including whether the Supreme Court’s own rules apply to the justice themselves, whether they should be subject to the standards of everyone else in the federal judiciary, and the whys and wherefores of judges not doing anything to appear overtly partisan.
Please. It’s all so precious. The more time we spend splitting hairs over the ethical niceties of this or that particular episode, the harder it is to see the big picture.
This wasn’t merely a matter of the household of a sitting Supreme Court justice improperly demonstrating a partisan preference in a public way. This was a bold declaration of affinity for and alignment with the smoldering insurrection led by a president of the same party that had just been put down but which still loomed as a threat to civic order, the peaceful transfer of power (which at that point had still not yet happened), and the rule of law.
All Alito can muster in response is to blame his wife.
Stand Back And Standby
While Justice Alito was dancing around the issue, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was saying the quiet part out loud. He posted a photo of himself standing behind Donald Trump at the courthouse in Manhattan where his hush money trial is being held and echoed Trump’s own famous line to the Proud Boys from the 2020 presidential debate stage:
Many of the leaders of the Proud Boys, who led the attack on the Capitol, are now in jail after being convicted on seditious conspiracy charges.
The message to Gaetz’s 2.5 million followers on X/Twitter was clear: He stands with the Proud Boys and whether it’s the next election or the current trial, he and the MAGA hoards are prepared to tear it all down – or at least posture about planning to do so.
Tell me again how the insurrection was quashed, nothing really happened, and it’s now over.
Abbott Pardons Gunman Who Killed BLM Protester
The third example from yesterday is not directly related to Jan. 6, and yet it’s unmistakably connected.
As he has long promised, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) pardoned the gunman who was convicted of shooting and killing an armed Black Lives Matter protester in Austin in the summer of 2020.
The BLM protests and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are inextricably intertwined in the Republican mind. Jan. 6 was their BLM protest. Why are all the Jan. 6 rioters being prosecuted while Biden lets the BLM thugs walk free, they argue disingenuously. Abbott was sending his own message about the relative value of the lives of the gunman and the protester, about which side Abbott himself is on, and what his real values are.
So there you have it in a nutshell. From top to bottom, the Republican Party has become the insurrectionist party. It extends from the executive to the legislative to the judicial. It’s all encompassing and unapologetic. There is value in such clarity, if we choose to see it.
More Of What’s To Come In Trump II
WSJ: Trump Allies Draw Up Plans for Unprecedented Immigration Crackdown
Everything Is Perfectly Normal
The House Oversight Committee held a markup last evening of the bogus effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt and it devolved into a screaming match of a kind seldom seen on the Hill. It turned deeply personal and vindictive: “fake eyelashes” + “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body” + “you don’t have enough intelligence”:
This video lays out what happened in tonight’s heated exchange in the oversight hearing pic.twitter.com/7QTmpsa1eA
Great lede: “With the corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey underway on Thursday, a prosecutor handed a juror in the first row of the jury box a plastic bag containing an object at the heart of the government’s case: a gold bar that glinted under the courtroom lights.”
My WhatsApp Group Chats Don’t Look Like This
WaPo: Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show
I debated for a bit how to explain why I was publishing this note from TPM Reader JB. I happily publish notes I agree with and others I don’t. In this case though, I disagree with quite a few individual assertions but found myself overall saying yes. That’s pretty much it. That’s a not-terribly-clear reaction. But I found it worth sharing with you.
There is a story told about Franklin Roosevelt, who spent most of the Wilson administration as an active Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Decades later as President, he was hours into a meeting on military spending with his Army Chief of Staff, George Marshall, before Pearl Harbor, when the services’ needs were great and money was scarce. Wearily, Gen. Marshall acknowledged the history, but asked Roosevelt, “Mr. President, could you at least stop referring to the Navy as ‘we’ and the Army as ‘they’?”
Donald Trump has weighed in on the Kristi Noem dog-shooting drama, offering the South Dakota governor, who was long considered on the short list to be Trump’s running mate until the past few weeks, plenty of bizarre cover for revealing she killed a dog and may have lied about a meeting with Kim Jong Un.
In yesterday’s podcast Kate and I discussed that NYT-Siena poll (way overplayed and exaggerated but still not great for Biden) and the debate story which was literally continuing to break and change while we recorded the pod. The two stories intersect in some interesting ways.
The Times said: “The early-debate gambit from Mr. Biden amounted to a public acknowledgment that he is trailing in his re-election bid, and a bet that an accelerated debate timeline will force voters to tune back into politics and confront the possibility of Mr. Trump returning to power.”
