(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump’s huge win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday enshrines one of the most astonishing comebacks in American political history.

Losing one-term presidents almost never mount subsequent successful primary campaigns, much less pull off landslides that demonstrate utter dominance of their party. Trump transformed the GOP in his populist, nationalist, nihilistic image in 2016. By claiming 50% of the vote in the biggest win in caucus history, putting him on course to his third consecutive nomination, he showed that eight years after his outsider presidential victory, the current GOP is entirely his party.

“The big night is going to be in November, when we take back our country,” Trump told his first proper victory party since he shocked the world by winning the 2016 election. His MAGA-hat wearing crowd greeted him with chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” beneath two vast screens reading “Trump wins Iowa!”

But the ex-president’s rebound is more stunning for another reason. He won despite 91 criminal charges and other legal entanglements that threaten his freedom and his fortune. In a head-spinning snapshot of the unprecedented times, he’s expected to show up in a courtroom in Manhattan on Tuesday morning for the opening of a defamation trial.

His Iowa triumph came three years and nine days after he told a mob to “fight like hell” before it ransacked the US Capitol in an attempt to thwart the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win. Trump’s dominance on Monday night shows that among the most committed Republican voters, there is no price for him to pay for the worst attack on an election in modern history. In fact, his successful leveraging of his criminal plight to paint a narrative of persecution is the superpower that renewed his bond with GOP base voters and left his rivals with an impossible conundrum about how to exploit his liabilities.

His caucus victory also demonstrates the success of Trump’s election denial strategy, which has convinced millions of GOP voters of the false belief he was illegally ejected from power in 2020. For Americans who believe Biden’s warning that Trump is the “most anti-democratic president with a small ‘d’ in American history,” Monday night will have sown utter dread.

Trump’s vow to win a second term dedicated to “retribution” against his enemies, his labeling of political opponents as “vermin” and his warnings that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America, which are reminiscent of 1930s dictators, were no disqualification in Iowa. Instead, the president who attempted to overturn democracy to stay in power used democracy far more effectively than any of his Republican opponents to win an electoral endorsement from GOP voters who want him back in the White House.

DeSantis and Haley fail to emerge as the single anti-Trump candidate

Monday’s result posed huge questions for Trump’s rivals. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will claim second place, according to a CNN projection, narrowly ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. It is a showing that doesn’t offer DeSantis much hope of capturing the nomination, but may at least give him a rationale for staying in the race.

Haley came third but she is most focused on next week’s New Hampshire primary, where independent, undeclared voters and moderate Republicans offer her best chance to score an early win over Trump. But the electoral map of Iowa also illustrates the daunting task she faces in creating a path to the GOP nomination. In rural areas, where most Republicans live, she made little impression.

And while Haley and DeSantis proved there is a substantial constituency in the GOP for someone other than Trump, it’s not clear that it is large enough to defeat him, even if one of them were able to emerge as the sole alternative to the former president. While Trump was gracious to his opponents in his victory speech, there will be increasing pressure from his campaign for them to get out of the race so he can concentrate on Biden. Kari Lake, a staunch Trump supporter running for Senate in Arizona after refusing to recognize her 2022 gubernatorial loss, told reporters at his victory party that the other candidates couldn’t win and were running “vanity projects.”

The magnitude of Trump’s victory also makes it much harder for his distant rivals to claim any true momentum coming out of Iowa. “It’s not a race for second, it’s a race for relevancy and everyone is losing except for Donald Trump,” said Republican strategist Scott Jennings. “This Republican Party wants to give Donald Trump one more shot to prove them all wrong that everything was a witch hunt, that the election was rigged. … It’s obvious they want one more shot at it; it’s showing up in national polling and we are seeing it at these caucus sites.”

Iowa is only one state in a long nominating process. Votes cast in the caucuses represent a small proportion of the state’s population. But Trump’s dominance of rural voters in the state mirrors his support base across the country outside cities and suburbs. And polls suggest that his victory here can be replicated in most GOP bastions across the country.

Trump’s Iowa victory also sharpens the collision between the 2024 election and his legal imbroglio. His solidified status as a huge GOP front-runner increases the possibility that his party could nominate a convicted felon for president — an unheard-of-scenario — depending on the progress of his four looming criminal trials this year. The victor of the Iowa caucuses is expected in Manhattan on Tuesday morning for the opening of his defamation trial involving writer E. Jean Carroll, who has already been awarded $5 million in a separate trial after Trump was found liable for battery.

Trump is both a pseudo incumbent and change candidate

The former president’s dominance of Iowa also cements an impression that he is effectively running as an incumbent. To start with, many Republicans don’t believe he lost in 2020 and think he’s the rightful president, a theme Trump reinforced in his victory speech. And Trump’s aura and mastery of the GOP — recently demonstrated in his strong-arming of key party office holders for endorsements — has made it difficult for his rivals to take him on in a fair fight. That pseudo incumbency hugely helped Trump in Iowa, where he has leveraged relationships that he nurtured since he came second in the caucuses at the start of his shock rise to power in 2016.

During four years in the White House, Trump steered aid and attention the Hawkeye State’s way, constantly building political influence. The playbook is likely to work elsewhere, especially in the critical South Carolina primary that looms next month. CNN’s Manu Raju reported Monday that the ex-president is already pressuring one of the state’s senators, Tim Scott, for an endorsement as he seeks to effectively close out the nominating race early by crushing Haley on her own patch. Trump’s power is also underpinned by his campaign’s success in heading off any meaningful oversight from the Republican National Committee, which never made him pay a price for skipping campaign debates that it sanctioned. And Trump’s supporters now hold influence and power at every level of the Republican Party across the country. Many have taken legislative action in the wake of his false claims of fraud in 2020 that have made it harder to vote and easier to interfere in elections.

Yet while Trump’s effective incumbency is a huge factor, the fact he is out of power also allows him, paradoxically, to run as a candidate of change. The roles are reversed from 2020. Biden is the one in office and now has a more recent White House record than Trump’s to be judged on. But even when he was in the Oval Office, Trump never forgot that his magnetism among GOP voters lies in always being the outsider and a disruptor. His unhinged behavior, incessant shattering of rules and challenges to the law reinvigorated a brand perfectly tailored to Republican voters who despise “elites” in politics, government and the media. His uncouth language and politically incorrect jokes about the late Sen. John McCain and former President Jimmy Carter, who is in hospice care, only reinforce the impression he says what many of his supporters think.

