# Not Unmindful
> A champion for change at W&L and beyond. Anti racist. Anti fascist. Anti ignorance
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About Not Unmindful
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/about/
Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:19:45.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/AdobeStock_302242576_Editorial_Use_Only-4-1.jpeg) 

## About Not Unmindful

## Reimagining our future: a call for change

Welcome to the movement for a truly inclusive and equitable future for our society and for Washington and Lee University in particular. 

## Our inception

Our mission began rooted in the belief that our institution's name should reflect its highest aspirations, not the burdens of a divisive past. We still stand for a name change that aligns the university with progressive values, moving decisively *non in cautus futuri*—not unmindful of the future. It's a movement that started among like-minded alumni in the wake of what happened Charlottesville and Minneapolis not really that long ago. 

For too long, the "Lee" in Washington and Lee University has been a painful reminder of a history inextricably linked to slavery, white supremacy, the Confederacy, and the lost cause myth. While some narratives focus on Robert E. Lee's post-war role, this perspective minimizes his fundamental role in defending an abhorrent system of human bondage. From a progressive viewpoint, honoring a figure who fought to preserve slavery sends a deeply problematic message to black students, faculty, staff, and all who champion racial justice. It, in effect, makes our campus the world's largest confederate memorial, as many others are falling.

It overtly endorses the "Lost Cause" narrative, a pseudohistorical (i.e., bullshit) myth that romanticizes the Confederacy and downplays its horrific origins.

This isn't about erasing history; it's about making a conscious and progressive choice about what history we choose to honor and what values we project to the world. To be **not unmindful of the future** means actively shaping a future where our institutional identity reflects our commitment to justice and equality. It means anticipating evolving societal values and ensuring the university remains relevant and respected by attracting a diverse talent pool and ensuring long-term reputation and relevance in a world increasingly focused on equity. 

A name change is a vital step toward creating a truly welcoming and diverse academic environment where all members of the community can thrive without feeling marginalized or disrespected by the very name of their institution. It's about ensuring the university's public identity authentically reflects its stated aspirations for diversity, equity, and inclusion, fostering a culture of critical self-reflection and progress that will inspire future generations.

We believe that a new name, chosen through an inclusive and transparent process, would not only sever ties with a painful past but also powerfully declare the university's unwavering commitment to justice, equality, and a forward-looking vision for higher education. Join us in this crucial effort to build a university that truly embodies the ideals of a progressive society, always mindful of the future we are building together.

While progress has been made, we will continue to hold the University's feet to the fire to ensure it continues.

## Our current moment

Given what has happened in our country, our focus has now grown beyond the confines of the university, but that remains at the hear of our mission for the same reasons we fight for equity and education throughout society.

We now look to uphold those values that just a few years ago were unimpeachable: freedom of higher education, telling the truth about our history, and supporting a larger L Liberal Democracy (neither left or right kids, just one person one vote) where everyone has the freedoms guaranteed to them by the constitution and everyone is equal under the eyes of the law.

Not this fascist bullshit.

*Non in cautus futuri* applies not only to our alma mater, but also to our society at large, and I will not go silent into that authoritarian night.
### Mission
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/mission/
Last updated: 2025-08-04T18:54:59.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/AdobeStock_360069784_Editorial_Use_Only-2-1.jpeg) 

## Our Mission

## Our primary ask of the W&L Board of Trustees

Our focus remains unchanged—changing the name of the University, with particular focus on removing Lee, as a necessary step in the process of change. Lee is a barrier to progress for many reasons:

1. He is a symbol of white supremacy. Even when he was President of Washington College, he was known and referred to as General Lee, who led a rebel army that fought to maintain and expand slavery.
2. The name as it is divides the attention of university leaders between implementing the Strategic Plan and defending/rationalizing the university’s past.
3. His name divides the university community.
4. His inclusion in the name does not accurately reflect the values and 21st century initiatives of the university.
5. Lee is foundational to a culture built on myths, lies, and legends. That culture has a negative effect on campus climate and perpetuates the myth of the lost cause.
6. His inclusion in the name hinders the recruitment of the best students, faculty, and professional staff.
7. The veneration of Lee, even lessened, still can act as a magnet for those who do not have the best interests of the University at heart, but are serving their own outdated agendas.

## Other asks of the Board

Beyond changing the name, we encourage the Board of Trustees to honor the mission and community commitments in the Strategic Plan by accelerating the pace of change related to the initiatives in that plan. We note that 8 of the 13 Strategic Initiatives deal with the way that the university will address equity, diversity, and inclusion in terms of recruiting, campus climate, culture, and support.

We also Encourage the Board to address problems related to campus climate that have been raised by Not Unmindful and other groups and individuals. These steps include:

1. Soliciting and prioritizing unfiltered feedback from current students and the recent alumni—those who are best informed to speak to current campus climate.
2. Appropriately funding and staffing administrative offices and support functions necessary to enable and empower all students to enjoy their student experience.
3. Reforming or eliminating systems, organizations, and events that maintain, foster, or promote exclusion and division on campus.

## Our part

Finally, as alumni, we commit to support the university with our time, energy, and money as it makes these changes. And though the University has made positive steps in this direction (the changes to University Chapel), it has slid backwards in others (a commitment to DEI, though we understand the current climate for what it is). We will continue to hold its feet to the fire to follow through on the commitments it has already made.
### FAQ
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/faq/
Last updated: 2025-06-23T13:53:02.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/iStock-452046585-4-1.jpg) 

## FAQ

## Common Questions about Not Unmindful

#### Why are you doing this? Why do you want to hurt the school?

We want to help the school. We are doing this because we love the school. Morally, removing Lee from the name and brand of the university is the right thing to do. It's also the right thing to do from a business perspective. The university is boxed in, even though they may not see it or admit it yet. Lee is the primary brand of the university, and he is one of the primary symbols of white supremacy.

Despite the great work in admissions, especially in the last few years, the Lee name is a hindrance. After many events within the last decade, it will be more of an obstacle. Ask the professionals in admissions. Ask the coaches who are serious about recruiting for diversity.

It is an obstacle in recruiting adults as well. President Dudley said in 2021 that in the previous two years, 45% of tenure-track faculty hires were people of color and 20% were Black. That sounds great, but it doesn't take a math major to realize that he is talking about 20 people, 9 people, and 4 people. That is not enough. There are no Black cabinet members. 

It may not affect giving immediately, but many younger alumni also support a name change. This will become even more apparent as millennials and Gen-Z begin to make the kind of money to donate in large amounts.

#### Do you want to erase our history?

We want to make sure that history is accurate. We want to take Lee out of the lost-cause mythology and place him back into history. Nobody wants to pretend that Lee did not exist. 

After Germany’s defeat in WW2, the Germans did not name universities after Rommel. They did not teach that the Nazis were great men fighting for a noble cause. They did not build monuments to Rommel either. But Nazi Germany did not disappear from history because it IS history—it happened. In fact, that period and those historical figures have been studied and written about endlessly because they are fascinating.

#### So, you buy into all of this revisionist history?

We buy into facts. Actual history. The history that is not mythology. When we learn new facts, we are open to revising our own views. In fact, that is a a foundational principle of a liberal arts education.

Revisionism refers to re-interpretation of historical accounts. We reject the revisionist label as it relates to Lee, because we are evaluating him objectively based on the introduction of facts that previously have been suppressed by those who promoted the myths and lies of Lost Cause narratives, including the university itself. 

The lost-cause idolization of Lee IS revisionist history. He was a traitor against the United States of America. He didn't fight the "Union", he fought against the United States Army.

#### It’s a slippery slope. Where does it stop? 

We disagree. We believe that the truth provides firm footing.  
But if it is a slippery slope, it's because it's built on a mountain of myths, lies, and legends built over the past 150 years to support a racist and classist mindset, and it’s time that it be torn down. We don't know where it stops, but we are saying that it can start with Lee.

#### What do you wish for?

We do not know what the future looks like. No one does. But we DO believe that the risk of the status quo is more dangerous than the risk of change, both from a moral and a business perspective. We believe that the longer that the university wastes time and energy trying to rationalize the legacy of Lee, the more pain there will be for all members of the university community. 

#### Isn't the name different than statues and monuments?

As it stands. With the name, the University is the largest Confederate monument in the United States.

The name is also more harmful than any statue. Because it is an undeserved and undesired honor that legitimizes what the man stood for. Because it was the foundation of a business model based on name recognition, not merit. 

It was the foundation of a culture, rather than a small aesthetic piece of it. The trustees were trading on Lee's name. Then the university intentionally propagated a mythology, ethos, and culture after the fact to justify and inflate Lee’s “contributions to the school” so that the university could continue to prosper. 

#### But what about these super-wealthy alumni who support the school? Are they going to abandon it?

Generations pass. But we hope not.

The amount of money that several handfuls of donors have given to the school is astounding in its generosity. It has changed lives. It bothers us when people cast those patrons in a negative light. “Rich old people,” “White and Loaded”—those sorts of labels bother us. 

Those people have done more for the university and for students over the years than most of us will ever be able to do. Our belief is that those people have supported the school because they love the whole school—not just one part of it. We think they love the school more than they love Lee. In fact, that's not only true of the super-wealthy. It's true of almost all donors.

#### So what should the name be?

We will not propose a new name. We think that there should be a renaming process led by the Board of Trustees working with people who are experts in such things (i.e., branding agencies). 

 Further, we believe that if that process is transparent, and seeks input from all members of the university community, that it will provide an opportunity for healing. We also believe that the process will offer the university an unprecedented opportunity, complete with millions of dollars in free media, to tell the wider world about its values and strategic initiatives, and that it will be a tremendous asset in recruiting students, faculty, coaches, and key leaders. In fact, it will be the first time in ages that the university will have the opportunity to tell its own story, rather than reacting to current events.

#### Won't this just blowing up the school's culture and make it into just any other liberal arts university? 

We do not want to blow up anything. We are saying that the foundation is already collapsing. Changing the name of the university on moral and business grounds is an issue that does not reside on the left-right political continuum. 

Honestly, we do not think that a hard pivot to the left is very likely, given the school’s history, its alumni, its trustees, and so forth. But even if the university were to double down on its reputation as an institution that produces conservative thought leaders, it can better claim moral high ground if its name and brand do not double as a symbol of white supremacy. 

hanging the name opens the door for the university to create a culture more in line with its values and 21st century initiatives. We hope that students will participate in building that culture. As alumni, it is not our place to be overly prescriptive about how those initiatives are implemented.
### Resources
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/resources/
Last updated: 2025-07-20T18:34:39.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/AdobeStock_303128616_Editorial_Use_Only-3.jpeg) 

## Resources

Browse the available resources that have been published on the topics of Robert E. Lee and the Lost Cause and how it still reverberates today.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/AdobeStock_30835136-1.jpeg) 

## Online resources

Visit these links to read more about Robert E. Lee without the mythology and learn more about systemic racism in our society today.

[See Online Resources](https://www.notunmindful.org/online-resources/) 

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![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/AdobeStock_495250433-1.jpeg) 

## Books

A list of "required" reading to understand how we got here and how to best combat the lost cause mythology and racism in our society at large.

[See a List of Books](https://www.notunmindful.org/books/)
### Online resources
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/online-resources/
Last updated: 2025-07-20T18:34:01.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/AdobeStock_495250362-2-1.jpeg) 

## Online resources

This list provides a good background on the source and current state of systemic racism in the USA. The are source from various members suggestions. Variously, these articles and maps will give you the information you need around demystifying Robert E. Lee and help with a deeper understanding of the insidiousness of systemic racism and white privilege.

None of these are required reading for our cause, but we are providing a list of them for those that are interesting in learning more, whether it's for their own understanding or to help them in hard conversations with friends who may be persuaded to join us.

[Anti-DEI Efforts and the Attempted Whitewashing of America](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/anti-dei-efforts/?ref=notunmindful.org) — The Southern Poverty Law Center

[Anti-DEI efforts | 2024 Year in Hate & ExtremismDiversity, equity and inclusion initiatives became ground zero for hard-right mobilizations to whitewash American society and protect white supremacy.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/favicon-1.ico)Southern Poverty Law Center![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/web-2024-yihe-anti-dei-ben-jones-fist.jpg)](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/anti-dei-efforts/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[7 ways American racism is 'alive and well' today](https://www.futurity.org/7-factors-racism-united-states-2384462/?ref=notunmindful.org). —Futurity 

[7 ways American racism is ‘alive and well’ todaySeven factors shape racism in the United States, say researchers. “Many people, especially white people, underestimate the depths of racism.”![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/futurity_ico.png)FuturitySandra Feder-Stanford![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/7-factors-racism-united-states_1600.jpg)](https://www.futurity.org/7-factors-racism-united-states-2384462/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[A Map of Anti-DEI Efforts on College Campuses across the U.S.](https://edtrust.org/rti/a-map-of-anti-dei-efforts-on-college-campuses-across-the-u-s/?ref=notunmindful.org) —EdTrust

[A Map of Anti-DEI Efforts on College Campuses Across the U.S.Threats to DEI are only growing stronger, with continued plans to introduce bills in the next legislative session, and attacks occurring on the accreditation front. Use our interactive dashboard to keep track of the evolving attacks on DEI across the states.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/fav-icon.png)EdTrustSayda Martinez-Alvarado![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/Hope-College-campus.jpg)](https://edtrust.org/rti/a-map-of-anti-dei-efforts-on-college-campuses-across-the-u-s/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[Anti-DEI Efforts Are the Latest Attack on Racial Equity and Free Speech](https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/anti-dei-efforts-are-the-latest-attack-on-racial-equity-and-free-speech?ref=notunmindful.org) —ACLU

[Anti-DEI Efforts Are the Latest Attack on Racial Equity and Free Speech | ACLUThe far right wants to get rid of DEI offices, end anti-bias training, and stop public statements of support for diversity. It’s the latest effort to dismantle systems designed to foster racial equity and progress.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon.png@2x-300x300.png)American Civil Liberties UnionLeah Watson![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/dei-aclu-social.jpg)](https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/anti-dei-efforts-are-the-latest-attack-on-racial-equity-and-free-speech?ref=notunmindful.org)

[Map: The impact of anti-DEI legislation](https://abcnews.go.com/US/map-impact-anti-dei-legislation/story?id=108795967&ref=notunmindful.org) — ABC News

[Map: The impact of anti-DEI legislationAcross the country, conservative legislators have begun to target diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, in state agencies, schools and private companies.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/favicon.ico)ABC NewsABC News![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/AntiDEILaws_Main_v01_DP_1712164336520_hpMain_16x9.jpg)](https://abcnews.go.com/US/map-impact-anti-dei-legislation/story?id=108795967&ref=notunmindful.org)

[How State Anti-DEI Efforts Are Evolving (from Public Sector to Private?)](https://www.multistate.us/insider/2025/3/7/how-state-anti-dei-efforts-are-evolving-from-public-sector-to-private?ref=notunmindful.org) —Multistate.com

[How State Anti-DEI Efforts Are Evolving (from Public Sector to Private?)With the Trump Administration’s focus on eliminating DEI programs from the federal government, state lawmakers have renewed their own efforts at the state level. MultiState is tracking 78 bills in 23 states this legislative session related to anti-DEI efforts. These bills generally ensure that no state funds are spent on DEI programs and prohibit DEI use in state agencies, local governments, schools, higher education, public boards, and public health care systems. However, though elected officials have prioritized the repeal of DEI policies inside the public sector, they now are putting additional pressure on the private sector to conform to their preferences (via legislation and AG action).![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/multistate-favicon-16x16.png)MultiStateMultiState![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/NC-20-1--5907f8-1200px.jpg)](https://www.multistate.us/insider/2025/3/7/how-state-anti-dei-efforts-are-evolving-from-public-sector-to-private?ref=notunmindful.org)

[My University is Named for Robert E. Lee. What Now?](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/washington-lee-university-trump-nationalism.html?ref=notunmindful.org) — Pasquale S. Toscano

[Yes, Even George Washington](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/opinion/george-washington-confederate-statues.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR2pd6ci2ZdFTrLE96rWWdZNBb0YvYUWTk5IJ%5FmGQSrsL%5F2oNJSvKIEYYX8&ref=notunmindful.org) — Charles M. Blow

[The toxic masculinity behind Civil War monuments.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/local-opinions/the-toxic-masculinity-of-all-those-racist-statues/2020/06/18/b31488dc-b009-11ea-856d-5054296735e5%5Fstory.html?ref=notunmindful.org) — Laura Brodie in the Washington Post

"Ties between Confederate memorials and white supremacy have been documented in many of the speeches given at monument dedications. Most notorious were [Julian Carr’s words](https://hgreen.people.ua.edu/transcription-carr-speech.html?ref=notunmindful.org "hgreen.people.ua.edu") at the 1913 raising of the University of North Carolina’s “Silent Sam” memorial, [toppled by protesters](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/27/silent-sam-university-north-carolina-confederate-statue/4323970002/?ref=notunmindful.org "www.usatoday.com") in 2018."

[The Robert E. Lee Problem](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/opinion/david-brooks-the-robert-e-lee-problem.html?searchResultPosition=44&campaignId=7JFJX&ref=notunmindful.org) — David Brooks

Arlington, Bobby Lee, and the 'Peculiar Institution' — Ta-Nehisi Coates

[Arlington, Bobby Lee, and the ‘Peculiar Institution’An examination of Robert E. Lee’s complicated position on the institution of slavery![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-152x152-aafde20dd981a38fcd549b29b2b3b785.png)The AtlanticTa-Nehisi Coates![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/ArlingtonHouse01_post.jpg)](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/arlington-bobby-lee-and-the-peculiar-institution/61428/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[What Do We Do With Robert E. Lee?](https://delacortereview.org/2019/11/04/what-do-we-do-with-robert-e-lee/?ref=notunmindful.org) — Abigale Covington 

[What Do We Do With Robert E. Lee? - The Delacorte ReviewThe General is buried at Washington and Lee University. For over a century that was never a problem. Then came Charlottesville.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/cropped-TDR-5-1-270x270.jpg)The Delacorte Review - Real true stories (and how they happen)Abigail Covington![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/IMG_0664.jpg)](https://delacortereview.org/2019/11/04/what-do-we-do-with-robert-e-lee/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[The Making and Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/books/review/eric-foner-robert-e-lee.html?searchResultPosition=72&ref=notunmindful.org). — Eric Foner

[Why My Alma Mater’s Brand Name, Washington and Lee, is Becoming Untenable](https://thesageleopard.com/why-my-alma-maters-brand-name-washington-and-lee-is-becoming-untenable/?ref=notunmindful.org). — Katherine Fraser for The Sage Leopard (Not Unmindful)

"A bit of background to illustrate that the name brand of Washington and Lee has been internally debated within the W&L community for years. Why? “W&L’s affiliation with its namesakes – particularly R.E. Lee – greatly limits the school’s ability to attract diverse students, faculty and staff”...

[Robert E. Lee, American traitor](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/01/28/arguable/RoEcRoxu0og8OzYHTITKxN/story.html?event=event12&ref=notunmindful.org). — Jeff Jacoby (paywalled)

[Robert E. Lee, American traitor - The Boston GlobeIn this week’s Arguable newsletter, Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes about Robert E. Lee, the Charles Dickens page, and Universal Basic Income.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon.png)The Boston GlobePrint this Article View Comments![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/OGMFYEBDEYI6THZYFAI4AUI7XI.jpg)](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/01/28/arguable/RoEcRoxu0og8OzYHTITKxN/story.html?event=event12&ref=notunmindful.org)

[Letting Go of Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee University.](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/robert-lee-washington-statue/?ref=notunmindful.org) — Toni Locy 

[Letting Go of Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee UniversityIt is going to get increasingly hard to persuade high school students who care about diversity to attend a university named after a Confederate general.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-1.png)The NationToni Locy![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/robert-e-lee-getty-img.jpg)](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/robert-lee-washington-statue/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[At 63, I Threw Away My Prized Portrait of Robert E. Lee.](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-threw-away-my-portrait-robert-e-lee/573631/?ref=notunmindful.org) — Stanley A. McChrystal

[At 63, I Threw Away My Prized Portrait of Robert E. LeeI was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-152x152-aafde20dd981a38fcd549b29b2b3b785-1.png)The AtlanticStanley A. McChrystal![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/original.jpg)](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-threw-away-my-portrait-robert-e-lee/573631/?ref=notunmindful.org)

[Why Lee Should Go, and Washington Should Stay](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/opinion/why-lee-should-go-and-washington-should-stay.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.Q08.o2hs.v1MTq2EK1bKl&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org). — Jon Meacham

[Robert E. Lee: His Brutality to His Slaves](http://fair-use.org/national-anti-slavery-standard/1866/04/14/robert-e-lee-his-brutality-to-his-slaves?fbclid=IwAR1mtqPvHnarUi5Oujaxs06XwpYHqsmUO2FdC583FYA-HxO6vtDOoNO9uVU&ref=notunmindful.org) — Wesley Norris, edited by Parker Pillsbury

[Robert E. Lee: His Brutality to His Slaves. In NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD Vol. XXVI. No. 49 (April 14, 1866). Whole No. 1,349![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/favicon-2.ico)Fair Use RepositoryWesley Norris![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/pdf)](http://fair-use.org/national-anti-slavery-standard/1866/04/14/robert-e-lee-his-brutality-to-his-slaves?fbclid=IwAR1mtqPvHnarUi5Oujaxs06XwpYHqsmUO2FdC583FYA-HxO6vtDOoNO9uVU&ref=notunmindful.org)

[The Myth of the Kindly General Lee](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/?ref=notunmindful.org) — Adam Serwer

[The Myth of the Kindly General LeeThe legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-152x152-aafde20dd981a38fcd549b29b2b3b785-2.png)The AtlanticAdam Serwer![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/original-1.jpg)](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/?ref=notunmindful.org)

Robert E. Lee was not the George Washington of his time. But a lot ties them together — Ann M. Simmons

[Robert E. Lee was not the George Washington of his time. But a lot ties them togetherIf we tear down statues of Robert E. Lee, does that mean we should tear down statues of George Washington? We ask an expert.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-2.png)Los Angeles TimesAnn M. Simmons![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/75)](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-washington-and-lee-20170817-htmlstory.html?ref=notunmindful.org)

##
### Books
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/books/
Last updated: 2025-06-23T17:10:32.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/iStock-521495094-2.jpg) 

## Books

None of these are required reading for the cause, but we are providing a list of books for those that are interesting in learning more, whether it's for their own understanding or to help them in hard conversations with friends. They cover the myth of the lost cause as well as dealing with racism in society in general.

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/81KbFKjwW9L._SY342_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/cGXQsq1?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Seidule, Ty. ***Robert E. Lee and Me**. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2022.

In a unique blend of history and reflection, Seidule deconstructs the truth about the Confederacy―that its undisputed primary goal was the subjugation and enslavement of Black Americans―and directly challenges the idea of honoring those who labored to preserve that system and committed treason in their failed attempt to achieve it.

[Bu from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/cGXQsq1?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/81LTmqYYAQL._SL1500_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/cFaCj33?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Blight, David W. ***Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory**. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Probably the most influential book written in recent history about the Lost Cause and how American’s remembered the Civil War. Argues that white Americans reunified and reconciled by downplaying the importance of emancipation and the experience of African Americans during the Civil War.

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/cFaCj33?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/9780674027213.png.jpeg)](https://a.co/d/6EKjTWz?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Brundage, Fitzhugh W. ***The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory**. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Since the Civil War whites and blacks have struggled over the meanings and uses of the Southern past. Indeed, today's controversies over flying the Confederate flag, renaming schools and streets, and commemorating the Civil War and the civil rights movement are only the latest examples of this ongoing divisive contest over issues of regional identity and heritage. **The Southern Past* argues that these battles are ultimately about who has the power to determine what we remember of the past, and whether that remembrance will honor all Southerners or only select groups.

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/6EKjTWz?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/9780807152133_300_450-317969970.webp)](https://a.co/d/23vzql5?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Gallagher, Gary W. ***Lee and his Generals in War and Memory**. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998.

A timely reexamination of the career of Robert E. Lee and his relations with his subordinates includes a study of Lost Cause interpretations of the war that argue that Lee and Stonewall Jackson were flawless warriors hurt by inept generals

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/23vzql5?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/81IimYvlmIL._SY342_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/8YhlQhX?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Janney, Caroline E. ***Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconstruction** *.* Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

As early as 1865, survivors of the Civil War were acutely aware that people were purposefully shaping what would be remembered about the war and what would be omitted from the historical record. In **Remembering the Civil War*, Caroline E. Janney examines how the war generation ― men and women, black and white, Unionists and Confederates ― crafted and protected their memories of the nation’s greatest conflict. 

[Bu from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/8YhlQhX?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/81xuj-U7qqL._SY342_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/gSBbsyP?ref=notunmindful.org) 

***The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture**, edited by Alice Fahs and John Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

A collection of essays—the best one stop shop for quick but deep dives into a wide variety of controversies about how American’s remember the Civil War. The essays move among a variety of cultural and political arenas — from public monuments to parades to political campaigns; from soldiers' memoirs to textbook publishing to children’s literature — in order to reveal important changes in how the memory of the Civil War has been employed in American life. 

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/gSBbsyP?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/71ybvPkBWDL._SY342_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/a4uERhv?ref=notunmindful.org) 

***The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History**, edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Misrepresenting the war's true origins and its actual course, the myth of the Lost Cause distorts our national memory. In **The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History,* nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying ways in which it falsifies history―creating a volume that makes a significant contribution to Civil War historiography.

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/a4uERhv?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/514NaNCafCL._SY342_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/gJ8m6E0?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Dabney, R.L., ***A Defense of Virginia and the South, Annotated.** :Sprinkle Publications. 1991

This is the source. The origin of the lost cause mythology. Originally published in 1867, this book laid the foundation for the mythos that still haunts America today.

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/gJ8m6E0?ref=notunmindful.org) 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/06/81vH2HkMLSL._SY342_.jpg)](https://a.co/d/gsYvH7g?ref=notunmindful.org) 

Pryor. Elizabeth Brown. ***Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters**. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.

This book offers a portrait of him based on his unpublished personal correspondence offers insight into the lesser-known complexities of his personality, in a collection of essays that covers such topics as Lee's early years, his relationships with family and slaves, and his thoughts on military strategy.

[Buy from Amazon ](https://a.co/d/gsYvH7g?ref=notunmindful.org)
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### Help support Not Unmindful
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Last updated: 2025-09-29T14:42:19.000Z
As you know I helped build and then maintained the original Not Unmindful site, and I resurrected it earlier this year on a more cost effective and simpler platform to ease publication. One of the “benefits” of the new platform is to introduced tiered, subscription pricing for payment.

This content, however, must remain free. That is my promise. 

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## Posts
### Philip Meredith freed his own damn self
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/philip-meredith-freed-his-own-damn-self/
Last updated: 2026-09-11T14:17:02.000Z
There is no portrait of Philip Meredith. No photograph, no sketch, no likeness anywhere in the record. There is nothing like the stereo view of Selina Gray that turned up on eBay in England and now hangs at Arlington House.

There is only a clerk's physical description on a government form: "Dark Copper Color about 5 ft 4 inches" and an X where his name should be. That's the entirety of what Philip Meredith left behind for us to look at. 

Robert E. Lee, meanwhile, is carved in marble at one and a half times life-size, asleep under his own full name and dates, in a chapel at a university that still bears the name. One of these men has a face history remembers. It is not the one who was actually enslaved.

For roughly thirty years, Philip Meredith belonged to Robert E. Lee. Not to Arlington. Not to the Custis estate Lee administered, but to Lee, personally. The one relationship early Lee hagiography insists barely happened and the one that survived every account written to make Lee bearable.

Nobody freed him. He freed himself. He filed his own petition with a federal commission—the paperwork his owner wouldn't file—after Lee had already run south to fight a war to keep men like him enslaved. That story is sitting in the National Archives. It has been sitting there since 1862\. Three institutions had every resource to get this right. They didn't. It took one alumnus checking the files himself and reporting his findings on social media.

All the institutions got it wrong in exactly the direction you'd expect.

## **The file**

In April 1862, Congress freed every enslaved person in the District of Columbia and set up a commission to process claims. Philip Meredith filed his petition under that act, because the man who owned him hadn't bothered to. The form itself says why:

> "General Robert Lee of Virginia... having refused or neglected to file in your office the statement in writing... you will please file this petition... in lieu thereof."

Lee was busy. He'd joined a rebellion to keep Meredith enslaved. Freeing him wasn't the point.

Meredith couldn't sign his own name. The petition is marked with his X. Age thirty, "Dark Copper Color about 5 ft 4 inches," was the clerk's physical inventory of the man asking the government to certify he wasn't property anymore.

The supporting evidence comes from James Eveleth. Eveleth was the agent Lee had put in charge of Meredith in 1852—leasing him from Lee, collecting the wages Meredith earned, handling his arrangements, and answering to Lee for the proceeds. Eveleth testified he'd known the "servant" for thirty years, that Lee "left servant in District" when he went south, and—this is the line that ends up doing all the work later—that he'd had "frequent conversations with Gen Lee in which Gen Lee expressed regret that he owned servant & wished he was free."

Attached to that is a receipt from 1854: Meredith's wages passing through Eveleth's hands to Lee, seven dollars and fifty cents on top of fifty-one dollars already collected "at different times," credited against the "Service due" Lee. Whatever regret Lee expressed to his agent, it did not translate into a manumission paper, and it did not stop him from collecting the earnings of a man he claimed to wish were free—for at least eight years running, right up until the war took him south and a federal statute did what Lee never had.

That is the entire record. No sensation. No hearing. A dark-copper man in his thirties who could not write his name, asking a wartime commission to certify what his enslaver would not.

## **What the National Park Service page leaves out**

Arlington House—the federal memorial to Lee, rehabilitated in 2021 with $12.35 million—has the explicit mandate to stop telling the story as hagiography. Its website includes a page titled "Robert E. Lee and Slavery," a genuinely useful resource for anyone working this history. It cites an 1852 lease document as "the last direct evidence that Lee still owned enslaved people," and states: "There are no records of Lee freeing or selling any of them."

Both claims come up short. The Park Service's own footnote for the 1852 document is a [dead link](https://leefamilyarchive.org/9-family-papers/52-lease-for-a-slave-1852-august-1?ref=notunmindful.org) to leefamilyarchive.org. With a bit of searching, though, you can [read it here](https://leefamilyarchive.org/lease-for-a-slave-1852-august-1/?fbclid=IwY2xjawTVr4BleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFSYU9EZHdrNXhxNmR3RG1xc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHk15eGd8PaspXnMakzTyeWIVFXNC-Pl-VIZIJPBSRvttOXZvK1NZo5c8mTcO%5Faem%5FPLFMHpJZE5X4DDqGjuythA&ref=notunmindful.org)—Lee's own hand, appointing Eveleth as agent to hire out "my servant Philip Minday." A reader following the Park Service's actual citation would never reach it.

What the document shows, once you find it, combined with the Meredith petition: the same agent, Eveleth, and the same enslaved man, in a relationship that ran unbroken until Lee left for the Confederacy—a full decade past the point the page treats as the end of the trail. The record has sat in an accessible archive the entire time, while the footnote points nowhere.

The page is valuable, and worth fixing rather than dismissing. But it is the U.S. government's official corrective to Lost Cause mythology, four years post-rehabilitation, last updated in 2024, and it still undersells how long and how directly Lee held a human being in bondage.

## **What a Wall Street Journal Best Book got backwards**

Allen Guelzo's *Robert E. Lee: A Life*—a Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, praised across the ideological spectrum as the clear-eyed corrective to both hagiography and reflexive condemnation—tells the Meredith story with a twist. Guelzo writes that Meredith's petition was made "sensational by describing 'frequent conversations with Gen Lee in which Gen Lee expressed regret that he owned servant & wished he was free.'"

Read that again next to the actual document. That sentence is Eveleth's testimony. Word for word. It is not something Meredith said, described, or could have said—Meredith signed with an X and left no testimony in the file at all. Guelzo took his enslaver's agent's second-hand account of his enslaver's private feelings, and put it in the enslaved man's own mouth.

On the Law & Liberty Podcast, Guelzo went further, narrating a scene that doesn't exist: "this caused quite a ruffle of interest because here was General Lee's valet, and he's applying for emancipation in the District, so they interview him. And he says, well, you know, General Lee never liked slavery." Nobody interviewed Meredith. There is no "ruffle of interest" in the record. There is a form, an X, and another man's testimony about another man's regrets. Regrets that never once produced a manumission paper.

A researcher who found this a year ago wrote to Guelzo and Knopf requesting a correction. Nothing has been done. The paragraph in question has no endnote at all.

The error runs in exactly one direction. It takes the least flattering fact in the record—that Lee held a man in bondage for at least a decade after supposedly wishing he were free, and collected his wages the whole time—and replaces it with the oldest, most comfortable myth in Lost Cause literature: the enslaved man himself, testifying to his master's inner goodness. It doesn't matter whether Guelzo meant to do this. The effect is the same regardless of intent, and it's now sitting uncorrected in a book assigned in college classrooms as the fair-minded, non-hagiographic Lee biography.

## **Third institution, same file**

Washington and Lee University is choosing its twenty-eighth president right now. The Generals Redoubt—the alumni group organized to defend the university's Lee-centric identity—has spent this search pushing exactly the reading that the National Park Service and Guelzo both, independently, arrived at. Lee as the reluctant slaveholder, morally uneasy, better understood in context, a man who wished things were otherwise.

Philip Meredith is the context. Thirty years enslaved. A decade of wages collected by Lee's agent and passed up to Lee. No manumission, ever, offered freely—only a wartime commission, a government form, and an X mark, filed the same month Lee's legal obligation to free him lapsed through his own neglect.

That is not a complicated man wrestling with a system. That is a man who held another human being in bondage for as long as the war allowed him to, whose agent's flattering account of his private regrets changed nothing about what he actually did.

Two well-resourced, credentialed institutions had access to this file. Neither read it correctly. The university whose name is still Lee's is about to choose someone to decide, again, how much of this it's willing to teach. The file didn't change. The question is whether the twenty-eighth president will read it.

*Non incautus futuri.*

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### Lemon was a man
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/lemon-was-a-man/
Last updated: 2026-08-21T18:11:21.000Z
The College of William & Mary owned him along with an unknown number of others from its founding until the Civil War. In 2021 the law school named a scholarship after him—five full rides for graduates of historically Black colleges. This was one small piece of the university's long, halting effort to account for having been, for most of its existence, a slaveholder. *(Full disclosure: I graduated from William & Mary; I make that disclosure because what follows is about a place I attended and love.)*

On August 17, the Department of Justice [opened a civil-rights investigation](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-investigates-william-marys-scholarships-student-benefits-unlawful-race?ref=notunmindful.org) into the college for it.

