<The problems the Republican Party had in 2022 that crippled the "red wave" that was supposed to hand the GOP a massive majority in the House and control of the Senate could plague them again because Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is flexing his muscles after leading the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

According to a report from Politico, the GOP leadership is growing exasperated with Gaetz for promoting alternative far-right candidates of his own choosing for seats where the party already has a candidate in mind.

To some GOP insiders, that has created worries about being stuck with unelectable candidates much like what happened in 2022 and putting hopes of controlling both chambers of Congress — and the White House — in jeopardy.

Politico's Madison Fernandez and Gary Fineout report McCarthy has been busy lining up and promoting candidates as he readies his exit from the House while Gaetz is picking his own candidates to challenge them.

Pressed on the fact that he is bucking McCarthy's work, Gaetz replied, "He’s old news. Mike Johnson’s speaker now.”

Politico notes that "the common theme among these candidates who have caught Gaetz’s attention: They’re all ultra-conservatives who are running in primaries against candidates backed by McCarthy," and then adds that Gaetz's interference is causing a "headache for national Republicans."

Pressed on the fact that he is pushing candidates who stand a strong chance of losing in possible pick-up districts, Gaetz brushed aside concerns by stating, "Primaries are a really important part of the political process. It shows the direction the party is moving.”>

<A conservative talk show host on Monday was hit with severe pushback after a social media post that appeared to hail the Statue of Liberty, gifted to the U.S. by France, as a supreme example of American architecture.

Jesse Kelly, who in 2021 openly speculated that Republicans may soon get tired of "following the rules" and "pick a fascist" to lead the party, posted on Christmas eve that American art and architecture is superior to that of Europe.

“People love to sound sophisticated and brag about European art and architecture,” he said Sunday. “I’ve seen America’s and I’ve seen what they’ve got. Theirs can’t touch ours.” Along with that caption, Kelly also included a photo of the Statute [sic] of Liberty.

Kelly’s post was hit with a “community note” from the social media platform, which states that “readers added context to this image.”

“The copper statue, a gift from the people of France, was designed by French sculptor Bartholdi, its metal framework was built by Eiffel,” the note states. “The statue was dedicated in October 1886. The idea came from abolitionist de Laboulaye, to commemorate the centennial of U.S. independence.”

Kelly hit back at the community note, responding with, “I thought [Elon Musk] taking over would let freedom ring on this site.”

“Guess I was wrong,” the radio host added. “Sorry, but these colors don’t run.” He included an American flag as well.

The commenters also pointed out the apparent error.

“Made in France bruh,” one individual added in the comments.

“That was a gift from France,” a verified account with the name Ana Braga added. “This is why staying in school is important!”

Another verified commenter, David Duhme, wrote, “While I agree that American culture is obviously superior, this was literally made by France.”>

<[Event "Greater Boston Open"] [Site "Chestnut Hill Mass"]
[Date "1983.10.08"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "1.1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "B11"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Greater Boston Open"] [Site "Chestnut Hill Mass"]
[Date "1983.10.08"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Glueck, David"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "B10"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Greater Boston Open"] [Site "Chestnut Hill Mass"]
[Date "1983.10.09"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "3"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Gutman, Richard G"]
[ECO "E84"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Greater Boston Open"] [Site "Chestnut Hill Mass"]
[Date "1983.10.09"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "4"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Mercuri, Louis A"]
[ECO "E42"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Goodwin, Michael"]
[Black "Rizzitano, James A"]
[ECO "A48"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Nickoloff, Bryon"]
[Black "Rizzitano, James A"]
[ECO "D07"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Peckford, William"]
[Black "Rizzitano, James A"]
[ECO "E45"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 6.a3 Be7 7.Nf4 d5 8.cxd5 Bxf1 9.Rxf1 exd5 10.g4 c6 11.g5 Ng8 12.h4 Bd6 13.e4 Bxf4 14.Bxf4 Ne7 15.Qf3 O-O 16.Rd1 dxe4 17.Nxe4 Nd5 18.Be5 Nd7 19.Rg1 Nxe5 20.dxe5 Qc7 21.Qf5 Qc8 22.Qxc8 Rfxc8 23.Nd6 Rc7 24.Rd4 Rd8 25.f4 Rcd7 26.Kf2 Ne7 27.Rgd1 c5 28.R4d2 g6 29.Ke3 Kf8 30.Ke2 Nc6 31.Nb5 Ke7 32.Rxd7+ Rxd7 33.Rxd7+ Kxd7 34.Ke3 a6 35.Nd6 Ke6 36.Ke4 Ne7 37.h5 Nf5 38.Nxf5 gxf5+ 39.Kd3 b5 ½-½>

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Field, Gary"]
[ECO "E12"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "London Match"]
[Site "89th US Open"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Larsen, Kenneth"]
[ECO "D36"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "6th Monadnock Marathon"] [Site "Jaffrey NH"]
[Date "1983.10.29"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Thibault, James"]
[ECO "E84"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[Source "365chess"]

<With his "presidential immunity" claim on the line in the D.C. Court of Appeals, President Donald Trump is effectively trying to tell federal judges that they have no power whatsoever to review his conduct while he was in office, wrote Hayes Brown for MSNBC on Tuesday.