In a flash of self-awareness, Trump explained his political method when he told North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who endorsed him after his failed 2024 campaign, “You need controversy for traction sometimes.” In recent days, DeSantis has tried to position Trump as the “establishment.” But it’s a hopeless strategy: even when the front-runner was the head of the US government and his portrait was on the wall of every US government office and embassy, he was a scourge of the establishment.

A victory heard around the world

Trump’s win makes the long theoretical prospect that he could win the White House a far more direct possibility. Barring some unforeseen event, his dominance in Iowa shows the extreme difficulty any of his remaining rivals will have of keeping him off the Republican ticket. And recent polls have shown him highly competitive and even ahead of Biden in the handful of swing states that will decide the destiny of the White House. In a nation split down the middle, the election will be close whatever happens. It may concern Democrats that while Trump hasn’t toned down the unhinged wildness of his public appearances, his victory in Iowa was the first validation of a far more professional political operation than he deployed in either the 2016 or 2020 elections.

Still, the Biden campaign, beset by growing concern among Democrats about the president’s reelection prospects, has argued that a big victory for Trump in Iowa would begin to awaken Americans who rejected him in 2020 of the real danger that he could recapture the White House. While Trump was strong even in suburban areas around Des Moines, this may not translate into a similar performance among more moderate voters in corresponding areas in less conservative states. Trump’s deficit among this group nationwide cost him the 2020 election.

Trump’s triumph will also reverberate around the world, and force US allies to confront the possibility that the most antagonistic president in modern history, who cozied up to dictators and spurned America’s traditional friends in democratic nations, could soon be back.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde sounded the alarm on France 2 television last week. “If we are to draw lessons from history, as in the way he managed the four years of his mandate, it is clearly a threat,” she said.

A return to office for Trump could represent an existential danger to NATO, which helped keep peace in Europe through the Cold War and into the 21st century. Trump’s victory will also give Russian President Vladimir Putin another reason to prolong the bloody war in Ukraine. Trump said Monday he’d get Putin in a room with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an encounter that could only end on terms unfavorable to the Ukrainians.

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Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Education sent all colleges and universities across the nation a notice, reminding them that they need to comply with the newly updated cybersecurity regulations published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The regulations – which include specifications such as implementing critical controls for information security programs, maintaining oversight of service providers, and designating an individual to oversee a school’s cybersecurity infrastructure – came in response to an uptick in ransomware attacks on schools around the United States.

While these regulations are certainly warranted in an age where personal data is becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber-criminals, the penalties for failing to comply with the regulations – especially the withholding of federal needs-based funding under Title IV – pose an existential threat to schools operating under tight budgets.

Take Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which have throughout their existence struggled to find the substantial funding that many state and private predominantly white institutions (PWIs) of higher education enjoy and who are already steeling themselves to deal with an expected surge of applicants following the Supreme Court’s regressive decision to effectively end Affirmative Action admission programs. The loss of Title IV funding would drastically affect around 80% of the student bodies at HBCUs and would have a consequential negative impact on the future of these vital institutions of higher education.

Endowments at HBCUs pale in comparison to those at the U.S.’s top ranked colleges and universities, with the overall endowments at all the country’s HBCUs accounting for less than a tenth of Harvard’s.

The gap in funding between PWIs and HBCUs isn’t just because of smaller endowments, it’s also because state lawmakers keep funds off HBCU campuses – in North Carolina, for example, legislators awarded N.C. State an extra $79 million for research while N.C. A&T – the nation’s largest HBCU – was given only $9.5 million.

When it comes to access to technology, HBCUs also face an uphill battle with 82% of HBCUs being located in so-called “broadband deserts.”

Despite their struggles with funding, and the fact that these schools constitute only 3 percent of four-year colleges in the country, HBCU graduates account for 80 percent of all Black judges, 50 percent of Black lawyers, 50 percent of Black doctors, 40 percent of Black members of Congress, and our country’s current vice president.

HBCUs truly know how to do more with less, but they cannot be saddled with costly regulations that pose an existential crisis to their ability operate and be given no help to deflect some of the costs. Fortunately, however, there are businesses and individuals who see the importance of HBCUs to the Black community and are willing to lend their hands – and their dollars – to support them.

The Student Freedom Initiative (SFI), a non-profit chaired by philanthropist and entrepreneur Robert F. Smith and funded by major tech companies like Cisco, has raised millions of dollars to help HBUs comply with the Education Department’s mandates. Cisco alone donated $150 million to the SFI with $100 million allocated to bringing HBCU cybersecurity system upgrades and $50 million going to establish an endowment to offer alternative student loans.

With $89 million already distributed to 42 HBCUs across the nation, the initiative has already saved around $1.5 billion in needs-based funding to these colleges and universities and is making strong inroads to helping these institutions meet the new cybersecurity regulations, but more is required if all HBCUs are to be saved.

Given the empowering impact HBCUs have on the nation’s Black community and the future promise of a more inclusive America, it is imperative that more companies support the work the Student Freedom Initiative is doing to ensure these vital higher education schools can continue to educate and inspire future generations.

As Vice President Harris said, “What you learn at an HBCU is you do not have to fit into somebody’s limited perspective on what it means to be young, gifted and Black.”

We in the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) https://www.nafeonation.org/ stand in strong support of the Student Freedom Initiative. We all should work together to ensure the sustainability of HBCUs in America.

Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., is Chairman of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) and President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). The views and opinions belong to Dr. Chavis, Jr. and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Atlanta Voice.

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In the summer of 2022, members of the Atlanta City Council and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners pursued an intergovernmental agreement allowing for the lease of Atlanta’s City Detention Center to the Fulton County Sheriff. The lease was intended to be a solution to the overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail. Their conversations centered on the gross inhumane conditions at the jail. But little was said by elected officials about the gross inhumane policies that created overcrowding in the first place. 

A coalition of community stakeholders and advocates, including Color Of Change and the Southern Center for Human Rights, warned elected officials that their proposed remedy was myopic, stale, and ineffective. We cautioned elected officials, that the jail was not overcrowded because the facility was too small, but because the Fulton County processes were too inefficient and slow, trapping hundreds inside of its walls. Leasing more space at another jail, they forewarned, was a “band-aid” that would provide no immediate relief, protection, or safety for people navigating the county’s legal system. We suggested that public officials should push system actors to work towards decarcerating the county jail through a combination of more efficient charging processes and bond considerations that would have both immediate and lasting impact. 