The review proceeds under Title VI, and the letter is signed by Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Title VI bars institutions that take federal money from discriminating by race. Congress wrote this in 1964 to pry open segregated universities. Dhillon has turned it around to face the other way. 

Her letter to William & Mary's counsel states that the Department "has reason to believe" the college awards scholarships and benefits using "race-based criteria." Further, it demands the documents to prove it by September 8\. The government asserts it may pull student records, which are otherwise protected under FERPA, without consent. If the college is found in violation and will not settle, the letter promises the consequences plainly. It will suspend, terminate, or refuse federal funding, and bring a civil suit.

This is the third such review of a Virginia university in two years. The University of Virginia settled, and its president resigned. George Mason received the same letter in July 2025 and remains under investigation (one of several federal probes it now faces). The letters are near-identical—the openings run word for word, only the school names have been swapped in and out.

The letter states what the government means by "race-based criteria" directly. It is worth reading, because the words in it are the argument.

Among the programs Dhillon's letter cites is the W&M Scholars program, an undergraduate scholarship covering in-state tuition. Its offense: the college gives "top consideration" to applicants with "an interest in diverse people and perspectives." Not applicants of a particular race—applicants interested in diverse perspectives. The word "diverse," appearing on a public webpage, is entered as evidence. *(Full disclosure again: I'd have qualified for it had I enrolled there—a white man of the right background.)*

The letter continues through the programs:

- The School of Education's Martha L. Muguira Fellowship, need-based, prefers Hispanic and Latino women.
- The Holmes Scholars program mentors doctoral students to "develop future education leaders of color."
- The Reaching Back Scholarship prefers graduates of HBCUs or those "who contribute to the diversity of the Law School."
- The Virginia Teaching Scholarship Loan Program, a state loan for future teachers, flagged because the college describes its nominations as "an incentive to increase the diversity of persons pursuing careers in teaching." No race anywhere in it. The word "diversity" is the offense.

And then the letter reaches for things that are not scholarships at all:

- The Donning of the Kente, a graduation ceremony, flagged because an archived version of its webpage once described it as "for students of color."
- A promotional flier, posted October 4, 2022, by the W&M Student Assembly—the student government—to its Instagram account, for a two-day panel with Howard University to "promote Black Excellence in the legal field."

The Department found the first by going through the college's historical pages on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The second, from a student government account. They found a graduation ceremony and a student government's Instagram post, and they pulled those into a federal civil-rights file.

The Lemon Legal Scholars Program is the centerpiece. Here the letter confesses. To establish the program's intent, Dhillon quotes the college's own account of itself. She notes that the scholarship takes its name from the Lemon Project, which William & Mary describes as "a multifaceted and dynamic attempt to rectify wrongs perpetrated against African Americans by William & Mary through action or inaction." She quotes the college's statement of what those wrongs were: that it "owned and exploited slave labor from its founding to the Civil War," and that it "failed to take a stand against segregation during the Jim Crow Era."

That is the confession. The college admitted it, in public, and it owned it. But the government has entered it into the record as proof of wrongdoing—not the slaveholding, but the reckoning with it. The acknowledgment is the evidence. Dhillon's letter invokes what she calls, in the announcement, "our color-blind Constitution," and deploys it to investigate a school for the offense of having looked squarely at the fact that it was not, for most of its history, permitted to be colorblind, because it owned people.

It's plain. A college enslaved a man named Lemon. Generations later it admitted this, named a scholarship for him, and set about the attempt to repair it. The federal government has now cited the admission, the scholarship, and the atonement as grounds for stripping the college of its funding. The offense is remembering and trying to rectify the fact.

This is an old tradition. It is the oldest move in the region's political grammar. The party that tries to reckon with reality is recast as the party at fault, the act of memory recast as the aggression.

The Lost Cause never required anyone to argue that slavery was just. It required only that the men who fought to preserve it be remembered as honorable, and that those who insisted otherwise be treated as the ones causing the trouble. The machinery has not changed. It has only acquired a government letterhead. It no longer needs to win the argument about the past. It uses its power to make remembering illegal

William & Mary has until September 8.

*Non incautus futuri*

[William & Mary Previously](https://www.notunmindful.org/alma-mater-to-which-nation/)

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### The lost cause comes back again, and loses, again
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-comes-back-again-and-loses-again/
Last updated: 2026-08-12T19:09:22.000Z
> *"The past is never dead. It's not even past."*  
> — William Faulkner, *Requiem for a Nun*

> *"This whole land, the whole South, is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, lie under the curse."*  
> — William Faulkner, *Go Down, Moses*

On August 6, a federal judge in Harrisonburg, Virginia, issued a [141-page ruling](https://www.washlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026.08.06-ECF-285-Memorandum-Opinion.pdf?ref=notunmindful.org) that reads, in places, like an argument with itself about whether it's allowed to say the obvious thing out loud. Senior U.S. District Judge Michael F. Urbanski found that the Shenandoah County School Board violated the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act when it voted, in 2024, to restore the names Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School—names the same board had voted to retire four years earlier, for exactly the reasons you'd expect.

Urbanski spent much of the opinion insisting the case wasn't about history.

> "Nor is this case about the appropriate legacy of the three Confederate officers for whom the schools were named.... While that debate casts cultural, historical, and political shadows over this case, often evoking strong emotions, the issues to be decided here are entirely legal in nature."

He was right about the law. He was also, in the very act of drawing that line, demonstrating that the line doesn't hold. The legal question and the historical one are just two sides of the same coin.

## What the School Board actually did

Strip away the "process was rushed" defense the board leaned on for four years, and the sequence is simple. In 2020, following George Floyd's murder, the board voted 6-0 for a resolution condemning racism, and then 5-1 to retire the Confederate names as one of the resolution's "next steps." A community process replaced them with Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary. Yes — a clean majority, voted in by the community itself.

Then the Lost Cause fought back. A group called the Coalition for Better Schools, affiliated with a local outlet called the Freedom Press, spent four years planning to bring the Confederate names back. Three School Board seats flipped in 2021, and the board's attorney was fired in 2022 for "espousing liberal positions." That year's restoration vote failed, tied 3-3\. Three more seats flipped in 2023, all endorsed by the Freedom Press, and in 2024 the board finally got its restoration vote. A vote that was justified by a "survey" that was nothing more than a postcard mailer drafted and tabulated by the Coalition itself, sent to every address in the target zip codes. Not just the affected school districts, but everyone. No verification, no fixed counting rules, and a 13.6% response rate counted as "proof."

The board didn't request the survey, didn't vet it, and had never conducted anything like it for any other decision in four years. It voted to restore the names anyway.

Just plugging sod into a dam that had already broken.

Urbanski's opinion treats this as what it is. It's not confusion about process, but a machine assembled with intent and run to completion.

> "The Confederate names were restored with complete awareness of their historic legacy and ongoing discriminatory impact.... the affirmative act of reinstating these vestiges of segregation is far more problematic than a passive failure to remove a long-standing name or symbol."

The second bit does a lot of work. The distinction matters, because it's the whole case in one clause.

## A bit of history

Trust me on the irony here.

Urbanski's chambers sit in the same federal courthouse on North Main Street where, in 1956, Judge John Paul Jr. issued Virginia's first order under *Brown v. Board of Education*, directing a local school system to desegregate immediately. Two years later, Paul's ruling forcing Charlottesville and Warren County to admit Black students prompted the governor to shut the affected schools rather than comply—an early skirmish in the massive resistance campaign that would, a year after that, put Stonewall Jackson's name on a new high school forty miles south.

The building didn't change. The argument didn't, either. A memorial nobody ever took down is one kind of legal and moral problem. A memorial that was created once, deliberately. Then, it was formally repudiated, and then deliberately created again after a four-year campaign that resulted in firing their own lawyer. That's a different animal entirely.

The board's own record established that Stonewall Jackson High School was named in 1959 to discourage Black students from transferring in, and that Ashby-Lee Elementary was named in 1974 amid still massive resistance to *Brown*, "in part to reflect the county's opposition to federal mandates with regard to school integration."

Those weren't lost causes. They were tools. In 2024, the board picked the tools back up.

## Two alumni, two sides, one courtroom

The trial record includes a detail that belongs to a different beat, but it's still relevant here. The plaintiffs' lead historian and the board's rebuttal expert both hold degrees from Washington and Lee University. You can probably guess the rest, but here it is.

Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule (U.S. Army, ret.) testified for the plaintiffs. He's a W&L history graduate who went on to chair the Pentagon's commission on renaming military bases, and his book, *Robert E. Lee and Me*, is a work Not Unmindful has cited approvingly many times. It's still worth saying plainly, since it's not a coincidence he's the one making this argument well. His testimony was blunt: the Confederacy's animating purpose was the preservation of slavery, and Lee himself "is worthy of study, but he is not worthy of commemoration."

Gibson Kerr testified for the board. Also a W&L graduate, he says the school gave him his "fascination with Lee as 'a revered figure.'" In 2024 he published *Un-Cancel Robert E. Lee*, motivated, he testified, by a sense that "history was being erased" as Lee's name came down from streets and schools across Virginia. He was called specifically to rebut Seidule on Lee's motivation for fighting.

The court didn't split the difference. Kerr's testimony was, in Urbanski's words, "neither fully credible nor persuasive."

Two men, educated at what may be the largest Confederate memorial in the country, and one rebellious general between them—and a federal judge, working from a full trial record, found that the version of Lee built to be "un-cancelled" doesn't survive contact with the evidence.

## That curse. Inherited, then chosen

None of this required Urbanski to rule on whether Robert E. Lee was, on balance, a good man. He said so himself, more than once. He intended that as a constraint on his own authority, not a dodge. But limiting the ruling to law didn't limit what the law found. The Equal Educational Opportunities Act exists to eliminate the "vestiges" of a segregated school system—a word Dr. Brian Daugherity, the plaintiffs' desegregation historian, defined at trial as the "remnants," "signs," or "legacies" a dual system leaves behind after it's formally dismantled. Vestiges, by definition, are supposed to be things that linger passively, unaddressed, because nobody got around to them. Shenandoah County got around to them. It un-addressed them on purpose.

Faulkner's line about the past not being past usually gets deployed to describe something that persists on its own, unbidden—an old wound that never fully closed. That's not what happened in Shenandoah County. The county didn't fail to bury Stonewall Jackson. It dug him back up, checked the paperwork, fired the lawyer who objected, mailed 8,507 postcards to make it look like the neighbors asked for it, and put his name back on the building before the next school year started.

The curse the McCaslins inherited without choosing it, the board voted on. Twice. Five to one, the second time, in the open, after they'd already told everyone—themselves included—exactly what it meant.

*Non incautus futuri.*

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### McMahon's call to action, and what it means for W&L
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/mcmahons-call-to-action-and-what-it-means-for-w-l/
Last updated: 2026-08-06T18:29:48.000Z
[When I wrote about what W&L should want in its next president](https://www.notunmindful.org/thoughts-on-the-next-president/), I didn't anticipate Washington handing the Board a script.

On August 3, Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued a "National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards." This statement asked every postsecondary institution in the country— not just the nine schools singled out for last year's [failed "compact"](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-higher-education-compact-sparks-controversy-over-academic-freedom/)—to publish a public statement committing to a list of reforms by the end of the year. The list outlines seven questions. these include admissions criteria, campus protest policy, "intellectual pluralism" in hiring, cost containment, academic rigor "in the age of AI," foreign research influence, and something called "prioritizing American interests."

W&L wasn't on the list of nine last fall. It's on this one. Every school in the country is.

Read the questions and you'll recognize the vocabulary. "Merit, achievement." "Intellectual pluralism." Institutional neutrality, which McMahon praised by name as a step some schools have "already begun." These aren't new demands. They're the same demands the Generals Redoubt has been making of W&L's Board for years, dressed up now with a Department of Education letterhead and a deadline.

Nobody is required to answer. Jonathan Pidluzny, the Department's deputy chief of staff for policy, was careful to say there are no "direct penalties" attached. Then, in the same breath, he warned that a university's silence "will speak volumes." That's the whole letter in miniature: no mandate, just leverage. The letter doesn't need to compel W&L to do anything. It only needs to exist, so that the next time the Redoubt tells the Board what "merit" and "pluralism" require, they can point to Washington and say the government already agrees with them.

The presidential search is still open. Ken Ruscio is still interim. And now there's a date on the calendar—December 31\. By then we'll know whether W&L said anything at all, and if so, whose language it borrowed to say it.

We'll be watching.

*Non incautus futuri*

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### The Board was the weapon
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-board-was-the-weapon/
Last updated: 2026-06-25T14:57:13.000Z
## **Three ousters. One survivor. One mechanism.**

On Tuesday, George Mason University's Board of Visitors extended the contract of President Gregory Washington through June 30, 2031\. Washington, their first Black president, had been under invstigation for the better part of a year. He faced demands that he apologize for running what the Trump Department of Education called an "unlawful DEI" program. He refused. His attorney called the findings "legal fiction." And he survived.

Three of his Virginia peers did not.

In the last fourteen months, the first Black superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute was ousted, the president of the University of Virginia was forced out by a Department of Justice ultimatum, and the president of Virginia Tech was pushed aside before a Democratic governor could reshape the board that would have protected him. 

In each case, the mechanism was the same: a Board of Visitors stacked with appointees of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, carried out a MAGA-aligned purge of Virginia's public university leadership. Education as the enemy.

Washington's extension on Tuesday is not a feel-good postscript to that story. It is the proof of concept for how the story could have gone differently at every institution and didn't. Governor Spanberger arrived too late.

## Act I: the mechanism 

Boards of Visitors govern Virginia's public universities. Their members are appointed by the governor. The governor does not run the universities. The governor does not hire or fire presidents. The governor appoints the people who do.

Youngkin understood this. While in the office, he methodically populated university boards with ideologically aligned appointees. Some had direct ties to the Trump White House, while others were connected to the Heritage Foundation (of project 2025 fame). When the Trump administration launched its assault on DEI in higher education, those boards were already in place, ready to serve those ideological ends. In some cases they acted directly. In others they simply declined to resist when federal pressure arrived.

The result was a system working as designed.

## Act II: VMI, setting the table

In February 2025, the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute voted 10-6 not to renew the contract of Superintendent [Cedric T. Wins](https://www.notunmindful.org/update-on-the-institution-next-door/)—the school's first Black superintendent, a 1985 VMI alumnus, and a retired Army major general who had served more than three decades in uniform.

The board did not cite performance. It cited nothing. Board President John Adams issued a statement thanking Wins for his service "during some very difficult times" and said nothing further.

Wins said plenty. In a statement following the vote, he called the decision "a partisan choice that abandons the values of honor, integrity, and excellence upon which VMI was built." He warned against focusing "on our distant past believing it will produce tomorrow's leaders of character." 

This was a pointed remark at an institution that, until Wins, had held annual ceremonies honoring cadets who fought and died for the Confederacy, long celebrated Stonewall Jackson (who taught at VMI before leading Confederate forces in the field), and did not admit Black students until 1968 or women until a 1996 Supreme Court ruling forced the issue.

Wins had moved to change that culture. He oversaw the relocation of the Stonewall Jackson statue. He hired VMI's first chief diversity officer. He reformed a student-run honor court that had disproportionately expelled Black cadets. A state-commissioned report in 2021 had found that VMI "tolerated and failed to address institutional racism and sexism" and that "racial slurs and jokes are not uncommon." Wins was the board's answer to that report. Then, when the political winds shifted, the board's answer to Wins was a 10-6 vote in closed session.

Democratic State Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, a VMI alumna, said she had been told the board no longer wanted a Black superintendent. Republican Congressman Ben Cline responded by accusing Carroll Foy of intimidating board members. The board did not comment on Wins' statement.

Youngkin's diversity chief had visited VMI's campus in 2023 and announced, to mandatory faculty and staff training, that "DEI is dead." VMI's chief diversity officer, a Black woman, resigned later that year. The sequence was not subtle.

## Act III: UVA, escalation

In June 2025, Jim Ryan resigned as president of the University of Virginia. He had served nearly seven years. 

He did not resign voluntarily.

Ryan later described the circumstances as "a hostage situation." In a twelve-page letter to faculty senators that November, he wrote that he had been told by the DOJ that if he did not resign by 5 p.m. on June 26, the department would "basically rain hell on UVA"—cutting research funding, expanding investigations, withholding student financial aid. In exchange for his resignation, the DOJ offered what Ryan's account described as blanket immunity: all inquiries suspended, no financial penalties, agencies told not to cut off research funding.

The trouble, Ryan wrote, had begun when Youngkin's office drafted a resolution—the first time in Ryan's seven years that the governor's office had done so—dissolving UVA's DEI office. The board passed a modified, milder version. Youngkin then went on Fox News and announced that "DEI is dead" at UVA, overstating what the board had actually done and creating the impression that UVA was failing to comply with its own resolution. The DOJ picked up that thread.

As of July 1, 2025, all seventeen members of UVA's Board of Visitors had been appointed by Youngkin—including ex-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, whose appointment Virginia Senate Democrats had sued to block. The board accepted Ryan's resignation. Multiple observers noted at the time that the Trump administration's ability to strong-arm the situation depended entirely on who was sitting on that board.

"The administration can't necessarily control a university," one higher education analyst told Inside Higher Ed, "without—in some part—the university's consent."

## Act IV: Virginia Tech, racing the clock

The most recent entry in this series is also the most nakedly tactical.

In April 2026, Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. who had served twelve years and steered the university through significant expansion, announced he would step down. The announcement was sudden. The university's statement was glowing. Sands offered no explanation.

Sen. Tim Kaine did not wait long to offer one. In a press call the following morning, Kaine said he was "deeply troubled" and that the departure had "the earmarks of previous well-publicized efforts to oust presidents at other Virginia public universities—VMI, UVA, and George Mason." He said he believed the Youngkin-appointed board was moving to install a new president before Gov. Spanberger could fill five board vacancies set to open on July 1.

Kaine said: 

> "I think there is a desire by certain members on that board to force him out,even though he doesn't deserve to be treated like that, so that the board can pick a president before Gov. Spanberger is able to put this administration's stamp on the Virginia Tech board."

As of Sands' announcement, thirteen of Virginia Tech's fourteen board members had been appointed by Youngkin. Spanberger had filled one vacancy the day after Sands announced his departure, but four more seats expire June 30, giving her the opportunity to reshape the board only after the damage is done, if a search proceeds on the current board's timetable.

The board's rector, John Rocovich, had donated $75,000 to Republican candidates and causes the prior year. He and Spanberger had reportedly spoken about the need for her July appointees to be included in the presidential search. Whether that happens remains to be seen.

## Act V: George Mason, a reversal

Gregory Washington survived where the others did not. The reason is Abigail Spanberger.

[Washington had faced the same federal pressure](https://www.notunmindful.org/faculty-support-for-george-mason-president-triggers-federal-investigation/): four civil rights investigations launched by the Trump administration in July 2025, a Department of Education finding that August that GMU had violated Title VI by "illegally using race and other immutable characteristics" in hiring and promotion, a demand that Washington issue a personal public apology. He declined, on his attorney's counsel that doing so would create future legal jeopardy. His attorney called the OCR findings "legal fiction."

For much of 2025, Washington's position appeared precarious. The board was then led by Rector Michael Meese, a Youngkin appointee with ties to the Heritage Foundation. Other members had at times been sharply critical of Washington and his ARIE initiative, which he had launched in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in 2020.

Then Spanberger took office. In January 2026, she appointed twelve new board members, replacing Youngkin appointees who had left and filling vacant seats. Four more Spanberger appointments arrive July 1\. The board that on Tuesday extended Washington's contract through 2031—with Meese himself offering a glowing endorsement—is not the board that spent 2025 trying to force an exit.

That is the variable. Not Washington's defiance, admirable as it was. Not the legal strategy. The variable is that a Democratic governor replaced a Republican one, and the board reconstituted accordingly.

## The continuous plot

Three of the four men targeted in this sequence were the first Black leaders of their institutions. Wins was VMI's first Black superintendent. Washington is GMU's first Black president. Sands, at Virginia Tech, is white—but he too was pushed out by a Youngkin-packed board as the clock ran out on its ability to choose his successor.

The DEI framing served as pretext in every case. But at VMI, the subtext was harder to ignore: Wins had moved to reckon with a documented culture of institutional racism, had relocated the Stonewall Jackson statue, had hired the school's first diversity officer. The board thanked him for his service "during some very difficult times" and showed him the door. Those difficult times were the ones he had been hired to address.

Youngkin and the MAGA apparatus did not need to fire anyone directly. They appointed the boards. The boards did the work. And when a Democratic governor finally replaced a Republican one, the machinery reversed — at the institutions where she got there in time.

Washington's contract runs through 2031\. Ryan is gone. Wins is gone. Sands is leaving.

The board was the weapon.

## The resolution?

Only our votes will tell, as Spanberger's action at George Mason shows.

*Non incautus futuri.*

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### "Rigged": every accusation is a confession
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/rigged-every-accusation-is-a-confession/
Last updated: 2026-06-11T14:50:39.000Z
## **Always dodging**

[Last Sunday, on *Meet the Press*](https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/june-7-president-donald-trump-264703557615?ref=notunmindful.org), Kristen Welker asked Donald Trump a simple question: what evidence did he have that California's elections were rigged? He couldn't answer it. He called Welker crooked, called the network crooked, pulled off his microphone, and left. "Let's call it quits because I've had enough." He then left.

That's not a man with evidence. That's a man who's never needed any.

## **The big lie redux** 

The specific claim: California's primaries are being stolen through mail ballots and slow counts. The specific reality: California mails ballots to every registered voter and counts ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive within a week. Votes take time to count because there are a lot of them, and they keep arriving. Democrats tend to gain ground as late ballots are tallied because Democrats use mail voting at higher rates.

This is not fraud. This is access working as intended.

When Trump says "rigged," he is describing the how voters particpate—automatic ballot distribution, extended counting windows, and postmark deadlines. The accusation targets the fundamental system of democracy.

## **A pattern of bullshit**

This is not a new claim. It is not even a new claim about California.

In 2016, [Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%5FUnited%5FStates%5Fpresidential%5Felection?ref=notunmindful.org). Before the last ballot was counted, he had an explanation: millions of people voted illegally. He couldn't prove it. He formed a commission to prove it, headed by Kris Kobach, the voter suppression architect who had spent his career fighting the phantom of fraudulent registration. [The commission disbanded in 2018 without findings](https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d?ref=notunmindful.org). The lie had already done its work.

In 2019, on this same program, [Trump told Chuck Todd that California had "admitted to a million votes" of illegal voting](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/president-trump-s-full-unedited-interview-meet-press-n1020731?ref=notunmindful.org). It was a bald-face lie. PolitiFact rated it Pants on Fire. It didn't matter. The claim wasn't for the fact-checkers.

In 2020, on election night, as mail ballots began closing the gap in state after state, Trump went to the podium and said: "[We want all voting to stop](https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/2020/11/04/pres-trump-touts-victory-prematurely-we-want-all-voting-stop/6157969002/?ref=notunmindful.org)." Not counting. Voting. The slip was the message. Mailed ballots—disproportionately by voters of color, by voters who work multiple jobs, and by voters for whom Election Day is not a practical option—were the problem. Access to voting itself was the target.

By 2026, [he had announced a "fraud investigation" of California](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/california/2026/06/05/federal-audit-targets-california-voter-rolls-amid-slow-ballot-count/90411465007/?ref=notunmindful.org). No grounds. No findings. No evidence requested or produced. The investigation was the message.

And then Sunday. Same show. Same claim. Same state. No evidence. He left when asked for some.

A decade of the same lie, on the same program, about the same state, aimed at the same process. At some point the question isn't whether he believes it. The question is what it's for.

## **The confession as accusation**

The fraud mythology doesn't need to be true. It needs to be repeated until restricing access looks like a remedy. Repeated until every mail ballot deadline, every counting window, every automatic registration that makes voting easier becomes, in the public mind, cheating that must be addressed.

We have already seen what happens when that predicate lands. [As noted here in May](https://www.notunmindful.org/jim-crow-returns-the-maps-were-ready/), the maps were drawn before *Callais* was decided. The special sessions were scheduled before the ink was even dry. The states didn't need the fraud to be real. They needed the permission. The Court provided it; the mythology prepared the ground.

Every accusation is a confession. The mechanisms Trump calls rigged are the mechanisms already under assault by redistricting maps, in the court (*Shelby*, *Brnovich*, and *Callais)*, and in the legislation that follows each new "fraud" claim like night follows day.

He's not describing what Democrats are doing. He's describing what he and the Republicans intend.

This of course is a preview of the midterms.

*Non incautus futuri.*

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### Commemorating a racist, as they do
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/commemorating-a-racist-as-they-do/
Last updated: 2026-06-01T20:59:28.000Z
Today, June 1, Alabama state offices are closed. Schools are closed. Courts are closed. The state is observing Jefferson Davis's birthday—one of three holidays Alabama maintains to honor the Confederacy, alongside Robert E. Lee's Birthday in January and Confederate Memorial Day in April.

Davis was the president of a government explicitly founded on the preservation of slavery and white supremacy. He was captured fleeing Richmond, imprisoned for treason, and never tried. Alabama has been giving its employees the day off in his honor ever since.

None of this is news to us.

Also today, Alabama is in the middle of a federal redistricting fight over maps that a three-judge panel has ruled were drawn to intentionally dilute Black voting power. The state filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court within 24 hours of that ruling. The legal deadline fell today. The offices are closed.

The Confederacy lost. Alabama is still working on it. And given the current climate they have the might, if not the right. 

We must do what we can, wherever we can.

*Non incautus futuri*

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### Jim Crow returns: the maps were ready
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/jim-crow-returns-the-maps-were-ready/
Last updated: 2026-05-28T16:54:52.000Z
On April 29, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in *Louisiana v. Callais*. [As we noted at the time](https://www.notunmindful.org/extra-its-always-the-racism/), the decision gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—permitting states to use partisan gerrymandering as cover to dilute Black voting power without legal consequence.

The ink wasn't dry before the South got to work.

## **They weren't waiting**

Before the ruling even landed, Mississippi's governor had already blocked off his calendar. [He declared that a special legislative session on redistricting would begin exactly 21 days after any ruling in *Callais*](https://magnoliatribune.com/2026/04/24/governor-sets-special-session-to-address-state-supreme-court-redistricting/?ref=notunmindful.org). He didn't know what the Court would decide. He knew what he would do when it did.

In Florida, [during a special legislative session held in the hours immediately following the ruling, the legislature passed a new congressional map](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/us/florida-house-gop-map.html?ref=notunmindful.org). The governor [signed it into law](https://x.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2051332545841660356?ref=notunmindful.org) ahead of the 2026 elections. Not days later. Hours.

In Tennessee, [the legislature proposed and passed a new congressional map that carves up the city of Memphis into three districts.](https://tennesseelookout.com/2026/05/07/tenn-passes-new-potential-9-0-gop-u-s-house-map-eight-days-after-scotus-guts-voting-rights-act/?ref=notunmindful.org) This eliminates the only majority-Black district in the old map by spreading Democratic voters into rural Republican districts stretching hundreds of miles east.

In Alabama, the story is more tangled and more revealing. After the Supreme Court lifted a prior injunction and remanded Alabama's long-running redistricting case in light of *Callais*, [Governor Ivey called a special primary election for four of the state's seven congressional districts under a 2023 gerrymander that courts had already found to be intentionally racially discriminatory](https://redistrictingfoundation.org/2026/05/26/nrf-applauds-court-for-blocking-alabamas-congressional-gerrymander/?ref=notunmindful.org)—threatening ballots already cast under the prior map. The state tried to use *Callais* as a retroactive permission slip for a map that was already on the record as a civil rights violation.

This is not a response to a ruling. This is a response to a starting gun. The racism was not created by *Callais*. 

It was waiting for permission.

## **The cover** 

The legal language deployed in these efforts is the language of partisan politics, not race. That's the point. The Court rewrote key protections of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that goals such as partisan gerrymandering and incumbent protection can now justify drawing election maps that dampen minority voters' political power.

If you can call it partisanship, you can do it. The fig leaf is the feature.

This is an old technique in new paperwork. The Redeemer legislatures that dismantled Reconstruction didn't announce that their purpose was racial subordination either. They passed literacy tests. They required poll taxes. They drew lines. The stated rationale was always something else—fiscal responsibility, electoral integrity, community cohesion. 

The effect was always the same.

Until *Callais*, the Voting Rights Act's antidiscrimination protections partly served as a constraint on states seeking untrammeled partisan advantage in drawing election maps. No longer. The Roberts Court didn't invent this project in April. It's been building the scaffold for twenty years.

## **The Court's long project**

*Shelby County v. Holder* (2013) gutted the preclearance requirement. This was the provision that required states with histories of voter suppression to get federal approval before changing their voting laws. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the coverage formula was based on outdated data. Within hours of that ruling, Texas announced it would implement a voter ID law that had previously been blocked.

*Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee* (2021) narrowed the remaining enforcement mechanisms under Section 2, making it substantially harder to challenge laws that disproportionately burden minority voters.

*Callais* finished the job. Moving forward, any legal constraints on gerrymandering will come from state law, barring new action by Congress. These could include state constitutional limits on partisan gerrymandering, along with other state requirements. But we are unlikely to see many judicial limits in the first wave of post-*Callais* gerrymanders.

The federal floor is gone. What remains is a patchwork of state courts, some of which have already shifted sharply rightward. In Florida, the state constitution prohibits drawing districts to favor incumbents or political parties, and the Florida Supreme Court previously enforced that provision to block gerrymandered maps. 

But the court's composition has shifted sharply to the right since its earlier ruling, leaving it unclear what force these limits will have today.

## **May 26**

We found out this week.

On May 26, the judge in the consolidated Florida lawsuits refused to grant a temporary injunction, allowing the state's new congressional map to remain in place.

The same day, a panel of three judges dismissed the Tennessee state court challenge, finding the legislature had the authority to engage in mid-decade redistricting.

Two states. Same day. Both maps standing.

The Tennessee dismissal is worth examining. The NAACP had argued that because the governor's special session proclamation didn't specifically identify the mid-decade redistricting ban as something to be addressed, the legislature lacked the authority to overturn it and pass the new map. A procedural argument, yes, but a legitimate one, rooted in the state's own constitution. The court dismissed it anyway.

Alabama, for the moment, is a partial exception. [A federal three-judge panel blocked Alabama's 2023 map on May 26, ruling it was "tainted by intentional race-based discrimination"](https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/court-blocks-alabama-racial-gerrymander-from-being-used-in-2026-elections/?ref=notunmindful.org) and explicitly rejected the state's attempt to use *Callais* as cover: "Alabama cannot use *Callais* to legitimize its pre-*Callais* decision to double down on the discriminatory vote dilution that we and the Supreme Court found." Alabama filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court within 24 hours. The permission slip is now back in front of the people who wrote it.

This is what the post-*Callais* landscape looks like in practice. The federal floor is gone. The state courts are declining to hold. The maps are in place for November.

## **What's actually happening**

The numbers speak for themselves. Over 1.7 million Black voters reside in Florida. Over 1.2 million Black people reside in Tennessee. Over 1.3 million in Alabama. Over 1.4 million in Louisiana. Over 1.1 million in Mississippi. 

These are not abstractions. These are voters whose representation is being deliberately engineered away, in real time, ahead of a midterm election.

Several GOP-controlled southern states have responded swiftly to *Callais* with efforts to draw more extreme gerrymanders. More such efforts are likely after the midterms, at both the state and local levels.

Jim Crow didn't announce itself as racism either. It announced itself as order. As tradition. As the natural arrangement of things. The Roberts Court has handed that tradition a new vocabulary—Equal Protection, colorblindness, partisan prerogative—and the states that were waiting for permission are using it.

The maps were ready. They've always been ready.

*Non incautus futuri*

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### A steady hand for the transition
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/a-steady-hand-for-the-transition/
Last updated: 2026-05-19T17:22:18.000Z
Last week, the Board of Trustees announced that Kenneth P. Ruscio '76, president emeritus of Washington and Lee, will return as interim president effective July 1.

This is a good call.

Ruscio is not a mere placeholder. He served as president from 2006 to 2016\. His tenure was marked by genuine progress on inclusion and access—expansion of co-education, significant growth in need-based financial aid, and a campus that became a more welcoming place for students who would have been afterthoughts when I was there. That record matters.

Beyond his record at W&L, Ruscio recently served on the board of the American Civil War Museum. This Richmond institution has made a deliberate effort toward honest, balanced interpretation of the Civil War and its legacy. It has done the work that Washington and Lee has not.

None of this, however, changes what's still unresolved. The Board's presidential search remains ongoing, and the questions about Washington and Lee's relationship with its Confederate identity don't go away. The kind of leadership the institution needs is one that honestly reckons with that history. The search is now running against a defined clock with a respected figure at the helm. The Board has bought itself time and credibility. What it does with both is worth watching.

Ruscio inherits an institution at an interesting moment. The planned Institutional History Museum remains on the table. The search for a permanent president continues. And the broader question of what Washington and Lee wants to be—for its alumni, its students, and the country that has to live with what it represents—is still open.

We'll be watching.

*Non incautus futuri*

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### Veneration is not history
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/veneration-is-not-history/
Last updated: 2026-05-09T15:54:32.000Z
A recent piece published by The Generals Redoubt, the includes an unusual word. The piece laments the university's plan to build an Institutional History Museum and mourns the removal of portraits, plaques, and memorial markers from daily campus life. *\[Ed. note: no link for them. I will not contribute to their traffic.\]*

The word is *osmosis*.

## **The stick fort speaks**

The author argues that for generations, W&L students absorbed the university's history naturally by living among its symbols, walking past Traveller's grave marker, sitting beneath portraits of Robert E. Lee, and gathering in a chapel that bore his name. No museum required. No director of institutional history needed. The history was simply *there*, in the air, and students took it in.

It's a peculiar word here when you think about it. Osmosis is a biological process. It requires no thought, no interpretation, no engagement. Things move through a membrane because of pressure and concentration, not because anyone decided they should. To learn by osmosis is, by definition, to learn without knowing you're learning. It is to absorb a pre-determined conclusion without encountering the argument.

That is not education. It is something very different.