A public acknowledgement!
In recent days I’ve been in a running conversation with several Times staffers about Times coverage, some private, some on social media, trying to both keep it real and keep it calm. When I saw this line it struck me as part of that subtext of so much Times coverage, at least going back months and in many ways much longer, of “Joe, stop playing games and admit you’re behind. Admit you’re behind, Joe!”
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh analyze the presidential polling landscape plus some breaking news about the debates.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a massive win for an agency constantly under fire from conservative corporate interest.
Its decades-long decline has long been emblematic of America’s industrial decline, the hollowing out of cities that followed the loss of factories, and the urban wasteland of poverty, crime, drugs and social decay left behind. It was always a bit more complicated than that, but damn Detroit had it rough.
The contrast between its heyday and its nadir were so stark. From gleaming mid-century capital of the automotive industry that drew immigrants from around the world and was a major destination of the Great Migration to a husk of a city with abandoned landmarks, a local economy in free-fall, and its national reputation in disrepair.
Detroit benefitted from an unbelievable population explosion in the first half of the 20th century. It didn’t crack the top 10 until 1910, but by 1920 it had doubled its population and was the fourth largest city in America. By 1930, it became the fourth U.S. city to top 1 million people, and it peaked in the 1950s with a population of nearly 2 million. It has the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. city to surpass 1 million people then fall back below that number.
The latest figures show a slight uptick of 1,852 people from 2022 to 2023. Not a huge swing, but deeply symbolic given its painful historical arc.
The Menace Of Stroads
While we’re on the topic of urban development, the WSJ had a good piece on “stroads” yesterday which reminded me of this really good explanation of how the stroad is the centerpiece of America’s misbegotten post-war development patterns, largely built around the automobile (sorry, Detroit, I giveth, then I taketh away):
Biden’s Blue Wall
Let’s me streeeetch and bring all of this back to politics. The Blue Wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remains President Biden’s simplest path to 270 electoral votes, and he’s spending a lot of time there. The WSJ looks at the numbers.
Biden-Trump Debates Are On
Things moved very quickly Wednesday morning, with President Biden ditching the traditional Commission on Presidential Debates and throwing down a gauntlet to Donald Trump to debate twice and on the early side. What looked initially like the beginning of a negotiation over the debates turned out to be the culmination of negotiations that had already been under way. By midday, the debate schedule was more or less locked in place (and the debate commission was entirely sidelined):
June 27: hosted by CNN in Atlanta and moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash
Sept. 10: hosted by ABC News
In related news, former Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain will take leave from his Airbnb job to help Biden with debate prep.
A Counterintuitive Supreme Court Decision
The Supreme Court cleared the way for Louisiana to use a new congressional district map with two majority-Black districts – a win of sorts for voting rights – but the dissenters were the liberal justices who feared that how the majority arrived at the decision will be used to undermine voting rights in future cases.
What A Colossal Waste
When the final tally is complete, Rep. David Trone (D-MD) may end up having spent more on his losing primary campaign than any Senate candidate has spent on their entire campaigns ever.
Michael Cohen Is Back On The Witness Stand
TPM’s Josh Kovensky is liveblogging the second day of the cross-examination of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial.
Menendez Trial: Opening Statements
Prosecutors gave their opening statements yesterday in the public corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Defense counsel are expected to give their opening statements today.
Just In …
President Biden is asserting executive privilege over the audio of his two-day interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents investigation that ultimately yielded no criminal charges. The move comes as House Republicans try to keep the issue in the news during an election year by pushing toward holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to cough up the audio of the interview. Biden invoked the privilege at Garland’s request, the White House said.
Gaetz Under The Gun
As part of its investigation of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the House Ethics Committee earlier this week subpoenaed the Justice Department for records related to its investigation of Gaetz in a related sex trafficking case, Politico is reporting. The DOJ investigation ended without charging Gaetz.
Thomas is still refusing to reveal whether he repaid the principal on the $267,000 loan that he received from Anthony Welters, a wealthy health care executive and personal friend, to purchase his RV in 1999, according to a letter that senators Ron Wyden and Sheldon Whitehouse have sent to an attorney for Thomas.
Venezuela Loses Its Last Glacier
The loss of La Corona glacier was long expected but it marks a point of no return for the glaciers of the tropical northern Andes, which are expected to all be gone by 2050.