Councilpersons and commissioners barely feigned interest in the option, agreeing to the legislation approving the lease in August 2022, and its failures were immediately obvious. On September 13th, 2022, LaShawn Thompson – a 35-year-old man – was found dead in his Fulton County Jail cell, eaten alive by bugs and forgotten by medical staff. Thompson’s case is tragic and sadly for people incarcerated in Fulton County it is not entirely unique, as the Fulton County Jail system has taken 10 lives this year. But there is a path forward that can save lives in Atlanta today. 

That path is decarceration – an organized and systematic way to safely release people incarcerated pre-trial while awaiting their day in court. Decreasing the jail population will alleviate the strain on a jail system that is holding almost double its designed capacity. The only reason this many people are being held is because they cannot afford high bonds. They are there for economic, not legal, reasons. Fulton County is a national outlier when it comes to the jail crisis. Most urban jurisdictions do not have a felony case backlog of 11,000 cases and 10 deaths a year. The closest comparison would be Dallas, which has a backlog of 35,000 cases. But Dallas is more than double the size of Fulton County, has fewer jail deaths, and unlike Fani Willis, Dallas’ District Attorney handles misdemeanors AND felonies. We know that the maltreatment of incarcerated people is a national problem, but Fulton County has become a leader on this issue.

Color Of Change and the Southern Center for Human Rights have continued to point to decarceration as the single most powerful tool for change in Atlanta – and it seems like District Attorney Willis has begun to listen. Since August of this year – when five people died in the jail in a single month – we have seen a jail population reduction of more than 500 people. And most importantly, we have not seen anyone else die. This reduction is a clear sign that decarceration is both possible and effective and that if this continues, lives will be saved and the county will experience financial relief. According to our sources, it seems that these reduced numbers can be attributed to a process between District Attorney Willis and the Public Defender where bonds are being reduced and cases are being resolved or dismissed. This is exactly the direction we have been demanding of District Attorney Willis for months, and we are encouraged by this progress as we continue to demand further action. 

The continuation of this positive trend rests almost squarely on District Attorney Willis’ shoulders. She must continue the efforts that advocates have long asked for and have proven more effective than legislative efforts by public officials in saving lives and giving accused persons their day in court. District Attorney Willis and other system actors must resist the temptation to fall back into the failed policies of more jails and more cages, as a hallmark solution to absolving jail deaths, namely the county’s proposed new $2 billion jail. Not only is that a shocking price tag for a new facility, but a new jail could take years to get approval and finish construction. The people awaiting relief in Fulton County do not have days to wait for a new facility, let alone years. 

Decarcerating Fulton County will continue to be the foundation of our work to change the conditions experienced by incarcerated people in Atlanta, and a pillar of our national advocacy to change oppressive cycles of incarceration. We are encouraged by District Attorney Willis and other local decision-makers for beginning this process, but a true commitment to fairness and justice requires much more. In addition to reducing the county jail population, District Attorney Willis must dramatically decrease the usage of cash bonds and clear the case backlog in a timely manner. There is so much more work to be done, and we look forward to a future in Atlanta that puts first the humanity of all people, including those in the Fulton County jail system. 

Michael Collins is the Senior Director for State and Local Government Affairs at Color Of Change. Michael lives and works in Atlanta, and was previously Policy Director for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney. 

Devin Franklin is Movement Policy Counsel at the Southern Center for Human Rights, and is based in Mableton, GA. Prior to joining SCHR, Devin was a Senior Assistant Public Defender at the Office of the Circuit Public Defender-Atlanta Judicial Circuit for over 12 years.

The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to Collins and Franklin and not necessarily those of The Atlanta Voice.

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Food insecurity is one of the most pressing issues facing older Georgians and individuals with disabilities, particularly among low-income, minority, and traditionally underserved communities. During my time on Atlanta City Council, I have partnered with local and national stakeholders to improve access to nutritious meals, Medicare-eligible residents can use open enrollment as an opportunity to learn more about and enroll in Medicare Advantage.

Since August 2021, I’ve been proud to partner with meal kit company Hello Fresh on expanding their Meals with Meaning program here in Atlanta. Many of the communities served by this program—which provides grab-and-go meals to those in need—lie in food deserts, where access to fresh, healthy food is scarce, and people face a higher risk of malnourishment, illness, or death. 

Now, including local partner Second Helpings Atlanta, these weekly food distribution events are helping address food insecurity while promoting healthier, more nutritious eating habits for local families. As important as I believe these efforts are, however, there is more work to do to ensure all Georgians—including seniors and those living with disabilities—have access to the services and support they need to combat food insecurity in our communities. That is where Medicare Advantage comes into play.

Now covering more than 31 million Americans—or just over half of the entire Medicare population—Medicare Advantage takes a more cost-effective, comprehensive approach to health care than traditional, fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare. Not only does it help improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, but the program also helps strengthen access to nutrition services that seniors and patients with disabilities need to overcome food insecurity. 

Based on current data, Medicare Advantage helps seniors and patients with disabilities save more than $2,400 annually in healthcare costs compared to FFS Medicare beneficiaries. Considering enrollees in Medicare Advantage are more likely to come from low-income households and communities than their FFS counterparts, these savings go a long way in ensuring at-risk Georgians are spending less to meet their basic health care needs so they have more money for necessities like nutritious food.

While saving low-income patients money on medical expenses, Medicare Advantage also provides a broader range of health care, wellness, and supplemental services and offerings that help Georgia seniors and patients with disabilities address food-access concerns. This includes the basics, like more flexible vision, dental, and hearing benefits as well as more innovative offerings, including in-home support, medical appointment transportation, telehealth, fitness programs, and, importantly, meal delivery services that provide patients with easier, more efficient access to healthier food options.

Medicare Advantage has been growing by leaps and bounds over the years for good reason—it is working as intended to help expand access to vital health care, wellness, and nutritional services that improve the lives of patients and strengthen the health of entire communities. It should not come as any surprise that the program enjoys a 95% satisfaction rate among its beneficiaries.