This comes after the Supreme Court rejected a request by special counsel Jack Smith to leapfrog the appeals court and decide the matter on an expedited basis, punting the question at least until that lower court decides, and possibly setting up a delay in the trial even in the likely event Trump is unsuccessful.

"Much of the brief Trump’s lawyers filed on Saturday is a rehash of the unfounded constitutional claims that [District Judge Tanya] Chutkan shot down," wrote Brown. "But among those well-trodden arguments, Trump all but requests the appeals court to rule that the judiciary has no power over anything he did while in office — to rule, in effect, that Chutkan has it wrong: He does possess the divine right of kings, and as such, no other branch of government can touch him."

"The basis of this truly bonkers assertion is a favorite of Trump’s, that the separation of powers safeguards him from any kind of oversight," Brown continued. "'Under the doctrine of separated powers, neither a federal nor a state prosecutor, nor a state or federal court, may sit in judgment over a President’s official acts, which are vested in the Presidency alone,' his lawyers write in their brief. They emphasize that a president’s official acts aren’t 'examinable by the Judicial Branch,' a principle that extends back to the landmark 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury vs. Madison. Trump also contends that senior officials — like, for example, the president — shouldn’t face criminal charges from a 'possibly hostile judiciary.'"

The effect of such a holding, if judges were to agree with Trump, would effectively mean no president could ever be prosecuted for conduct they did in office, wrote Brown.

"It’s true that there must be guardrails to allow for the independence of the three branches of our federal government to operate without undue interference from the others," concluded Brown. "But when you look at not just this one appeal, but the aggregate constitutional worldview Trump has espoused over the last seven years, it’s obvious that 'guardrails' are not what he’s advocating. Neither Congress, nor the courts, nor the voters themselves can constrain a president in his framing. For the courts to agree would make Trump a president in name, an emperor in practice, and nothing close to what the Constitution and its drafters intended.">

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Pazos Gambarrotti, Plinio"]
[ECO "E87"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Rolletschek, Heinrich"]
[Black "Rizzitano, James A"]
[ECO "B50"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d3 Nc6 4.g3 g6 5.Bg2 Bg7 6.c3 e5 7.Na3 Nge7 8.O-O O-O 9.Ne1 Be6 10.f4 f5 11.Nf3 h6 12.Be3 b6 13.Qd2 exf4 14.gxf4 fxe4 15.dxe4 d5 16.f5 dxe4 17.fxe6 exf3 18.Rxf3 Rxf3 19.Bxf3 Qxd2 20.Bxd2 Rd8 21.Be1 Rd6 22.Bg3 Rxe6 23.Rd1 Ne5 24.Bg2 Kh7 25.Nb5 Nf5 26.Nxa7 Nxg3 27.hxg3 h5 28.Nb5 Ng4 29.Bf3 Re3 30.Kg2 Ne5 31.Rf1 Nd3 32.g4 h4 33.Rh1 g5 34.Rh3 Be5 35.b3 Bg3 0-1>

No, <ftc>: you <don't> get to dictate content here.

<[Event "5th Midwest Masters"] [Site "Chicago IL"]
[Date "1987.??.??"]
[EventDate "1987"]
[Round "3"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Weiss, Mitchell"]
[Black "Rizzitano, James A"]
[ECO "B93"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "5th Midwest Masters"] [Site "Chicago IL"]
[Date "1987.??.??"]
[EventDate "1987"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Reyes, Romuel"]
[ECO "C17"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<The recorded evidence is music to Jack Smith's ears.

Pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro was recorded discussing how miffed he is over being left holding the consequential bag and touched on the hasty efforts to allegedly secure fake electors' with paperwork in key battleground states in the wake of the incumbent president's 2020 election loss, according to CNN.

The material is something that former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams believes could add fuel to Smith's body of evidence against the 45th president in his criminal election subversion case.

"It's one thing for a jury to read a transcript or even hear someone talk about things they hurt somebody else day, it is another thing to hear voices to have sort of an evocative effect, that is more valuable and powerful," he said during an appearance on the network.