## **The Lost Cause always understood this**

[We've laid out many times](https://www.notunmindful.org/tag/lost-cause/) how the Lost Cause was not, at its core, a historical argument. It was an *atmospheric* one. Its architects—the monument builders, the textbook committees, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of Confederate Veterans—understood that the most durable ideology is one that never has to defend itself. 

You don't argue for what everyone already takes for granted. You build it into the landscape. You put it on the courthouse lawn. You name the school after it. You make it the air students breathe.

Washington and Lee has long been one of the most complete expressions of this project. We have [called it](https://www.notunmindful.org/about/), in effect, the country's largest Confederate memorial. The chapel, the recumbent statue, the horse's grave, the portraits, the Founders' Day holiday, and the names on the buildings, and so on. None of this was accidental. It was a curriculum. One that produced, in the author's own words, a "lasting impact on generations of alumni."

He means that as a compliment. And what of the lasting scars?

The Lost Cause required no museum because it had something better: an entire campus organized around a single, uncontested interpretation. Building a museum with all that entails introduces the possibility that the interpretation might be contested. That is exactly what the author fears. He calls the future museum director an "institutional apparatchik." The word choice is telling. An apparatchik is an enforcer of official ideology. What he fears, without quite saying so, is that someone might finally enforce a *different* ideology than the one generations of students grew up breathing, whether they wanted to or not.

## **What museums actually do**

The argument against the Institutional History Museum rests on a false premise. It presupposes that what existed before was neutral, and what is being built is political. We know this is exactly backwards.

The portrait without context is not neutral. Recumbent Lee in the chapel is not neutral. Traveller's grave, placed where students pass it daily, is not neutral. These are arguments made in stone and paint and tradition. They have always had a point of view. 

The only thing that has changed is that the university is now willing to say so. After much prodding of course.

The Board of Trustees said so much in 2023: 

> *"\[Washington and Lee is\] an educational institution whose campus is neither a museum nor an appropriate repository for Confederate artifacts."* 

The author cites this statement as the enemy position. But, it is an institution finally saying out loud what an honest reckoning with its history requires.

A museum labels and names. It contextualizes. It situates objects and images within the history that produced them. It allows students to encounter the past as something to understand rather than be absorbed. This is education, not received knowledge.

Immersion without interpretation isn't education. It's indoctrination.

## **The stakes are not just abstract**

This is where the argument stops being about portraits and plaques.

The Supreme Court's recent decision in *Louisiana v. Callais* did not emerge from nowhere. It is the latest instrument in a decades-long project to roll back the Voting Rights Act. This project has always depended, at its foundation, on a particular story. A fairytale about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and what followed. 

The Lost Cause didn't only romanticize the Confederacy. It also provided the ideological framework to defend and normalize disenfranchisement. All so it could be eventually litigated back into legitimacy. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act could not be gutted without the mythology that made it politically possible. And we've known this for a long time.

The same movement now invoking academic freedom to protest diversity programs on university campuses is simultaneously arguing that a private university has no right to contextualize its own symbols. The contradiction is not incidental. It is the point. Academic freedom, in this deployment, means the freedom to maintain the inherited interpretation. It does not extend to the freedom to examine it. The programs designed to correct for the history that the Lost Cause obscured are the first targets.

That is not a principle. That is a protection racket for a particular version of the past.

Despite the wishes of those in that stick fort, W&L is not an island. What it decides about how to present its history is the question. Does it do so in ambient, unremarked veneration as it has in the past? Or does it engage honestly with its own past and the South's as a whole? This would mean contextualized engagement. 

The answer to this question connects directly to the larger battle over whose history gets told, whose votes get counted, and whose version of America gets to be the one students absorb by osmosis.

As alumi and university family, we know it has landed as an institution in the past, but we've also shown glimmers of hope by engaging with the future. W&L must meet this moment wisely. 

It must be: 

### ***Non incautus futuri.***

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### Extra! It’s always the racism
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/extra-its-always-the-racism/
Last updated: 2026-04-30T18:37:44.000Z
On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States finished what it started ([as covered here before)](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-assault-on-voting-rights-reaching-its-endgame/). In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, [*Louisiana v. Callais*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana%5Fv.%5FCallais?ref=notunmindful.org) effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965\. It didn't strike it down, but it rewrote it into something unrecognizable. 

To win a Section 2 claim now, plaintiffs must demonstrate an “objective likelihood of intentional discrimination.” Congress didn’t write that standard. The Court invented it. Legislating from the bench, which they purport to abhor. And the Court knew exactly what it was doing. 

This is not a voting rights or redistricting story. It is a racism story. It has always been a racism story. 

## **The things that got us here**

Here is what the Court held. Louisiana drew a congressional map in 2022 that gave Black voters who comprise roughly a third of the state’s population meaningful representation in exactly **one** of six districts. A federal court found that this violated the Voting Rights Act. The court ordered a remedial map with two majority-Black districts. As the Voting Rights Act intended.

But then a group of “non-African American voters,” assembled by conservative lawyers, sued to block the remedy. The three-judge panel agreed with them. And so did the Supreme Court. Think about this. The original map diluted Black voting power. A court ordered it fixed. The fix was then declared the constitutional violation. The remedy is now the crime.

Alito's majority held that because the Voting Rights Act didn't **require** Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district because no compelling interest justified using race in drawing the map (under the newly tightened [*Gingles*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornburg%5Fv.%5FGingles?ref=notunmindful.org) framework). But partisan goals, however, are just fine. They always have been, since [*Rucho v. Common Cause* (2019)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rucho%5Fv.%5FCommon%5FCause?ref=notunmindful.org) placed partisan gerrymandering beyond federal court review. 

Put *these* together and you have arrived at the Court's destination. All gerrymandering is now constitutional. Discriminate by party. Discriminate by race dressed as party. The courthouse door is closed. No remedy now exists.

Justice Kagan, announced her dissent from the bench with what [Chris Geidner at Law Dork](https://www.lawdork.com/p/scotus-voting-rights-decision-tps-arguments?ref=notunmindful.org) described as "anger simmering just below the surface." She called *Callais* "the last piece" in a decade-long effort to "destroy" the voting rights law, making it "nearly impossible" to succeed in bringing a constitutional vote-dilution claim, the last real task the law was still accomplishing. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund had warned during oral argument that further neutering of Section 2 would resurrect the 15th Amendment as a mere “parchment promise." They were right. It is now just paper and nothing more..

And the damage does not stop at congressional maps. Rep. Terry Landry Jr., a Louisiana state legislator and former state policy director for the [Southern Poverty Law Center, ](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/redistricting-war-scotus-callais-decision/?ref=notunmindful.org)warned before today's ruling that gutting Section 2 "will affect the state legislatures. This will affect city councils. It will affect school boards. You will see a huge impact on minority representation at every level of government." Every level. The courthouse door is not just closed for Congress. It is closed.

## **The common thread** 

I have been [following *Callais* on this site since the case began to climb toward the Court](https://notunmindful.org/?ref=notunmindful.org). None of this is a surprise. 

It is a denouement.

In 2013, [*Shelby County v. Holder*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby%5FCounty%5Fv.%5FHolder?ref=notunmindful.org) gutted Section 5\. This was the preclearance provision that required states with histories of voter suppression to get federal approval before changing their election laws. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, declared that the "extraordinary measures" of the Voting Rights Act were no longer necessary because conditions had changed. They had not changed. They changed back. 

In 2021, [*Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brnovich%5Fv.%5FDemocratic%5FNational%5FCommittee?ref=notunmindful.org) weakened Section 2's application to voting restrictions. It now made it much harder for plaintiffs to challenge discriminatory laws. The standard tightened. The opening narrowed.

Today, it is closed.

This was not drift. 

This was not the accidental accumulation of jurisprudence. 

This was a plan, executed across decades, by a legal movement that understood precisely what it was doing and why. 

Alito wrote Wednesday's opinion. But the hand behind it belongs to John Roberts. As a young Reagan administration lawyer in the early 1980s, Roberts [opposed the 1982 amendments](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-rights-act-explained?ref=notunmindful.org) to the Voting Rights Act—the very amendments that established the effects test *Callais* just interred. He has pursued this result ever since, through *Shelby County*, through every erosion of pre-clearance, through forty years on the inside of the federal judiciary. 

Wednesday was the culmination of his project, not Alito's. He just let someone else sign it. It was the end of his long play. Now we just wait for Fortenbras to clear the wreckage.

But it wasn't just Roberts. An outside architect of this also has a name: Edward Blum, a former stockbroker turned anti-civil-rights litigant whose [Project on Fair Representation](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/redistricting-war-scotus-callais-decision/?ref=notunmindful.org) brought the case that gutted preclearance in *Shelby County*, then built *Students for Fair Admissions* to kill race-conscious college admissions, and filed amicus briefs in *Callais* at every stage. 

Blum's operation is bankrolled by the DonorsTrust dark money network. The president of it once boasted that his organization's "DNA floats in the bloodstream" of groups like Blum's. The Federalist Society supplied the bench. Blum supplied the cases. The same framework that ended race-conscious college admissions in 2023 has now been applied to the fundamental right to vote. "Colorblind" constitutionalism marches on, indifferent to the world it actually produces.

## **A Lost Cause found**

There is a word for the use of facially neutral principles to enforce racial hierarchy. The word is not "colorblind." The word is "Lost Cause."

After Reconstruction, the Redeemer governments of the post-Civil War South did not need to say "we are disenfranchising Black voters" out loud. They had poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and white primaries. The tools were race-neutral on their face. Their purpose and effect were not. The 15th Amendment became, in [the phrase the NAACP Legal Defense Fund used last October in oral argument, a "paper guarantee."](https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais/?ref=notunmindful.org)

The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, and President Johnson signed it into law weeks after the beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, precisely because the Constitution's guarantees had proven insufficient against the ingenuity of those determined to nullify them. Today's Court has returned us to that baseline. The guarantee is paper again. The legal machinations won.

This is the through line. It runs from Redemption to massive resistance to the architecture of "colorblind" law. The tactics change. The goal does not.

## **This is who they are**

The Court is not alone. It does not operate in a vacuum.

Pete Hegseth is purging the military of officers he deems insufficiently ideologically aligned, presiding over a Pentagon wrapped in Christian nationalist iconography, dismantling diversity programs with a fervor that is, at its root, about who belongs in the institution and who does not. It is [not a warrior ethos story](https://notunmindful.org/?ref=notunmindful.org). It is a racism story.

ICE is conducting mass deportations at a scale and speed that targets communities by ethnicity, by language, by the color of skin that agents have been documented using as a proxy for suspicion. The administration does not call it ethnic cleansing. The administration does not need to. The actions name themselves.

The Supreme Court has told Black Americans that the remedy for their disenfranchisement is itself unconstitutional. The Pentagon has told non-white service members that their presence is a problem to be solved. ICE has told brown-skinned communities that their papers are never quite enough. 

And then there was this. On the same day, the Court heard *Mullin v. Doe* and *Trump v. Miot,* the administration's bid to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian refugees, mostly people of color, without judicial review. During oral arguments in these cases, Alito asked whether Syrians, Turks, Greeks—and then, drawing laughter from the courtroom, "southern Italians"—would be considered non-white for purposes of an equal protection analysis. Plaintiff's counsel answered him directly and correctly: 120 years ago, during the last great wave of European immigration, southern Italians were in fact not considered white. "Our concept of these things evolves over time," the lawyer said. 

Minutes after gutting the mechanism Congress built to protect Black voters from discrimination, Alito expressed bewilderment at the history of American racial classification. Whether that performance was ignorance or theater, the effect is the same. 

What has changed is that they are no longer maintaining the fiction. Alito's opinion does not pretend to be colorblind. It calls the correction discriminatory. The mask has not slipped. The mask has been removed and set on the table, and the majority has looked into the camera.

These are not four separate stories. They are one story, told by one movement, in four acts.

Fascism has racism in its cold, dead, greedy heart. This has always been true—Umberto Eco named it, history confirmed it, and the present tense is confirming it again. The ideology requires an enemy. The enemy is always, in the end, the same. The other.

They are telling us who they are. 

**They just now wear black robes instead of white ones.**

The only question that remains is what we intend to do about it. First, rage. Then, fight.

*Non incautus futuri.*  

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### Trump's DOJ Thinks the Klan Had a Point
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-doj-thinks-the-klan-had-a-point/
Last updated: 2026-04-28T12:39:06.000Z
We know the pattern. We've seen it play out before. The Trump administration has made little secret of its sympathies. It deploys federal power with increasing directness [on behalf of white grievance](https://www.notunmindful.org/government-of-the-people-for-the-people-white-people/). [The Secretary of Defense has enacted it wantonly](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-warrior-ethos-has-a-color/). 

Last week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, with FBI Director Kash Patel at his side, announced the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This is only the latest and most explicit example yet.

## An indictment for attacking white supremacy

The DOJ charged the SPLC with eleven counts. The charges span wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. All of these stem from SPLC's discontinued practice of embedding paid confidential informants inside white supremacist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, those guys. 

How did they the fraud theory? Donors weren't told the program existed. The bank charges? SPLC used dummy company names to pay its informants, which is how you pay informants whose cover you are trying to protect. The indictment, to its credit, explains this in detail. Blanche, however, ignored what his own document said. Maybe he had a different document in mind.

"The SPLC was not dismantling these groups," Blanche told reporters. "It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred." The DOJ's own indictment describes informants who couldn't receive direct SPLC paychecks precisely *because* of the danger their exposure would create. 

That's not manufacturing extremism. That's operational security in service of civil rights intelligence work; work that, [as SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair noted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25dlBorkAy4&ref=notunmindful.org), the organization shared with law enforcement, including the FBI. Fair put the program in its proper context: 

> "When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system." 

There is no question, Fair added, that what the informants reported saved lives.

It is also worth noting that the Biden administration looked at this same set of facts and declined to bring charges. Blanche revived the investigation after Trump's return to office. When asked why, he offered no explanation.

This is not the first time a legal body has objected to the SPLC's practice of placing sympathizers inside Klan organizations to gather intelligence. \\

In 1981, the United Klans of America complained in its official publication, *The Fiery Cross*, that SPLC's new Klanwatch program was "extremely dangerous to American freedom." This is the organization that beat the Freedom Riders, murdered civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, and bombed Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. The language Blanche used on Tuesday is not analogous to the Klan's objection. It may not quote, but it rhymes.

## **Who the FBI was really watching**

But first, we should look at history. The FBI spent decades doing to civil rights organizations what SPLC did to the Klan. COINTELPRO—the Bureau's counterintelligence program, running from 1956 into the 1970s—used paid informants, infiltration, psychological warfare, and legal harassment to disrupt, discredit, and destroy domestic dissident groups, [with Black civil rights organizations as its primary target](https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/cointelpro-1956-1976/?ref=notunmindful.org). 

The tools were identical to what SPLC employed. An informant inside the organization, the dummy account, the covert payment, the intelligence gathered and passed to law enforcement. The federal government ran that playbook against the movement SPLC defended. SPLC was founded in 1971, at the tail end of COINTELPRO's run, into a world where the Justice Department had spent fifteen years protecting white supremacy by destroying its opponents. 

It stepped into that vacuum and turned the toolkit around. Now Trump's DOJ is prosecuting it for doing so. No rhyming detected. The wheel hasn't turned. It's the same wheel.

## Back to a troubled source

Which brings us back to *The Fiery Cross* and its legal staff. They understood Klanwatch's purpose well in 1981 and said so in terms that would not be out of place in Blanche's Tuesday press conference. The United Klans of America knew what SPLC was doing and why. So does Blanche. [Chris Geidner at *Law Dork* nails the landing](https://www.lawdork.com/p/splc-indictment-united-klans-of-america?ref=notunmindful.org). It's not whether Blanche understands this because of course he does. The question is what it tells us that he is pretending otherwise, and using the criminal law to do it.

The last time the federal government effectively sided with the United Klans of America's arguments against the SPLC, the Klan got a different kind of legal proceeding. In the late 1980s, SPLC brought suit on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald, whose 19-year-old son Michael had been lynched by two members of the United Klans of America. The judgment bankrupted the organization. 

The United Klans of America, which had beaten, murdered, and bombed its way through the Civil Rights Movement, was destroyed by a civil rights organization that refused to let it operate without consequence. The federal government had no part in it.

The forfeiture allegations attached to the indictment make the ambition explicit. A conviction could open the door to claiming the SPLC's donated funds in their entirety. The organization that bankrupted the Klan may now find itself bankrupted by a DOJ that has decided the Klan's objections deserved a second look.

We know all where this DOJ is heading.

*Non incautus futuri*

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### Honor, integrity, and civility
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/honor-integrity-and-civility/
Last updated: 2026-04-22T18:12:30.000Z
[Washington and Lee's presidential search committee released a profile last week outlining the expectations of it's next president.](https://www.wlu.edu/about-w-l/presidential-search/position-profile?ref=notunmindful.org) It is worth reading. 

To be honest, it's more serious and forward looking that I expected. That said, it's not perfect. The distance between what it gets right and what it minimizes tells us something important about the institution's current moment.

The profile requires the next president to understand Washington and Lee's history as "a critical component of the University's identity." It does place it as a burden to be managed but as a subject requiring "thoughtful leadership." The Institutional History Museum, [still in progress](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-museum-isnt-built-yet-the-excuses-are/), gets a prominent place in the opportunities section. 

The access and affordability commitments are real and detailed. The intellectual pluralism language, backed by the faculty-led Liberating Ideas initiative, reflects genuine institutional investment. These are not throwaway lines. They bear marks of a community that has been in conversation with itself, and with critics, about what this university is and what it ought to become.

We have been part of that conversation. Some of what appears in this profile echoes the arguments made here and that others have been making. That's worth acknowledging. It is evidence that our efforts have not been futile.

But then there's civility.

The profile's first and framing charge to the next president is to "honor, preserve, and champion Washington and Lee's culture of integrity and civility." Integrity is unimpeachable. Civility, however, can be complicated. And the profile doesn't make it any less so.

Why does this matter? Civility, deployed as an institutional value without qualification, has a history. Universities like W&L—historically white, male, and well off—have long internalized the mythology of the Lost Cause. With this lens, civility has functioned as a management tool. It can recast legitimate grievances as bad manners. In this climate, the person raising uncomfortable questions bears more reputational cost than the institution that created the condition requiring the question. It is how "let's have a conversation" becomes a way of not having the conversation.

[ We said as much in January](https://www.notunmindful.org/thoughts-on-the-next-president/) in an outline of what we hoped to see in W&L's next president. A genuine champion of difficult conversations, we argued, must be able to distinguish "between viewpoints that deserve engagement and conduct that violates community standards." A big part of this is recognizing that a standard of civility, applied without self-awareness, tends to burden those who can least bear it.

None of that appears in the profile. The civility mandate arrives unqualified and unexamined. This, in itself, is a kind of answer.

The alumni-unity language makes it explicit. The profile calls on the next president to continue "rebuilding unity and deepening alumni affinity" among graduates whose engagement had been "strained by the University's examination of its history." 

 The institution is asking its next leader to prioritize the comfort of alumni who were upset by honest history. That is not a neutral ask. A president with that mandate has a structural incentive to slow-walk the very historical reckoning the profile elsewhere presents as a commitment.

That tension isn't accidental. It's the document's load-bearing contradiction.

Washington and Lee's motto is *non incautus futuri* — not unmindful of the future. The profile invokes it. But a civility-first mandate, deployed to soothe alumni strained by the university's own truth-telling, is not mindfulness of the future. It is a hedge against it.

The next president will have to choose. The profile, to its credit, gives them the language to choose well. Whether the Board will support that choice is a different question. That question will shape the future of our university.

*Non incautus futuri.*

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### Government of the people, for the people—white people
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/government-of-the-people-for-the-people-white-people/
Last updated: 2026-04-26T17:43:20.000Z
**4,496 of 4,499.**

The latter is the total number of refugees admitted to the United States since October 2025, according to the Refugee Processing Center. In the last full fiscal year of the Biden administration, the United States resettled 125,000 people from 85 countries: from war zones, from famine, from the specific and documented hell that produces a refugee.

Donald Trump shut that down on day one. Then he made an exception.

4,496 of that total were Afrikaners—white South Africans whom Trump has designated as victims of racial persecution. The other three were Afghans, whose admissions were later revoked. The administration's position stated plainly that the world's most deserving refugees are white farmers from a country at peace, and the U.S. refugee program exists to serve them. White Afrikaners.

South Africa's ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, called this what it is. Trump, he said, was "mobilising a supremacism" and trying to "project white victimhood as a dog whistle." For that clarity, he was declared persona non grata and expelled from the U.S.

Keep that number in mind: 4,496 out of 4,499\. And place it with what has been happening at the Pentagon at the same time.

## The promotion list, again

The pattern at the Pentagon is by now documented. [As covered here last week](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-warrior-ethos-has-a-color/), Hegseth has systematically removed or blocked the promotions of Black and female senior officers across all four branches—Brown, Franchetti, Crosland, Green. 

Most recently, Army Chief of Staff General Randy George was fired after refusing to remove Black and female officers from a promotion list. Hegseth declined even to meet with him to discuss it.

The Pentagon's official position is that promotions are "apolitical and unbiased." Hegseth's own chief of staff, Ricky Buria, offered a more candid assessment last year: "President Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events."

Buria denied it. The firings continued.

## An old argument returns in force

D.W. Griffith's *The Birth of a Nation* (the image above is from that film) came out in 1915\. Woodrow Wilson screened it at the White House and called it "writing history with lightning." The film's argument, made with the full apparatus of early cinema, was this: Reconstruction was a catastrophe visited upon white people, Black political power was an existential threat to civilization, and white men riding to restore the racial order were heroes.

The argument it made has never really ceased. The Lost Cause spent the century and a half after Appomattox dressing it in bronze and marble—in the statues of Confederate generals in courthouse squares, in the names on military bases, in the textbooks that called enslaved people "workers" and the Civil War a dispute over "states' rights." 

The argument is always the same: white people are the aggrieved party, their dominance is the natural order, its disruption is the injustice requiring remedy.

That argument is now refugee policy. It is now Pentagon personnel policy.

The Afrikaner farmers and the Black and female generals are different scenes in the same production. 

In the first, white people displaced by the end of apartheid are cast as the world's most compelling victims, deserving of refuge that is denied to people fleeing actual wars. 

In the other scene, Black and female officers who have spent careers in honorable service are removed from promotion lists because the Secretary of Defense has decided the warrior ethos belongs to a particular kind of person.

Hegseth has been explicit about this. He has complained that "America's white sons and daughters are walking away" from the military. He has said "our diversity is our strength" is "the dumbest phrase in military history." He has rehabilitated tributes to Confederate soldiers at the Pentagon. Yes, traitors. And he has been erasing the histories of nonwhite service members who fought for it.

The connections aren't subtle. [It is, in fact, written on his skin](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-warrior-ethos-has-a-color/).

## Not a culture war but an imposition

This is not a culture war. Culture wars have two sides arguing about values. What we are watching is the institutional capture of federal power by an ideology with a very specific theory of who should have power in America—and who should not. That ideology has a long history in this country. It built the monuments. It wrote the textbooks. It made that movie.

It is now running the Pentagon and the refugee program.

Senator Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at MLK's own Ebenezer Baptist Church said as much in an exchange with Jake Tapper. He was explaining that faith leaders who claim divine sanction for this administration's actions are doing what religious leaders have always done when they sanctify power: 

> "Yeah, they're wrong. And there were Christians who thought that slavery was, you know, somehow Godlike, American chattel slavery. And they justified it, and they used scripture to support their position."

He is right about that. He is right about what this is.

*The Birth of a Nation* was fiction dressed as history. What is happening now is policy. The casting has changed. The argument is the same. 

And now it's a documentary.

## **Update: April 26, 2026**

The program is now expanding. The numbers above, already stark, are about to get starker.

[According to Reuters,](https://www.africa-press.net/south-africa/all-news/trump-advocates-for-increased-afrikaner-immigration?ref=notunmindful.org) the administration is now discussing more than doubling the 7,500-person annual refugee cap by 10,000\. This is specifically to accommodate additional Afrikaners. State Department documents show the U.S. has already paid to install trailers on embassy property in Pretoria to handle the processing load. They are targeting 4,500 applications per month. The new U.S. ambassador to South Africa is Leo Brent Bozell, a conservative media figure, which tells you something about the diplomatic priorities at play here.

That monthly target is jarring. Four thousand five hundred per month, from a country whose government denies the persecution narrative, whose white minority has been returning home from abroad in increasing numbers, and from which at least four of the original resettled refugees have already gone back.

Again, the refugee program was established in 1980 to help people fleeing wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. Trump has used it, almost exclusively, for this.

The policy has not changed. Neither has the logic behind it.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The warrior ethos has a color
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-warrior-ethos-has-a-color/
Last updated: 2026-04-07T15:46:07.000Z
The list had 29 names on it.

Most of them were white men. Four were not: two Black officers and two women. All four of them decorated, all of them with records that earned their place. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll looked at those four names and said they belonged.

Pete Hegseth looked at those four names and said they did not.

George then requested a meeting with Hegseth to discuss the promotion list. Hegseth declined. Then he fired George—over the phone interrupting another meeting—in the middle of a war.

That is where we are.

## The numbers don't lie

The firings of Gen. George, Gen. David Hodne, and Maj. Gen. William Green Jr. last week were not aberrations. They were part of a recurring pattern. Nine U.S. officials told reporters that Hegseth has blocked or delayed promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military. One official put it plainly: 

> "There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth."

This from the man who said, in February 2025, that "the single dumbest phrase in military history is 'our diversity is our strength.'" He meant it. He has spent every month since using it as his guide.

He fired George for refusing to go along. He fired a four-star general, a Purple Heart recipient and a decorated combat veteran who had led the Army out of a significant recruitment crisis. He fired the man who was actively working to get equipment and personnel into a war theater. [An Axios source asked the obvious question](https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/hegseth-george-hodne-army-fired-iran?ref=notunmindful.org): 

> "Here is a four-star general who is actively working to get equipment and people into theater—to protect U.S. forces—and you fire him? In the middle of a war?"

The warrior ethos, it turns out, has its limits. 

It stops at the color line.

## The crusader versus the Chaplain

We also have to talk about Maj. Gen. William Green Jr.

Green was the Army's chief of chaplains, a Baptist minister with over three decades of service, who had been decorated with the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star. Hegseth fired him too, making this the first time in U.S. military history that a Chief of Chaplains has been dismissed during a four-year term. The reason? "Secular humanism" within the chaplaincy.

Pete Hegseth fired the Army's top chaplain, a Baptist, for insufficient Christianity.

This is the same Pete Hegseth who, on March 26, held a Pentagon prayer service at which he called for "overwhelming violence" against America's enemies. The same Pete Hegseth who read from a Bible adorned with two Crusader images. The same Pete Hegseth whose tattoos include the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase *Deus Vult,* Latin for "God wills it" (the battle cry of the First Crusade). Both tattoos are recognized symbols of the white nationalist movement.

He is not hiding it. He carries it permanently inked on his skin and it has been there his whole tenure as the Secretary of Defense.

On Easter Sunday, as Hegseth's Pentagon processed its latest round of purges, Pope Leo XIV delivered his *Urbi et Orbi* message. "Let those who have weapons lay them down," he said. He quoted Isaiah: "Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: Your hands are full of blood." 

The most senior Catholic voices in the world and in the American military both pushed back on Easter weekend. Hegseth did not respond. His actions tell his tale.

Crusader 2 – 0 Catholics and Baptists.

## This has a name

This is Christian white supremacist nationalism.

The promotion list. The firings. The *Deus Vult*. The prayer services calling for overwhelming violence. The systematic removal of Black and female officers and their replacement with loyalists. The purging of a chaplain for insufficient fealty to a particular brand of Christianity.

This is not a culture war. Culture wars have two sides arguing about values. This is something older, more specific, and more insidious: a belief that martial virtue is racially and religiously encoded and that the warrior ethos belongs, by nature and by God, to a particular kind of man. And of course, it is a man—a white Christian nationalist man.

Other kinds of people in positions of authority is not just a debatable policy preference, but an offense against the natural order. An offense that must be corrected.

Pete Hegseth is not subtle. The text is on his skin.

Senator Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, said this weekend that faith leaders who claim Trump has a divine purpose are doing what religious leaders have always done when they sanctify power: the same thing that was done to justify slavery. *\[Ed. note: Senator Warnock is, more or less, my neighbor.\]* 

Warnock is right. The contemptible theology that put *Deus Vult* on Hegseth's arm and summarily removed Black and women officers off the promotion list is not new. It is very, very old.

It was wrong then. His position doesn't make it less wrong now.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### We are who we fear we are
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/we-are-who-we-fear-we-are/
Last updated: 2026-03-30T18:53:36.000Z
With everything else going on, some big news happened recently. The big newspapers here mostly missed it or buried. Thankfully, [*The Guardian* had a story on it](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/25/un-votes-slave-trade-gravest-crime-against-humanity-reparatory-justice?ref=notunmindful.org), which brought it to my attention.

On March 25, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted [Resolution A/80/L.48](https://press.un.org/en/2026/ga12755.doc.htm?ref=notunmindful.org). This resolution declared the transatlantic slave trade and the enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity. It also called for reparatory justice for its descendants. The vote was 123 to 3.

## **The US told the world chattel slavery was legal**

The United States voted no.

It did not abstain, which is common in such matters. 

It voted no. 

Explaining the vote, it stated its official position plainly: 

> \[America\] "does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred."

Think about that for a moment.The official position of the United States government on the kidnapping, transport, sale, and enslavement of millions of African men, women, and children is that it was fine; it was legal. 

Not a tragedy. Not a crime against humanity. Fine. A lawful transaction. A feature of the global economy, not a bug.

This is America's original sin, and its effects still pervade this society.

## **What chattel slavery was**

The legal argument depends on your willingness to forget. So, this bit of history is what we are talking about.

For more than four hundred years, twelve to fifteen million African men, women, and children were abducted from their homes. They were force-marched to coastal fortresses and loaded onto ships in conditions designed to maximize cargo and minimize the cost of death. 

Those who survived the Middle Passage—and many did not—were sold at auction, classified as property, stripped of their names, their languages, their religions, their families, and their futures. They could be bred, beaten, rented, mortgaged, raped, and killed. Their children were born into the same condition, inheriting not freedom but ownership. This is what chattel means. Not enslaved in the general sense. Owned. Like land. Like livestock.

Permanently, from one generation to the next.

We know the role of the U.S., but Britain was no bystander in this system. It created it. By the eighteenth century, British merchants dominated the transatlantic slave trade, operating out of Liverpool, Bristol, and London, carrying more enslaved Africans across the Atlantic than any other nation. The Royal African Company held a Crown-granted monopoly on the trade from 1672\. 

When that monopoly was broken and the trade opened to private merchants, the volume didn't decrease—it exploded. British capital financed the ships, the forts, the plantations, and the insurance markets that made the whole machinery profitable. Lloyd's of London insured the cargo. The cargo was human beings.

When Britain passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 — the date the UN now commemorates, the date chosen for the International Day of Remembrance—it did not free a single enslaved person. It banned the trade while leaving the plantation system it had built fully intact. Emancipation for Britain came in 1833, after decades of sustained abolitionist pressure. Even then, it arrived with a condition that should have been a scandal and has instead been mostly forgotten: £20 million in compensation, paid not to the people who had been enslaved, but to the people who had owned them. 

That sum represented roughly 40 percent of the British government's annual budget at the time. The British taxpayer finished paying off the debt compensating slaveholders for the loss of their human property in 2015\. People alive today paid it.

The economy that made the United States a global power was built on this system. The cotton that fed British and American textile mills. The sugar that sweetened European tables. The tobacco, the rice, the indigo. The financial instruments (insurance policies, mortgage-backed securities, bonds) that financed the plantations and the trade itself. 

The wealth generated by chattel slavery didn't stay on the plantation. It moved. It capitalized banks. It built universities. It funded political careers. It compounded. It is still compounding. The enduring racial wealth gap in America is not a coincidence or a cultural artifact. It is a balance sheet.

The resolution the United States voted against named all of this. It described the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery as the gravest crime against humanity,

> "by reason of the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital." 

That is a precise and accurate description. The United States looked at that language and voted no.

## **The legal argument is not a legal argument**

"Not illegal under international law at the time" deserves careful deconstruction, because it does a lot deal of dishonest work.

International law is not received laws *a priori*. Nation states make it over time to reflect their interests and power. Those that made international law in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were, in significant part, the same ones conducting and profiting from the transatlantic slave trade. Of course they didn't write laws against it. They practiced it. Pointing to the absence of those laws as a defense is like an arsonist citing the lack of a fire code.

Follow this logic to its conclusion. The Holocaust was not illegal under German law at the time it was occurring. The legal apparatus of the Third Reich authorized and administered it. Does the United States believe that forecloses their accountability? Nuremberg argues otherwise.

The colonial seizure of indigenous lands across the Americas was conducted under legal frameworks specifically constructed to authorize it. Does legality at the time of commission settle the moral and political question of remedy? 

The answer has been no. Civilization eventually decided that some things are wrong independent of whether the perpetrators wrote them into law.

The US delegate offered a second argument: that calling chattel slavery the gravest crime against humanity implies a hierarchy among atrocity crimes, which "diminishes the suffering of countless victims and survivors of other atrocities." This is a remarkable position from a country that just voted against acknowledging one of the atrocities in question. The concern for comparative suffering rings somewhat hollow when your vote is actively denying the suffering you claim to be protecting. Seems on brand for our current administration doesn't it.

Deputy US Ambassador Dan Negrea knows all this. This is not a legal argument. It is a political argument dressed in legal language. What it is protecting is not a principle. It is an inheritance.

## **The theft didn't stop with the ships**

The resolution also called for the restitution of cultural artifacts taken from African nations and peoples during the centuries of the slave trade and the colonial exploitation that followed it. This means the art, monuments, documents, national archives. (hello, British Museum.) This demand was rejected along with everything else.

This is more than a symbolic recognition. The systematic destruction and theft of African cultural production, including languages suppressed, religions criminalized, art looted, histories erased, was not incidental to chattel slavery. It was integral to it. 

You cannot hold human beings as property without first stripping them of their humanity, and you cannot strip them of their humanity without destroying the cultural inheritance that grounds it. Cultural genocide was not a side effect of the transatlantic slave trade. It was a method. The demand for restitution is a demand to acknowledge that the theft did not end when the ships stopped running.

The United States voted against that too.