As the my colleagues and I on the Atlanta City Council work to address food insecurity in the neighborhoods throughout the City of Atlanta, especially those in underserved communities, Medicare Advantage will continue to play a vital role in expanding access, reducing costs, and addressing the health care and food-access needs in underserved communities nationwide. With Medicare’s open enrollment period running until December 7, those Georgians who can enroll in this vital, innovative program should take a closer look at the myriad benefits of doing so.

Michael Julian Bond represents more than 450,000 local residents, since his election to the Atlanta City Council Post 1 At-Large seat in November of 2009. He is a member of the Committee on Council and the Community Development/Human Resources and Public Safety committees. The views and opinions expressed are entirely his own.

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(CNN) — Special counsel Jack Smith’s request to the Supreme Court on Monday thrusts the justices into a highly charged situation with a former president who has repeatedly tried to politicize the federal judiciary and use it for his ends.

As this case tests Smith’s federal prosecution of Donald Trump for election subversion, it will also test America’s high court.

During the Trump tenure, disputes over his administration’s policy and his own business dealings constantly roiled the justices. As Trump challenged the rule of law, he fomented conspiracy theories and engaged in personal attacks. He directed vitriol toward Chief Justice John Roberts and, when he lost a case, the entire bench.

After the 2020 election, the justices rejected baseless Trump-related claims that would have undermined the results that put Joe Biden in the White House.

Now Smith, representing the US government, has asked the justices – six conservatives and three liberals – to step up and to accept immediate responsibility for a question that only they can definitively decide: Is a former president absolutely immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office?

From beginning to end, the Supreme Court’s handling of the case is bound to be closely scrutinized. Public opinion polls show approval of the justices at record lows, as the court has delivered a series of decisions rolling back established precedents and become tangled in ethics controversies.

Five votes would be needed to grant the case directly from a federal trial court, skipping the appellate level, and the individual justices are bound to have varying views regarding the urgency of the matter. Some have distinct relationships with Trump.

He appointed three of the justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. A fourth, Clarence Thomas, is linked to Trump through the activities of his wife, Ginni Thomas, who sought to help Trump retain the presidency back in 2020.

That has already spurred some Democrats to question whether Thomas should hear the case. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin told CNN that Thomas should consider recusing himself because of his wife’s role in trying to overturn the election results. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal went further, saying he believes Thomas should definitely recuse.

The justices’ decision whether to hear Trump’s claim of immunity may determine whether his trial for election subversion culminating in the January 6, 2021, insurrection is over before votes are cast in a new matchup later in 2024 between Trump and Biden.

Smith has made a compelling case for the justices’ early intervention, before a US appellate court addresses the question, so that a scheduled March 4 trial can go forward.

The magnitude of the constitutional issue regarding presidential immunity cannot be overstated, and Smith has invoked the Supreme Court’s 1974 Watergate case, along with the adage that “no person is above the law,” to try to persuade the justices to fast-track the dispute.

“Nothing could be more vital to our democracy than that a President who abuses the electoral system to remain in office is held accountable for criminal conduct,” Smith wrote in his petition. “Yet (Trump) has asserted that the Constitution accords him absolute immunity from prosecution. The Constitution’s text, structure, and history lend no support to that novel claim.”

Late Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to expedite the filings at this stage, directing Trump’s lawyers to respond by 4 p.m. ET December 20 to Smith’s request that the justices hear the case.

Trump’s anti-justice rhetoric

Trump’s campaign put out a statement calling Smith “deranged” and describing him as trying “a Hail Mary by racing to the Supreme Court and attempting to bypass the appellate process.”

Such rhetoric reflects Trump’s longstanding derision of justice-system officials, including judges, a pattern evident since at least 2016, when he first ran for president and tried to disparage a US district court judge hearing a Trump University fraud case as “a Mexican” judge.

Once elected, Trump continued to denounce judges at all levels of the judiciary when they acted against him. After the Supreme Court refused to hear an unsubstantiated challenge to election 2020 results filed by Republican attorneys general, Trump wrote on Twitter, “The Supreme Court really let us down. No wisdom, No Courage!”

Other Trump moves undermined their independence, as when he invited all the justices and their spouses to an October 2018 ceremonial swearing-in for Kavanaugh. White House aides had assured justices the event would not be overtly political. Yet it turned out to be an intensely partisan affair, as the justices sat awkwardly in the camera’s eye. After publicly thanking each justice individually for attending, Trump referred to the assault accusations by Christine Blasey Ford still churning in America against Kavanaugh, who denied the claims. Trump proclaimed that he was apologizing “on behalf of our nation” to Kavanaugh.

The following month, in November 2018, Trump criticized a judge who ruled against administration policy regarding asylum-seekers as, “an Obama judge.” That prompted Roberts to respond: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

Trump retorted on Twitter immediately: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”

Demonstrating Trump ’s recent escalation, he has been subject to judicial gag orders because of inflammatory comments in the election subversion case and, separately, a civil fraud trial in New York.

Yet, Trump has prevailed in federal litigation over the years, including at the Supreme Court. Much of his administration’s agenda was upheld when challenged, and even when he lost battles to keep his personal tax and other financial records from a Manhattan district attorney and, separately, committees of the US House of Representatives, Trump was able to delay the disclosures.

Trump has also taken credit for the court’s 2022 decision reversing the 1973 Roe v. Wade milestone, which had made abortion legal nationwide. Trump said the new landmark was possible because of his three appointments. “I delivered everything as promised,” he said in a statement after the ruling.

The 5-4 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was indeed sealed by Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett; also joining the majority were Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito.

Now Trump is running again for the White House and a chance to further remake the high court.

Moving quickly for now

At this point, the justices appear at least open to swift consideration of the presidential-immunity dispute. If they eventually require Smith to first make his case in a US appellate court, the proceedings could take months and the Trump trial would be significantly delayed. Lawyers for the former president have argued that Trump’s alleged actions over the 2020 election results were part of his official duties at the time and therefore he is protected by presidential immunity.

“As President Trump has said over and over again, this prosecution is completely politically motivated,” a Trump spokesperson said Monday. “There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for Justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics.”

The justices last met in a private session on December 8, and their next such scheduled in-person session was not until January 5. But the Smith request, like similar emergency matters, can be handled through telephone conference calls and memos.

If the court grants the petition and decides to hear the case, Smith has asked that the two sides file opening briefs 14 days after the case is granted.

The special counsel has patterned his timetable on the 1974 Watergate tapes case, when the justices quickly heard a dispute related to then-President Richard Nixon’s claim that he was immune from subpoena for White House tape recordings based on executive privilege.