The Trump team is described by Chesebro as trying to deliver critical "phony certificates" to these supposed propped-up electors in multiple states and D.C.

Williams said that the furious attempts to move these ballots across state lines "could be introduced as evidence showing the state mind of not just of the former president, or people around him who knew what they were doing and attempting to take all efforts to get these fake or alternate, their argument is, ballots to Washington, D.C.., it can speak to intent."

Chesebro, who pleaded guilty in October to felony conspiracy in Fulton County Georgia tied to the alternate electors' scheme, has been questioned by prosecutors investigating potential post-election crimes committed in other states including Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

"I don’t have a really warm feeling toward, at least, the top Trump lawyers that did this, hid from me what they were doing and then lied to Congress about me. So, it’s been really difficult,” he said in the recordings.

Chesebro resents being the scapegoat when he claims many others shunned him.

"I have the three top campaign lawyers in interviews with Congress claim they pulled out of this on Dec. 11 and I ran off and did it with Giuliani when in fact they were day-to-day coordinating the efforts of more than a dozen people with the GOP and with the Trump campaign."

"For them to basically say they had nothing to do with it and it's because of me and Giuliani that's what really rankles.">

<A Republican congressional candidate in Colorado who will face Representative Lauren Boebert in next year's primary said the two-term lawmaker cares only about herself.

Boebert, who was first elected in 2020 and won reelection by 546 votes in 2022, announced on Wednesday that she will switch congressional districts ahead of the 2024 election—moving from her 3rd Congressional District to Colorado's more conservative 4th district, citing a "fresh start."

A tough primary race is anticipated as Boebert and other Republicans try to replace outgoing GOP Representative Ken Buck, who after serving the district since 2015 decided to retire from Congress. Buck, who has been verbally attacked by former President Donald Trump as a "Republican in Name Only [RINO]," has been an outspoken member of his conference, notably for criticizing fellow conservatives who continue to claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or rigged in favor of Joe Biden.

"Lauren's political move is to secure a career seat in [Washington] D.C. as she knows CD [Colorado District] 4 is a very conservative district," Trent Leisy, a GOP candidate running in the fourth district, told Newsweek. "She is doing exactly what she has attacked [former Democratic House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi on, which is being a lifelong career politician."

Newsweek reached out to Boebert's office via email for comment.

Leisy has recently made his own headlines, saying that the four Colorado Supreme Court judges who ruled to leave Trump off the state's 2024 presidential primary ballot next year should be tried for treason.

The U.S. Navy veteran and business owner defended his decision to Newsweek, saying every American has a "God-given right" to vote and that the four justices in question—all of whom have received additional security from local and federal agencies since the ruling earlier this month—betrayed the Constitution.

He is running on a platform that vows to "destroy child trafficking, destroy the porn industry, outlaw chemtrails, and financially compensate the families of the January 6 patriots." Leisy noted that he announced his candidacy in June, months before Buck announced his decision to leave Washington.

[Boebert's] representation of Colorado is weakening," he said. "She doesn't represent her current constituents and does not represent my constituents in CD4, which is why she is seat hopping. Not only is she a seat hopper, she is a flip-flopper and has become out of touch with America First constituents by voting alongside RINO representatives.

"I'm not in this for fame or money. I'm in this because I love President Trump and love this country."

Boebert has been widely criticized since her decision was announced, notably because she is leaving a district where her 2022 opponent, Adam Frisch, is running for office again and had already raised more than three times the funds that she has in the past three months.

However, Frisch's chances may have also taken a hit if he doesn't run against a polarizing figure like Boebert.

"Frisch is no longer running against his foil, so the campaign has to retool, which adds a bit of [surmountable] difficulty for them," Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at the Colorado State University, told Newsweek.

Her decision has received mixed reaction from her constituents in the 3rd district, some of whom lamented her move while others expressed optimism at being able to vote for someone whom they say is more in tune with their values.>

<A widespread and misleading story about the Latino vote has taken hold in the media. It goes something like this: Latinos used to be monolithic base voters for Democrats, but now they are fracturing and increasingly fleeing to Republicans.

As longtime practitioners of Latino voter outreach, we’re skeptical of this herd narrative, and we have data to support our misgivings.

Our community is dynamic, diverse and fast-growing. It includes primarily English-speaking, fifth-generation Mexican Americans, many of whom are proud veterans of our armed forces or lifelong union members; recently naturalized, largely Spanish-speaking Mexican and Central American immigrants, especially in the West and Southwest, for whom economic opportunity, education, healthcare and immigration policy are particularly important; large Puerto Rican and Dominican populations in the ever-critical battleground state of Pennsylvania; and long-established families and recently arrived refugees from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua who live in Florida and care deeply about democracy.