## **Who we stand with: 123 to 3**

The vote was 123 to 3\. One hundred and twenty-three nations looked at this history and said: this was wrong, this demands remedy, this cannot be resolved by waiting for the people it damaged to die. 

The United States stood with Argentina and Israel and said no.

Fifty-two nations (including most of Europe) abstained, including the United Kingdom. This is the country that:

1. Built the dominant machinery of the transatlantic slave trade
2. Held a Crown monopoly on human trafficking
3. Collected £20 million in slaveholder compensation and finished paying it off eleven years ago

It's acting ambassador spoke about commitment to adressing "root causes" and the "scourge of modern slavery." The redirect is deliberate. Acknowledge the legacy in the softest possible terms, pivot to contemporary trafficking, and quietly protect the inheritance. Britain didn't have the nerve to vote no. It also didn't have the integrity to vote yes. It abstained, which is its own kind of answer.

Europe's hands are no cleaner, whatever the abstentions imply. But the United States didn't have the decency to abstain. It voted.

Ghana led this resolution. Ghana's coastline is still marked by slave forts where millions of human beings passed through the door of no return. Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama, a key architect of the resolution, said before the vote: 

> "Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of the millions who suffered the indignity of slavery." 

One hundred and twenty-three nations followed.

The country that built the most powerful economy in human history on the labor of the people who passed through that door said the quiet part out loud.

It always has. And still does.

## **This is what they glorify**

The lost causers flying Confederate battle flags everywhere.

The legislators dismantling DEI programs and banning books that tell the history of race in America. 

The school boards scrubbing the word slavery from curricula and replacing it with "involuntary relocation." 

The politicians who call reparations radical while sitting in buildings constructed by enslaved labor. 

And the diplomat in New York, in 2026, hiding behind international legal theory to avoid saying that what we did was wrong and that wrong demands remedy.

These are not separate phenomena. They are the same refusal, expressed in different registers, protecting the same inheritance. The Confederate monument and the UN vote are the same gesture. The book ban and the legal objection are the same argument. 

**Our inheritance as a nation is built on it: chattel slavery.** 

Our inheritance is the wealth, the power, the political architecture. The project has alway been to avoid accounting for how it was acquired.

The resolution the United States voted against this week did not demand the impossible. It did not set a dollar figure or establish a tribunal. It asked for acknowledgment. For a formal apology. For a framework of conversations about what remedy might look like. For the return of what was stolen. For the recognition that the gravest crime against humanity was, in fact, a crime.

Our United States said no.

One hundred and twenty-three nations said otherwise.

The world is watching for history. The United States has made its position clear. It has been making it clear for two hundred and fifty years. 

Now we must pick up the pieces and hold them all to account for all those lives.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

*(Editor's note: this piece is 1865 words long.)*

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### Dismantling the public displays of the Lost Cause a piece at a time
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/dismantling-the-public-displays-of-the-lost-cause-a-piece-at-a-time/
Last updated: 2026-03-24T18:57:28.000Z
## The whole Lost Cause apparatus

Virginia built a Lost Cause infrastructure piece by piece. It put statues next to the Capitol. It provided tax exemptions coded into state law for groups we've covered before. And it issued license plates stamped with rebel iconography and Robert E. Lee's likeness. 

It took decades. 

Now the 2026 General Assembly has passed bills to dismantle part of it in one session. 

Three bills. Three different mechanisms. One argument. The state of Virginia should not subsidize, honor, or promote the Confederacy. (This also relates to [what's happening at the institution next door](https://www.notunmindful.org/update-on-the-institution-next-door/).) 

That package now awaits Gov. Abigail Spanberger's signature, which is almost assured.

None of it is subtle. It is long overdue.

## Backlash, not heritage

We'll Start with HB 167, because it has the most revealing origin story.

The bill strips tax-exempt status from a collection of Confederate heritage organizations: the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial, the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the J.E.B. Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust. 

These exemptions weren't written into Virginia law at the end of the Civil War, or even during the first wave of Lost Cause monument-building in the late 19th century.

They were introduced in 1950.

Why then? 1950 is not the pre-civil-rights era. It is smack in the middle of the movement to dismantle segregationshortly before *Brown v. Board of Education*, which would produce massive resistance and the closing of Virginia public schools rather than integrate them. These tax exemptions were not a gesture of tradition or a nod at heritage. They were an explicitly political act. The Virginia legislature was declaring whose history it intended to protect and whose movement it intended to resist.

Last month, the Virginia Senate passed HB 167 along party lines (21-17 ). Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a version of the bill last year. The difference this year is Spanberger in the executive mansion. And she is expected to sign it.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, for their part, responded to passage with a statement calling it "viewpoint discrimination" and warning that it sets a precedent that might one day strip churches of their tax-exempt status. This argument is the Lost Cause in miniature. It argues that organizations devoted to honoring men who went to war to preserve slavery deserve the same protections as religious institutions . It claims victimhood dressed up as a constitutional principle. It is, of course, bullshit.

## The license plates

HB 1344 is the tidiest of the three. It repeals the statutory authorization for Virginia to issue special license plates glorifying the confederacy. One for the Sons of Confederate Veterans and one commemorating Robert E. Lee. The plates already on vehicles will remain valid until they expire, but they cannot be renewed.

The state of Virginia has, for years, been in the business of stamping Confederate iconography on license plates and handing them out through the DMV—an arrangement that required an affirmative act of the legislature to create and will now require an affirmative act to end. The bill does exactly that. It passed both chambers and is headed to Spanberger along with the rest of this package.

The public comment record on the bill is instructive. One submission argued that removing the plates constitutes "an act of aggression." Another insisted these plates represent "heritage, not hatred." 

These arguments have been made so many times, for so many years, about so many Confederate symbols, that they have calcified into ritual. Same playbook, different day. It doesn't even matter what is actually being argued. The heritage claimed, as we know, is a heritage of secession and slavery. The state of Virginia declining to put that heritage on a license plate is not aggression. 

It is the least it could do.

## The statues on Capitol Square

It always comes back to statues too.

SB 636 is the one that has drawn the most heated response, which makes sense—it is the most visible. The bill directs the Department of General Services to remove three Confederate statues from Capitol Square in Richmond: Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Gov. William "Extra Billy" Smith, and Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire.

All three were installed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—the same era that gave Virginia its poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and the systematic dismantling of Black political power after Reconstruction. We know Jackson well. Smith also was a prominent Confederate general, who later served as governor of Virginia. McGuire, the least known of the three, was also extra virulent. He was the Confederacy's medical director and a committed defender of slavery. After the war he spoke loudly in opposition to Black voting rights.

They are all currently visible from the windows of the state capitol.

Senate sponsor Adam Ebbin, who is leaving office, called the statues "an embarrassment" commemorating people who "supported slavery" standing in the public square where Virginia's laws are made. Del. Lee Ware (R-Powhatan) rose to speak against removal, which is his right. But there is something clarifying about watching a Virginia Republican rise to defend statues of Confederate generals on the grounds of the capitol of the former Confederate capital. The argument writes itself.

SB 636 passed the Senate along party lines. The statues would are to be removed and stored pending a determination by the General Assembly about their final disposition.

## The clock ticks

All three bills are on Gov. Spanberger's desk. Under Virginia law, she has until April 13 to sign, veto, or send back amendments. If she takes no action, the bills become law automatically.

She most assuredly will sign them. Her office has said, in measured language, that she "looks forward to reviewing all legislation that reaches her desk." Youngkin vetoed predecessors to both HB 167 and the license plate bill. Spanberger is not Youngkin. That is precisely why these bills are on her desk instead of into the bin.

This is electoral accountability. The General Assembly passed these bills in earlier sessions. A Republican governor killed them. Virginia voters elected a Democratic governor, and now the same legislature, with the same priorities, has passed the same bills again—and this time there is every reason to expect them to become law.

The Lost Cause infrastructure in Virginia did not build itself. It was constructed through deliberate legislative acts, carve-outs, authorizations, and appropriations. It can be dismantled the same way. The 2026 session is doing exactly that. It's not symbolic, but a series of specific, concrete changes to the Code of Virginia.

All these vestiges of hate date to the era of Jim Crow by a legislature that knew exactly what it was doing.

Now a new legislature is doing something different.

Will the country's largest Confederate memorial (our alma mater) get the memo?I'm not holding my breath, but we have to keep the pressure on it.

*Non in cautus futuri.*  

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/AdobeStock_303128616_Editorial_Use_Only.jpeg) 

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### Update on the institution next door
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/update-on-the-institution-next-door/
Last updated: 2026-03-18T18:45:22.000Z
## States' rights?

On March 5th, five Republican members of Virginia's congressional delegation sent a letter to Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth asking the federal government to intervene in Virginia's oversight of the Virginia Military Institute. Reps. Ben Cline, Rob Wittman, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, and John McGuire signed it.

The letter warns that two bills moving through Virginia's General Assembly represent dangerous "state over-reach." It maintains the bills could undermine a federally recognized officer-development system and weaken national defense.

The signatories, of course, are from the party that has built its brand since the civil rights era on the idea of states' rights—the principle that the federal government should keep its hands off state institutions. They have apparently decided to make an exception here.

 Why? (The answer will shock exactly no one.)

## What the letter says

As with the flags, they are relying on the literal aspects of law. Their legal hook is VMI's status as one of six Senior Military Colleges recognized under Title 10 of the U.S. Code. They argue that VMI's participation in ROTC programs under federal authority and the cadets commission at high rates, any state restructuring of VMI's governance should involve a national say. If Virginia can do this to VMI, they warn, any state could do it to any of the other five Senior Military Colleges. (Not that there have yet been any questions or noise about Virginia Tech or the others\*.)

The letter cites two outside advocacy documents to support its argument. The first is a resolution from the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (nothing surprising). The second and shadier is an open letter from a group called STARRS (Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services). Including the terrible acronym, the group's name itself tells us how this coalition has framed their opposition. Holding institutions accountable for documented systemic racism is, in their telling, the radicalism. The racism itself, apparently, is just heritage. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.)

What's instructive is what it leaves out. 

The letter neglects to mention the 2021 state investigation that found VMI maintained, what it carefully termed, "an outdated, idealized reverence for the Civil War and the Confederacy." 

It also doesn't mention the decades during which VMI sent first-year cadets to reenact the Battle of New Market—not as a cautionary tale about what happens when educated men choose treason, but as a heroic tradition to be honored. Their American Thermopylae.

What it also does not mention is Cedric Wins. (More on that later.)

The two bills in question—one restructuring VMI's Board of Visitors and one establishing a task force to examine whether the reforms demanded by a 2021 state investigation have actually been implemented—were both substantially watered down before passage. 

[We covered this legislation in February](https://www.notunmindful.org/news-regarding-that-other-lexington-institution/), including how VMI's superintendent eventually endorsed the amended task force bill once the language threatening state funding was stripped out. What survived is modest. 

What the congressional letter is trying to kill is modesty itself.

## The question the letter is designed to prevent

In 2020, retired Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins became VMI's first Black superintendent, appointed in the aftermath of that damning state investigation. Under his tenure, VMI implemented 34 of 38 reform recommendations. The Confederate reenactment at New Market ended. VMI made documentable and documented progress.

In 2025, VMI's Board of Visitors chose not to renew Wins' contract.

The first Black superintendent in the institution's history—the man tasked with addressing a documented culture of Confederate reverence and racial hostility—made substantial, measurable progress on the reforms the state demanded. And the board fired him for that.

That board was not a neutral body. Throughout Wins' tenure, former Gov. Glenn Youngkin was making appointments to it. The Governor stacked the board that decided Wins' reforms had gone far enough. The same Governor whose political coalition had spent years characterizing those reforms as ideological overreach. This outcome was not an accident. It was premeditated. 

And now, the same political network that engineered Wins' exit asks Trump and Hegseth to shield VMI from the task force that would examine whether his work will remain or be publicly reversed to appease the basest base. 

As they do, they have dressed this up in the language of national security and federal supremacy. But let's see it for what it is: a Lost Cause" protection racket for an institution that has never fully reckoned with what it spent generations teaching. 

## The hand signing off on the protection

Now the true picture emerges. Pete Hegseth, who received the congressional letter asking for VMI's protection, wrote a memo that [blacklisted the College of William & Mary from the Senior Service College Fellows program](https://www.notunmindful.org/alma-mater-to-which-nation/) because W&M had failed to "sharpen our leaders' warfighting capabilities" and had "undermined the very values they are sworn to defend."

Hegseth's preferred replacements for W&M include Liberty University. Jeebus. Yes that one.

Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell, espouses a particular strain of Christian nationalist education that has never been shy about its sympathies. The man deciding which institutions are worthy of federal military partnership has a [worldview](https://www.notunmindful.org/god-of-war/), and it is not subtle.

VMI—with its documented Lost Cause culture, its fired Black superintendent, its cadets who were taught about Confederate heroes while enslaved people who built and sustained the institution were erased from the record—gets a letter of protection from five Republican members of Congress and the implicit backing of the Department of War. W&M gets blacklisted. This is not a coincidence. This is a policy. From the Confederacy to the Pentagon indeed.

## Federalism when it suits them

  
Sitting members of Congress did not write to anyone in 1968, when VMI was the last public college in Virginia to desegregate—four years after the Civil Rights Act. Even then, they only did so because the federal government threatened their funding

The current crop didn't write when the 2021 investigation found persistent barriers, inadequately addressed sexual assault reports, and a culture that made Black cadets and women feel like outsiders in their own state institution. They did not write when the Board of Visitors decided that Cedric Wins had done enough reforming and it was time for him to go.

They wrote when Virginia proposed asking, through a task force, whether the reforms had actually stuck.

And there it is. 

The invocation of federal supremacy and national security is not a principled argument about the constitutional limits of state authority. It is a tool, deployed selectively, to protect a specific institutional culture from a specific kind of scrutiny. When VMI resisted desegregation, federal intervention was the problem. When Virginia asks whether VMI has moved past celebrating the Confederacy, federal intervention is suddenly the solution.

It's the racism.

The task force created by HB 1377 will report its findings by November 2026\. It will examine whether VMI has actively worked to distance itself from Lost Cause mythology and whether it has the institutional capacity to stop celebrating the Confederacy. These are not radical questions 160 years after the war. They are the minimum a state owes its taxpayers when it spends $30 million a year on an institution with this history.

Cedric Wins answered those questions quietly and professionally. The board fired him for doing it, and they answered them too.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/iStock-824699640.jpg) 

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\*Norwich University (VT), University of North Georgia, Texas A&M University, and The Citadel.
### From the Confederacy to the Pentagon
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/god-of-war/
Last updated: 2026-03-17T00:52:51.000Z
## God of war

There is a man tattooed with the Jerusalem Cross—the coat of arms of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem after 1099—who now controls the most powerful military in the history of the world. He has renamed his department the Department of War. He hosts monthly Christian prayer services inside the Pentagon. He attends weekly White House Bible studies. He told the [National Prayer Breakfast](https://publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/at-national-prayer-breakfast-hegseth?ref=notunmindful.org) in February that America:

> "...was founded as a Christian nation. It remains a Christian nation in our DNA if we can keep it. And as public officials, we have a sacred duty 250 years on to glorify Him."

Ladies and gentlemen meet Pete Hegseth, the United States Secretary of Defense.

While all this may seem like background noise, it's not. This is their operating system.

## The pastor and the Pentagon

On February 18, Hegseth [invited Doug Wilson](https://www.columbian.com/news/2026/feb/19/hegseth-invites-controversial-idaho-pastor-and-self-described-christian-nationalist-to-lead-pentagons-monthly-prayer-meeting/?ref=notunmindful.org) to lead the Pentagon's monthly prayer service. Wilson is a pastor from Moscow, Idaho. He describes himself as a Christian nationalist and is the co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Hegseth belongs to this "denomination." 

The Secretary did not only invite Wilson, but he also thanked him, on stage, in front of hundreds of troops and government employees, for his "leadership" and "mentorship" and "the willingness to be bold." He called Wilson's presence an exercise in the kind of thing "we are trying to do here."

Wilson told the crowd the service was a sign of national revival. "If you bear the name of Jesus Christ," he declared, "there's no armor greater than that."

The Department of Defense—operating under a name its secretary has no legal authority to change—posted photographs of the two men together on its official communications channels with the caption: "We are One Nation Under God."

Let's be clear about who Doug Wilson is, because the Pentagon's embrace of him deserves more than the three-paragraph treatment it's received in most outlets.

[Wilson has written](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/02/20/christian-nationalist-pastor-speaks-on-his-sermon-to-troops-at-pentagon/?ref=notunmindful.org) that enslaved people in the American South had an "affectionate" relationship with their owners. Rape is not affectionate. He has argued that women are unsuited for combat because God assigns gender roles. His church holds that women should not vote. When *The Military Times* asked him about whether he supports the 19th Amendment, Wilson declined to give a straight answer. Instead he retreated to language about how his church runs its own elections. 

Now get this! He believes, and has taught, that the Civil War was biblically justified. He has argued that Muslims have no right to participate in government and has made statements about LGBTQ people that are too toxic to dignify with repetition here.

Wilson's reverence for the Confederacy is not incidental to his theology—it is load-bearing. He has written extensively about Robert E. Lee with the devotion of a hagiographer. He frames the Confederate cause as a Christian civilization that understood the ordained nature of social and race hierarchy. 

Lee, in Wilson's telling, was not a traitor. He was a model. Stop me if you've heard this one before. He was a Christian soldier who chose his people, bore his burden with honor, and trusted God's providence even in defeat. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

This is the Lost Cause not as regional nostalgia but as active theology—and it is the theology now being practiced inside the Pentagon. The rebels are running the establishment.

This is the man Pete Hegseth calls his mentor.

## The new crusades in real time

It would be troubling enough if this remained a story about prayer services and ideological patronage. It has not remained that story.

The United States is currently waging war on Iran. Actual war. As of this writing, the U.S. has sunk a defenseless ship from the Iranian Navy in the Indian ocean. (The same ship had just completed maneuvers with the U.S. Navy at the behest of the Indian government. And seven American service members are dead. Six of them [arrived at Dover Air Force Base](https://www.ms.now/ali-velshi/iran-holy-war-trump-christian-nationalism-pete-hegseth?ref=notunmindful.org) in flag-draped cases last week. (Some of them had served for nearly two decades and the youngest was just 20 years old.)

More will follow. Boots on the ground and all.

And in the units preparing for possible deployment, some of the men and women responsible for those troops have been telling them what this war is really about.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization founded by Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein and made up of roughly 95% of Christians, has been [flooded with complaints](https://theintercept.com/2026/03/05/iran-war-end-times-christian/?ref=notunmindful.org) from service members. The pattern across those complaints is consistent and specific. Commanders describing the Iran conflict as biblically sanctioned, as the fulfillment of end-times prophecy, as the signal fire for the return of Christ. One commander reportedly told his unit that Trump "has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon."

What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem indeed.

[Thirty members of Congress](https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/03/06/lawmakers-want-dod-hegseth-investigated-biblical-armageddon-claims.html?ref=notunmindful.org), led by Reps. Jamie Raskin and Jared Huffman of the Congressional Freethought Caucus and House Armed Services Subcommittee Ranking Member Chrissy Houlahan, have formally requested that the DoD Inspector General investigate whether Hegseth's "extreme religious rhetoric has metastasized into segments of the military chain of command."

Metastasized. That is a word chosen carefully by members of Congress, and it is the right word. This is what happens when the person at the top of a command structure makes his theology the governing framework of his leadership. It is a cancer that flows downward. It fills the vacuum. It kills our polity. 

And when young soldiers are frightened and uncertain and looking for meaning, a commander who tells them God has ordained this—that dying here is a path to salvation, as Hegseth himself suggested at the National Prayer Breakfast — is not offering comfort. He is issuing an order wrapped in scripture.

Religious war by a new name. The soldiers will still be dead, whatever their beliefs.

## This isn't new. That's the point.

American military history has never been free of religion. Chaplains, prayer, the assumption of providential purpose—these are woven through the fabric of how this country has always gone to war. And when we think of the fight against global fascism in the '40s, it fit well.

None of that is what we're talking about here.

What we're talking about instead is the deliberate institutional capture of a secular military command structure by a specific theological movement. A movement with a specific political agenda, a specific theory of history, and a specific set of beliefs about who belongs in the American project and who does not. A specific racism and misogyny if you will.

Doug Wilson does not believe women should vote. He does not believe Muslims have a role in American governance. He has [written sympathetically](https://baptistnews.com/article/hegseth-promotes-christian-america-at-pentagon-and-nrb/?ref=notunmindful.org) about the slaveholder's relationship with the enslaved. These are not fringe positions he holds privately. They are published, defended, and taught. This man is the spiritual mentor of the Secretary of Defense. And he is welcomed into the Pentagon and praised on government social media as an emblem of national identity.

The Lost Cause mythology as racist as it is does not exist in isolation. It is part of a coherent ideological framework that ranges from your local school board to the Idaho pastor. And now to the Pentagon war room. Wilson is an explicit link in that chain. His theology of hierarchy—racial, gendered, religious—springs directly from theology that gave the Confederacy its self-understanding; a Christian civilization defending a divinely ordained social order.

The statues of Robert E. Lee are coming down from courthouse squares across the South—against fierce resistance from the movement Wilson represents. But the ideology those statues were built to consecrate has not been defeated. It has been promoted. It now has a prayer service at the Department of Defense and the ear of the man who controls the American military. 

You don't need the monument when you have the Pentagon.

That theology is now hosting prayer services inside the Department of Defense. It is now shaping how commanders explain a war to the troops under their command. It is now, per the Jerusalem Cross tattooed across the chest of the Secretary of Defense, decorating the body of the man with his finger on the most lethal apparatus in human history.

## What the Establishment Clause was for

The Constitution is not ambiguous on this. The First Amendment begins with a prohibition: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. 

The framers—several of whom, it bears noting, were educated at [William & Mary](https://www.notunmindful.org/alma-mater-to-which-nation/)—understood from European history what happens when state power and religious authority fuse. They built a wall. Not because they were hostile to faith, but because they understood that the wall protects faith as much as it protects the state. A military that tells its soldiers they are fighting for Jesus is not protecting religious freedom. It is conscripting it.

Hegseth's response to this criticism has been to frame the prohibition itself as the attack. ["Protecting our culture and our religion from godless ideologies and pagan religions,"](https://tennesseelookout.com/2026/02/21/in-nashville-hegseth-talks-western-values-christian-nationalism/?ref=notunmindful.org) he said in a recent speech, "is not political—it is biblical." In other words, the Constitution's secular framework is the threat. His theology is the defense.

That is not only a confession but also a declaration.

Service members now are filing complaints with the MRFF. They are not doing so because they are hostile to religion. The MRFF is 95% Christian. They are doing so because they took an oath to a Constitution and they are being told, by the people commanding them, that the oath that matters is to their theology. A [military contractor](https://baptistnews.com/article/hegseth-promotes-christian-america-at-pentagon-and-nrb/?ref=notunmindful.org) who declined to attend one of Hegseth's prayer services put it plainly: 

> "the services give Christians access to senior leadership that members of other faiths simply do not have."

This is not religious freedom. That is religious adherence enforced through the chain of command.

## The bodies at Dover

Six soldiers came home to Dover last week. Seven are dead. The youngest was 20 years old.

They did not die for Jesus. They did not die to light a signal fire for Armageddon. They died because a government sent them into harm's way, and governments that do that owe those soldiers—and the rest of us—a reckoning: 

> Why this war? What are the objectives? What does victory look like? What is the plan?

No one has answered those questions. Instead, the commanders of some of the units preparing for expanded combat, offer eschatology. The war is God's will. The dying and blood shed fulfills a prophecy. But whose.

That is not a military rationale. It is a mechanism for silencing doubt, suppressing dissent, and insulating bad decisions from accountability. It is, in the oldest and most cynical sense, how power employs religion when it needs a justification for something it cannot defend on the merits.

Pete Hegseth wears the Jerusalem Cross. The Crusaders wore it too. Nazis saw themselves in the same light.

History has a verdict on the Crusades and fascists. It will also have one on this war.

We must plainly ask the reasons again and again, and then we must hold them to account.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

**Further reading update 13 March 2026:**[*CNN now has a deeper article about this*](https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/hegseth-iran-israel-war-american-crusade-analysis?ref=notunmindful.org) *but it misses the confederate, Lost Cause, racism background entirely.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/AdobeStock_360072471_Editorial_Use_Only.jpeg) 

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### Alma mater to which nation
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/alma-mater-to-which-nation/
Last updated: 2026-03-06T13:24:21.000Z
The College of William & Mary has been training Americans for public service since 1693\. That is not a boast. It is a fact so foundational it should not raise an eyebrow. It's like noting that the Atlantic Ocean is wet. (Full disclosure: W&M is my other alma mater.)

Thomas Jefferson studied there. Joh Marshall. James Monroe. John Tyler. George Wythe. Henry Clay. Oh, and George Washington studied there too. (That's four presidents and a few others you may remember from your high school history classes.)

The men who wrote the documents, argued the principles, and built—however imperfectly—the architecture of American self-governance walked those grounds in Williamsburg and carried what they learned into the world. Crucially, they built the architecture to adapt.

The Trump Pentagon has decided this is no longer good enough.

On February 27, the Department of Defense [announced it was cutting William & Mary from its Senior Service College Fellows Program](https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4418359/statement-by-chief-pentagon-spokesman-sean-parnell-on-aligning-senior-service-c/?ref=notunmindful.org), along with thirteen other universities it accused of harboring "woke" policies. The DoD statement accused the listed schools of failing to "deliver rigorous education grounded in realism" and of harboring "significant adversary involvement"—a charge so vague it functions as a threat more than an accusation. They can poison the well without having to name the poison.

William & Mary's administration [described itself as "puzzled and saddened."](https://www.whro.org/local-government/2026-03-03/pentagon-bars-william-mary-from-college-program?ref=notunmindful.org) They did not receive any official notification from the Defense Department explaining their inclusion. Instead, they learned about it the way you learn about anything this administration does—through a press release or Truth Social post, designed for maximum visibility and minimum accountability.

Puzzled and saddened. It's a measured response. It's the kind of language institutions use when they're trying to hold the door open, to leave room for conversation, to avoid escalation. You can read the dignity in it. You can also read the futility.

## The absurdity of it all

Let's explore the absurdity of this for a moment, because it deserves more than a passing mention.

William & Mary's Army ROTC battalion is called the Revolutionary Guard. It holds a battle streamer from the Battle of Yorktown—the only Army ROTC program in the nation with that distinction. The school has been described, consistently, as one of the most military-friendly institutions in the country. 

Its chancellor is Robert M. Gates, class of 1965, who served as Director of Central Intelligence under George H.W. Bush and as Secretary of Defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Gates is not a figure of the academic left. He is the American national security establishment incarnate, a man who spent decades at the center of the apparatus that the Pentagon nominally serves.

None of that mattered. The anti-woke monster must be fed.

If Robert Gates's institution can be labeled insufficiently grounded in "realism" by a Pentagon press release—with no direct notification, no stated evidence, no process—then the word "woke" has finished its evolution into something that means only this: "we have decided you are an enemy, and we do not need to explain why." 

That is not a standard. It is a weapon. "Woke" also means awake.

## What "woke" means now

The broader list of expelled institutions tells you everything you need to know about the actual criteria: Harvard, MIT, George Washington University, to name a few. These schools have produced generals, cabinet secretaries, intelligence officers, and heads of state across generations. The common thread is not some measurable failure of educational rigor. The common thread is that these institutions have, at various points, declined to fully subordinate themselves to the political preferences of the current administration.

This is what "woke" means now. It means resistant. It means not yet broken.

The pattern is consistent and deliberate. First, identify institutions with social and intellectual authority. Second, manufacture a pretext for punishment. Third, execute the punishment publicly and without due process. Then, wait to see who capitulates. Some do. Columbia negotiated. Harvard is holding, at least for now. 

William & Mary, with a chancellor whose military credentials are beyond serious challenge, found itself cut anyway. No one seriously believes it failed its students. It's being made an example of. Thus, targeting even the most unimpeachable targets sends a clearer message than only going after the easy ones.

The message is clear: 

> "*there is no safe harbor. There is no credential, no history, no record of service that protects you. There is only compliance or consequence."*

## Founded to educate a nation

William & Mary was founded 83 years before the Declaration of Independence. It has operated continuously through the revolution, a civil war, two world wars, the Cold War, and every iteration of American political dysfunction in between. It educated the men who invented the country, and has spent over three centuries educating the people who try to keep it running.

  
The institution that taught Thomas Jefferson to think about liberty is now, according to the Pentagon, insufficiently committed to American values.

The institution whose ROTC battalion carries a battle streamer from the decisive battle of the Revolutionary War is now, according to the Pentagon, a potential vector for adversarial influence.

The institution whose chancellor ran the CIA and the Defense Department under Republican and Democratic presidents alike is now, according to the Pentagon, too "woke" to train senior military officers.

You don't have to squint to see what's happening. 

This isn't a policy dispute about curriculum. This isn't a serious argument about the quality of education at institutions that have been producing American leaders for longer than the United States has existed. 

This is a loyalty test administered by people who have decided that the point of American institutions is not to think, challenge, or question—it is to confirm.

William & Mary was founded to educate a nation. What's being built right now has no use for that.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/iStock-1065210670-1.jpg) 

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### That flag is never the point
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/that-flag-is-never-the-point/
Last updated: 2026-03-03T16:15:24.000Z
Last month, a South Carolina court ordered the removal of a 120-foot Confederate battle flag in Spartanburg County because the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) didn't pull the right permits. The law worked. In Fairfield, Virginia, the SCV did pull the permits, bought the land, and the flag went up anyway. The law had nothing to say.

That's the strategy. When one workaround closes, they find another. They always have. Because the flag has never been the point.

First a bit of recap. What is the Lost Cause really? Let's look at it honestly. The people behind it have spent 160 years counting on us not to do that.

## **"Heritage" is a weapon**

The Lost Cause is not nostalgia. It is not grief. It is not a regional quirk or a harmless reverence for ancestors. It is an organized, deliberate political project launched from the rubble of Confederate defeat. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans then institutionalized it. It aims to accomplish through culture what the Confederacy failed to do through war: rehabilitate white supremacy as the legitimate baseline of American identity.

The project has three interlocking components, and it has never abandoned any of them. 

First, rewrite the history:

- The Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery
- Confederate soldiers were noble patriots, not traitors
- The Confederacy was a constitutional republic, not a slaveholding rebellion.

Second, embed the symbols: 

- Monuments on courthouse squares
- Flags over statehouses
- School names honoring men who fought to keep human beings in chains (*ahem*)

None of really serve as historical markers but as declarations of to whom this country really belongs. 

Third, control the curriculum. 

- Ensure the next generation learns the rewritten, fake version, of the war of Southern rebellion
- Make sure any attempt to teach actual history is framed as indoctrination, radicalism, and an attack on America itself.

## Adaptation from those big-ass flags

The mega-flag campaign—planting 120-foot Confederate battle flags along major interstates when the courthouse squares became untenable—is the second component adapting to pressure. 

It is not sentiment. It is strategy.

## **Whitewashing history with a federal budget**

On January 29, 2025, Donald Trump signed an [executive order titled "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling." ](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/?ref=notunmindful.org)Buried inside it was the resurrection of the 1776 Commission—the same commission Biden dissolved on his first day in office after [historians ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776%5FCommission?ref=notunmindful.org)[charitably ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776%5FCommission?ref=notunmindful.org)[called its report a "hack job](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776%5FCommission?ref=notunmindful.org)." The American Historical Association called it not a work of history but of cynical politics. Trump brought it back anyway and handed it a federal budget.

The 1776 Commission uses the language of patriotism to institutionalize Lost Cause mythology in American classrooms. It frames honest teaching about slavery and systemic racism as "radical indoctrination." The SCV uses exactly this tactic whenever someone challenges Confederate iconography.

These are not separate movements with similar talking points. They are the same project operating in different registers.

The [Education Department has already announced](https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/ed-dept-will-emphasize-patriotic-education-in-grant-competitions/2025/09?ref=notunmindful.org) that "patriotic education" will be a priority for competitive federal grants. The coalition of organizations tapped to develop curriculum for America's 250th birthday celebration includes Hillsdale College, PragerU, and Turning Point USA. The people writing the history our children will be taught are the same people who have been arguing for decades that what our children have been taught is a lie.

That is not a reform. That is a takeover.

## **They're not preserving history. They're writing it.**

Here's what clear-eyed resistance looks like in this moment: stop arguing only about symbols. They obviously cause pain and they must go. But we should also focus our fire on the project behind them. The flag on the interstate is a symptom. The 1776 Commission is a symptom. The assault on the 1619 Project is a symptom. The book bans are a symptom. The gutting of DEI in schools and universities is a symptom.

The disease is the same one it has always been: a determined, organized effort to define American identity as white identity, to write everyone else out of the founding story, and to use the machinery of government—courts, legislatures, curriculum standards, federal grant priorities—to make that definition stick.

It's an absolute denial of what Faulkner called America's original sin.

They have been at this for a long time. They are very good at it. But now they are operating with institutional power behind them. A power they haven't had since Reconstruction ended and the federal government decided that Black Americans' freedom was too inconvenient to defend.

Bit by bit. Post by post. Lawsuit after lawsuit. That's how you fight a 160-year project. Shine a light, and the vermin scatter.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The assault on voting rights reaching its endgame
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-assault-on-voting-rights-reaching-its-endgame/
Last updated: 2026-02-25T20:36:27.000Z
Chief Justice John Roberts is 69 years old. He has spent almost four decades working toward a single goal: the systematic legal dismantling of the Voting Rights Act of 1965\. He is very close now. The Supreme Court's ruling in [*Louisiana v. Callais*](https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/louisiana-v-callais-2/?ref=notunmindful.org) could come anytime now. When it does, a lot of people are going to act surprised. Don't be one of them.

## **They've been planning this since Reagan**

This didn't start with *Callais*. It didn't start with [*Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee*](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/brnovich-v-democratic-national-committee?ref=notunmindful.org) in 2021\. Then, the Court quietly strangled what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act's practical reach. It didn't even start with [*Shelby County v. Holder*](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/shelby-county-v-holder?ref=notunmindful.org) in 2013\. That's when Roberts finally got to the work he'd been auditioning for since he was a 27-year-old lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, where he argued that the [Voting Rights Act](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-rights-act-explained?ref=notunmindful.org) was probably unconstitutional anyway. 

This has been a decades-long project. Now it's time for the final act.