The justices ended up ruling unanimously – 16 days after oral arguments in July 1974 – that Nixon had to comply with the subpoena for tapes of conversations tied to the break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate office building.

In the Trump controversy, US district Judge Tanya Chutkan on December 1 rejected his immunity claim, as well as a double-jeopardy argument that he is constitutionally protected from Smith’s prosecution because he was impeached by the US House and acquitted by the Senate.

Smith stressed the importance of the Supreme Court – the ultimate arbiter of such constitutional questions – resolving the issues sooner rather than later.

With the unprecedented legal issues and Trump’s volatility among the justices, the suspense and stakes could not be higher.

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It’s no surprise to anyone who has filled up their tank, been to the grocery store, or applied for a loan that sky-high inflation and increasing interest rates are placing an undue financial burden on citizens across the country and constraints on business investments. Here in Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp suspended the gas tax for months and put money back in the pockets of hardworking taxpayers among other fiscal decisions that have helped ease the burden on Peach State families. However, at the end of the day, inflation and interest rates are D.C. problems that place an artificial cap on an otherwise healthy economy. 

In addition to facing the challenges of inflation, young Georgians are finding it nearly impossible to afford their critical first homes because of increasing mortgage rates. Nationally, home purchases are down by over 14% since October of last year, and monthly payments on housing units have sky-rocketed by 53% from Q1 of 2022 to Q1 of 2023 alone. Interest rates between 6% and 7% coupled with the drastic decrease in new builds have forced many empty nesters to stay in homes they don’t need further limiting the available housing stock for first-time home buyers and making it even harder for them to afford their first home. The Georgia Chamber has supported legislation at the state level to increase the availability of housing and decrease barriers for homebuilders, but further action to reduce interest rates and housing costs is needed at the federal level.  

Housing affordability isn’t the only problem. Georgia has the second-highest loan rates for both new and used vehicles in the country at 7.91% and 12.15% respectively. Transportation is a key reason many people aren’t working today, and these rates are making the problem worse!  

While these issues are impacting Georgia’s families in a very real way, small businesses throughout the state are also struggling under the current economic conditions. In a recent survey, only 29% of small business owners said that their companies could afford to take out a loan with small business loan rates sitting between 7% and 9%. Many of these Main Street businesses already operate week to week, so it’s easy to see how even a small uptick in interest rates could ripple through their profit margins. In the same survey, 85% of respondents noted that if access to capital continues to tighten it will dramatically impact their growth by forcing them to halt expansion plans, implement hiring freezes, lay off workers, or close their doors altogether. These businesses are the heartbeat of our communities and deserve better!  

Instead of decreasing barriers for small businesses to access loans, federal regulators chose to do the exact opposite. In July 2023, the Basel III Endgame Rule was proposed which would require large banks and most regional banks to increase their capital holdings by 20%. This rule will significantly reduce access to capital for Georgia’s small businesses, households, and consumers by forcing banks to offer less financing or offer it at a much higher cost. At the same time, Washington’s inaction on tax policy means many small businesses will be paying higher tax bills in 2025.  

The Georgia Chamber, on behalf of the business community in every single county in the state, is taking a stand for small businesses, our employees, and communities by urging Washington lawmakers to address poorly conceived policy in the financial markets, and to pass much-needed tax break extensions. We also call on the Federal Reserve to take immediate action to reduce interest rates and remove the constraints hindering economic growth and prosperity. Homeownership matters. Small businesses matter. The auto industry and manufacturing matter. It’s time for Washington to act like it!  

Chris Clark is the President and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. Chris serves on the Board of Directors for Council of State Chambers as the Secretary Treasurer, and sits on the boards of the Georgia Allies, the Georgia Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, and Georgia College and State University Board of Trustees. He is also a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Council of 100, the U.S. Chamber’s Board, and the Political Affairs Committee. The views and opinions expressed are entirely his own.

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After the brutal heat wave that enveloped Georgia this summer, many of us looked forward to the reprieve of lower temperatures, and corresponding lower utility bills. But unfortunately, nearly a month into autumn, some of us aren’t breathing the sigh of relief we anticipated — and the reason might be different than what you’d initially think. 

All through the metro area, Atlantans are suffering from sky-high electric bills — especially in the more rural outlying areas, which face a high energy burden. The reason is often mischaracterized solely as rising temperatures, when it’s actually energy-inefficient technologies so common in minority low- to middle-income households that are just as much a factor.

This issue is the product of decades of redlining and housing insecurity directed at communities of color. Discriminatory housing policies have hindered access to the resources these residents need to secure and maintain home ownership – and, combined with rising energy costs, have increased the energy burden to alarming levels. 

This takes a toll on monthly bills, but can also have life-threatening impacts. In fact, Black Americans are actually 40% more likely to live in areas with the highest projected increases in deaths from extreme temperatures. 

But there is hope, in the form of a potentially life-changing campaign coming to the Atlanta area. Soon our community members might finally be able to experience real — and lasting — relief. The WeatheRISE ATL campaign offers select residents in parts of Fulton County the chance to make a significant transition to cleaner and more affordable energy generation in their homes. 

While offering the opportunity for those residents to help reduce carbon emissions and see improved health outcomes, the campaign will provide the resources for those in the targeted communities to save almost $600 per year on their household utility bills — all at no cost to them. 

Here’s how it works: Through a partnership with the City of Atlanta, participating residents will receive a certified home energy audit to evaluate energy-efficiency improvements best tailored to their household needs. From there, the City of Atlanta will provide the funding and resources to ensure the installation of these improvements. From installing smart thermostats to high-efficiency air conditioning and more, these simple changes will save these Atlantans money while combating climate change and years of environmental injustice. 

Campaigns like this one are already being implemented on a national scale, and are having positive ripple effects all over the country – including elsewhere in Georgia. The Tillman family in Athens, as just one example, was able to use funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program to cut their electric and water bills by more than half. 

Just think about how many stories we could have just like that, right here in our own backyard. Our neighbors deserve to see relief from the almost century-long impacts of environmental injustice, while also saving money on their electric bills and being empowered to take charge of their energy use. 

To learn more about the WeatheRISE ATL Campaign and see if you qualify, visit https://www.100atl.com/weatherise-atl or

https://sustainablegafutures.org/weatherise-atl-campaign/.