It’s hyperbole to say that Latinos have traditionally been a Democratic Party base vote in the way that, for example, African Americans are. Black Americans typically vote for Democrats about 9 to 1; the Latino vote for Democratic presidential candidates is considerably less lopsided, about 2 to 1, with significant variations depending on the candidate.

In 2004, for example, George W. Bush won close to 40% of the Latino vote, helping him carry Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and Virginia. Just eight years later, Barack Obama won more than 70% of Latinos’ votes, flipping five of those states.

We have long argued that as a growing electorate with record numbers of first- and second-time voters, Latinos respond to both persuasion and mobilization campaigns — that is, efforts to win them over as swing voters and to turn them out as base voters. When Democrats invest early and heavily in communicating a message about hope, optimism and the American dream, Latinos support Democrats, and Democrats win.

In 2020, Biden won Latino voters by a 2-1 margin, which proved critical to his victories in Arizona and Nevada. While some Latinos moved toward Trump in South Florida and South Texas, the reports of Democrats hemorrhaging Latino voters have been greatly exaggerated.

The same myth was propagated in 2022: GOP operatives proclaimed that a majority of Nevada’s Latino electorate would vote Republican and send Adam Laxalt to the U.S. Senate. The actual result was the opposite: Nearly two-thirds of the state’s Latino voters supported Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s reelection and helped Democrats expand their majority in the Senate.

What about today? How are the parties’ positions on inflation, abortion, gun violence and the fate of democracy playing among Latinos?

A recent poll of 3,000 Latino voters by UnidosUS suggests it’s Republicans who are struggling with this demographic:

Only 25% of Latinos say they believe that the Republican Party cares a great deal about their community, down from 35% in 2022.

Seventy-one percent of Latino voters think abortion should be legal, putting them at odds with Republicans on the issue.

Latinos trust Democrats over Republicans on healthcare nearly 4 to 1, not surprisingly given Trump’s determination to undo Obamacare.

Across 19 policy issues, including the economy, inflation, small business, healthcare, abortion, gun violence, education and immigration, Latino voters have more confidence in Democrats by double-digit margins.

The poll also found that immigration is still important to this electorate. Latino voters strongly favor a path to citizenship for Dreamers and other long-present immigrants; favor better, more orderly, humane policies on asylum and other forms of legal immigration; and oppose cruel mass deportations.

Trump and other Republicans, meanwhile, are promising to end birthright citizenship, create detention camps and deport 12 million immigrants with no path to citizenship. Their positions could serve to make immigration more salient to Latino voters. Demonstrating a contrast with the GOP’s xenophobic rhetoric and record on this issue would help Democrats pick up critical votes, according to an Immigration Hub poll of Latino voters in battleground states and congressional districts.

What, after all, has Trump or his party proposed to lower costs for Latino families, increase their access to affordable healthcare, reduce gun violence in our communities, protect our rights and democracy, and respect our contributions to our country?

<In William Faulkner’s novel, Sartoris, someone asks the title character, Colonel John Sartoris, why he had fought for the Confederacy so many decades before. “Damned if I ever did know,” replied the aging veteran, now a pillar of his community in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

Of course, we know why Colonel Sartoris raised arms against the United States. So does anyone with a high school diploma — assuming they used up-to-date textbooks. And so did Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, who in 1861 famously asserted that the “cornerstone” of the new Southern nation rested “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” All of which makes it disappointing, though not surprising, that at this late date — almost 160 years after the Civil War — Nikki Haley, a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination, shares Colonel Sartoris’ selective amnesia on the topic. When asked a softball question this week about the causes of the Civil War, Haley, a former South Carolina governor, flubbed the answer, calling it a “difficult” question and mumbling on about “basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

This morning, Haley qualified the comment on a radio show called “The Pulse of New Hampshire,” and followed the clean-up job with a press release, stating: “Of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s unquestioned, always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery. But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.”

But as Haley must know — after all, as governor of South Carolina, she presided over the removal of Confederate flags from the Statehouse— many Americans do question the fundamental fact that slavery precipitated the Civil War, and her equivocation played into a long-standing agenda to rewrite American history. Haley was effectively parroting the Lost Cause mythology, a revisionist school of thought born in the war’s immediate aftermath, which whitewashed the Confederacy’s cornerstone interest in raising arms to preserve slavery. Instead, a generation of Lost Cause mythologists chalked the war up to a battle over political abstractions like states’ rights.