Here's what [*Callais*](https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/louisiana-v-callais-2/?ref=notunmindful.org) is actually about, stripped of the legal jargon. Louisiana is one-third Black. For years, the state drew congressional maps that gave Black voters a meaningful shot at electing a candidate of their choice in exactly one of six districts. Yes, one-sixth is smaller than one-third. A federal court said that was illegal under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana drew a second majority-Black district to comply. That should have been the end of it.

But a group of white voters sued, arguing that drawing a district with Black voters in mind—even to remedy documented discrimination—is itself unconstitutional racial discrimination. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and, in a move that should have set off every alarm in the country, asked the parties to brief whether Section 2 is constitutional at all. Louisiana, smelling blood, abandoned its own map and told the Court: go ahead, kill the whole thing. The whole thing being the Voting Rights Act.

So now the only people in that courtroom defending the Voting Rights Act are the Black voters and civil rights organizations who have been fighting this same damn fight for over sixty years. 

Normally, the state is supposed to defend the law it was forced to comply with. But, it took one look at this Court and decided to join the opposition. Who would have seen this coming? Everyone with eyes.

## **This isn't really about maps**

What happens if Section 2 falls? Beyond Congress and the headlines about House seats, think about your city council. Your school board. Your county commission. Section 2 is the legal tool that has [forced hundreds of local governments](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/louisiana-v-callais?ref=notunmindful.org) across this country to stop holding at-large elections specifically designed to dilute Black and Brown voting power and create districts where those communities can actually elect someone who gives a damn about them. 

That will go away. All of it. In states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, unified Republican legislatures have been sharpening their pencils and waiting for this ruling. They could have [new maps drawn up within weeks](https://issueone.org/articles/how-louisiana-v-callais-could-impact-pre-midterm-redistricting/?ref=notunmindful.org). One Louisiana state legislator put it plainly: the best case is they go back to a 5-1 map. The worst case is [6-0](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/redistricting-war-scotus-callais-decision/?ref=notunmindful.org). Six congressional districts. Zero where Black voters have a real voice. That's not a hypothetical. They openly say so.

And here's the infuriating rub: this Court is going to use the language of colorblindness to do it. They're going to invoke the Equal Protection Clause—written to protect Black Americans from the terrorism of Reconstruction-era white supremacy—and argue that using it to ensure Black Americans can elect their representatives is the real discrimination. With straight fucking faces. Roberts has been rehearsing this argument since the 80s.

We've been here before. Last fall, when [Richard Hasen told Dahlia Lithwick](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-v-callais.html?ref=notunmindful.org) that it could be "an earthquake in American politics," we also [laid out exactly how we got here](https://www.notunmindful.org/civil-rights-under-fire-again/)—the Roberts project, the death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy, what's actually at stake for multiracial democracy. And we went deep on [the case itself](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-fight-for-fair-representation-understanding-whats-at-stake-in-louisiana-v-callais/) when the October re-argument made clear the Court wasn't backing down. 

Those pieces hold up. They are even truer today. But, now I'd add, as we sit on the edge of the catastrophe, the surprise is not that they're doing it. The surprise is that anyone thought the project would stop. And that so few seem to give a damn.

## **Killing democracy by a thousand cuts**

*Shelby County* killed the requirement that states with histories of voter suppression get federal approval before changing their voting laws. Roberts said it was unnecessary, that the country had moved on, that the coverage formula was outdated. Look around. Racism hasn't magically disappeared. Now it's ok to say the quiet parts out loud and parade around disappearing people.

Within hours of that ruling, states began passing voter suppression laws they'd had sitting in a drawer. Hours. They were ready. Because they knew what the ruling meant even if some of the commentators were still trying to find the bright side.

[*Brnovich*](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/brnovich-v-democratic-national-committee?ref=notunmindful.org) made it nearly impossible to prove a Section 2 violation even when discriminatory intent was obvious. The Court invented a balancing test out of thin air that basically said: yes, this burdens minority voters more, but have you considered that states have interests?

And now *Callais* is [positioned to finish it](https://issueone.org/articles/how-louisiana-v-callais-could-impact-pre-midterm-redistricting/?ref=notunmindful.org). No preclearance. No meaningful Section 2\. The Voting Rights Act becomes a museum piece, something we can put in a display case next to the poll tax and the grandfather clause and explain to future schoolchildren—in states that still teach history without the stain of the "lost cause"—that we used to have this.

## Goodbye equality in representation

The decision is coming. Before the ruling and the inevitable "both sides need to find common ground on this" columns start appearing remember this: this is what the [systematic dismantling of democracy](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-arguments-conclude-in-landmark-voting-rights-case?ref=notunmindful.org) looks like. 

Not all at once. Case by case. Out in the open. On the shadow docket. Decade by decade. Decision by decision. Then, one morning you wake up and actual democracy is gone and someone in a red tie and a flag pin on their lapel tells you the Constitution requires it.

John Roberts has been waiting forty years for this. He's almost there. It's the last chance to hold power for whites in a rapidly diversifying country. Gone will be the concept of one person, one vote. Instead, it looks like a return of the three-fifths compromise: One white person equals 1+ vote.

May it bite them in the ass.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### A flag came down. The lost cause did not.
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/a-flag-came-down-the-lost-cause-did-not/
Last updated: 2026-02-19T02:29:08.000Z
## **A 120-foot flag and a 30-foot limit**

Last month, a South Carolina court did something unremarkable and, in the current climate, almost startling: it enforced the law.

A Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) chapter had erected a 120-foot flagpole along Teaberry Road in Spartanburg County. The massive flag towered next to a busy section of Interstate 85\. However, they erected it without obtaining the required development permit. 

Spartanburg County issued a violation notice. The group appealed. A zoning board initially sided with them. The county appealed that. A circuit court reversed the zoning board's decision. The group filed a motion to reconsider. Circuit Court Judge J. Mark Hayes denied it on January 29, 2026, and ordered the flag down before February 5\. The flag came down.

The case will continue because of course it will. The group has appealed the ruling to the South Carolina Court of Appeals, but for now, the flag stays down.

## **Who put the flag there**

The Adam Washington Ballenger Camp No. 68 of the SCV originally erected this flag. It is one of the oldest SCV chapters in the country, originally chartered in 1898 in Spartanburg. 

The SCV itself was founded in Richmond in 1896 as a hereditary organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers. It presents itself as a historical and preservation society—marking soldiers' graves, conducting reenactments, promoting what it calls "the true history" of the Civil War era.

That word "true" is doing an enormous amount of work, and it's worth re-examining what it actually means here: the Lost Cause.

## **The familiar mythology behind the monuments**

The Lost Cause is not simply a romanticized view of the antebellum South. It is a deliberate and organized propaganda campaign that began almost immediately after Appomattox. Since then, it has never fully stopped. And we still feel the repercussions as a nation today.

Its central claims are straightforward, and reactionary politicians have trotted them out at every opportunity since. Behold the mistruths, again:

- The Civil War was fought over states' rights rather than slavery
- Slavery was a benign or even beneficial institution
- Confederate soldiers and their generals (ahem) were men of extraordinary honor who were simply outgunned by a more industrialized North
- Reconstruction was a period of unjust Northern revenge rather than a promising, if incomplete, attempt to build a multiracial democracy

Every one of these claims of course is absolute bullshit. 

We this know this not just from contemporary scholarship but from the words of the Confederates themselves. Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President, said plainly in his 1861 Cornerstone Speech that the Confederacy's foundations were built upon "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." The secession ordinances of South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi all explicitly named the preservation of slavery as their cause. 

The historical record is not ambiguous. As much as they whine otherwise.

The Lost Cause became the philosophical foundation for the racial violence and terrorism employed to reverse Reconstruction and for the reimposition of white supremacy in the Jim Crow era. Its acceptance in the North as well as in the South facilitated national reunion following the war—but at the cost of the civil rights of African Americans. Historian David Blight put it concisely: a key to the Lost Cause is "its use of white supremacy as both means and ends."

The monument-building campaigns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were not acts of grief. They were acts of power. The Lost Cause reached a high level of popularity again during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. 

Lost Cause organizations built monuments and rewrote history textbooks not only to entrench their version of the Civil War in public memory but also to sustain the white supremacist policies, like Jim Crow, that depended on it. Georgia redesigned its state flag in 1956 to include the Confederate battle flag (and what a battle it was to get it changed). South Carolina hoisted the battle flag above its statehouse in 1961—ostensibly to mark the war's centennial, but also in direct response to the Freedom Riders and the sit-in movement. 

These are not coincidences.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy ensured that every white classroom in the South had a Confederate battle flag for display (my own high school, Riverheads, did not), reviewing school textbooks to ensure they represented the Confederate cause as honorable and just. 

They also printed "catechisms" for the Children of the Confederacy—booklets with questions and answers for white children to memorize—instructing them how "Reconstruction was unjust to the South" and that only the actions of the Ku Klux Klan "saved" the South from "negro domination." 

This is actual blasphemy. An actual church catechism reads thusly (I memorized this as a kid):

> Q. What is the sum of the six commandments which contain our duty to man?

> A. The sum of the six commandments which contain our duty to man, is, to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to do to others what we would have them to do to us.

These are not the practices of a historical society. They are the practices of an indoctrination program.

Recent scholarship has confirmed a statistically significant correlation between the number of lynchings in a county and the number of Confederate monuments it contains. Courthouse lawns were common sites for both monument dedications and lynchings. Not coincidentally, both served the same purpose: the enforcement of white supremacy through public spectacle. 

When the Stonewall Brigade commander in Fairfield (just down the road) talks about bringing monuments "home," when Camp 68 in Spartanburg invokes the Battle of the Crater, when the SCV national website describes its mission as preserving "the true history of the 1861–1865 period"—this is the tradition they are operating within. The heritage they are defending is not the heritage of fallen soldiers. It is the heritage of the propaganda machine built to ensure those soldiers' cause outlived their defeat. It is the heritage of outright racism and chattel slavery.

## Black voices have been speaking this truth

Black voices have called this out for over a century, and they have been ignored. In 1890, Richmond journalist John Mitchell Jr. wrote that white Southern memorialization of the Confederacy "serves to retard \[the South's\] progress in the country and forges heavier chains with which to be bound."   
  
W.E.B. Du Bois spent decades critiquing the cultural veneration of Lee and Davis as symptoms of deeper social pathology. Mary Church Terrell directly challenged Lost Cause theories of race in 1904\. 

Carter G. Woodson and Rayford Logan wrote searching histories of Black life before and after slavery that exposed the mythology's false narrative. 

These were not fringe voices. They were among the most rigorous public intellectuals of their era—and the power of white supremacist cultural institutions ensured they were ignored while Lost Cause textbooks shaped generations of classrooms. Fiend of Not Unmindful, Ty Seidule describes this in his book: [Robert E. Lee and Me](https://a.co/d/0anya3bI?ref=notunmindful.org).

These critics were not wrong then. They are not wrong now. The difference? Today their arguments have the full weight of mainstream historical scholarship behind them. The Lost Cause has no credibility left in any serious academic or archival setting. It survives, as it always has, not because it is true, but because it is useful.

But the Lost Cause has the current political power behind it, again.

## **Closer to home**

For us, this isn't abstract. We see it coming back or living there. In May 2023, the Stonewall Brigade camp of the SCV—the local camp of the same organization—dedicated what they're calling Lee-Jackson Memorial Park on a two-acre site along the southbound exit of Interstate 81 at Fairfield. 

To the sound of bagpipes playing "The Bonnie Blue Flag," they raised a large Confederate battle flag visible to every driver heading south through Rockbridge County. (No link for the racist source is my editorial decision.)

The park is explicitly designed as a sanctuary for displaced Confederate iconography—a place to receive monuments removed from Southern cities and commission new ones. The camp commander described it as coming in from "the wilderness," a refuge from what he called the forces trying to drive Confederate heritage from the public square. One of the major donors called the site "the promised land" and issued a call for Charlottesville to return its removed statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson to the park. They need their gods.

Nevermind that neither general has any connection to Fairfield, but to Lexington. Lexington did the right thing already.

Unlike the Spartanburg situation, the Fairfield flagpole appears to have been legally permitted—the camp obtained a building permit from Rockbridge County for the 80-foot pole, and the property falls outside the county's tourism corridor overlay district, exempting it from additional zoning review. Of course tourists don't travel I-81... a fucking joke.

That distinction matters. The Spartanburg case was won on a procedural technicality. The Fairfield project did its homework. It found land in a regulatory gap, secured the right paperwork, and built something designed to be permanent. 

When asked how he would respond to those who view Confederate monuments as symbols of white supremacy, the Stonewall Brigade commander said his answer had grown "quite cynical"—that those who oppose Confederate heritage have "had no issue with destroying things that we love," and that the park was a way to reestablish SCV presence "just beyond their control." So boo fucking hoo, now come and get it.

That's a frank statement of intent. This is not preservation in any archival or scholarly sense. It is defiance, organized and land-banked: a new iteration of a strategy that goes back 160 years: find a venue, claim it, and dare the public to respond and subtly threaten them if they do. 

It's the heritage without hate argument, even when the heritage IS hate. Not to mention the whataboutism. And the pry my cold dead hands thing on top as a ribbon.  
  
The Rev. Reginald Early, president of the Rockbridge County NAACP, put it plainly in response to the Fairfield project: 

> "There are forces in the American society as well as the local community who want to dismiss people of color and all of their contributions. Those forces are working tirelessly to take us backwards rather than forward."

So the law, as it stands locally in both instances, was followed. The flag stays up or goes down. But it might be time to change those laws across the board so there is no ambiguity or loopholes to finally punish the traitors and those that worship them because of their white supremacy complex.

## **What the law did and did not do**

The neo-Confederates have long wrapped themselves in the language of heritage and free speech, making any challenge feel like cultural overreach. That framing has been remarkably effective because poor whites are aggrieved and politicians respond or echo it. They are a reliable audience for it, and politicians know it.

While the communal grief white Confederate Southerners suffered from the war and the loss of their evil empire may well have been very real, it became an instrument of defiance and exploitation. It created an ideology that justified segregation and white supremacy. 

The broader battle over Confederate symbols in public life has been fought and refought for decades, with some genuine progress. South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its Statehouse grounds in 2015, following the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Georgia changed it's flag. Lexington banned the traitor's flag in public spaces. 

But that progress has always been contested and often fragile. No matter how discredited, no matter how much mainstream historical scholarship and teaching curricula expose and explain the Lost Cause traditions, they endure—especially for those in search of a past that they believe will relieve them of the present. Or even scarier, that they can somehow recreate.

In a political moment when DEI programs are being gutted, diversity initiatives dismantled, and the interpretation of American history is again under siege in classrooms and statehouses, a court order enforcing a zoning ordinance in Spartanburg County is a small, procedural thing. But it is a thing. The flag came down. And in Fairfield, it didn't. The law worked in one place, and had nothing to say in another. That's not an argument for despair it's an argument for clarity. 

We know what the Lost Cause actually is. WE know the history. We know its aims. We must do what ever we can do wherever we can do it, and keep moving forward...

*Non in cautus futuri* (**not** *in memoria praeteritorum bonorum).*

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### The museum isn't built yet. The excuses are
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-museum-isnt-built-yet-the-excuses-are/
Last updated: 2026-02-13T20:38:58.000Z
Well, it looks like were are back to our original mission: holding the University's administration to account and keeping their feet to the fire. 

As we know, in 2018, Washington and Lee's Board of Trustees approved a [Strategic Plan](https://www.wlu.edu/the-w-l-story/strategic-plan?ref=notunmindful.org) committing to create an Institutional History Museum—a facility to tell "the full and rich history of the university, its people, traditions, and impact throughout the arc of the nation's history." Seven years on, the museum only exists as an artist's rendering, a parking lot earmarked for construction, and a series of carefully worded institutional statements. 

That gap is not a scheduling problem. It is a character problem. And now, quietly posted to the museum's website, there is a new policy that one of W&L's own faculty says may make that character problem permanent.

And disagreement with this policy is also coming from the stick fort. Strange bedfellows indeed. How that thing about blind nuts and squirrels go?

## The policy nobody asked anyone about

A new line on the [Institutional History Museum website](https://www.wlu.edu/academics/libraries-and-museums/institutional-history-museum-and-galleries/institutional-history-museum?ref=notunmindful.org) states:

> "All interpretive interactions based on the history of the sites, its collections, or related history are the sole responsibility of official W&L personnel." 

Noted friend of *Not Unmindful*, W&L anthropology Professor Alison Bell—a W&L alumna ('91), 20-year faculty member, and the university's own archaeologist of its 18th-century foundations—says this policy was published without any faculty consultation. Director Matthew Davis has informally assured her it won't affect teaching or research. But Bell told [*The Ring-tum Phi's*](https://ringtumphi.net/10961/arts-life/faculty-member-expresses-concern-over-institutional-history-museum-policy/?ref=notunmindful.org) reporter Amelia Lanierthat informal assurances don't override published language:

> "If you read this policy literally, it will affect me. Only museum staff are considered official W&L personnel able to interpret the history of the university. That would exclude faculty and students."

Bell teaches a course called Collective Memory that relies on university artifacts. She related her students' reaction when hey read the policy. "They were really shocked when they saw this and couldn't understand why Washington and Lee would promulgate this."

Ignoring experts is sadly on brand.

Davis defended the policy by citing comparable restrictions at the Louvre and the National 9/11 Memorial. Bell's response identifies exactly why that comparison fails:

> "Mr. Davis told me that this policy is based on procedures in place at the 9/11 memorial. Among them, it says that with school groups, teachers can't lead lectures or tours for their students, that only museum staff can do that. He says that's the model. So the model does seem to be that the museum staff really have ownership of the university exclusively."

The Louvre and the 9/11 Memorial serve general public audiences. Washington and Lee is a teaching university whose faculty are the leading scholarly authorities on its own history. Granting exclusive interpretive authority over artifacts Bell spent a career unearthing to administrators who weren't there for the excavation and are paid to serve the University's agenda is not an operational best practice. It is asserting a power hierarchy.

n a [letter published in the *W&L Spectator*](https://www.wluspectator.com/articles/reader-on-institutional-history?ref=notunmindful.org) in February 2025, Bell also wrote:

> "The Liberty Hall Farmhouse 'lab' and two temporary spaces in Early Fielding are wildly, embarrassingly below state and federal standards for artifact curation, as administrators have been made aware for more than two decades. The 1793 Steward's House was restored a year ago but cannot be used effectively: it lacks interpretive signage and is inaccessible to anyone not able-bodied or in possession of a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Archaeology faculty who asked how it would be maintained were given a leaf blower to use. W&L likes to capitalize on its 18th-century history but doesn't materially care for it."

This is not a disgruntled faculty member venting at the margins. This is the person who has done more than any administrator to recover W&L's material past. *The Ring-tum Phi*'s [earlier reporting on the archaeology program](https://ringtumphi.net/8890/arts-life/archaeology-suffers-from-lack-of-school-resources/?ref=notunmindful.org) surfaced an even sharper legal exposure: "We don't own them. We curate them, and there are laws regarding the curation of federal artifacts," Bell said. "We don't meet those."

## The record to date

The [2021 Commission on Institutional History](https://my.wlu.edu/presidents-office/issues-and-initiatives/institutional-history/response-to-the-report-of-the-commission-on-institutional-history-and-community/report-of-the-commission-on-institutional-history--x22420-ml?ref=notunmindful.org) found that graduating students couldnot explain the university's ownership of enslaved people or why the school bears a Confederate general's name. It further warned that historical vacuums invite outsiders to impose their own narratives on spaces like Lee Chapel. (And we know just who those forces are.) The university responded with promising language, a new director, and museum plans. 

But the paper has done most of the work.

The [Lee Chapel basement museum](https://www.wluspectator.com/articles/wlu-old-lee-chapel-museum?ref=notunmindful.org) has been closed for five years. Seventeen of twenty plaques removed from the chapel in 2021 remain in storage with no confirmed destination. The museum has cycled through two directors and two proposed locations. A groundbreaking has not been announced. Lee's office remains "unaltered." The Lost Cause framing that the Commission explicitly identified still operates, by default.

And now this policy dropped—without any faculty input . Read literally, it strips the most qualified interpreters of W&L's history of their authority to interpret it.

## Professor Bell asks for the right standard

Bell isn't asking for a fight. She's asking for basic institutional integrity:

> "We need to do what we say and say what we do. So if it's published online, it needs to be our real practice."

An uncomlicated fix is right there if they choose to do it: 

- Revise the language
- Explicitly bring faculty into the interpretive framework
- Make the policy reflect what the institution claims to believe

None of this has happened. Only informal reassurances have been offered in place of any formal course of correction. 

## **Who gets to tell W&L's story?**

A museum that gives exclusive interpretive authority to administrators—over the objections of the scholars who built the historical record it claims to honor—is not an overdue reckoning. It is a tepid rebrand. 

Those of us who take W&L's motto seriously must insist that its practice match its language. All of us should not let a policy published without consultation, justified by a faulty analogy to a 9/11 memorial, stand as the last word on who gets to tell this university's story.

It's a promise past due for the University reckoning with its past. We, however, intend to keep the promise of:

*Non Incautus Futuri.*

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### News regarding that other Lexington  Institution
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/news-regarding-that-other-lexington-institution/
Last updated: 2026-02-08T20:38:53.000Z
A story that we've all been living only regarding VMI, and this one has teeth. I've known many Keydets over the years, and they were fine people without a hintof racism, but.the institution's.reverence to the lost cause bullshit is as bad as what we face. Of course, all the usual suspects are outraged that the state should examine public expenditures here.

And really, I'm not here to bury VMI, but to praise those I've known that went there just to be clear.

### Virginia finally questions whether it should keep funding Confederate nostalgia

The Virginia House of Delegates [passed legislation this week](https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2026/02/05/house-passes-bill-to-study-vmis-academics-military-training-and-diversity-efforts/?ref=notunmindful.org) that asks ask a question the state should have asked decades ago. That is, should taxpayers continue funding an institution that spent generations celebrating treason in defense of slavery? We know my answer to the question as a.native. whose roots predate the American Revolution.

The final version of House Bill 1377 got watered down—because of course it did (have to face those MAGA voters, for now at least)—but the 71-24 vote still matters. It states that even the Virginia Military Institute, with all its marble-columned gravitas and influential alumni, has to answer for teaching generations of cadets that the Confederacy was something other than what it was: a failed rebellion to preserve human bondage.

Again, I implore you equal time to the Revolution, and yes, George Washington had his problems, but he was much better than Lee could hope to be (as his own history indicates that he was trying to join that legacy.)

### So what happened exactly?

HB 1377 creates a task force to examine whether VMI actually fulfills its stated mission as a state-supported institution. Originally, the bill would have questioned whether VMI deserves state funding at all. Bipartisan amendments stripped that language out because threatening an institution's budget is apparently too confrontational, even when that institution spent decades actively promoting historical lies.

Of course, our *alma mater* follows it's own money free from those constraints.

VMI Superintendent Lt. Gen. David Furness now says [the school supports the amended bill](https://www.vmi.edu/news/headlines/2025-2026/statement-from-superintendent-on-hb1377.php?ref=notunmindful.org) and welcomes the review. Which is what you say when the alternative was having your entire funding model questioned.The task force will evaluate whether VMI trains military leaders effectively, whether its academics measure up to other state universities.(I'd argue it does despite.the bullshit), and whether it's actually responded to a 2021 state investigation. 

That investigation [found VMI maintained](https://www.vpm.org/generalassembly/2026-02-04/vmi-bills-state-funding-board-of-visitors-helmer-feggans-wins-furness?ref=notunmindful.org) what it carefully termed "an outdated, idealized reverence for the Civil War and the Confederacy." Translation: VMI was still actively celebrating the people who tried to destroy the United States so they could keep enslaving human beings.

Two other bills are still moving through the legislature. [HB 1374 would dissolve VMI's independent Board of Visitors](https://www.thecentersquare.com/virginia/article%5Fb0150c9c-0496-4e1a-a21c-27cd6c43d3f9.html?ref=notunmindful.org) and transfer governance to Virginia State University, a historically Black institution. The symbolism is not subtle. HB 22 would end VMI's special exemption from sexual assault reporting protections—because apparently VMI thought it needed its own separate rules for handling sexual violence, which tells you something.

### And the elephant (natch) in the room is the "lost cause"

  
This will be remedial for most of us, but still.(one day I may have a wider readership, knock wood and. look heavenwards):

If you're not familiar with the Lost Cause mythology, here's what you need to know: It's the lie that the Confederacy was fighting for "states' rights" and "Southern heritage" rather than for the explicit right to own human beings.(funny how those arguments disappear those days, just ask Minnesota). 

It's historical revisionism at its.worst—transformed losing generals from traitors who killed U.S. soldiers into noble heroes defending their homeland and doing god's will. It sanitizes slavery, erases the experiences of enslaved people, and turns a war to preserve human bondage into a tragic but honorable defense of principle.It's also, not coincidentally, complete horseshit.

For us, it's Lee. For them, Jackson (full disclosure, that dude is in my family tree.)

[VMI has been a particularly committed guardian](https://virginiabusiness.com/virginia-democrats-vmi-state-funding-task-force/?ref=notunmindful.org) of these lies. The school holds annual ceremonies honoring cadets who fought and died for the Confederacy—not as cautionary tales about what happens when educated people choose treason, but as heroes to emulate. For generations, VMI celebrated Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general who taught at the school before taking up arms against the United States. The institute wove Confederate mythology so deeply into its identity that Black students and women walking onto campus had to navigate an environment that literally celebrated their subjugation.

They still hold up the battle of New Market as an American Thermopylae, costing those cadets that died as the 300.

Jeremiah Woods, a Black former cadet who left VMI after experiencing racial targeting, [testified](https://www.vpm.org/generalassembly/2026-02-04/vmi-bills-state-funding-board-of-visitors-helmer-feggans-wins-furnus?ref=notunmindful.org) that cadets learned extensively about Confederate troops while "enslaved people who supported VMI are erased." That's the Lost Cause in practice: center the stories of enslavers, disappear the enslaved, and call it heritage.

Heritage not hate. Nevermind that.that heritage should erasedfrom our daily lives.

### Why now?

Well, non-racists are in power. (TL;DR.version)

[VMI gets 27.5% of its $120 million budget](https://www.vpm.org/generalassembly/2026-02-04/vmi-bills-state-funding-board-of-visitors-helmer-feggans-wins-furness?ref=notunmindful.org) from Virginia taxpayers. That's over $30 million in public money flowing annually to an institution that, until very recently, was actively promoting a historical fantasy designed to make white supremacy respectable.

The thing is, VMI.can stand on its own damn merits.if it were to chose to do so. George Marshall, not Thomas Jackson. 

Delegate Dan Helmer, who sponsored the bill, framed it plainly: taxpayer money should advance Virginia's interests, not subsidize VMI's efforts to "move past their Lost Cause ideology." The phrasing—"moving past"—is doing heavy lifting there. It implies VMI hasn't quite arrived at actually being past it yet. See above.

To give VMI some additional credit: changes have happened. Under its first Black superintendent, retired Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, the school began addressing Confederate monuments and traditions. The current superintendent says VMI has adopted 34 of 38 recommendations from the 2021 investigation and is working on the rest.

But what of course happened to Wins? [VMI's Board of Visitors chose not to renew Wins' contract](https://cardinalnews.org/2026/02/03/pentagon-warns-it-could-take-extraordinary-measures-in-fight-over-vmis-future/?ref=notunmindful.org) in 2025\. The first Black superintendent who actually started addressing VMI's Confederate problem got shown the door. Which raises the obvious question of whether VMI's commitment to reform will outlast the people pushing for it. Rich white alumni sounds like a familiar tune.

### Using institutional importance as shield

[The Pentagon has expressed "significant concern"](https://cardinalnews.org/2026/02/03/pentagon-warns-it-could-take-extraordinary-measures-in-fight-over-vmis-future/?ref=notunmindful.org) about the legislation, arguing that VMI has been a vital source of commissioned officers for generations. [North Carolina has offered](https://www.thecentersquare.com/north%5Fcarolina/article%5F840cdd50-5f9f-411c-9b96-25d1d46b4768.html?ref=notunmindful.org) to relocate the entire institution if Virginia withdraws support, framing it as a rescue mission for military readiness rather than what it actually is: an invitation for VMI to escape accountability by moving to a state that won't ask hard questions.

But who runs the pentagon right now. A slavish bootlicker who will do anything the social racist posting ass in charge wants.

These responses reveal how institutions weaponize their own importance. Yes, VMI produces military officers. Yes, it has influential alumni including the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And yes, those facts matter. But what of the generations of discrimination against people of color and now, women.

But they don't exempt VMI from having to explain why a state-funded institution in 2026 spent decades celebrating people who took up arms against the United States to preserve slavery. Value isn't a get-out-of-scrutiny-free card. Being important doesn't mean you get to keep teaching lies with public money. 

### Where this should go

The task force will deliver its findings by November 2026\. If it's actually serious—and that's a big if—it needs to ask questions that go beyond whether VMI removed the most obvious Confederate statues.

- Does VMI teach accurate history about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and slavery's long aftermath? Or does it still soft-pedal the Confederacy's actual purpose?
- Does it prepare future military leaders to serve a diverse democracy? Or does it train them in an environment where Confederate nostalgia is baked into the institutional culture?
- Does it create conditions where students of all backgrounds can thrive? Or does it maintain traditions that make some students feel like outsiders at their own state institution?

Virginia taxpayers deserve these answers. So do the students who attend VMI. So does the military that commissions its graduates. And so does the historical record that the "lost cause" has been distorting for over a century. 

While amended statute is weaker than it should be, it still means something: Virginia is saying that even venerable institutions have to reckon with their history honestly. That taxpayer support comes with expectations. That Confederate nostalgia, however deeply embedded in tradition, isn't beyond scrutiny.

Other tax-funded institutions have.done a lot more and tried a lot harder: William and Mary (full.disclosure also an.alumnus there).and the University of Virginia spring to mind, despite how far you think they have or should have gone.

This is fight worth having—not just regarding VMI, but regarding every institution still clinging to Confederate mythology in a state that has changed more than they have, or want to admit. I think that latter bit will resonate a bit with all of us.

*Non in cautus futuri*

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### Thoughts on the next president
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/thoughts-on-the-next-president/
Last updated: 2026-04-12T15:39:21.000Z
The stick fork is at it again. This time outlining lining their reactionary hopes for the next president of our *alma mater*. It's the usual dreck, racist dog whistles wrapped up in nice sounding language.

I thought it would behoove us to come up with our own hopes for our next president, which follow.

## **Guiding principles for Washington and Lee University's 28th President**

As Washington and Lee undertakes this critical search, we must articulate the qualities needed to lead the university through necessary evolution while preserving what makes it genuinely excellent. The following principles balance institutional continuity with the moral courage required for this moment:

### **1\. Historical reckoning and institutional courage**

The candidate should demonstrate sophisticated understanding of Washington and Lee's complex history—including the legacies of both namesakes and the university's deep entanglement with slavery, secession, and segregation. An effective president recognizes that institutional memory includes uncomfortable truths, and that honest engagement with history strengthens rather than weakens the university's foundation.This requires moving beyond defensive postures about tradition toward a more complete accounting of who has been served, who has been excluded, and how the university's values have evolved. The Honor System itself emerged from specific historical contexts that merit examination, not just celebration.

### **2\. Proven leadership in complex institutions**

The candidate should bring executive experience managing change in environments where competing constituencies, limited resources, and external pressures require sophisticated judgment. Whether from academia, law, government, or other sectors, the president must demonstrate:

- Success building diverse, high-performing teams
- Capacity to make difficult decisions that balance short-term disruption with long-term institutional health
- Track record of transparent communication during periods of transition
- Ability to attract resources and talent in competitive environments

### **3\. An architect of inclusive excellence**

The candidate should understand that institutional identity is not static—it evolves or it calcifies. Washington and Lee's competitive advantage lies not in resisting change, but in pursuing excellence through:

- Attracting the most talented students and faculty from all backgrounds
- Creating conditions where everyone can contribute and thrive
- Recognizing that demographic diversity and intellectual rigor are complementary, not competing values
- Building institutional culture where tradition informs rather than constrains possibility

The president should reject false choices between "merit" and "inclusion," understanding that exclusionary practices have historically hidden merit, not revealed it. The university must demonstrate capacity for growth and further evolution.

### **4\. Champion of difficult conversations**

The candidate should create environments where disagreement is productive rather than destructive. This means:

- Establishing clear behavioral expectations rooted in mutual respect
- Distinguishing between viewpoints that deserve engagement and conduct that violates community standards
- Modeling how to engage positions one disagrees with while maintaining intellectual integrity
- Understanding that "civility" cannot be weaponized to silence legitimate grievance or necessary critique

The president must recognize that marginalized community members often bear disproportionate costs in "civil discourse" frameworks that treat all disagreements as equally abstract.This includes persons of color and those who are from different economic strata.

### **5\. Commitment to intellectual pluralism and academic freedom**

The candidate should ensure the curriculum reflects genuine intellectual diversity—not ideological balance achieved through false equivalencies, but exposure to:

- Rigorous scholarship across methodologies and disciplines
- Historical and contemporary perspectives, including those that challenge dominant narratives
- Questions that lack easy answers and problems that require sustained inquiry
- Faculty hired for scholarly excellence, not to fill predetermined ideological quotas

Students should encounter ideas that make them uncomfortable. Evidence to challenge their assumptions and lead to frameworks that will require them to think beyond their prior experiences. This is what liberal arts education demands.

### **6\. Integrity grounded in self-awareness**

The candidate should embody the Honor System's aspirational values while recognizing its inconsistencies. The president must:

- Acknowledge that honor codes have been selectively applied throughout institutional history
- Demonstrate commitment to enforcement across all student populations
- Model the self-reflection and accountability the university asks of students
- Recognize that integrity sometimes requires admitting institutional failure

### **7\. Communicator across difference**

The candidate should articulate Washington and Lee's mission to constituencies with fundamentally different relationships to the university:

- Alumni whose experiences span decades of institutional evolution
- Students navigating contemporary challenges with historical burdens
- Faculty balancing research, teaching, and institutional service
- Community members affected by the university's decisions and presence
- Donors whose support reflects varied visions of institutional purpose

This requires more than rhetorical skill—it demands genuine listening. They must explicitly listen to voices historically excluded from institutional decision-making.