Adrienne L. Rice is an Atlanta resident and the Founder and Executive Director of Sustainable Georgia Futures. 

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During the late 1970’s, I went to work for the Carter Administration in the press office of Health and Human Services Secretary Joseph Califano. While our agency was focused primarily on domestic issues, one of President Carter’s all-consuming objectives was a foreign policy issue: How to broker a peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. 

With Carter’s tenacity and the willingness of Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat’s to come to Camp David to hash out what would later be called the Camp David Peace Accords, the world was given an example of how seemingly unbridgeable national interests could be harmonized through skillful diplomacy.

Today, some 45 years later, the Middle East is once again mired in deadly conflict with casualties mounting for both Israelis and Palestinians. An attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians has been countered by airstrikes on innocent Palestinians with a ground invasion resulting in the deaths of thousands, including more than 3,000 who are children!

As of this writing, over 1,500 Israelis and at least 8,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. The number of wounded on both sides is much larger. Over 200 hostages are being held in captivity. 

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has already reached nightmarish proportions with shortages of food, clean drinking water, medical supplies and fuel needed for hospitals to operate reaching dangerously low levels. Children are suffering and dying! Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that this will be a protracted struggle; hopefully, he will be proven wrong. The sooner this war is ended, the better for all concerned. This includes Israelis.

The United States has leverage to discourage further carnage. We have not effectively used our resources as bargaining chips to secure a reliable two-state solution, with two sovereign powers, ruled by governmental authorities recognized by the United Nations and the world community.

To be an honest broker in this latest conflict, the U.S. must demonstrate to the people of the region that it wants a fair deal for both sides. If with our foreign aid, Israel has carte blanche ability to encroach and occupy without restraint, Arab resentment will proliferate; thereby giving justification to rogue states’ desires to exploit local tensions. 

My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will move the people of the world to insist on an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Pictures of the human suffering broadcasted around the world should shock the conscience of all who say they believe in a just and compassionate God.

If you have read this article, please join a world-wide movement calling for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Remember President John F. Kennedy’s exhortation: God’s work on this earth must truly be our own”.

Michael A. Grant, J.D. is former president of the National Bankers Association.

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(CNN) — The arc of Rep. Mike Johnson’s career encapsulates the shifting priorities of the religious right in the era of Donald Trump.

During his first decades in political life, the newly elected House speaker was a vehement opponent of legal abortion and greater legal equality for LGBTQ people. That focus reflected the dominant public focus of religious conservatives on issues of sexuality and gender roles from the 1980s until Barack Obama’s presidency.

Without abandoning those views, Johnson in recent years has embraced key priorities of Trump’s MAGA movement, describing illegal immigration as “the true existential” threat to America’s future and leading congressional efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he claimed suffered from “credible allegations of fraud and irregularity.”

In his own journey, the Louisiana Republican embodies the merger between different generations of public priorities for the movement of conservative evangelical Christians in which he launched his career and still strongly identifies. Long identified with issues revolving around sexuality, religious conservatives have also become the bedrock supporters of a Trump movement rooted in hostility toward demographic and racial change.

Multiple polls now show that the White evangelicals, and other Republican voters, who express the most conservative views on issues relating to sexuality and gender roles also take the most conservative positions on immigration and racial equity – amalgamating all these concerns into one overarching cry of resistance to the changes remaking 21^st century America.

Like Trump’s commanding lead in the 2024 GOP presidential race, Johnson’s rapid ascent to the speakership in just his fourth congressional term showcases how this multi-front resistance to an evolving America has become the most powerful force binding the modern GOP coalition.

Johnson’s rise reveals the religious roots of that shift much more clearly than Trump’s ascent. As a twice-divorced New Yorker with a history of affairs and public scandals, Trump has always been an unlikely champion for religious conservatives seeking to impose their definitions of morality on public policy.

But Johnson, an evangelical himself, has been a virulent warrior for conservative cultural causes throughout his career, and has closely identified with far-right Christian nationalists seeking to tear down the separation of church and state. Johnson himself has declared, “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.” His rise to leadership underscores the links in the Trump-era GOP between hostility to social and cultural change and the belief that the founders intended America to operate as an explicitly Christian nation.

In the latest annual American Values Survey released last week by the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, a 52% majority of Republican voters agreed with the statement that “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” Only about two-in-ten Democrats and three-in-ten independents agreed. More than half of White evangelicals agreed with that statement as well – the only major religious denomination in which it found majority support.

Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the PRRI, sees the fear that America is straying from explicitly Christian roots as the unifying thread binding the concerns about sexual behavior and gender roles, which preoccupied the first generation of religious right leaders, with the more overt focus on racial and demographic change in the Trump era.

With his embrace of MAGA themes after years denouncing abortion and same-sex marriage, Johnson “is a good symbol of this amalgamation,” said Jones, author of the recent book “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy.”

“I should say it straight here: it really is this view of a country that is a White Christian country. That’s the vision that is being put forward. In many ways that is the vision that holds this whole thing together.”

As the PRRI’s surveys show, White Christians, after representing a majority of the US population for most of its history, now constitute only a little over two-fifths of the total, with White evangelicals slipping to only about one-in-seven. Yet both groups are much more influential inside the GOP coalition, with evangelicals representing nearly one-third of Republican voters and all White Christians about two-thirds. Mike Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, recently calculated in a Substack post that fully 70% of House Republicans represent districts that rank in the top two quintiles for the largest share of White evangelical residents. “A group that represents less than 15% of the US population commands 70% of the districts comprising the majority party in the House of Representatives,” Podhorzer wrote.

As Jones notes, racial issues were central to the “genesis story of the Christian Right.” Though it is often assumed that the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a nationwide right to abortion was the trigger for the emergence of the religious right in the 1970s, in fact it originally coalesced around opposition to efforts from the Jimmy Carter administration to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially segregated religious schools.

Over the next few decades, though, religious right leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson put much more public emphasis on the issues relating to changing sexual mores than on questions tied to race or identity. That changed, Jones and others believe, earlier in this century, amid the combined pressure of increasing diversity in the population and Barack Obama’s election as the first Black president.

“What is new about Republican leaders like Trump and Johnson is not that they reveal a new blend of sexual culture wars and racial grievance,” Jones said, “but rather a willingness to more fully articulate the long-suppressed key ingredient in that recipe.”