With red states doing battle with American history, seeking to erase the legacy of violence and inequality that counterbalance the great good also inherent in our national story, it’s worth revisiting the rise of the Lost Cause, not just to remember how damaging it was, but to confront just how damaging it still is.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the work of interpreting the rebellion fell to a small group of unreconstructed rebels. The pioneers of Confederate revisionism included wealthy and influential veterans of the Confederacy like Jubal Early, B. T. Johnson, Fitz Lee and W. P. Johnson, who helped formulate the Lost Cause myth that would take hold by the 1880s.

The narrative strains were simple. They painted a picture of Southern chivalry — mint juleps, magnolias and moonlight — that stood in sharp contrast with the North, a region marked by avarice, grinding capitalism and poverty. The rebellion, by this rendering, had been a legal response to the North’s assault on states’ rights — not a violent insurrection to preserve chattel slavery. Even Confederate veterans like Hunter McGuire knew that to admit the war had been about slavery would “hold us degraded rather than worthy of honor … our children, instead of revering their fathers will be secretly, if not openly, ashamed.”....>

<.....The myth gained steamed by the end of the century, largely because of the work of organizations like the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), groups that offered a compelling story that people could wrap their minds around — including many Northerners, who were eager to put the war behind them. Because the Lost Cause emphasized heroism and honor over slavery, it venerated military figures like Robert E. Lee and swept politicians like Jefferson Davis under the rug. So it was that in May 1890 over 100,000 citizens gathered in Richmond for the dedication of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

The decade saw hundreds of towns across the former Confederacy raise similar monuments to their heroes and war dead. These marble and steel memorials were often planted in town squares and by county courthouses to help sanitize not only Confederate memory but the new Jim Crow order. After all, if secession had been a noble thing, so was the separation of the races.

The signs of revisionism ranged from subtle to clear. During the war, for instance, Confederate soldiers had keenly embraced the term “reb,” but the new gatekeepers of Southern memory abandoned the term. “Was your father a Rebel and a Traitor?” asked a typical leaflet. “Did he fight in the service of the Confederacy for the purpose of defeating the Union, or was he a Patriot, fighting for the liberties granted him under the Constitution, in defense of his native land, and for a cause he knew to be right?” Equally important was figuring out what to even call the war. It couldn’t be the “Civil War,” which sounded too revolutionary. It couldn’t be “the War of Rebellion” which smacked of treason. In the late 1880s the UCV and UDC approved resolutions designating the conflict that killed 750,000 Americans the “War Between the States.” The term stuck for generations to come.

It wasn’t just Southerners who suffered willful memory loss in these years. Jaded by the experience of Reconstruction and in the thrall of rising scientific racism, many Northerners were equally eager to remember the war as a brothers’ quarrel over politics rather than a struggle over slavery and Black rights. The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who began the war as a committed abolitionist, later erased the roots of the conflict and celebrated the battlefield valor of both Union and Confederate troops. “The faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty,” he said, “in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.”>

<....Of course, historians agree that most Union troops did know why they were fighting. So did Holmes. But years after the fact, he was willing to forget. As were tens of thousands of veterans who attended Blue and Gray reunions well into the 20th century, including a massive camp gathering of 25,000 people who gathered at Crawfish Springs, Georgia, in 1889, near the Chickamauga Battlefield, for a picnic and public speeches. These mass spectacles helped Yankees and Confederates rewrite the history of the 1850s and 1860s, ostensibly in the service of national reunion and regeneration, but also in a way that fundamentally reinforced the emerging culture and politics of Jim Crow.

The Lost Cause mythology was more than bad history. It provided the intellectual justification for Jim Crow — not just in the former Confederacy, but everywhere systemic racism denied Black citizens equal citizenship and economic rights. Its dismantling only began in the 1960s when historians inspired by the modern Civil Rights Movement revisited the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, adopting the views of earlier Black scholars like W.E.B. DuBois and John Hope Franklin, who always knew what the war was about and had shined a spotlight on the agency of Black and white actors alike.

That’s why the recent retreat to Lost Cause mythos is troubling. One would think that a Republican candidate for the presidency might be proud of the party’s roots as a firmly antislavery organization that dismantled the “Peculiar Institution” and fomented a critical constitutional revolution during Reconstruction — one that truly made the country more free.

With GOP presidential candidates waffling on the Civil War, rejecting history curricula in their states and launching political fusillades against “woke” culture, it remains for the rest of us to reaffirm the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, who in the last years of his life stated: “Death has no power to change moral qualities. What was bad before the war, and during the war, has not been made good since the war. … Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.”>

<[Event "October Madness"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1983.10.22"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Chilenskas, Mark"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "A00"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "October Madness"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1983.10.22"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Hinchey, Christopher"]
[ECO "A53"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]