### **8\. Steward of rigorous, relevant education**

The candidate should strengthen Washington and Lee's academic foundation by:

- Supporting faculty innovation in pedagogy and curriculum development
- Ensuring students encounter both enduring questions and contemporary challenges
- Resisting pressures to eliminate difficult subjects while also questioning whose knowledge has been centered and whose has been marginalized
- Recognizing that "classical liberal arts" is itself a constructed tradition that has evolved continuously
- Attracting scholar-teachers committed to student learning across diverse learning styles and backgrounds

Academic excellence requires resources, faculty agency, and institutional support for teaching that meets students where they are while challenging them to grow.

### **9\. Builder of institutional coherence**

The candidate should work toward unified community standards while recognizing that the undergraduate and law school programs serve different educational missions. This includes:

- Creating opportunities for cross-school dialogue and shared intellectual culture
- Respecting the distinct professional formation required in legal education
- Building coherence through shared values rather than imposed uniformity

### **10\. Strategic, values-driven leadership**

The candidate should demonstrate:

- Financial acumen that balances budget constraints with necessary investment in people and programs
- Willingness to make resource allocation decisions that reflect stated institutional values
- Capacity to maintain alumni confidence while pursuing necessary evolution
- Understanding that institutional independence includes freedom to make unpopular choices when they serve the university's mission
- Recognition that "short-term pressures" sometimes signal fundamental shifts requiring institutional response

### **Conclusion**

These principles reflect belief that Washington and Lee's next president must lead with both respect for what the university has been and honest assessment of what it must become—with a clear-eyed vision of what it should become. The university's strength lies not in resistance to change, but in its capacity to evolve while maintaining commitments to educational excellence, student formation, and institutional integrity.

It has evolved before. It must evolve again.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Ladies and gentlemen, the next racist Republican generation
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/ladies-and-gentlemen-the-next-racist-republican-generation/
Last updated: 2025-10-15T19:17:08.000Z
A large cache of private messages from Young Republican leaders across multiple states revealed extensive use of racist, antisemitic, and violent language, which prompted swift condemnation and resignations across the GOP. Of course, this would never surprise anyone witnessed an Old South party in Lex back in the day.

## As the scandal shows casual virulent racism was the price of admission

According to reporting by Politico, [the leaked Telegram chat known as "RESTOREYR WAR ROOM" contained approximately 2,900 pages of messages](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146?ref=notunmindful.org) exchanged over seven months among leaders from Young Republican chapters in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont. The messages, which totaled more than 28,000 exchanges, included repeated racial slurs, Holocaust jokes, and violent rhetoric directed at political opponents.

[New York Magazine's Intelligencer described how the participants "agreed on one thing](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/young-republican-leaders-are-really-racist-in-group-chats.html?ref=notunmindful.org) — to text each other the most racist things imaginable" while engaged in a power struggle over leadership of the Young Republican National Federation.

The messages contained disturbing patterns of hate speech. Politico reported that slurs including variations of the N-word, homophobic epithets, and the word "retarded" appeared more than 251 times combined throughout the conversations. Participants referred to Black people using dehumanizing terms and made references to slavery, gas chambers, and sexual violence. Did I forget to mention misogyny?

Peter Giunta, former chair of the New York State Young Republicans, emerged as one of the most active participants. New York Magazine noted that after a flight landed, Giunta advised fellow chat members that "if your pilot is a she and she looks ten shades darker than someone from Sicily, just end it there." When asked about watching an NBA game, he responded that he'd "go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball."

William Hendrix, vice chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, used racial slurs more than a dozen times in the chat. In one July exchange reported by Politico, Hendrix wrote stereotypical comments about food preferences while using offensive language.

The messages also included an exchange where Giunta wrote "I love Hitler" and references to white supremacist symbols, including the number 1488\. This number conflates a white supremacist slogan with coded references to Nazi ideology.

The scandal reached beyond grassroots organizers to include individuals in government positions. Vermont State Senator Samuel Douglass participated in exchanges that included offensive stereotypes. His wife Brianna Douglass, the Vermont Young Republicans' national committeewoman, also contributed antisemitic remarks. And anti-semetism is their cudgel against DEI. Maybe they are so concerned about it after all.

## Immediate repercussions

The revelations triggered swift consequences across Republican organizations. The Kansas Republican Party deactivated its Young Republicans chapter following the report, and Hendrix lost his position as communications assistant to Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach.

Peter Giunta, who had served as chief of staff to New York State Assembly member Mike Reilly, was fired. Bobby Walker, who was to manage a congressional campaign in upstate New York, had the offer rescinded.

The Young Republican National Federation issued a strong condemnation. It called the behavior "disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and standing in direct opposition to the values our movement represents." The organization demanded immediate resignations from all those involved.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott called on Senator Douglass to resign, stating that the "vile, racist, bigoted, and antisemitic dialogue" was "deeply disturbing" with "no excuse for it."

## GOP leadership's response

Prominent Republicans condemned the messages. Representative Elise Stefanik, who had previously endorsed Giunta for national Young Republican leadership, said she was "absolutely appalled" by the alleged comments. Her adviser described them as "heinous, antisemitic, racist and unacceptable."

New York State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, whose former staffer participated in the chat, called the behavior "indefensible" and demanded resignations.

Kansas GOP Chair Danedri Herbert, who is Black, said party leadership was "disgusted by the comments," emphasizing they "do not reflect the beliefs of Republicans and certainly not of Kansas Republicans at large."

All the protestations aside, these comments were a thread that had future party leaders from across the nation. Surely they must align in some way to the overall drift of the party. Or as a famous film character once said, "I am shocked—shocked!—to find that gambling is going on in here!"

## It's always a conspiracy isn't it?

Several participants issued apologies while simultaneously claiming the leak was politically motivated. Giunta characterized the release as "a highly-coordinated year-long character assassination" led by rivals in New York's fractured Young Republican ecosystem. He specifically named Gavin Wax of the New York City Young Republican Club.

According to Politico, Giunta apologized for "the insensitive and inexcusable language" while expressing concern that "the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored." Walker similarly suggested portions of the chat "may have been altered, taken out of context, or otherwise manipulated." Taking responsibility is never an option apparently.

However, Bobby Walker himself acknowledged the potential consequences in the chat: 

> "If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked."

And cooked they right are. Well done, we hope.

## Nothing happens in vacuum

Of course, this scandal occurred within the context of the rapid devolution of political discourse on the right. This "private" converstation came to light, [as Politico notes](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146?ref=notunmindful.org), "amid a widespread coarsening of the broader political discourse and as incendiary and racially offensive tropes from the right become increasingly common in public debate." 

The chat members engaged in an internal campaign to control the direction of the Young Republican National Federation. Their chats mixed campaign strategy and vote counting alongside the offensive content. 

Giunta lost his bid for the national chairmanship by six points. Add he had endorsements from Representative Stefanik and longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Neither of theem cared enough about thee rhetoric to withold their endorsement of him (as presumably his views, despite their words to the contrary).

The leaked messages highlighted existing divisions within Young Republican circles and raised questions about the culture among emerging GOP leaders. After all, they are positioning themselves for future political careers.

Maybe we can find some non-racist meembers to carry the standard? Hahahahahaha!

*Non in cautus futuri.*
### What the hell  is  a "Heritage American"?
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/what-the-hell-is-a-heritage-american/
Last updated: 2025-10-15T00:26:08.000Z
In a recent article for The Atlantic, [Ali Breland explores a troubling new term gaining traction on the American right. ](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/heritage-americans-nativist-right/684472/?ref=notunmindful.org)Tucker Carlson and Vice President J.D. Vancehave been using the phrase, "heritage Americans."

This is just the latest move in their old playbook. Minimizating and erasuring nonwhite contributions to American society. They also look to whitewash everything.

## Are you Aray-in or -out?

This term sprang out of an August podcast with between Carlson and Blaze Media's Auron MacIntyre. MacIntyre providedthe initial deefiniton. He said heritage Americans are people "whose last names could be found in the Civil War registry." 

This argues that America isn't "a collection of abstract things agreed to in some social contract" but it is a specific group embodying an "Anglo-Protestant spirit" with deep historical ties to the land. That means very white. Of course, it ignores the fact that were people in this land before any European even knew about it. (As they always do.)

This definition excludes millions of white Americans whose ancestors arrived after the Civil War, those who those heritage americans enslaved during it, or those whose contributions have been systematically marginalized throughout history. So blacks, Catholics, eastern Europeans, and Latinos can pretty much pound sand in their view.

veryone's favorite fake hillbilly, Vice President Vance, echoed these sentiments at the Claremont Institute. He suggested that "people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America" than those who view American identity as purely ideological. 

## Ambiguity, deniability, and dog whistles 

As The Atlantic piece reveals, proponents of the "heritage American" concept often speak in deliberately vague terms that allow theme to deny anything as insidious as what they actually mean. 

C. Jay Engel, credited by Politico with popularizing the term, claims he's not a "racial essentialist." He makes room for "blacks of the Old South" and "integrated Native Americans." One wonders what their ancestors think about being allowed in his "white-man, color hating" treehouse. Because of course, he simultaneously argues that "the majority of blacks have demonstrated that they cannot function within the old European cultural standards." And what makes an Native American assimilated? He doesn't say, but maybe they own a casino.

Far-right writer Scott Greer explicitly made it clear the purpose of the term in *The American Conservative.* Writing there, he noted that "heritage American is more palatable to the public than 'white.'" This purposeful ambiguity fits a familiar pattern from this lot: creating terms that gesture toward racial hierarchies while maintaining enough distance to deflect accusations of racism. 

## Normalizing exclusion and remigration

The "heritage American" label connects to the right's broader project of ignoring nonwhite contributions to American society and history. By defining authentic Americanness through Civil War-era ancestry and Anglo-Protestant heritage, this idea systematically ignores the foundational role of enslaved Africans who built much of America's economic infrastructure, the Indigenous peoples whose lands became American territory, and the countless immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere in Europe who have shaped American culture, innovation, and prosperity.

This isn't merely rhetorical. As Breland notes, such language often precedes policy shifts. The backlash against critical race theory led to bans on discussing racism in schools. "Great Replacement" conspiracy theories fueled support for mass deportations. Now, "heritage American" rhetoric sits alongside Trump's mass deportation efforts and attempts to end birthright citizenship.

The most extreme application of these ideas is "remigration"—the notion that nonwhite citizens who haven't "properly assimilated" should be deported. Trump, Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk (himsleft an immigrant) have floated this concept. And in May, the State Department announced an Office of Remigration, which is a fancy name for exiling non desirables.

Nicole Hemmer, a Vanderbilt historian interviewed by Breland, observes that "heritage Americans" serves as "a framework that gestures to an intellectual justification for policy." It's a way of codifying the belief that some Americans are more legitimate than others based on ancestry and race.

## As usual, they are deadly serious

The "heritage American" discourse represents more than semantic games. It's another part of the sustained effort to redefine American identity to make it white. the fancy term is just a bullshit maintaining rhetorical cover. By centering Anglo-Protestant ancestry as the measure of authentic Americanness, it not only minimizes nonwhite contributions but also suggests those contributions are fundamentally foreign to America's true character.

This view ignores the reality that America has always been shaped by diverse peoples and cultures. The fight over who counts as a "real" American isn't new, but today's version comes with institutional power and policy implications that could affect millions of lives. 

Understanding the exclusionary logic behind terms like "heritage American" is essential to resisting the erasure they promote. These folks are the heir to those who fought to keep the racial status quo over 150 years ago in a traitorous rebellion. We must remain vigilant and fight this every step of the way.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #10/11
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-10-11/
Last updated: 2025-10-12T17:22:18.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful the weeks ending 3 October and 10 October 2025\. Posting was light last week. The governmental shutdown had sucked most of the air from the news, and I had actual paying work to get done (as much as I love this labor, it doesn't pay the mortgage). So this is a two-week digest. 

## Tuesday

### [Mario Guevara deported](https://www.notunmindful.org/mario-guevara-deported/)

Journalist Mario Guevara, despite being here legally and committing no crimes, has been deported. This one hits me close to home.

## Monday

### [Trump's higher education "compact" sparks controversy over academic freedom](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-higher-education-compact-sparks-controversy-over-academic-freedom/)

Demands sent to nine top schools included pledging to freeze tuition for five years and to commit to strict definitions of gender and conservative priorities to get special treatment.

## Tuesday

### [How America's racism became a national security threat](https://www.notunmindful.org/how-americas-racism-became-a-national-security-threat/)

Foreign bots spewed much of the racist rhetoric that followed Charlie Kirk’s killing. But it gained traction only because plenty of homegrown racism exists to exploit.

## Monday 

### [The fight for fair representation: understanding what’s at stake in Louisiana v. Callais](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-fight-for-fair-representation-understanding-whats-at-stake-in-louisiana-v-callais/)

Louisiana v Callais could roll back what remains of the Voting Rights Act, putting the future of America’s multiracial democracy at stake

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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## 

## 

## 

##
### Mario Guevara deported
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/mario-guevara-deported/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T15:06:42.000Z
As reported in USA Today last Friday, [journalist Maria Guevara was deported to El Salvador after his arrest covering the No Kings protests in Atlanta](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/10/03/journalist-deported-press-freedom/86504002007/?ref=notunmindful.org). H was an Emmy-award winning journalist who had been in the U.S. since 2004\. He originally came to this country after receiving death threats for his work as a journalist at a conservative newspaper.

Upon his deportation, he had to leave behind his. wife and children, who live in the U.S.

He was merely doing his job. He was here legally. His only crime was doing something the administration didn't like and not looking white. [*The Bitter Southerner* published a letter from him written from his cell in the detention center](https://bittersoutherner.com/journalist-mario-guevara-speaks-letter-from-ice-detention-facility-english?ref=notunmindful.org):

> "Since my arrest, I have lost tens of thousands of dollars and my company, the news channel MGNews, is on the verge of bankruptcy.

> But I have to remain strong and confident that the United States still has some caring and decency left and that in the end justice will prevail. 

> I hope that it will be soon, because for me, every day is like a week.

> Hopefully, soon all my tears and my family’s tears will be wiped away, and we can have fun and smile, triumphant, as we did before, together and in absolute freedom."

I'd encourage you all read the whole thing.

It should bring to mind other famous missives from jail (Thoreau, Ghandi, and MLK, for example). We must not, as a country continue this. A free press and respect for established laws and norms must be respected.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Trump's higher education "compact" sparks controversy over academic freedom
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-higher-education-compact-sparks-controversy-over-academic-freedom/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T15:41:32.000Z
The Trump administration has sent a proposal to nine major universities that offers preferential access to federal funding in exchange for signing onto a sweeping set of conservative policy commitments. The move has ignited fierce reactions to the government overreach and the threeat to academic independence.

## What is the compact?

The "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" is a 10-page document that represents the most comprehensive accounting to date of what the Trump administration aims to achieve from its months-long pressure campaign on academia. Various administration officials, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon, May Mailman (senior adviser for special projects at the White House), and Vince Haley (head of Trump's Domestic Policy Council), signed the letters. 

The nine universities invited to sign include the University of Texas at Austin, UVA, Brown, Penn, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, MIT, and the University of Arizona. The schools have until October 20 to respond. And any agreements expected to be finalized by late November.

## The terms and demands

Universities that sign would need to commit to the following requirements (at a minimum):

- Freeze tuition for American students for five years
- Cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15%
- Require applicants to pass admissions examinations
- Commit to strict definitions of gender based on reproductive function and biological processes.

The compact also asks universities to commit to "transforming or abolishing institutional units that punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas". In other words, facts and history.

The letter outlines other requirements. These include banning consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, straight from K-Tel their conservative greatest hits of grievances. It also requires instruction in American civics to all foreign students. Finally, it aims to suppress grade inflation. (Even for the legacy failsons, one wonders?) 

Universities with endowments over $2 million per undergraduate would also be required to provide free tuition to students studying math, biology, or other "hard sciences". Those pesky humanities get the shaft again—history is too inconvenient I guess.

In response for capitulating, universities would receive priority access to federal funds and looser restraints on overhead costs. The signed compacts would serve as assurance that schools are complying with civil rights laws.

## Both sides have issues

In a Bluesky thread, legal scholar Joey Fishkin [characterized the proposal as a threat](https://bsky.app/profile/fishkin.bsky.social/post/3m27wp2qpzs22?ref=notunmindful.org). He reckons the administration will disfavor universities that don't sign in various ways. These could impact things from foreign student visas to student loans, federal contracts and grants, and even tax-exempt status. He calls it "a maximalist plan of 1st Amendment violation".

Kevin Eltife, chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, [welcomed the compact, saying the university was "honored" to be included and noting that "higher education has been at a crossroads in recent years"](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/us/trump-universities-compact-funding.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ref=notunmindful.org). At the University of Virginia, interim president Paul Mahoney created a working group to advise on a response.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would cut state funding to any university that signeed. This would include state-backed student loans. He stated "California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom".

[Even conservative groups expressed reservations](https://apple.news/APCGjTPLUSzWR25RbHIunWQ?ref=notunmindful.org). Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, questioned whether "we really want to wind up with each successive administration blasting out fast-pass conditions for federal research funds." He went on to call the approach "profoundly problematic" despite agreeing with the underlying principles.

## Precedent and power

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, described the compact as "a naked exercise of power." He warned signing it would set "a horrible precedent to cede power to the federal government".

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression allso warned that the requirement for universities to monitor employee speech could violate the First Amendment: 

> "A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow".

Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, argued that "federal funding for universities should never depend on a loyalty oath," adding that "the health of our democracy depends on the freedom to work with the federal government without having to follow the ideological dictates of those in power".

Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers criticized the proposal as "like trying to fix a watch with a hammer—ill conceived and counterproductive,. He also warned that "the backlash against its crudity will likely set back necessary reform efforts".

## A new approach to policy implementation

The compact represents the administration tendency to bypass normal channels. Instead, they reach out directly to institutions, seeking their sign-off on pledges to adopt portions of the Trump agenda, often blackmailing them with threat of losing federal funding. 

May Mailman indicated the compact could ultimately be extended to all colleges and universities, saying "we hope all universities ultimately are able to have a conversation with us".

This continuing debate highlights government pressure and academic freedom. And it uses federal funding as the carrot, but more often the stick, to imprint itself on higher education.

We can only hope that the universities can stand firm. We seen success with the tactic of saying, "Fuck you. Make me," after all.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### How America's racism became a national security threat
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/how-americas-racism-became-a-national-security-threat/
Last updated: 2025-09-30T16:21:59.000Z
When Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on a Utah college campus, law enforcement had no leads on the shooter's identity. Yet within hours, social media exploded with racist vitriol and calls for anti-Black violence—much of it amplified by foreign bot networks seeking to destabilize America from within.

## The bot problem is real

[According to Kali Holloway's reporting in *The Nation* ](https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/charlie-kirk-bots-racism-national-security/?ref=notunmindful.org)[(summarized here)]( )[ ](https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/charlie-kirk-bots-racism-national-security/?ref=notunmindful.org), analysts from the Center for Internet Security and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue identified bot accounts deliberately spreading inflammatory content after Kirk's death. These accounts were Russian, Chinese, and Iranian. These foreign actors, Utah Governor Spencer Cox warned, were intentionally trying to "instill disinformation and encourage violence."

The scale of bot activity online is staggering. Studies show bots now account for roughly 50 percent of all internet traffic, and cybersecurity experts estimate that 64 to 75 percent of Twitter/X users are bots—a far higher percentage than other social platforms. Within days of Kirk's shooting, tweets calling for retaliatory violence had amassed 43 million views.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, explained.: 

> "This is a really prime example of how the distorted lens of social media algorithms can turn perception into reality.... We all start to feel like the world is worse than it really is."

## Bots only exploit existing hate

The truth is uncomfortable. Such foreign interference only works because it taps into America's deep existing racism. Regardless of the shooter's identity and the probability that they were white (Utah after all), Black communities immediately became targets.

The day after Kirk's killing, at least six historically Black colleges and universities received terroristic threats. Threats that forced emergency lockdowns. One manifesto sent to NYU and Southern University declared intentions to "shoot every n\*\*\*\*\* I see." *\[Ed. Note: Stars mine\]*

Days later, a group claiming Kirk as inspiration showed up at Tennessee State University in MAGA gear with signs reading "DEI should be illegal," deliberately provoking students to then portray them as violent on social media.

HBCUs were created because Black Americans were barred from white colleges. Despite their separate nature, they remain vulnerable to "America's age-old predictable scapegoating of Black communities." .

## A well used playbook

Of course, there's nothing new under the sun. Before the 2016 election, Russia's most prolific troll factory launched a massive operation that set up websites publishing pro-Trump stories designed to sow racial discord. The Kremlin-backed group bought over 3,500 Facebook ads, the majority focusing on race directly or indirectly through "issues fraught with racial and religious baggage."

A 2019 Senate report concluded that Russian cyber interference had an "overwhelming operational emphasis on race," with African Americans targeted more than any other group. These tactics continued through the 2018 midterms, 2020, and 2024 elections—including fabricated videos of supposed Haitian immigrants voting illegally and depictions of Black men attacking a white woman in Trump gear.

As Holloway notes in the article: 

> "American racism is so reliably reflexive, it gives our purported enemies an easy and surefire way to crush national unity and break down our barely-there democracy from within." 

## The X factor

The problem isn't just foreign bots—it's also the platform they exploit. After acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Elon Musk has made the site a haven for hate speech, which jumped 50 percent following his takeover. Likes on hateful posts increased 70 percent, according to a 2025 university study. By April, NBC found "a flourishing Nazi network" operating under Musk's ownership.

After Kirk's shooting, Musk himself tweeted to his 225 million followers that they must "fight or die," unquestionably escalating tensions. Meanwhile, a 2024 study found that just 45 bot-like accounts made 610,000 tweets in a month, generating 4 billion impressions—pivoting seamlessly from one inflammatory event to the next.

Musk has little incentive to clean up the platform. Bots inflate user numbers, which helps sell ads. He's also put Twitter's programming interface behind a paywall and sued researchers investigating the problem.

## America is leaving itself defenseless

The Trump administration has only exacerbated the vulnerability. For example, the State Department recently shut down the Global Engagement Center, which tracked Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation. Presumably because of Russian interference in Trump's first election.

Other groups within the FBI, DHS, and ODNI that monitoried foreign interferences have also been shuttered since Trump reentered office in January.

In response to reporting on foreign exploitation of Kirk's shooting, China's *Global Times* retorted that "media hype aimed at distracting attention toward external powers serves as little more than an ostrich burying its head in the sand." The sand is real and it insulates from the actual cause—America's reflexive and foundational racism.

## Treating the symptomms isn't enough

Countering foreign bots is necessary but insufficient. The deeper problem lies within American culture. Our persistent, exploitable racism. Foreign adversaries know exactly how fragile this makes the country, and they'll keep weaponizing it as long as it works.

We must do more than merelye countering foreign interference. Instead, we must clean our own house. This means even the the ugliest corners—those we ignore because they are hard. As Holloway concludes: 

> "Otherwise, a house so readily divided is sure to burn in someone else's war."

Until America confronts its foundational racism (hard) and its digital vulnerabilities (easy), foreign actors will continue finding fertile ground for chaos. The national security threat isn't just the bots—it's what makes us susceptible to them in the first place.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The fight for fair representation: understanding what’s at stake in Louisiana v. Callais
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-fight-for-fair-representation-understanding-whats-at-stake-in-louisiana-v-callais/
Last updated: 2025-09-29T17:35:26.000Z
On 15 October 2025, the Supreme Court will hear Louisiana v. Callais, which could reshape not just Louisiana's congressional map, but the future of the Voting Rights Act itself. It could change how race can be considered in all redistricting moving forward. As legal scholar Leah Litman writes in *The Guardian*, [this case represents the culmimation of a 160-year-old campaign against civil rights](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/28/supreme-court-louisiana-v-callais?CMP=Share%5FiOSApp%5FOther&ref=notunmindful.org). In short, the case threatens the future of multiracial democracy in the U.S. 

## The backdrop for this case

The case asks whether Louisiana lawmakers properly balanced constitutional protections and Voting Rights Act requirements when they created a congressional map in 2024\. This map includes two districts with Black majorities. Black Louisianians are one-third of the state's population, and they have advocated for fair representation in Congress for years using all the tools avaialble to them.

The Supreme Court will determine if states can consider race when drawing districts to remedy discrimination or if such considerations violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

## **The road to an equitable map** and an immediate challenge

This story begins after the 2020 census. Based on it, Louisiana's legislature drew a congressional map in 2021 that had only one majority-Black district. Despite Black residents comprising a third of Louisiana's population, the map gave them the opportunity to elect only one-sixth of the state's congressional representatives. Thus, it significantly diluted their voting power compared to white voters. 

[Black voters and civil rights organizations, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), challenged this map as a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act](https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais-faq/?ref=notunmindful.org). This prohibits voting policies that in effect disadvantage Black voters. This section of the act addresses s long history of disenfranchisement. 

Multiple federal courts agreed. They found the original map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by weakening Black voters' political power. The courts ordered Louisiana to redraw the map by January 2024 to include a second majority-Black district where Black voters would have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. 

In January 2024, the legislature passed a new map, known as SB 8, to create a second majority-Black district. It connected communities from Baton Rouge north along the Red River through Alexandria to Shreveport. Legislators cited political priorities for this configuration, including protecting the incumbency of powerful Louisiana congressmembers like Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Of course, no powerful white politician would be potentially harmed.

Shortly after SB 8 became law, a group of white voters filed a new lawsuit that challenged it as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Their theory was ludicrous. They argued that the legislature discriminated against whites. (It denied them outsized representation of the original map). 

A divided three-judge federal panel sided with these challengers and struck down the map, finding that it violated the Equal Protection Clause. This created a remarkable legal conundrum. federal courts first required Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district to comply with the Voting Rights Act, then they struck down that very map as unconstitutional. 

## **The Supreme Court weighs in** 

Both Louisiana and the Black voters from the original case appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in March 2025\. Rather than issuing a decision by the end of its spring term, the Court took the unusual step of ordering the case to be reargued in the fall with a narrower focus. 

The Court's reargument order asked parties to address a fundamental question: Does the intentional creation of a majority-minority district as a remedy for vote dilution found by a court under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act violate either the 14th or 15th Amendments? 

This question strikes at the heart of voting rights law. If the answer is yes, it could make it nearly impossible for states to remedy voting discrimination without simultaneously violating the Constitution. 

Legal experts say the Court's decision to reargue the case suggests deep debate among the justices about a potential major shift in voting rights jurisprudence. 

## **Louisiana reverses course** 

In a supplemental brief filed in August 2025, Louisiana took a surprisingly broad position, arguing that all "race-based redistricting is unconstitutional." 

This represents a significant shift from the state's original defense of its redrawn map and suggests Louisiana now believes that complying with the Voting Rights Act itself may be unconstitutional. 

Or, they are just seeing which way the wind tends to be blowing (like everyone else).

## **A 160-year battle over reconstruction** 

[As The Guardian's analysis notes](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/28/supreme-court-louisiana-v-callais?CMP=Share%5FiOSApp%5FOther&ref=notunmindful.org), Louisiana v. Callais is about far more than redistricting—it's part of a broad effort to reinterpret the Reconstruction amendments and either ignore them outright or even weaponize them against democracy and civil rights. The case lies on a straight line from a campaign that began immediately after the Civil War. 

The Reconstruction era, following the end of slavery, sought to integrate Black Americans into the political system and protect their rights. This included passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which outlawed slavery, guaranteed equal protection, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting. As Senator John F. Edmunds said in 1869, the 15th Amendment would allow Black voters "to choose from among his fellow citizens the man who suits him for his representative." 

Reconstruction initially produced real gains. Within years, former Confederate states sent Black representatives and senators to Congress and elected Black leaders to state offices. 

![The First Colored Senator and Representatives in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States. New York. Published by Currier &. Ives.225 Nassau Street.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/09/First_Colored_Senator_and_Representatives-2.jpg)

This real progress, however, was short lived. It was met with virulent racism and violent resistance, including the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. 

The anti-Reconstruction movement used language that sounds familiar today:

- Federal civil rights protections were too radical
- Protections were no longer needed since slavery had ended (we live in a post racial society anyone because Obama anyone?)
- Protecting Black citizens was actually unfair discrimination against white people

When Andrew Johnson, covering himself in his usual glory, vetoed a congressional civil rights statute, he insisted it "operated in favor of the colored and against the white race." 

The Supreme Court echoed this logic in 1883 when it invalidated the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act, declaring that freedmen should "cease to be the special favorite of the laws." 

In short, opponents tried to weaponize the principles of Reconstruction against itself—arguing that prohibiting discrimination against Black Americans was itself discrimination against would-be discriminators. 

This logic has endured through the decades and now appears in Louisiana v. Callais, where white voters claim that ensuring fair representation for both Black and white voters somehow discriminates against white people. 

Why whites always think equality is like a pie eludes me. The only rigthtrs they lose are those to discriminate and subjugate.

## **Why Section 2 matters** 

The Brennan Center for Justice[ filed a friend-of-the-court brief highlighting the transformational impact that Section 2 vote-dilution claims have had since the 1980s](Louisiana v. Callais | Brennan Center for Justice
). Nearly half of all Section 2 cases since 1982 have challenged at-large elections by cities, school districts, counties, and other local governments. 

These cases resulted in hundreds of jurisdictions moving to fairer electoral systems over four decades, dramatically expanding representation for voters of color, especially, but not only, in the South. 

The brief argues that Section 2 is a carefully tailored tool with demanding requirements. Under the framework established in Thornburg v. Gingles, plaintiffs must prove the existence of racially polarized voting so severe that the normal give-and-take of politics is no longer possible for voters of color. The law is not a mandate for universal race-based districting, but rather a targeted remedy for the most racially divided communities. 

## **Nationwide impact** 

[The NAACP's LDF has emphasized that this case goes beyond just maps](https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais-faq/?ref=notunmindful.org)—it's about the future of multiracial democracy in the U.a. It's about ensuring that every vote counts. Fair representation in Congress can lead to real improvements in health care access, education, environmental safety, infrastructure, and other issues that directly affect communities. 

The reargument itself signals the case's significance. As LDF notes, some of the Supreme Court's most consequential decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education, came following reargument. The Court's decision to hold the case over suggests the justices recognize the profound implications of their eventual ruling. 

If the Supreme Court sides with the challengers and finds that remedying vote dilution violates the Constitution, it would gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and make it almost impossible to address racial discrimination in redistricting. 

This would allow the Republican party to engage in even more partisan gerrymandering that it does today. The goal would be elimination several legislative districts held by Democratic officials, many of whom are racial minorities. 

If the Court sides the Black voters defending the map, it would affirm that states can and must consider race to ensure equal political opportunities for all citizens—preserving a key protection from the civil rights movement. 

## Ideals versus our reality 

The Guardian piece places this case in the troubling context of America's current democratic health, or lack thereof. With an executive branch wielding unprecedented power, a legislature failing to check that power, and a Supreme Court that has largely rubber-stamped the administration's novel assertions of authority, the future of voting rights protections appears increasingly precarious—if not outright doomed.

The Supreme Court has already allowed the executive branch to engage in racial profiling through roving immigration patrols, to fire non-regime friendly officials in violation of federal law, and to dismantle entire departments. 

Louisiana v. Callais represents the Court's potential participation in a far-reaching rightwing project that stretches back to the end of the Civil War. And further would move the clock backward to Jim Crow America.

## **What happens next** 

The case is scheduled for oral reargument on 15 October. The current map with two majority-Black districts remains in place pending the Court's decision. Nationwide, voting rights advocates, state legislators, and legal scholars will be observing it closely. They know the Court's ruling will shape the future of our democracy for generations. 

Black Louisianians have spent years fighting for fair maps—from their communities all the way to the Supreme Court. To them, the case represents both the culmination of their efforts and a porential death blow in their ongoing struggle for equal political power. 

Will the promise of Reconstruction be reaffirmed or dismantled. 

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #9
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-98-copy/
Last updated: 2025-09-26T19:03:15.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful this week (ending 26 September 2025).

## Friday

### [Toward a new Reconstruction to rebuild the American polity](https://www.notunmindful.org/toward-a-new-reconstruction-to-rebuild-the-american-polity/)

Where do we go from here? There is so much to repair and build to return us to where we thought we were. This is an outline for democratic renewal.

## Thursday

### [More consequences and reactions to whitewashing the Smithsonian](https://www.notunmindful.org/more-consequences-and-reactions-to-whitewashing-the-smithsonian/)

The consequences of the Trump administration's sweeping efforts to whitewash American history at the Smithsonian and reactions to it.

## Wednesday

### [Behind closed doors: academic freedom under attack at UNC-Chapel Hill](https://www.notunmindful.org/behind-closed-doors-academic-freedom-under-attack-at-unc-chapel-hill/)

Former provost dues UNC-Chapel Hill Trustees over closed meetings about eliminating tenure.

## Tuesday

### [Frederick Douglass still resonates](https://www.notunmindful.org/frederick-douglass-still-resonates/)

Frederick Douglass still has something to say for the current moment. Although these words were written after Lee's death, the bombast is all to present again today.

## Monday 

### [The Charlie Kirk assassination: political violence and the dangerous path forward](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-charlie-kirk-assassination-political-violence-and-the-dangerous-path-forward/)

By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of Kirk, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy as the American right calls for retribution and a crackdown on the political left.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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## 

## 

## 

##
### Toward a new Reconstruction to rebuild the American polity
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/toward-a-new-reconstruction-to-rebuild-the-american-polity/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:53:45.000Z
The first Reconstruction happened after the Civil War as we all were taught. It fell apart in the face of racism and institutional recalcitrance. The civil rights movement of the mid twentieth century has been called the second reconstruction. Now, the norms and gains from that are under assault and falling quickly.

It is clear that America needs a new Reconstruction. This time, however, no half measures should be contemplated. We must be all in. Fascism, oligarchy, racism, and authoritarianism must be confronted head on and dug up by the roots. And we must salt the ground behind that. 

*MAGA delende est*.

In the last decade, America's unseen institutional weaknesses allowed authoritarian takeovers of all governmental branches. The 2024 election was both a failure of the United States as a country and as a nation, with democratic institutions unable to prevent an autocratic leader from coming to power and begin moving inexorably toward fascism, all abetted by other branches of government and those institutional bulwarks we had counted on. 

That said, as Nicholas Kristof has noted, "nations like America with strong institutions are hardy" and the "typical authoritarian model isn't the police state conjured by Hitlerian nightmares" but rather "competitive authoritarianism" where "elections still matter even if the playing field is tilted". Even this looks a rosy view these days with ICE and the National Guard in city streets.

While his assessment is optimistic, it gets at the institutional memory that may still exist. This could serve our purposes moving forward at least as a start.