As an attorney for the Dobson-linked conservative Christian advocacy group the Alliance Defense Fund (known today as Alliance Defending Freedom) through the early 2000s, Johnson was an especially zealous advocate on the issues of changing sexual attitudes  that dominated the religious right’s first generation.

Johnson not only opposed same-sex marriage, as many conservatives did in those years, but also supported the criminalizing of gay and lesbian sexual relationships, writing at one point that “States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse,” as CNN’s KFile recently reported. Even by the standards of that era, Johnson was especially vitriolic in his denunciations, calling same-sex relations “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle,” and describing gay people as “a deviant group,” as KFile found.

As an elected official, Johnson has generally tempered his rhetoric, but he does not appear to have wavered from those beliefs. As a Louisiana state legislator, he proposed a bill in 2015 that would have prevented the state from applying any sanctions, such as loss of a professional license, on anyone who discriminated against LGBTQ people. In the House of Representatives, he’s proposed a bill to extend nationwide the ban on discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early public school grades that Florida has imposed under Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Johnson’s bill would also affect public libraries and museums.)

Johnson has also co-sponsored legislation proposed by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor to extend nationwide the ban on gender-affirming care for minors – a version of which many Republican-controlled states have also approved. At a hearing on the issue this summer, Johnson expressed impassioned alarm about the large number of young people who identify as LGBTQ in recent surveys and alleged it was driven by conscious efforts to steer them toward that identity. “Whether it’s by scalpel or by social coercion from teachers, professors, administrators, and left-wing media, it’s an attempt to transition the young people of our country,” Johnson insisted.

Nor has Johnson slackened in his opposition to abortion. He’s been a co-sponsor of the so-called “Life at Conception Act,” which would declare a fetus as a person under the 14th amendment and create the legal framework for banning abortion nationwide. Johnson’s congressional votes on other abortion-related issues has consistently earned him an “A+” rating from groups that oppose legal abortion and a zero rating from groups that support it.

But in Congress, Johnson has also identified more with some of the party’s Trump-era priorities that revolve around demographic change. He’s described illegal immigration as “the true existential threat to the country” and insisted, “If you don’t have a border, you don’t have sovereignty, you don’t have a nation at all.”

While many Republicans and conservatives have expressed similar views, Johnson has been noteworthy in embracing one variation of the xenophobic and racist Great Replacement Theory. That theory, which originated in far-right White nationalist circles, argues that Democrats and liberals are deliberately importing undocumented immigrants to “replace” the White majority and diminish their political power. While Johnson has not framed that issue in overtly racial terms, he has repeatedly described illegal immigration as “an invasion” and insisted that Democrats are deliberately enabling it for partisan gain. “The Biden administration has done this intentionally,” Johnson declared in an interview on Newsmax earlier this year. “For what reason? Everybody asks me all the time. I think that ultimately they hope to turn all these illegals into voters for their side.”

Johnson, who’s a constitutional lawyer, also played a central role in organizing House Republicans behind Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those efforts were inextricably bound to conservative fears of racial change as well. The GOP claims of fraud, as I’ve written, were centered on the claims that Democrats were stealing votes in heavily minority large cities rather than the more predominantly White suburban areas where Trump’s performance actually deteriorated the most from 2016 to 2020. Though Johnson was not the most extravagant in his claims of fraud, he echoed some of the key assertions from Trump that the election had been “rigged” against the former president and provided the intellectual and legal arguments that underpin House Republican efforts to reject the results.

In the convergence of these views, Johnson represents the core of the modern GOP coalition. The PRRI provided CNN unpublished results from its new annual survey that show how the same voters most uneasy about changing social mores also express the most discomfort about demographic change.

PRRI found, for instance, that about two-thirds of both Republicans and evangelical Christians who want to ban abortion also agree with a harsh statement that echoes “great replacement theory” language: “Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” Likewise, over four-fifths of Republicans and evangelicals who oppose legal abortion said they support placing physical barriers, including razor wire, along the US-Mexico border to deter illegal immigration “even if they endanger or kill some people.” Among Americans who take liberal positions on abortion and same-sex marriage, there’s much less support for those ideas.

Tresa Undem, who polls for progressive groups, has found a similar correlation in multiple national surveys exploring attitudes toward race, gender and social change. In a national poll last year, she said, her firm found that among Republicans who oppose same-sex marriage or legal abortion, overwhelming proportions also agreed that illegal immigration is a big problem, discrimination against Whites is now as big a problem as discrimination against minorities and that “these days society seems to punish men just for acting like men.” The correlations were similarly powerful among White evangelical Christians: virtually all of them who oppose legal abortion or same-sex marriage also support building a wall at the US-Mexico border.

All of these views, Undem maintains, are the modern expressions of the perennial resistance through American history toward movements that challenge the preeminent societal role of White men, particularly Christians. “It’s a historical and ever-present crushing force against threats to White supremacy and patriarchy,” she argued. “So whether it’s Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, recognizing the humanity of transgender people, voting rights, ending slavery, anti-lynching legislation, women having control over their bodies, or a changing demographic population – the hammer strikes.”

The overwhelming support for exclusionary immigration policies marks a significant, and revealing, shift in evangelical politics over just the past few decades. Large segments of evangelical leadership supported efforts at comprehensive immigration reform that included a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the US under both Republican President George W. Bush and even Obama.

Pete Wehner, who served as a top White House adviser to Bush, said that in those years even many evangelical leaders who were deeply conservative on social issues still supported a welcoming posture toward immigrants. “There was definitely an openness to immigration reform that doesn’t exist today,” said Wehner, now a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. “It was informed, for a lot of Christians who were involved in politics, on a biblical interpretation of welcoming the stranger and the outsider.”

To Wehner, Jones and other analysts, the near universal turn against immigration reform among religious conservatives reflects that community’s increasing sense of alarm about a changing America. From the start, Trump has centered his political identity around the claim that Democrats and other liberal forces are uprooting the nation from its historic traditions and transforming it into something unrecognizable. Johnson also embodies that belief in his marriage of social conservative sentiments from the early 2000s with the anti-immigrant emphasis of the Trump years.

These fears of “losing” America are perhaps most deeply felt in the corners of the religious conservative movement that most explicitly view the US as a Christian nation and most directly seeks to undermine the traditional barriers between church and state. As NBC News recently reported, Johnson in 2021 spoke at a conference hosted by one of the leaders in that effort, a self-styled historian named David Barton. In arguments dismissed by a wide array of professional historians, Barton has contended for years that it is a myth the founders wanted a separation between church and state; Johnson, at that conference, declared that Barton’s work has had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.” (CNN has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment on his current relationship with Barton but did not receive a response before deadline.)

