The Dictatorship
We’re witnessing transparent attempts to diminish Black political strength
We’re awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callaisa case about how to draw congressional maps that may bring Chief Justice John Roberts’ final blow against a Voting Rights Act he already weakened. But in the meantime, the Louisiana Legislature has been engaged in an even more transparent attempt to diminish Black political strength. In November, 68% of voters in the majority-Black city of New Orleans chose as clerk of criminal district court Calvin Duncana jailhouse lawyer who was imprisoned for 28 years for a murder he didn’t commit. In what is the first legislative session since then, white lawmakers far removed from New Orleans (politically if not geographically) both chambers have now voted to eliminate the office that Duncan won before he can occupy it.
We can count on the state Senate approving some minor amendments to the bill — perhaps as early as Monday — and Gov. Jeff Landry has promised to sign the bill once it reaches his desk.
The Louisiana Legislature is making an even more transparent attempt to diminish Black political strength.
For the past two presidential cycles, many Democrats have argued that “democracy is on the ballot.” The implication was that Donald Trump represented a grave threat to the future of our republic. And Trump’s pardoning of Jan. 6 insurrectionists, his vote-throttling SAVE Act, his moves against birthright citizenship, his hypocritical stance against mail-in voting and his administration’s refusal to swear off sending immigration officers to the polls in November are all signs that he is hostile to full participation in democracy. And Roberts, who has had it in for the Voting Rights Act since he worked in the Reagan administrationand the other conservatives on the court appear to be equally hostile.
However, threats to democracy exist outside the White House and the Supreme Court: Plenty of states — and, to a much lesser extent, some local governments — have been choking out democracy themselves.
Preemptionin which a state government overrules the decision of a local government, has been rampant for decades, and it has had the expected effect of weakening Black political strength. Then there are those states that tyrannically strip away the authority of local governments. This week, Tennessee passed a law that will put political appointees, and not the duly elected school boardin charge of the Memphis-Shelby County school system, whose students are more than 70% Black. Mississippi passed a law this month that strips Jackson (the second-Blackest big city in the country) of majority control of its long-troubled water system. In 2023, as Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, a Black woman, was pursuing a prosecution against Trump, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill to stop “rogue or incompetent prosecutors” who “refuse to uphold the law.” That was an attack on the Black voters of Atlanta.
But Duncan may soon be the most recognizable victim of such plantation-style attacks on democracy. Duncan got elected, and all of a sudden his office — which maintains the records used in a busy criminal court — was deemed superfluous. When the bill becomes law, those records are to be handled by the civil court clerk.
Knowing the future of his office was in doubt, Duncan defiantly took the oath of office Tuesdayahead of the scheduled May 4 start of the term. The Louisiana Legislature is still racing to have Gov. Landry sign the bill eliminating his office before May 4.
State Sen. Jay Morris, a Republican who lives about five hours from New Orleans, says he didn’t talk to anybody in the city before filing his bill: “It wouldn’t have made a difference. There was no point in that.” Morris hasn’t been convincing that his real motivation is saving money. Louisiana’s Republican leaders, especially Attorney General Liz Murrill, who wrongly claims Duncan wasn’t exoneratedhave seemed dead set on putting Duncan in his place — and, by extension, putting the voters of New Orleans in theirs.
Louisiana’s Republican leaders seem dead set on putting Duncan in his place — and the voters of New Orleans in theirs.
To be clear, this not the Louisiana Legislature’s first expression of racist paternalism. For more than 10 years after Hurricane Katrina, the state maintained control of New Orleans schoolsin the same manner Tennessee is taking control of the schools in Memphis. And when the Crescent City’s elected officials voted to remove a quartet of white supremacist monuments blighting its landscape, members of the Louisiana Legislature tried — unsuccessfully, but still — to strip the city of its power to take them down. Notably, their counterparts in Alabama did succeed in passing a bill protecting Confederate monuments — to keep any uppity cities there from following New Orleans’ lead.
Roberts justified a 2013 ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act with the specious claim that the “blight of racial discrimination in voting” that had “infected the electoral process in parts of our country for nearly a century” no longer existed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously dissented that Roberts’ thinking was akin to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” To the extent that there was less apparent discrimination, Ginsburg argued, it was because the Voting Rights Act was there to prevent it.
But egregious examples of racist voting policies continue to exist in this century. White people in my mother’s tiny hometown of Kilmichael, Mississippi, had, with one exception, long held every municipal position — because they were in the majority, and every elected position was voted on at-large. And 25 years ago, the town’s changing demographics meant a Black candidate was poised to win each of those seats, and the town canceled the election.
Yes, canceled. As in: We won’t have an election if the results will put Black people in charge.
Patrick Braxton wrote for this website two years ago that when he was elected mayor of Newbern, Alabama, in 2020, officials there responded by changing the locks at the town hall and refused to share the town’s financial records.
I hope that what happened to me, that they would make sure what happened to me would never happen to nobody in life.
calvin duncan
Kilmichael and Newbern have about 700 residents between them. But Atlanta, Memphis and New Orleans are big cities, and the attacks on Black political strength there have been only slightly less blatant.
News reports describe a series of speakers speaking up for democracy Tuesday as Duncan symbolically took his oath of office. “Today we honor the will of the people of Orleans Parish — manifested on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025!” said one former New Orleans councilwoman and state lawmaker.
“Regardless of what they do in Baton Rouge and whoever gets this position,” Duncan said, “I hope that what happened to me, that they would make sure what happened to me would never happen to nobody in life.”