Today, we require not only rebuilt versions of what existed, but also better structures and new solutions. Our new Reconstruction must address systemic vulnerabilities while strengthening democratic resilience for the future.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but I intend it as a staring point. For organizational purposes, I've grouped these ideas into the four categories: Executive, Legistlative, Judicial, Societal. Of course, action across all of these areas will be required to make this a reality. 

## **I. Constitutional**

The constinturion was designed to be pliable and flexible to meet new conditions. That's what amendments are for. 

Currently, the constitution has 27 amendments. That's roughly about an amendment per decade (or generation if you leave the Bill of Rights out of it). The last amendment, however, was ratified in 1992, over 30 years ago. The constiution is due a bit of a refresh.

We should look to use this method to codify things in a more nationwide manner than using the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter for all (more on that lot later).

Normalize amending the constitution again. \[Update: [*The Atlantic* has an article about amendments and how thew misguided concept of originalism has stunted thenatural evolution of the constitution](https://apple.news/A6aByxR4iR4CV9gIIDW44oQ?ref=notunmindful.org).\] We need to amend it—and often.

The following potential amendments, obviously, are just a start.

- Enshrine a new right to privacy and bodily autonomy.
- End Gerrymandering by mandating that redistricting happen only once per decade and that it follow statistical, not political, methods
- Revise the Second Amendment to clarify what "well regulated" and "militia" mean in our current society. (Ed. Note: something like, "The right of the people to keep and bear regulated and properly licensed Arms, shall not be infringed.")
- An amendment to strengthen press freedoms and protection granted by the first First Amendment (new or revised)
- An amendment to protect academic and scientific freedom free from political interference
- Removing or reforming the electoral college to more accurately represent the will of all Americans

Some of the following ideas may also require amendments if systemic reform and legislation are not enough to make them happen.

## **II. Executive**

### 

### A. Limiting Presidential Powers 

- Insurrection Act reform with Congressional approval requirements
- Limit emergency powers with automatic sunset clauses
- Restrict pardon power to prevent abuse
- Independent inspector generals with tenure protection

### **B. Protecting the civil service**

- Insulate career civil servants from political hiring and firing whims
- Strengthen merit-based hiring and political activity restrictions
- Expand civil service protections to prevent political purges
- Independent oversight of personnel decisions
- Whistleblower protection enhancement
- Federal worker protection from political retaliation and mass firings

### **C. Rebuilding federal agencies**

- **Science Agencies**: rebuild the CDC, restore the NIH grant system (and grants), rebuild the EPA's scientific capacity and give it teeth
- **Scientific Workforce Recovery**: create career rehabilitation programs, reform the foreign scientist visa process (not for $100k a pop), reconbstruct research labs, listen to scientists
- **The Cabinet:** create a coordinator position to oversee systematic rebuilding
- **Whistle-Blowers**: provide anti-retaliation protections for scientists and federal workers in all departments

### **D. Reforming law enforcement** 

- Eliminate ICE and enact comprehensive immigration reform
- Restructure the Border Patrol with a humanitarian focus
- Provide federal oversight of all law enforcement agencies
- Re-establish the structural independence the Department of Justice from White House interference
- Shift law enforcement funding to mental health resources
- De-militarize local police forces by removing war equipment from their arsenals, and ensure no more Cop Cities

### **E. National Security**

- Re-iterate support for and commitment to NATO
- Fund Ukraine to fight fascist Russia
- Recognize the Palestinian state
- Cease all arms shipments to Israel
- Isolate Israel until they rejoin the community of reasonable nations
- End all idiotic tariffs and reconcile with Canda nd Mexico, whatever it takes
- Strengthen Pacific alliances
- Try to influence India on retuning to a full democracy beyond Modi while working to smooth tensions in South Asia
- Cease fascination with Venezuela and end extra-judicial killings

## **III. Legislative**

### **A. Overhaul the Electoral System and Voting Rights**

- Eliminate voting restrictions and make voting more accessible (i.e., restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time)
- Stop purging voter rolls so frequently' once.per census is enough.
- National voting standards ensuring uniform access. Nationalize mail in voting
- Automatic voter registration and expanded early voting
- Electoral College reform or abolition.
- Campaign finance reform to reduce oligarchic influence.Legistlate Citzens United out of existence. Money does not equal speech and corporations are not people
- Public funding for elections
- Make Election Day a national holiday
- Gerrymandering elimination through independent redistricting commissions
- Voting Rights Act restoration and expansion. Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights act.
- Accommodate for multiple languages and make voting ADA compliant for accessibility

### **B. Create a Modern Legislative Agenda**

- Enact a Green New Deal, subsidizing green energy to lessen dependence of fossil fuels; invest in nationwide smart grid technology to modernize electrical infrastructure
- Make climate change the top of any agenda as it is the largest threat currently facing our planet
- Restore national lands, removing them from private use beyond grazing rights agree to with native tribes
- Enact an abundance agenda to reflect productivity gains over the last 75 years. This would include a minimum basic income, a 32 hour work week, and a living mimimum wage ($25+ per hour)
- Ban further offshore drilling
- Add national parks, monuments, and forests
- Require minimum fuel standard for vehicles with internal combustion engines
- Repeal tariffs
- Expand Medicaid and endeavor to institute single-payer universal healthcare and re-establish vaccine programs and other public health initiatives
- Invest in scientific and medical research and participate in international cooperation on these issues
- Re-establish environmental regulations and give the EPA teeth to enforce them
- Retake the reins from Silicon Valley with oversight of cutting technologies  
(AI, autonomous vehicles) while investing in new areas

### **C. Modify How Congressional Works**

- Wrest control over the ability to declare war and authorize military operations from the Executive Branch
- Kill the filibuster for precedural votes and executive nominations to prevent minority obstruction
- Enforce ethics standards with independent oversight and censure
- Restrict lobbying and limit the revolving door between the Hill and K. Street
- Require transparancy for all legislative activities save top secret intel hearings

### **D. Reform Taxation**

- Allow Trump tax cuts to expire
- Increase the marginal tax rate above $1 Million. Greatly increase it aboiiut $1 Billion. Make billionaires foot the bill for a new great abundance agenda as they serve no purpose
- Make income between $50k and $1m taxable for FICA to fund social security
- Bring capital gains tax rates inline with personal income taxes. Make wealth equal to work
- Decrease the amount that is immune from inheritance taxes
- Close corporate loopholes and tax offshore companies

### **E. National Security (repeated)**

- Re-iterate support for and commitment to NATO
- Fund Ukraine to fight fascist Russia
- Recognize the Palestinian state
- Cease all arms shipments to Israel
- Isolate Israel until they rejoin the community of reasonable nations
- End all idiotic tariffs and reconcile with Canda nd Mexico, whatever it takes
- Strengthen Pacific alliances
- Try to influence India on retuning to a full democracy beyond Modi while working to smooth tensions in South Asia
- Cease fascination with Venezuela and end extra-judicial killings

### **F. Expand the Union**

- Grant D.C. statehood immediately
- Grant Puerto Rico statehood should the populace wish
- Make other territories feel at ease about petitioning for statehood

## IV. Judicial

### **A. Reform the the Courts from the Top**

- Expand the court to restore representation for all: one justice for each appellate circuit (14). The number of justices is only fixed by recent tradtion anyway. Let's not get to concerned about the even number (14).
- Enact term limits for justices to prevent excessive political influence (20 years)
- Create Ethics enforcement mechanisms with real consequences
- Reform the nomination process reform to reduce partisan influence
- Lower the bar for impeachment of judges, including the supreme court justices
- Outlaw the shadow docket

### **B. Justice System Independence**

- Provide special counsel protections with Congressional oversight
- Protect career prosecutor and defenders from political retaliation
- Require transparency for all prosecutorial decisions
- Allow, encourage and abide by legal challenges to and decisions against authoritarian actions

### **C. Protecting the Legal Profession** 

- Provide independence protections for lawyers and legal organizations
- Grant *pro bono* representation guarantees for targets of political persecution
- Expand legal aid for those facing government retaliation

## V. Societal

I'm not going to lie. This will be the hardest for many reasons: years of disinformation, inherent racism, rampant anti-intellectualism, general narrowness, xenophobia, ignorance, etc., etc. But just getting them down will give us a North Star to make all that has come above more achievable.

### **A. Civil Rights and Social Justice**

- **Declare complete victory over the confederacy once and for all**. It was the first total war, not is the time for total victory. The root of much of today's evils—the lost cause mythology feeding racist hate
- Remove all remnants of the confederacy insofar is possible, madatiing it in public space and highly incentivizing it in private ones, including the name of our alma mater.
- Remove statues. Restore non dogwhistle names to renamed army bases. Rename streets. Ban the confederate flag in all of its forms. I recognize Stone Mountain will be impossible, but contextualize it as racist and let it erode on its own.
- Make clear at all junctures that the confederacy was rebelling agains the United States of America and fighting the United States Army (not the Union)
- Enforce civil rights comprehensively across all sectors and states
- Add additional teeth to hate crime legislation with enhanced penalties
- Ensure equal access to education, healthcare, and employment
- Address misogyny, racism, and LGBTQ+ phobia from the top down as Truman did with integrating the military
- Stop demonization of trans people

### **B. Economic Democracy and Justice**

- Guarantee labor rights and the ability to join unions. Reconstruct the NLRB, roll back "right to work" (hahahaha) laws ala Michigan
- Enact Affordable housing mandates, anti-speculation measures, transit-oriented development
- Implement inflation control, employment recovery programs, tariff policy reversal
- Demilitarization local police and make them accountable to their communities

### **C. Information Ecosystem and Media**

- Protection from harassment of critical media
- Anti-SLAPP legislation expansion
- Expand public media as alternative to corporate-captured outlets
- Revise the telecommunications act of 1996 to make media decrease media consolidation (from 50 companies to 5 in 50 years); restore a revised fairness doctrine to combat propaganda (Fox News)
- Create a fact-checking infrastructure independent of media companies

### **D. Democratic Participation and Civic Renewal**

- Create civic literacy requirements teaching recognition of authoritarianism, media literacy education, and U.S. civics and government.
- Provide community organizing support, citizens' assemblies, and participatory budgeting locally
- Strengthen democratic alliances. Prioritize diplomacy over. military intervention. (Jaw jaw is better than war war. —Churchill)

### **E. Implementation and Coalition Building**

- Create a cross-partisan democracy defenders coalition (not just democrats and republicans, but also greens, libertarians, democratic socialists, socialists, etc.
- Continually assess institutional resilience assessment and provide support
- Conduct generational planning to acknowledge the long time horizon (20+ year reconstruction timeline)

### F. Other Societal Issues

- **Housing:** work toward walkable neighborhoods. More planning independent of motor vehicles
- **Transportation**: re-invest in mass transit and high-speed rails, much as did for Interstate Highways in the 1950s. Greater regulation of autonomous vehicles.
- **Accountability for current abuses:** prosecute all Trump political appointees who carried out illegal orders and otherwise abetted his administration
- **Education**: strengthen public schools and provide not money to private, charter schools; Increase teacher salaries, and reform funding for higher education (i.e., outlawing predatory student loans and granting student loan forgiveness). Invest in civics and scientific education
- **Expertise**: rebuild trust in experts in science, policy, health, etc.

## **Conclusion**

Political scientists surveyed by Bright Line Watch gave American democracy a rating of 67 after Trump's election, which plummeted to 55 just weeks into his second term—"a precipitous drop" representing the biggest decline since 2017\. As Harvard professor Steven Levitsky warns, "We've slid into some form of authoritarianism... we are no longer living in a liberal democracy."

However much Trump is weakening America's core strengths— "higher education, scientific research, rule of law, a melting pot of immigrants, recruitment of the world's best minds, the strong dollar, American soft power"—recovery is still possible, as outlined above. It won't be easy,but is anything that is truly worth it ever easy?

In the immediate term,this new reconstruction will likely lead to more intense partisan division and ill-feeling. But it must go beyond restoration to transformation, creating a democracy more resilient to authoritarian threats while expanding genuine participation and equality. 

The task will require sustained commitment across multiple election cycles and the courage to make fundamental changes to systems that have proven vulnerable to abuse.

The scope of damage is unprecedented. It ranges from the systematic destruction of scientific institutions to the demoralization of the federal workforce to the capture of major legal and academic institutions. Recovery will require not just policy changes but a generational commitment to rebuilding democratic culture and institutions from the ground up.

**Are you up for it? We are Not Unmindful of the future for a reason.**

Success depends on building a broad coalition committed to democratic values over partisan advantage. We must maintain hope that "this is a time for a rebirth of liberal patriotism." 

Most importantly, we must acknowledge the severity of the damage and the historical precedent that such systems can be overcome through sustained democratic resistance.

*Non in cautus futuri*

## **Partial list of sources/links**

- [https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/08/second-reconstruction](https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/08/second-reconstruction?ref=notunmindful.org)
- [https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-10/trump-wont-last-forever-heres-what-it-will-take-to-rebuild-what-hes-tearing-down](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-10/trump-wont-last-forever-heres-what-it-will-take-to-rebuild-what-hes-tearing-down?ref=notunmindful.org)
- [https://www.salon.com/2025/01/14/there-will-be-no-rebuilding-bracing-america-for-the-implementation-of-project-2025/](https://www.salon.com/2025/01/14/there-will-be-no-rebuilding-bracing-america-for-the-implementation-of-project-2025/?ref=notunmindful.org)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/opinion/america-authoritarianism-trump.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.mE8.VCtm.dAM-a4eWkvsz&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/opinion/america-authoritarianism-trump.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.mE8.VCtm.dAM-a4eWkvsz&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org)
- [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/hiltzik-trump-wont-last-forever-heres-what-it-will-take-to-rebuild-what-hes-tearing-down/ar-AA1Mg6W4 ](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/hiltzik-trump-wont-last-forever-heres-what-it-will-take-to-rebuild-what-hes-tearing-down/ar-AA1Mg6W4?ref=notunmindful.org)

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## Help Support Not Unmindful

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**Note:** Claude.ai was used to help outline this list into manageable subdivisions. However, the text was not in any way written by AI.
### More consequences and reactions  to whitewashing the Smithsonian
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/more-consequences-and-reactions-to-whitewashing-the-smithsonian/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T14:02:36.000Z
As noted here before, [the Trump administration has launched an unprecedented white-washing campaign to reshape the Smithsonian Institution](https://www.notunmindful.org/white-washing-the-smithsonian/). To recap, he is demanding the removal of what it calls "divisive" content while targeting exhibits, artworks, and educational materials that address America's complex racial history. 

The August 2025 formal letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch demanded a "comprehensive internal review" of eight major museums. The directive calls for replacing "divisive or ideologically driven language." Of course, the administration's definition of what constitutes "accurate" history is pretty exclusively white.

## Artists targeted for depicting American realities

The White House has published an official newsletter identifying specific artworks and exhibitions it finds objectionable. N[PR ptovides a good overview](https://www.npr.org/2025/08/24/nx-s1-5511241/smithsonian-white-house-art?ref=notunmindful.org), which is summarized here. 

Among the targeted works is Rigoberto Gonzalez's 2020 painting "Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas," which depicts an immigrant family crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The White House criticized the work for "commemorating the act of illegally crossing" the southern border. Alternatively, coming to America as a none-white person.

Gonzalez, an American citizen born in Reynosa, Mexico, rejects the administration's characterization of his work. "My work is political, and that painting in particular was questioning the anti-immigrant sentiment of the time," he said. The artist drew parallels to Nazi Germany's "degenerate art" exhibitions of the 1930s. Then, as now, the regimes targeted modern artists whose work didn't align with their ideology.

Other targeted artists include Amy Sherald. Sherald, known for her portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, preemptively canceled her upcoming Smithsonian exhibition. This exhibit would have included "Trans Forming Liberty," a painting of a transgender woman holding a torch. Sherald has described her current work as "counterterrorist attacks" against efforts to erase American history and Black American experiences.

## Scholars labeled as "activists"

The administration has also targeted prominent scholars whose research addresses systemic racism.[ NPR also provides a list](https://www.npr.org/2025/08/24/nx-s1-5511241/smithsonian-white-house-art?ref=notunmindful.org) of these, which inludes Howard University professor Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi wrote "How to be an Antiracist." So of course, the White House has labeled hime a "hardcore woke activist." Kendi's work has also been featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

> "Those of us who study racism, who engage in rigorous research to try to explain what racism is have been typically described as activists, as opposed to what we are: scholars and intellectuals using research and analysis to try to present the truth." —Kendi 

He further noted that such characterizations are designed to discredit scholarship and distract from research findings.

Hugo Crosthwaite's animated portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci was also singled out, likely because it depicts someone who promoted vaccine technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. The artist suspects the targeting stems from Fauci's association with public health measures that have become as politically divisive as they are stupid.

## Gullah heritage at risk

The review's potential impact extends beyond individual artworks to entire cultural traditions. [WCSC Charleston reported on its effect on the rich traditiona of Gullah culture.](https://www.live5news.com/2025/09/23/smithsonian-museum-review-could-affect-lowcountrys-gullah-heritage/?ref=notunmindful.org) Sweetgrass basket maker Corey Alston's work, currently displayed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, could be removed under the administration's guidelines. 

Alston's baskets represent a 300-year-old Gullah Geechee tradition that traces back to enslaved Africans who brought rice cultivation knowledge to the Carolina colonies.

"It's a great joy to be able to display our artwork at museum levels because it tells a story of our ancestry," Alston said. "For those that never heard of Gullah people, this is the conversation starter." He expressed concern that removing such exhibits would erase history that helped build America.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, established by Congress in 2006, extends from North Carolina to Florida and represents a vital part of African American cultural identity. Michael Allen, a retired National Park Service historian, emphasized that "all voices and all stories need to be told and incorporated in the American journey."

## "Focus on the positive"

White House official Lindsey Halligan is leading the Smithsonian overhaul. She has articulated the administration's vision in media appearances. Speaking on Fox News (and reported in *The New Republic*), [she argued that the museums exhibit "an overemphasis on slavery"](https://newrepublic.com/post/199376/lindsey-halligan-smithsonian-museum-slavery-comments?ref=notunmindful.org) and should instead emphasize "how far we've come since slavery." (Sorry, still won't watch or link to Fox News.)

Halligan's approach reflects an effort to present what she calls a more "positive" version of American history; that is what we call a white-washed sanitized version. "We should be able to take our kids, our students through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave," she said, advocating for content that represents "our country in a positive way" rather than grappling with difficult historical realities. 

This perspective has alarmed historians who argue that understanding America's full history, including its darkest chapters, is essential for genuine progress and education.

I don't know about you, but how this country has dealt with such ugly bits and moved beyond them while reckoning with them is a source of pride. Has that reckoning been delayed and many times incomplete? Of course, but the effort is still the thing.

## Citizen response and documentation efforts

[Concerned historians and citizens have mobilized to document the current state of Smithsonian exhibits before potential changes](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5517973/smithsonian-document-citizen-historians?ref=notunmindful.org). (NPR reporting again before it, too whithers.) Georgetown University professors Jim Millward and Chandra Manning launched the "Citizen Historians" project, calling for volunteers to systematically photograph exhibits, wall text, and artifacts across the museum system.

"I'm a historian of China, and so I'm really used to when governments are stepping in trying to whitewash history and censor history," Millward explained. "It really upset me to see this being threatened in the United States as well."

The project has attracted hundreds of volunteers who have uploaded more than 25,000 photographs and videos to create an archive of current museum content. The effort takes inspiration from "[Save Our Signs," effort to document National Park signage](https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/07/group-works-archive-national-parks-signs-they-disappear?ref=notunmindful.org) after the Trump administration called for visitors to report signs "negative about either past or living Americans."

## hilling effect on cultural institutions

The administration's actions have created what's been called a chilling effect throughout the cultural sector. Artist Patricia Cronin, whose sculpture "Memorial to a Marriage"is part of the National Portrait Gallery's permanent collection, expressed concern about the broader implications. The sculpture depicts two women. 

"Part of this whole censorship is to erase our history, but also erase our lives," said Cronin. 

> "If we're not allowed to be in public, or museums aren't showing the American story in its fullest complexities, it's going to be terrible for many artists who are making work that reflects their human experience."

Art historian Richard Meyer of Stanford University noted that the current situation differs from previous culture wars skirmishes, such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs in the 1990s. "I've never seen a list like this," he said. "It does remind me a bit of McCarthyism."

Meyer expressed particular concern about self-censorship among emerging artists: "The worst kind of censorship is when you never see the work or it's never made."

## Historical precedent and broader implications

Several targeted individuals have drawn parallels to historical periods when governments sought to control cultural expression. The comparison to Nazi Germany's targeting of "degenerate art" is often cited. The comparison reflects broader concerns about governmental overreach in our own cultural institutions.

Kendi also noted similarities to the Jim Crow era, when segregationist politicians "were firmly against our public museums presenting an accurate picture of slavery, or the Civil War, of civil rights activism." 

He pointed to historical efforts to present slavery as beneficial to African Americans. At the time, southern white society endeavored to "downplay or downgrade the level of horror and torture and terror that Black people faced." This, of course, was always in the background of the last cause fairy tale.

The current effort intensifies previous attempts to influence museum content. The White House is now directly naming specific artists, scholars, and works for removal or revision.

## Museums under pressure

The Smithsonian Institution faces significant pressure to comply with the administration's demands because it receives federal funding, . While the institution has declined to comment on the White House list, it hsd stated its commitment to remaining "free from political or partisan influence."

The Smithsonian is the national repository of American culture and history. With 21 museums containing millions of artifacts, objects, and artworks, the institution serves as a crucial educational resource for millions of annual visitors. This unique place in our culture and history makes this effort all the more grim. 

[Four Democratic senators have urged the Smithsonian to resist. ](https://www.wusf.org/2025-09-05/four-democratic-senators-urge-smithsonian-to-resist-white-house-attempts-to-bully-the-institution?ref=notunmindful.org)Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley, D-Ore joined Alex Padilla, D-Calif. in calling for the instituiontion to resist what they characterize as White House attempts to "bully the institution." However, the practical reality of federal funding and political pressure creates a complex situation for museum leadership.

## Yet another test for American democracy and society

The battle over the Smithsonian is a small part of the broader struggle over how America tells its story. The administration's wants to emphasize "positive" narratives and minimize the "inconvnient facts" of genocide, slavery, racism, and other difficult aspects of American history. This raises fundamental questions about the role of museums in democratic society.

As historian Chandra Manning noted, the Smithsonian serves as "a repository of human wisdom" that encompasses everything from "Jackie Robinson's jersey to prehistoric skeletons to Ming vases." The effort to selectively present this collection based on ideology threatens not only the institution's educational mission but also it's scholarly integrity.

The coming months will reveal whether the Smithsonian can maintain its commitment to presenting comprehensive, scholarly approaches to American history, or whether political pressure will fundamentally alter it. Thus, neutering one of the nation's most important cultural institutions. 

For the artists, scholars, and cultural traditions caught in the crosshairs, the end game is now. For the citizenry trying to capture what they can while it remains, we salute you. Now we also must make our voices heard to our own [representative](https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative?ref=notunmindful.org) and [senators](https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1&ref=notunmindful.org).

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Behind closed doors: academic freedom under attack  at UNC-Chapel Hill
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/behind-closed-doors-academic-freedom-under-attack-at-unc-chapel-hill/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T14:02:21.000Z
The fight for academic freedom in American higher education has taken yet another turn. This time one of the nation's most prestigious public universities: UNC Chapel Hill. Former Provost Chris Clemens has filed a lawsuit that shows a secret effort by university trustees to undermine faculty protections.

## A provost forced out for doing his job

In *The Assembly*, Matt Hartman's reports that [Clemens was essentially forced to resign after informing faculty about the Board of Trustees' decision to postpone tenure votes](https://www.theassemblync.com/education/higher-education/clemens-provost-resign-unc-chapel-hill-civic-life/?ref=notunmindful.org). The March 2025 incident reveals a troubling pattern. Against all precedent, trustees used closed-door sessions not to discuss individual personnel matters—which would be legal—but to debate the very existence of tenure itself.

The lawsuit states:

> "The closed session at issue was unlawful because the Board used the personnel exemption to conduct a policy debate on the existential value and global costs of tenure—subjects that must be addressed in open session."

This is more than a procedural violation; it's a deliberate attempt to hide policy decisions that fundamentally alter he nature of academia itself. They are hiding the effect on academic freedom from public scrutiny.

## Secrecy as a weapon 

The lawsuit alleges that UNC trustees have "systematically hidden matters of grave public concern by illegally using closed sessions and encrypted messaging apps such as Signal. 

These incidents are not isolated. They fit into a broader pattern that includes discussions about athletics finances, conference realignment, and coaching contracts—all conducted away from public oversight.

When Clemens fulfilled his duty to inform academic leadership about the tenure delays, Board chair John Preyera ccused of "betrayal." The message was blunt—loyalty to the board's secrecy mattered more than transparency to faculty and the public.

## Another front in the assault on academic freedom

We've seen some flavor of this endgame at university after university nationally. Politically appointed boards systematically try to destroy the foundations of academic freedom. Tenure has become a particular target, with trustees arguing it's "too expensive" and limits "staffing flexibility." 

But tenure isn't just an employment benefit—it's the cornerstone that allows faculty to pursue controversial research, challenge orthodoxies, and speak truth to power without fear of retaliation. 

And there's the crux of the matter right there. Tenured academics cannot be muzzled or made to toe the line with major repercussions and bad PR.

## They won't stop either

## 

Faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill have voiced "widespread opposition" to these tenure delays. They understand that a lack of job security will preclude universities from attracting top scholars and maintaining their research mission. 

When trustees operate in shadows, they're not only violating open meetings laws, but they are also attacking the very principles that make universities engines of knowledge and democratic discourse.

The outcome of this case will signal whether public universities can maintain their independence and commitment to academic freedom. If they cannot, they may continue tto become institutions controlled by political appointees operating in the shadows. 

And higher education as it has served this nation for generations will be lost.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Frederick Douglass still resonates
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/frederick-douglass-still-resonates/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T14:01:59.000Z
Although these words were written in *The New National Er*a on 10 November 1870 on the occasion of Robert E. Lee's death, much of what he describes is sadly rearing its head again. To quote a bit of Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

I've quoted his column in full below:

> **Bombast**

> “How sleep the brave who sink to rest, by all their country's wishes blest,” occurs in four fifths of the newspaper obituaries of Gen. Lee. —*Exchange*. 

> Is it not about time that this bombastic laudation of the rebel chief should cease? We can scarcely take up a paper that comes to us from the South, that is not tilled with nauseating flatteries of the late Robert E. Lee; and many Northern journals also join in these undeserved tributes to his memory.

> We give the following extract as a specimen which comes to us in an extra Galveston *News*. The writer says:

> “Lee is dead! The soldier rests. When the loved Apostle, grown venerable with the winters of a century, lay entrancedon the Isle of Patmos, he heard a voice saying, 'Write from henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors.” When the clouds of night hung like a funeral pall over the bloody held of Chancellorvsille—when the shrieks of the wounded and dying rose like a mad tumult—when the plunging horses, the screeching shell, the rattling musketr and the sullen boom of the cannon joined in terror and destruction to the advancing hosts, the dying general murmured from between his quivering lips the invitation 'Let us cress the river and rest beneath the shade of the trees." He crossed then and rested on the green banks and beneath the waving trees that grow on the other side of that dark river. Thither Lee has gone to join him who was on earth always first in the advance."

> It would seem from this that the soldier who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian, and entitled to the highest place in Heaven. It may be so! If Lee has gone to Heaven we are sincerelyglad of it. ''Barkis is willing."

> We are beginning to get at the cause of General Lee's death. Jeff Davis says that ''he died of a broken heart;” and one journal has declared, that he died being sadly depressed at condition of the country, that he could stand it no longer. From which we are to infer, that the liberation of four millions of slaves and their elevation to manhood, anil to the enjoyment of their civil and political rights, was more than he could stand, and so he died!

Remind of you the current climate much?

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The Charlie Kirk assassination: political violence and the dangerous path forward
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-charlie-kirk-assassination-political-violence-and-the-dangerous-path-forward/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T14:00:49.000Z
The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has become a flashpoint that reveals the dangerous trajectory of American political discourse. The aftermath of Kirk's killing has exposed both the immediate dangers of extremist mobilization and the troubling tendency to sanitize controversial figures in death.

## Immediate calls for vengeance

In the hours following Kirk's assassination, the far-right mobilized with alarming speed and vitriol. As Reuters reported, [Trump supporters immediately blamed the political left for the murder,](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/right-wing-anger-surges-kirks-killing-fuels-calls-vengeance-2025-09-12/?ref=notunmindful.org) even before the shooter's identity or motives were known. "They couldn't beat him in a debate, so they assassinated him," wrote Isabella Maria DeLuca, a pardoned January 6 rioter.

The 22-year-old shooter, Tyler Robinson, was captured after a 33-hour manhunt. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said that Robinson had recently become more political and had expressed disdain for Kirk, without any evidence to support it. He also reveals an unfired cartridge recovered from his gun engraved with "Hey, fascist! Catch!" And no one seems to get that as a gaming meme more than a political manifesto.

Computer science professor Jen Golbeck's analysis of over 3,000 posts on X and Patriots.Win revealed "a volatile mix of grief, rage, and signs of growing radicalization." On Patriots.Win, calls for vengeance surged: "The entire Democrat party needs to fucking hang now!" one poster wrote. Another invoked the Reichstag Fire, declaring "It's time to end democracy." 

## Extremist leaders seize the moment

Pardoned January 6 insurrectionists have used Kirk's death as a rallying cry to reorganize. Stewart Rhodes, the pardoned Oath Keepers founder, announced he would be "rebuilding Oath Keepers" and resuming "public protection of patriots." Speaking on Alex Jones' Infowars podcast, Rhodes urged men to "step up...do your tour of duty" and start vigilante groups.

Other convicted insurrectionists responded similarly. Enrique Tarrio, the pardoned Proud Boys leader, declared "We carry the torch" in Kirk's memory. Jake Lang called for "a MILLION MAN MARCH on DC," while Chris Worrell demanded "RETRIBUTION" for what he called a "POLITICAL ASSASSINATION."

[As Mother Jones reported, experts worry these messages from influencers with wide online reach could inspire lone actors to violence](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/pardoned-insurrectionists-are-using-charlie-kirks-death-to-call-for-civil-?ref=notunmindful.org). "They're now being told that the same people who tried to steal this country away from you just killed Charlie Kirk, and someone has to do something about that," said Jon Lewis from George Washington University's Program on Extremism.

## Presidential rhetoric fans the flames

President Trump's response has been particularly inflammatory. In a televised address, Trump blamed his political opponents for Kirk's death before any investigation was complete: 

> "For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today."

This baseless politicization serves multiple purposes, as professor John Rennie Short noted: "It takes attention away from the Epstein files, from Israel bombing allies, or Putin continuing to savagely attack Ukraine." More dangerously, it provides potential justification for authoritarian crackdowns.

[The Financial Times reported concerns that Trump could use Kirk's killing as a pretext for broader government action against the left](https://www.ft.com/content/e76c9b1f-7157-4bcd-9aa2-a535f3f1ed62?ref=notunmindful.org). Steven Levitsky from Harvard warned: "This could be used as an accelerant for troops on the streets, \[and\] efforts to persecute the opposition."

## The sanitization of Charlie Kirk's bigotry

While the violent response to Kirk's death is deeply troubling, equally concerning is the tendency to sanitize Kirk's legacy. [As Ta-Nehisi Coates documented in Vanity Fair, numerous prominent figures have rushed to memorialize Kirk while ignoring the explicit bigotry that defined his public persona](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates?ref=notunmindful.org#intcid=%5Fvanity-fair-verso-hp-trending%5Fa3846bdc-d068-4ca5-a498-e9b0d1fa3d81%5Fpopular4-2).

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein called Kirk "one of the era's most effective practitioners of persuasion," while California Governor Gavin Newsom praised his "passion and commitment to debate." Atlantic writer Sally Jenkins claimed Kirk "argued with civility." I'm not sure whatr Kirk quotes they base any of trhis on, and they've been rightly pilloried online for it.

These characterizations are difficult to reconcile with Kirk's actual record. Kirk regularly demeaned LGBTQ+ individuals as "freaks" and used slurs against transgender people. He claimed that large Islamic areas were "a threat to America" and referred to Muslim political candidate Zohran Mamdani as a "Mohammedan." Kirk habitually railed against "Black crime" and repeated false rape accusations against members of the exonerated Central Park Five.

Kirk's antisemitism was equally explicit, claiming that "Jewish donors" were "the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies."

In short, Kirk's views were heinous, and that part seems now lost.

Thise bigotry extended beyond Kirk as a person to the organization he founded. Crystal Clanton, Turning Point USA's former national field director, once texted "I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all." Adviser Rip McIntosh published content claiming Blacks had "become socially incompatible with other races." In 2022, a chapter president joked about wanting more Black students killed.

This culture of hatred makes the post-killing praise for Kirk's "civility" particularly jarring because it is bullshit.

## A broader pattern of political violence

Kirk's assassination represents the latest in a disturbing pattern of political violence affecting figures across the ideological spectrum. Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally last year, while a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband were assassinated in June. The assassin in that case had a hit list of democrats. And he killed an innoccnt dog. 

Also, Pennsylvania's Democratic governor Josh Shapiro's home was set on fire with his family inside. (And we must remember the attack on Paul Pelosi, which the right actually mocked.)

What makes the current moment particularly dangerous is how political violence is occurring alongside Trump's consolidation of power. "This is when an aggressive president moving in an aggressive direction can be a dangerous thing," said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor. "There are literally federal troops on the streets of American cities, and Trump is flexing federal force whenever he wants to."

The polarization has reached levels reminiscent of failed democracies. Harvard's Levitsky noted that the two main parties now view each other as "enemies not rivals," like 1930s Spain before its democratic breakdown. "When two parties view each other as an existential threat, the temptation to engage in violent and illegal behavior is very high," he said.

Using the Spanish analogy, I remain antifa.

## The dangerous precedent

Experts have drawn parallels between the response to Kirk's assassination and historical precedents that led to democratic collapse. 

The comparison to the Reichstag Fire—used by Nazis to justify dismantling constitutional freedoms—has been invoked both by extremists calling for crackdowns and by experts warning about these dangers.