Wehner says the religious conservative circles that believe “America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation” were “the waters in which he [Johnson] swam.” And it is those circles, he notes, that have responded most viscerally to the heightened ferocity and apocalyptic framing of Trump-era Republican politics. “The most important change” in the political engagement of religious conservatives over the past few decades “has not been on the policy agenda, though that’s been important,” Wehner said. “It’s in the temperament and sensibility. There is a ferocity and a cruelty and a dishonesty that characterizes Christian engagement in politics today compared to a generation ago, or even 15 years ago.”

“It doesn’t mean those elements didn’t exist before – if you go through Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, those elements were there,” Wehner added. “But they are more pronounced now and the Trump ethic is one that have imbibed, and they have embraced.”

In his personal demeanor, Johnson is as mild-mannered as Trump is bombastic. But each man appears equally committed to a vision of America that elevates the moral and political preferences of conservative White Christians over any other group. In a podcast recorded immediately after Johnson’s elevation last week, Barton and two colleagues told their listeners not to let the new speaker’s soft-spoken affect confuse them.

“There’s an axiom back from cowboy days that said, ‘Hey, this guy, he’s tough but he’s nice,’” Barton said. “’He’ll make you smile before he hits you in the mouth so he won’t bloody your lips before he breaks your teeth.’”

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(CNN) — The remarkable spectacle in the House of Representatives, where Republicans repeatedly failed for three weeks to fill the speaker’s seat they vacated in early October, has come to an end. The election of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana to the seat, once the most coveted position in the House, has temporarily put the governing body back in session amid urgent foreign policy crises and a looming government shutdown.

It has been more than 150 years since the speakership sat vacant for so long. And this latest chaos only reinforces our current moment as a time when lengthy vacancies have become a regular feature of the federal government. The 422-day vacancy on the Supreme Court following Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016 was the longest since the court was set at nine members in 1869. The Trump administration was so rife with vacancies that record numbers of agencies had acting heads, which led The Washington Post to describe the executive branch as a “government full of temps.”

In each case, Republicans orchestrated these vacancies. But this government in absentia is not just a sign of the party’s dysfunction. While these vacancies emerged for different reasons, the driving force behind them all is a party that has radicalized to the point that it has created a crisis in democracy with catastrophic consequences for the entire country.

It is tempting to see these vacancies through the feature-not-a-bug lens of the Republican Party’s antigovernment politics. If a party doesn’t care about governing, why would it care that the government isn’t functioning? And certainly some on the right have made arguments to that effect. But that misses the much more insidious logic behind these vacancies: Many of today’s Republicans love government, because government is a form of power. You can’t ban reproductive and transition health care without government. You can’t ban books and drag shows without it. You can’t militarize a border or pardon your political allies without state power.

In many ways, the Republicans in the conference who are less radical are the ones more wary of how their colleagues deploy state power. But they have little power. They may have thwarted the nomination of Rep. Jim Jordan, the hard-right Trump ally who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, as speaker — but they fell in line behind Johnson, a far-right election denier. Right now, the party’s radicals run the conference, and they have found real power in the vacancy strategy.

The last time the speakership was vacant this long was in 1859, on the eve of the Civil War. The nation and its parties were riven by sectional divides over slavery that led politicians to contort the federal government to satisfy proponents of slavery. For eight years in the 1830s and 1840s, pro-slavery forces banned any discussion of antislavery petitions with the infamous gag rule. Conflict over slavery destroyed one political party (the Whigs) and gave birth to a new one (the Republicans). And in Congress, it ground all work to a halt in the House for two months as pro- and anti-slavery forces clashed over the speakership. Finally, a compromise candidate emerged, William Pennington of New Jersey, a freshly elected member who would serve just one term in office. And while the speakership crisis resolved, politics ultimately failed. War broke out a year after Pennington’s swearing-in.

We don’t need to draw the parallels too finely. The divisions in the US today are markedly different than those created by slavery. But the political failings that characterized the years leading up to the Civil War suggest we should pay attention when political institutions and procedures begin to systematically fail. Which is why we should spend some time thinking more seriously about these lengthy vacancies.

The first and most important thing to understand: The Republican Party has been responsible for nearly all these vacancies, at a time when a number of its members have also been responsible for one of the most serious incidents of political violence since the Civil War, the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. (There have been deadlier domestic terror attacks, consequential assassinations and widespread state violence against persecuted groups, but the coordinated effort to overturn a presidential election, aided by the leaders of a major party, stands out even among these.)

The motivations have varied. Scalia’s seat remained vacant so Republicans could seize the power to fill it, just as lower courts have had lengthy vacancies to deny Democrats the right to fill those seats. The Trump administration vacancies were devised to give Trump more power over agencies and their leadership, whereas the speaker’s vacancy resulted from intraparty factionalism.

Yet these seemingly disparate motivations spring from a single source: an increasingly radicalized, illiberal Republican Party. In the case of the speakership vacancy, that dynamic annoyed Republican members but did not shake their commitment to antidemocratic politics. After all, the new speaker not only voted to overturn the 2020 election but was an enthusiastic participant in the illegal effort to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

Scalia’s seat sat empty so Republicans could radicalize the court (mission accomplished). Trump skipped confirmation of Cabinet officials so he could wield more power over them (mission accomplished). A small band of Republicans vacated the speakership in hopes they could install a more right-wing speaker (mission very much accomplished). When government gets in the way of those larger goals, then it must be emptied, contorted or violently rejected, but the goal remains not the destruction of government, but the control of it. Which is why these vacancies — and their resolution — remain one of the most important signs we have of democratic decline in the United States.

By vacating the speakership and elevating Johnson to the highest position in the House, Republican radicals have confirmed the value of this vacancy strategy. And while Johnson may enjoy a longer run than his predecessor, the right has learned that vacancies fit perfectly with its power-grab politics. With an election just a year away — and the memory of a violent attempt at seizing power still fresh in mind — their commitment to this approach portends even more chaos ahead.

Nicole Hemmer is an associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s” and co-hosts the podcasts “Past Present” and “This Day in Esoteric Political History.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

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