Duncan was talking about being wrongly imprisoned for murder. But he could have been talking about the Louisiana Legislature’s shameless move to disenfranchise not only him — but also disenfranchise voters in a majority Black city.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune.
The Dictatorship
Friday’s Campaign Round-Up, 7.10.26: Democrats pour into Maine race to replace Platner
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In Maine’s closely watched Senate raceGraham Platner has until Monday to officially withdraw his Democratic candidacy. And according to multiple reportshe intends to wait until Monday to file the paperwork. It’s not at all clear why he’s dragging out the process.
In the meantime, the field of contenders hoping to replace him on the general election ballot is growing quickly. Former state Senate President Troy Jackson, for example, announced his candidacy less than an hour after Platner left the race. Dan Kleban, co-founder of Maine Beer Company, is also in, along with former gubernatorial hopeful Nirav Shah, who led the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention during the pandemic.
As Thursday progressed, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows joined the party’s field, as did Jordan Wood, who recently lost a competitive House primary race in the northern part of Maine.
Over the past 30 years, there have been only nine instances in which a major party replaced its Senate nominee. Two of those nine won.
* Despite credible concerns about Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor in Alabama, a state judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that argued he does not meet the residency requirement to run.
* In Texas’ closely watched Senate raceRepublican Attorney General Ken Paxton raised over $9 million in the second quarter (spanning April through June), while Democratic state Rep. James Talarico raised a staggering $30 million over the same three months. According to The Texas TribuneTalarico’s haul “is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year.”
* As Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s Republican gubernatorial campaign prepares for an Aug. 6 primary, the senator launched a new television ad this week that has been widely panned as racist.
* Rep. Mike Collins’ Republican Senate campaign in Georgia was already facing long oddsand it probably won’t help that the far-right congressman is now struggling with staffing issuesincluding the departure of two chiefs of staff.
* And while it’s undeniable that Republicans enjoy a financial advantage headed into the midterm electionsSenate Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with the Senate Democratic leadership, and its affiliated nonprofit raised $147 million in the second quarter. That’s the best quarter it’s ever had.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was not the target of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation that resulted in his fatal shooting, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, told MS NOW.
Salgado, a Mexican immigrant who moved to the United States 35 years ago, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday. According to Garcia, acting ICE Director David Venturella told her that neither Salgado nor his brother, who was in the vehicle with him, were the individuals that ICE officers were looking for. But Venturella “refused” to provide further information, Garcia said.
In a statement to MS NOW, a DHS spokesperson said that “officers conducted surveillance on a target’s address” where “they noted two white vans at the property. On July 7, officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.”
The New York Timesciting a DHS spokeswoman, also reported on Thursday that ICE officers had been looking for a different person.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has ruled Salgado’s death a homicide.
How the incident escalated to result in Salgado’s killing is unclear. Three other men arrested in the operation have disputed in handwritten statements to The Washington Post the claim by DHS that Salgado “weaponized his vehicle” against an officer.
“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas said. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”
The officers engaging in the operation were also not wearing body cameras, nor were there cameras on the car dashboard. A DHS spokesperson told MS NOW in a statement that officers had not been issued body cameras because of the government shutdowns over funding for the department, saying the process of acquiring the equipment for ICE field offices “was interrupted by the Democrats multiple government shutdowns.”
Salgado’s death has sparked a firestorm across the country. His family said he was in the process of obtaining his work permit and was en route to a construction site when he was killed.
They have also called for an independent investigation into his killing, pointing to the similarities in DHS’ claim about the circumstances of Salgado’s death to that of Renee Good’s in Minneapolis.
DHS has said its Office of Inspector General is probing the incident. A spokesperson for the FBI in Houston previously told MS NOW that it is “leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
Rosa Flores is a national correspondent for MS NOW.
Sara Weisfeldt is a field producer for MS NOW.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Voters in Colorado haven’t elected a Republican governor in more than two decades, and now that this year’s GOP gubernatorial primary has been called, it seems the streak will continue for four more years. The Associated Press reported:
Marine Corps veteran Victor Marx won the Republican primary for Colorado governor on Thursday, inching past a state senator who had the establishment’s backing.
Marx, described as a “high risk humanitarian” and the fastest gun disarmer in the world, defeated Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, his stiffest competition, in the June 30 election.
The results were incredibly close, and as of the latest tallies, Marx’s lead over Kirkmeyer was only about half a percentage point. That said, the advantage was good enough for news organizations to call the contest.
For her party, Kirkmeyer thanked her supporters and volunteers in a statement Thursday evening, signing off by saying, “I’m still proud of the campaign we ran … and, for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone.”
That might sound like a strange thing to say, but in this case, it was highly relevant: According to Marx, who founded a group called All Things Possible Ministries, he had an abusive stepfather who effectively forced him, at just 7 years old, to kill a man.
Asked in May how many people he has killed since then, the GOP candidate paused before telling Kyle Clark, an anchor at the NBC affiliate in Denver, “Does it matter?” He went on to call it an “odd question.”
(For the record, there are lingering questions about whether Marx actually killed a man as a child, and according to local law enforcementthere are unsolved murders from that time period.)
In case that weren’t quite enough, in the same interview, Marx explained that he also performs exorcisms, which he added can be completed over the phone.
He did not appear to be kidding.
A recent Slate report noted that party insiders not only expect him to lose badly, they’re also concerned that having Marx at the top of the GOP ballot “could imperil other Republican seats in the statehouse and Congress, plunging the fractured, marginalized party into chaos.”
Marx will face Phil Weiser, the Democratic state attorney general, in November. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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