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Fifty-six years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. While we traditionally take stock of a major figure’s legacy on the anniversary of their birth, with King I think it’s just as useful — if not more
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You might have seen this story about an incarcerated teacher in an Illinois prison who was fired from his teaching position there for having the audacity to claim that the literacy tests used in the Jim Crow South were part of a racist scheme to suppress the black vote. According
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Previously on CAMPAIGN TRAILS, I suggested that Biden should take a page from Harry Truman’s famous re-election campaign and run against the inaction of a Do-Nothing Congress. Well, in his surprisingly fiery State of the Union address this week, Biden seemed to do exactly that. During the speech, he
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Work in Progress is a recurring feature on CAMPAIGN TRAILS for paid subscribers. I’m using it to share some of the more interesting materials I’ve uncovered in the past few years of research for my book-in-progress on the work of John Doar and the Civil Rights Division in
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Monday is Presidents’ Day, a national holiday which most Americans will celebrate by wondering why the mail never came. The history of the holiday itself is one of steady expansion. First, it was a president’s day, singular, devoted to celebrating George Washington’s birthday. The inspiration for the holiday
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When President Harry Truman decided to run for re-election in 1948, there wasn’t a whole lot of enthusiasm. He had been a compromise vice-presidential pick at the previous Democratic convention, an afterthought who was only thrust into the presidency when FDR died in April 1945. The new president started
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It’s been four months since I left the Nazi bar formerly known as Twitter, but that doesn’t mean I’m not keeping up with news about what’s going on there. Increasingly, it seems, the site isn’t just “a bar that lets some Nazis hang out” but
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Now that the hilariously inept Ron DeSantis campaign has come to a merciful end, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what it meant for him and for us. For the candidate himself, the collapse of his presidential campaign represents a reversion to the mean. He never possessed
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For decades now, conservatives have insisted that Martin Luther King Jr. had Only One True Quote and argued that “color-blind” conservatives were therefore the true defenders of his legacy. But it looks like they might be starting to give up the charade, with Charlie Kirk announcing today his sudden discovery
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It’s no secret that the Republican Party has become a cult of personality during the Trump era. While the GOP has had its share of hero worship in the past, celebrating leaders ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, the party’s prostration before Donald Trump is in a
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In wake of the courts in Colorado and the secretary of state in Maine each ruling that Donald Trump should be disqualified from their state ballots due to his considerable role in the insurrection effort after his defeat in the 2020 election, a lot of commentators on the right are
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Happy New Year! In the time since my last post, I’ve been busy trying to find a new home for Campaign Trails, but it’s proved much harder than I’d been led to believe. I’ve spent much of the last two weeks sorting through the alternatives, and