"Charlie Kirk being assassinated is the American Reichstag fire," declared rightwing blogger Matt Forney, calling for Democratic politicians to be arrested and the party banned. Such rhetoric is particularly concerning given the current administration's documented willingness to push constitutional boundaries.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has already warned that the U.S. would take action against foreigners "praising, rationalizing, or making light" of Kirk's killing, suggesting they would not be "welcome visitors to our country." 

This represents yet another troubling expansion of government authority over protected speech.

## The role of social media echo chambers

The rapid mobilization of extremist sentiment following Kirk's death highlights the dangerous role social media plays amplifying violent rhetoric. Platforms like Patriots.Win and Telegram have become breeding grounds for increasingly radical discourse, while mainstream platforms struggle to moderate content that walks the line between protected speech and incitement to violence. Or, they've thrown in the towel on moderation altogether.

Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok posted screenshots of social media users allegedly celebrating Kirk's death, while Ryan Nichols urged followers to identify and harass these individuals: "Tag them, their employers, and make it so uncomfortable for them to even leave their house." Of course, none of these were ever validated or proven real. They make it up and report it as truth. And the MAGA flock believes. This doxxing behavior represents a clear escalation from online rhetoric to real-world harassment. 

The amplification effect of social media means that extreme voices can reach vast audiences instantly. As Nealin Parker of Common Ground USA noted, "Right now people are willing to believe terrible things about the other side. What's happening online really matters."

## Democratic failure of leadership

While Democratic leaders have appropriately condemned the violence, their responses have largely failed to address the underlying dynamics driving political polarization. Generic calls for "unity" and "civility" ring hollow when one side is actively mobilizing for what they frame as an existential war.

Senator Elizabeth Warren pushed back on criticism that Democrats needed to tone down rhetoric: "Oh, please. Why don't you start with the president of the United States?" 

While her frustration is understandable, such responses may inadvertently validate the "both sides" framing that obscures the asymmetric nature of current political violence. The whataboutism burns.

## The historical echo

Coates' comparison to post-Civil War America is particularly apt. Just as the country once ignored the explicit pro-slavery words of Confederate leaders and transformed them into "gallant knights," there's a similar tendency to sanitize Kirk's legacy. This historical amnesia enabled decades of racial terrorism and apartheid.

Today's republicans gleefully are following the lost cause playbook, making Charlie Kirk the next R.E. Lee.

Coates notes:

> "The rewriting and the ignoring were done not just by Confederates, but also by putative allies for whom the reduction of Black people to serfdom was the unfortunate price of white unity," 

The same dynamic appears to be at work today, where the desire for "unity" and "healing" leads to willful blindness about the nature of extremist movements.

## So, what's next?

The response to Kirk's assassination suggests American democracy faces its most serious test since the Civil War. The combination of extremist mobilization, presidential legitimization of violence, and mainstream media sanitization creates conditions ripe for democratic collapse.

Several factors make the current moment particularly dangerous:

### **Institutional capture**

 With pardoned insurrectionists reorganizing and Trump loyalists controlling key government positions, the normal guardrails against political violence have been dismantled.

### **Asymmetric polarization**

While both parties express concern about political violence, only one side is actively organizing militia groups and calling for the elimination of political opposition.

### **Information warfare**

 Social media echo chambers enable the rapid spread of conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric while mainstream media often fails to accurately characterize the threat.

### **Historical precedent**

The parallels to failed democracies are becoming clear, yet there seems to be little recognition of the gravity of the moment among political elites.

## And where do we go from here?

Preventing further democratic erosion or collapse requires more than generic calls for civility. Several concrete steps are necessary:

### **Accurate threat assessment**

Media and political leaders must stop treating asymmetric polarization as a "both sides" problem and characterize the nature of the extremist threat.

### **Platform accountability**

Social media companies must take responsibility for the role their platforms play in radicalizing users and organizing violence.

### **Legal consequences**

Despite presidential pardons, those organizing violence must face legal accountability under state and local laws.

### **Historical honesty**

We all must resist thhe tendency to sanitize extremist figures in death. Honest accounting of their beliefs and actions is essential to prevent their vile ideas from spreading.

### **Democratic renewal**

Ultimately, countering authoritarianism requires strengthening democratic institutions and expanding participation rather than simply defending the status quo.

Can we count on the institutions that have traditionally served as bulwarks? I'd argue no, as this year has shown how eager they are to capitulate. We are going to have to hold their feet to the fire at every step. 

Organize. March. Strike. Vote.

## The stakes could not be higher

Charlie Kirk's death represents a terrible act, but what ensues may be more so: more loss of human life, escalating of political violence, and setting a dangerous precedent for weaponizing such events . While we should condem Kirk's death regardless of his beliefs, the aftermath reveals how precarious American democracy is now.

The sanitization of Kirk's extremist record, combined with the mobilization of violent rhetoric by pardoned insurrectionists and the legitimization of their grievances by the highest levels of government, creates a perfect storm for democratic collapse. The historical parallels to failed democracies are becoming impossible to ignore.

As Coates warned, "If you would look away from the words of Charlie Kirk, from what else would you look away?" The answer to that question may well determine whether American democracy survives the current crisis.

The coming months will test whether democratic institutions can withstand an unprecedented assault from within. The response to Kirk's assassination suggests the outcome is far from certain. What is clear is that generic appeals to civility and unity will not o address a threat this serious. Only honest confrontation of the nature of American extremism—and the ways mainstream institutions legitimize it—can allow us to hope to find a path back from the brink.

This is for all the marbles. American democracy faces an existential threat, and the clock is ticking.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/iStock-1065210670.jpg) 

## Help Support Not Unmindful

[Contribute Now](https://www.notunmindful.org/support-not-unmindful/) 

Primary Sources:  
Guy Chazan: [American right vows vengeance after killing of Charlie Kirk](https://www.ft.com/content/e76c9b1f-7157-4bcd-9aa2-a535f3f1ed62?ref=notunmindful.org). Financial Times.  
Kiera Butler and Julianne McShane: [Pardoned Insurrectionists Are Using Charlie Kirk’s Death to Call for Civil War](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/pardoned-insurrectionists-are-using-charlie-kirks-death-to-call-for-civil-?ref=notunmindful.org). Mother Jones.  
Joseph Tanfani, Ned Parker,and John Shiffman: [Right-wing anger surges as Kirk’s killing fuels calls for vengeance](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/right-wing-anger-surges-kirks-killing-fuels-calls-vengeance-2025-09-12/?ref=notunmindful.org). Reuters.  
Ta-Nehisi Coates: [Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates?ref=notunmindful.org#intcid=%5Fvanity-fair-verso-hp-trending%5Fa3846bdc-d068-4ca5-a498-e9b0d1fa3d81%5Fpopular4-2). Vanity Fair.
### Not Unmindful weekly digest #8
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-8/
Last updated: 2025-09-19T15:15:34.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful this week (ending 19 September 2025). It seems to be a week focused on academic freedom and education and history, after all the furor of last week and myth making. I expect, we will be addressing First Amendment issues a lot in the coming week.

## Friday

### [UC Berkeley turns over 160 names to federal government](https://www.notunmindful.org/uc-berkeley-turns-over-160-names-to-federal-government/)

The University of California, Berkeley, is among the 10 universities that a Trump administration task force on antisemitism has identified for particular attention.

## Thursday

### [Trump's education funding shuffle: a strategic shift toward separation](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-education-funding-shuffle-a-strategic-shift-toward-separation/)

The Trump administration is cutting money from programs that have supported minority students, including at other universities, to CCBUs, while ending financial support minority programs.

## Wednesday

### [Harvard ends undergraduate minority recruitment program as Trump targets race in admissions](https://www.notunmindful.org/harvard-ends-undergraduate-minority-recruitment-program-as-trump-targets-race-in-admissions/)

By ending the minority recruitment program in May, Harvard shuttered a more than 50-year-old initiative to encourage minority high school students to apply.

## Tuesday

### [Trump administration orders removal of slavery exhibits from national parks](https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-orders-removal-of-slavery-exhibits-from-national-parks/)

The Trump administration is ordering the removal of information on slavery at multiple national parks in an effort to scrub them of “corrosive ideology,” including photo of enslaved man’s scars.

## Monday 

### [Trump's $1.2 billion UCLA settlement is a blueprint for conservative campus transformation](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-1-2-billion-ucla-settlement-is-a-blueprint-for-conservative-campus-transformation/)

The details of Trump’s $1.2-billion call to remake UCLA in a conservative image and its ramifications.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

## 

## 

## 

##
### UC Berkeley turns over 160 names to federal government
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/uc-berkeley-turns-over-160-names-to-federal-government/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T14:00:11.000Z
The University of California, Berkeley has disclosed the names of approximately 160 students, faculty, and staff members to the Trump administration. This falls into a federal investigation into alleged antisemitism on campus, but it hasa sparked concerns about academic freedom and government overreach.

## The disclosure details

The university shared the names with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. They identified individuals[ who have a "potential connection to reports of alleged antisemitism," according to *The Chronicle of Higher Education*](https://www.chronicle.com/article/uc-berkeley-hands-over-160-names-to-the-federal-government-for-potential-connection-to-antisemitism?ref=notunmindful.org). Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore told *The Chronicle* that the people mentioned in the documents were either reporters of alleged antisemitism, "the subject of reports, or individuals impacted by the matter."

Berkeley made the disclosure "in compliance with its legal obligations to cooperate" with the federal investigation. The decision came from the University of California system president's office, *The Chronicle* reported. 

An email from the campus's chief legal counsel, David M. Robinson, notified those affected on September 4\. The email informed them that the university had shared their information with the government.

## Faculty concerns about academic freedom

The disclosure has drawn sharp criticism from prominent faculty members who see it as an attack on academic freedom. The list inbcluded Ussama Makdisi, a Berkeley history professor and leading scholar of modern Arab history. 

She expressed alarm about the lack of transparency in the process in [an interview with NPR for morning edition](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5542204/uc-berkeley-sends-160-names-to-government-for-alleged-antisemitic-incidents?ref=notunmindful.org): 

> The idea is obviously, clearly a chilling of speech and a chilling of academic freedom because we have no idea what we have allegedly been accused of. We have no idea how to even go about clearing our name."

She framed the investigation within a broader context of suppressing Palestinian advocacy. 

> "What's happening across American institutions and across the United States more generally is a crackdown, an unprecedented crackdown, on academic freedom, on the ability of students to express themselves in support of various very basic and fundamental issues, such as freedom, such as equality, such as justice for Palestinians in particular."

## Historical parallels 

When asked by NPR about historical precedents, Makdisi drew comparisons to "the McCarthyist period" and "the Salem Witch Trials," though he noted the current situation occurs against the backdrop of the conflict in Gaza.

Philosopher Judith Butler, another Berkeley faculty member whose name was reportedly shared, also wrote in *The Chronicle*  that the university's decision echoed "a practice from the McCarthy era" and lacked due process. She continued:

> "We were not allowed to know the substance of the allegation nor were we provided with a review process where our own accounts could be considered."

## The broader federal campaign

Berkeley officials defended their compliance with the federal investigation. In a statement to NPR, spokesperson Janet Gilmore confirmed that he Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education provided the records of complaints about "alleged incidents of antisemitism and discrimination." Nothing seems to have come directly from Berkeley.

The university system's president's office emphasized their legal obligations to *The Chronicle*. Spokesperson Rachel Zaentz wrote that "Our campuses routinely receive document requests in connection with government audits, compliance reviews, or investigations. UC is committed to protecting the privacy of our students, faculty, and staff to the greatest extent possible, while fulfilling its legal obligations."

The disclosure comes as the federal government continues its campaign to investigate elite universities, launched after campus protests over Israel's war in Gaza. The administration has opened similar investigations into dozens of campuses and demanded that colleges turn over personal information about students .

The stakes are significant for the UC system. According to *The Chronicle*, the Trump administration is seeking a $1-billion payment from UCLA to resolve a probe there, and federal-funding losses could soon extend across the system, which currently receives more than $17 billion in federal funding across 10 campuses.

## Future concerns and surveillance fears

The investigation remains ongoing, with Robinson warning in his letter that Berkeley "may be subject to additional production obligations,. Faculty and students have also expressed concerns about potential surveillance and restrictions on their activities.

In *The Chronicle*, Butler captured the anxiety felt by many in the Berkeley community: 

> "Will those of us on the list be branded by the government as 'terrorist sympathizers'? Will our travel be restricted? Will our email be surveilled?"

Veena Dubal, general counsel for the American Association of University Professors, told *The Chronicle* that Berkeley's decision was "improper" and "has had a chilling effect on campus."

Speaking to NPR about the implications for higher education, Makdisi warned of a crisis moment: "We are in a crisis moment right now" regarding the free exchange of ideas on campus.

The situation at Berkeley reflects broader tensions between federal oversight and academic freedom as universities navigate investigations into campus climate and antisemitism allegations amid ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How we maintain academic freedoms at those very institutions meant to serve as bulwarks agains such overreach remains to be seen.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

Sources: [Article in The Chronicle for Higher Education by Megan Tahinis](https://www.chronicle.com/article/uc-berkeley-hands-over-160-names-to-the-federal-government-for-potential-connection-to-antisemitism?ref=notunmindful.org). [NPR Interview of Ussama Makdisi by Leila Fadel](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5542204/uc-berkeley-sends-160-names-to-government-for-alleged-antisemitic-incidents?ref=notunmindful.org).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/iStock-1065210670.jpg) 

## Help Support Not Unmindful

[Contribute Now](https://www.notunmindful.org/support-not-unmindful/)
### Trump's education funding shuffle: a strategic shift toward separation
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-education-funding-shuffle-a-strategic-shift-toward-separation/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:59:59.000Z
A recent post by Jamelle Bouie on Bluesky cuts to the heart of the Trump administration's latest education policy moves: 

> ["What this sounds like to me is the administration is cutting money for efforts to support integration and sending some of the cash over to HCBUs, under the view that this is where black students ought to go." ](https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lyvaocjupc24?ref=notunmindful.org)

This captures a new pattern for the Education Department. It's recent $500 million funding redistribution appears to abandon integration efforts in favor of a more segregated educational landscape.

## The numbers tell a stark story

Two recent articles in the New York Times, taken together, tell this story. Links are summary follow.

[The Trump administration has orchestrated a massive reshuffling of federal education dollars](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/hbcus-trump-administration-funding.html?ref=notunmindful.org). The most significant cut? [$350 million has been stripped from programs supporting minority students.](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/politics/linda-mcmahon-federal-grants-colleges-universities.html?ref=notunmindful.org) these cuts include science and engineering, schools with significant Hispanic enrollment, and other federal grants at minority-serving institutions. 

The administration wants to redirect this money, along with additional cuts from gifted and talented programs and magnet schools, to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The HCBUs will see their funding increase to $1.34 billion—a 48 percent increase.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended these moves by claiming the department was "redirecting financial support away from ineffective and discriminatory programs toward those which support student success." 

But this framing obscures a deeper ideological shift. The notion that efforts to support minority students at predominantly white institutions ares inherently problematic, while positioning HBCUs as the appropriate educational destination for Black students.

## Abandoning integration 

The cuts reveal a systematic dismantling of programs designed to promote educational integration and opportunity. Moving the clock backward yet again. 

Magnet schools, which have historically served as tools for combating school segregation, lost $15 million in funding. Gifted and talented programs—which the administration claims use "racial targeting" in recruitment—were also cut. These reductions signal a retreat from decades of federal policy aimed at ensuring educational access to all types of institutions by all.

The $350 million in eliminated grants supported seven programs that helped minority-serving institutions strengthen their academic offerings, particularly in science and engineering fields where students of color remain underrepresented. 

These weren't quota systems, despite any propaganda from the administration. Instead, these investments targeted institutions that serve significant numbers of underrepresented students.They were designed to level the playing field. 

## Implications of the concurrent HBCU windfall

While HBCUs deserve robust federal support. They have been underfunded since their inception, and they serve students from low-income families. Lodriguez Murray from UNCF called the additional funding a "godsend," and it's true that these institutions need and deserve resources. 

The method of financing this increase, however, raises serious concerns. Funding HBCUs by cutting support for minority students at other institutions creates a false choice that pits different educational approaches against each other.

As Marybeth Gasman from the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions noted:

> "None of these institutions should be pitted against each other, which seems to be what the Trump administration is doing." 

Minority-serving institutions already educate more than half of all students of color. A comprehensive approach would strengthen both HBCUs and those programs that support diversity at other institutions.

## Ideology over education

The funding redistribution also advances Trump's broader political agenda. American history and civics education will receive $137 million—seven times the expected funding—to support what the administration calls "patriotic education." All to supercharge the whitewashing of American history [we've](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-lives-on/) [noted](https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-returns-traitors-portrait-to-west-point/) [here](https://www.notunmindful.org/rejecting-lincolns-america/) [before,](https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-orders-removal-of-slavery-exhibits-from-national-parks/) [ad nauseam](https://www.notunmindful.org/renaming-and-dog-whistles/). 

And the source of the windfall? The money comes from cutting $140 million from teacher training programs that officials claim promoted "divisive ideology." And by now, we all know that means actually teaching American history: slavery, genocide, and all.

Charter schools, another Trump priority, will see a 13 percent funding increase to $500 million, paid for by cutting programs including magnet schools, gifted and talented initiatives, and Ready to Learn, which funded PBS educational programming. PBS is a subject for another day though.

## Exploiting congressional dysfunction

Congress's has failed to do their job—passing regular appropriations bills. Thus creating what critics call would be "slush funds" that allow the executive branch unusual flexibility in redirecting money. 

And of course shady slush funds are their preferred instrument for everything. The administration is exploiting this congressional dysfunction to unilaterally reshape education priorities without legislative oversight.

These are one-time changes for this fiscal year, but they establish a troubling precedent and signal the administration's broader vision for education policy. That view is one that sees integration efforts as problematic while channeling minority students toward separate institutions. 

Separate but unequal. I lose track of what decade they are aiming for? 1950s? 1890s? 

## What this means right now

Bouie's insight in his post (follow him for real) reveals the administration's implicit assumption. The administration would rather steer these students toward separate institutions instead of trying to make all educational institutions more inclusive and supportive of minority students.

This fundamental shift away from integration as a policy goal toward a more segregated educational model is deeply troubling..

The Trump administration's moves reflect a broader retreat from civil rights enforcement and integration efforts across government. By framing programs that support minority students at diverse institutions as "discriminatory" while boosting HBCUs, the administration creates a narrative that integration efforts are inherently flawed.

This funding shuffle isn't just about money—it's about competing visions of American education. One vision seeks to break down barriers and create opportunities for all students across all institutions. 

The other appears content to direct students toward separate educational pathways based on race and ethnicity. The choice between these approaches will shape educational opportunity for generations to come.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/iStock-1065210670.jpg) 

## Help Support Not Unmindful

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### Harvard ends undergraduate minority recruitment program as Trump targets race in admissions
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/harvard-ends-undergraduate-minority-recruitment-program-as-trump-targets-race-in-admissions/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:59:45.000Z
[According tro a recent report in the Harvard Crimson,](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/9/15/admissions-minority-recruitment-program-end/?ref=notunmindful.org) the university has quietly disbanded its Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (UMRP) in May. This ends a recruitment initiative that had operated for more than five decades. The decision comes as the Trump administration continues to intensify its war on DEI and race-conscious practices in higher education admissions.

## A half-century program comes to an end

The UMRP, established in 1971, was designed to guide minority middle and high school students through Harvard's application process. By 2012, the program was reaching out to between 75 and 90 percent of minority students who ultimately enrolled at Harvard, according to then-Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons.

The program employed undergraduate coordinators who answered questions about admissions and student life at Harvard. These coordinators would contact rising seniors identified as minority students with high PSAT scores, staff dedicated phone lines, and travel to high schools in their hometowns to provide application guidance. 

I received similar from W& as someone who didn't quite their usual bill, even though I am white and male.

Harvard spokesperson James M. Chisholm, however, has indicated that many of these activities had already ceased in recent years, though he declined to specify which activities had been cut or why.

Harvard has replaced the UMRP with the Harvard Recruitment Ambassadors program, which allows prospective applicants to contact current undergraduates with questions about campus life. Unlike its predecessor, the new program does not include in-person outreach to high schools or target specific groups of students. This obviously makes it much less personal.

## Navigating legal and political pressure

The program's termination follows the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling against Harvard's race-conscious admissions practices. While the Court struck down the use of race in admissions decisions, it did not eliminate targeted recruitment programs, provided they weren't based solely on race.

Harvard has been walking a careful line since the ruling, attempting to maintain diversity without triggering accusations of non-compliance. That challenge intensified under the Trump administration's expanded interpretation of impermissible "race-based decision-making." 

In July, the Department of Justice issued guidance describing recruitment strategies targeting areas or organizations chosen primarily for their racial composition as "potentially unlawful proxies" for race.

## The impact on non-legacy recruitment programs

Education experts emphasize the importance of such programs in higher education diversity efforts. And here, diversity does not necessarily mean race or any of the administration's bugbears.

Lisa M. Stulberg, an education sociology professor at New York University, describes recruitment programs as "a form of soft affirmative action" designed to expand the pool of qualified underrepresented applicants. She further explains: 

> "Even just the idea of recruiting is a symbolic one that indicates to students that they are welcome on campus and that Harvard wants them there." 

Kevin D. Brown, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies race and education, noted that recruitment programs "have been critical in increasing both the quality and the number of underrepresented minority students going to college."

## Part of a wider pattern

Harvard's elimination of the UMRP reflects a broader institutional retreat from diversity initiatives. The university has also renamed and restructured diversity offices across its graduate schools and dismantled centers serving minority students, LGBTQ students, and women.

New York Times columnist [Jamelle Bouie capured the ramifications best on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lyurwhc4ok24?ref=notunmindful.org): 

> "I have said this before but when 'getting rid of race in admissions' for the administration means 'you can’t even try to reach out to underrepresented communities and encourage them to apply and if you do it is illegal discrimination against white people' then the actual goal here is segregation.” 

And that's what they are really after, isn't it?

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Trump administration orders removal of slavery exhibits from national parks
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-orders-removal-of-slavery-exhibits-from-national-parks/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:59:32.000Z
As reported by y Jake Spring and Hannah Natanson in The Washington Post, [the Trump administration has directed the National Park Service to remove exhibits and signage related to slavery from multiple national parks](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/15/national-parks-slavery-information-removal/?pwapi%5Ftoken=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzU3OTA4ODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzU5MjkxMTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NTc5MDg4MDAsImp0aSI6Ijc1ODljN2E5LTJmMTEtNGFiYS05MGVmLTA1ODdlZGI4MDVjZSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9jbGltYXRlLWVudmlyb25tZW50LzIwMjUvMDkvMTUvbmF0aW9uYWwtcGFya3Mtc2xhdmVyeS1pbmZvcm1hdGlvbi1yZW1vdmFsLyJ9.UNovvTaOt2vu4Wp9CgC1fbF%5FN4cvFjKYS5w8MXfeU8U&ref=notunmindful.org). This directive includes a shocking historic photograph showing scars on an enslaved man's back.

## Sweeping directive targets "corrosive ideology"

The removals stem from thee President Trump's March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects what he called "corrosive ideology." That is, information that disparages historic or white Americans. 

Park Service officials are interpreting this directive broadly, applying it to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights, and persecution of Indigenous people. If your history ain't cis, male, and lily white, suck it.

Following the order, Interior Department officials established policies requiring agency employees to report any potentially non-compliant material. This including signage and gift shop items. The administration also launched an effort encouraging park visitors to report "offending material." Thankfully, this has mostly generated criticism of the policy and praise for the parks.

## Historic sites affected

Several significant sites are in the crosshairs:

### **Harpers Ferry National Historic Park**

This park in West Virginia commenorates abolitionist John Brown's famous raid to arm enslaved people for revolt, before Robert E. Lee had him hanged. The park has flagged more than 30 signs for removal or modification. These include references to racial discrimination and white hostility toward formerly enslaved people.

### **The President's House Site**

 This site.in Philadelphia tells the story of nine people enslaved by George Washington while he served as president. This story has also been deemed non-compliant with the new policy.

### "The Scourged Back"

Officials have ordered the removal of "The Scourged Back," an 1863 photograph showing scars on the back of a man named Peter Gordon from wounds inflicted by his masters before he escaped slavery. The image (above) shocked Northern audiences, and it has become an iconic symbol in the struggle for Black liberation.

## Actual historical experts (and one shill) weigh in

University of Pennsylvania professor Jonathan Zimmerman characterized the directive as "unprecedented interference with the nation's civic institutions,. He also notes the irony of an administration that advocates for state and local control of education manifesting "an enormous increase in federal power and control." 

Cindy MacLeod, former superintendent of Independence National Historical Park, warned that removing slavery content would "fundamentally change the nature" of exhibits designed to tell America's complete story. But isn't that the entire point?

Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz defended the review, stating that materials emphasizing "negative aspects of U.S. history" without broader context "can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it." 

As with the lost cause, they'd rather celebrate the myth rather than the true storie and people that made America. How long before they try to eradicate slavery from all curricula?

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Trump's $1.2 billion UCLA settlement is a blueprint for conservative campus transformation
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-1-2-billion-ucla-settlement-is-a-blueprint-for-conservative-campus-transformation/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:59:19.000Z
The Trump administration's settlement proposal with UCLA reveals the sweeping scope of its efforts to remake American higher education in a conservative image. [According to a detailed review by Los Angeles Times reporter Jaweed Kaleem](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-15/trump-doj-proposed-settlement-demand-letter-ucla-university-of-california?ref=notunmindful.org), the 28-page Department of Justice letter not only demands nearly $1.2 billion in fines but also imposes extensive restrictions on campus life. These extend far beyond addressing any alleged antisemitic incidents.

## A massive financial penalty with broad demands

The settlement proposal centers on a staggering financial demand. UCLA must make five years of payments totaling $200 million annually, plus establish a $172 million fund for people claiming civil rights violations. In exchange, the government will release roughly $500 million in suspended research grants from the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy. Basically, holding already approved funding hostage.

The monetary penalty represents only part of the government's demands. The 7,300-word proposal outlines a three-year agreement that would fundamentally alter how UCLA operates. This includes massive changes for areas fromfrom admissions and hiring to healthcare and student life.

## Targeting gender identity and healthcare

The demands include sweeping restrictions on gender identity recognition and healthcare. The government wants UCLA to make a public declaration that it no longer recognizes transgender people's gender identities. This would extend to sports teams, bathrooms, and single-sex dormitory rooms.

The proposal also demands an end to gender-affirming care for minors at university medical facilities. This would prohibit "hormonal interventions and 'transgender' surgeries" including mastectomies and other procedures for patients under 18\. 

While such surgical procedures on minors are rare and typically focus on older teens, the blanket ban represents a significant policy shift for the university system.

## Restricting diversity initiatives and admissions

The settlement also takes direct aim at DEI programs at the university. It demands the appointment of a senior administrator to conduct a "thorough review" of DEI policies in admissions and employment. The government alleges these are discriminatory, because of course they do since they don't give white elites an extra leg up.

The proposal prohibits "indirect methods or criteria that serve as a substitute for race-conscious hiring, promotion, tenure, compensation, and other employment practices." California law has banned the use of race in public university hiring and admissions since 1997\. Apparently that is no longer enough. The government's demands will eliminate any remaining consideration of diversity in anything.

The government also seeks to end race- and ethnicity-based scholarships and eliminate the use of "personal statements, diversity narratives, or an applicant's reference to racial identity" in employment decisions. It would also require UCLA to annually release detailed demographic data for hires and students, broken down by race, color, grade point average, and standardized test performance.

## International student restrictions and surveillance

The proposal also includes significant restrictions on international students. It requires UCLA to ensure that foreigners "likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment are not recruited or admitted." Who gets to determine the criteria? The administration of course. 

The university would also need to develop materials to "socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate." Open debate as long as you toe the line.

From a privacy perspective, it would requird UCLA wto provide the government with all disciplinary actions involving student visa holders upon request, creating a potential surveillance mechanism for foreign students. And we've seen this year what happens to those who dare speak up.

## Protest restrictions, campus control, and monitoring

While antisemitism allegations form the public justification for the settlement, the actual antisemitism-related provisions represent only a small portion of the demands. The government seeks to ban protesters from wearing masks and requires that "all individuals must briefly unmask to verify their identity" when asked by authorities.

The proposal also calls for an outright "prohibition on overnight demonstrations in any university locations" and bans on wristbands and "ideological pledges" to gain access to university grounds. These restrictions stem from incidents during pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including accusations that activists restricted access to pro-Israel Jewish students.

Of course, none of this really had anything to do with anti-semitism. I mean, how many people in the administration are poorly hidden Nazis and all of them revere those with anti-semtism said out loud.

The settlement would also establish unprecedented government oversight of university operations. It would make UCLA grant the government access to "all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents, and data related to the agreement" not protected by attorney-client privilege.

## It just starts at UCLA and the UC system. The it goes nationwide

The UCLA demands are part of a wider campaign across the University of California system. UC Berkeley recently notified 160 faculty, staff, and students that their names had been provided to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights as part of an antisemitism investigation.

Professor emeritus Judith Butler, who was among those whose information was shared, criticized the cooperation as reminiscent of "well-known practice from the McCarthy Era." Faculty have expressed concern that UC is retreating on free speech values out of fear of funding cuts.

The hastily assembled document, which contains basic errors like referring to UCLA's "president" instead of "chancellor," appears to match settlement language used with Columbia and [Brown](https://www.notunmindful.org/brown-capitulates/) universities. This suggests the Trump administration is deploying a standardized approach to neuter higher education nationwide.

The UCLA settlement proposal provides a comprehensive blueprint for conservative control over universities. The administration uses the lever of federal funding to impose ideological conformity across admissions, employment, healthcare, student life, and academic freedom.

## What's next?

The UC system has not publicly agreed to the stipulations and has privately indicated that many requests would violate the university's mission and values. Legal challenges are already underway. A San Francisco federal judge recently ruled that the government must release $81 million in frozen National Science Foundation grants to UCLA, with a key hearing scheduled this week regarding the larger $500 million in NIH funding.

As the UC Board of Regents prepares to discuss the crisis at this week's meetings, the outcome of these negotiations will likely determine whether other public universities face similar demands. The settlement represents a test case for how far the federal government can go in reshaping higher education through financial coercion. 

The implications reach far beyond Westwood.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #7
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-7/
Last updated: 2025-09-12T19:51:51.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful this week (ending 12 September 2025). It’s been a busy week on all fronts.

## Friday

### [Supreme Court oks racial profiling in Los Angeles](https://www.notunmindful.org/supreme-court-greenlights-racial-profiling-in-los-angeles-as-reported-by-the-ap-the-supreme-court-delivered-a-devastating-blow-to-civil-rights-last-week-voting-6-3-along-party-lines-to-/)

The Supreme Court lifts restrictions on LA immigration stops set after agents swept up US citizens. The court’s ruling allows ICE to resume its indiscriminate roundups of LA’s Latino residents.

## Thursday

### [Charlie Kirk, myth making, and violence](https://www.notunmindful.org/charlie-kirk-myth-making-and-violence/)

Political violence, memory, and the danger of historical revisionism.

## Wednesday

### [Rejecting Lincoln's America](https://www.notunmindful.org/rejecting-lincolns-america/)

We live in Lincoln’s America as much as anyone else’s. Which makes it supremely ironic that Lincoln’s partisan political descendants, the modern Republican Party, wants to destroy it.

## Tuesday

### [ICE opens detention center at Louisiana's notorious Angola Prison: and a dark history returns](https://www.notunmindful.org/ice-opens-detention-center-at-louisianas-notorious-angola-prison-and-a-dark-history-returns/)

Critics are questioning the decision to hold immigrants at the maximum-security facility known as Angola, which has a troubled and racist history.

### [The General's Redoubt weighs in again](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-generals-redoubt-weighs-in-again/)

In an article his blog, The Patron Saint of Superheroes, Professor Chris Gavalar breaks down the latest missive from that lot.

## Monday 

### [Senator declares America a "white homeland" in shocking national conference speech](https://www.notunmindful.org/senator-declares-america-a-white-homeland-in-shocking-national-conference-speech/)

A Senator just unapologetically declared that America isn’t an idea—and isn’t for everyone. Just certain types, Guess.

### Sunday

### [Trump's dangerous plan to illegally deploy Texas troops in Illinois](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-dangerous-plan-to-illegally-deploy-texas-troops-in-illinois/)

Trump’s plan could tear apart the Union if it goes forward. Either way, it will plunge the country into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Special off-cycle edition.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

## 

## 

## 

##
### Supreme Court oks racial profiling in Los Angeles
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/supreme-court-greenlights-racial-profiling-in-los-angeles-as-reported-by-the-ap-the-supreme-court-delivered-a-devastating-blow-to-civil-rights-last-week-voting-6-3-along-party-lines-to-/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:59:01.000Z
[As reported by the AP](https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-immigration-stops-los-angeles-trump-57cc1f85ceafda0f11052b326c8b7173?ref=notunmindful.org), The Supreme Court delivered a devastating blow to civil rights last week, voting 6-3 along party lines to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to resume what critics call racially discriminatory raids across Los Angeles and surrounding counties.

Add the Fourth Amendment to the bonfire too: unreasonable search and seizure, based solely upojn your appearance or accent.

## The case and the controversy

In *Noem v. Perdomo*, the Court granted an emergency stay request from the Trump administration, halting a federal judge's restraining order that had blocked ICE operations since July. The original injunction prohibited immigration agents from stopping individuals without reasonable suspicion and from relying solely on four factors: 

- Apparent race or ethnicity
- Speaking Spanish or English with an accent
- Presence at locations like bus stops, car washes, or agricultural sites
- The type of work a person does

Federal District Court Judge Maame E. Frimpong had found that these raids were part of "a pattern of conduct by the Government that likely violated the Fourth Amendment," with teams of armed and masked agents seizing individuals on sight, often before asking questions.

## Government admits to profiling criteria

In a rare moment of transparency, the Trump administration admitted it was racially profiling Latinos and promised to continue doing so if the Supreme Court lifted the injunction. 

The Department of Homeland Security celebrated the ruling as "a win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law," stating that DHS would continue operations to "arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members, and other criminal illegal aliens." The Constitution now longer quaslifies as law if they don't likei .

## Kavanaugh's troublesome concurrence

Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the only member of the conservative majority to explain his reasoning. He wiote a concurring opinion that civil rights advocates found deeply concerning. Kavanaugh claimed that "about 10 percent of the people in the Los Angeles region are illegally in the United States—meaning about 2 million illegal immigrants out of a total population of 20 million."

[The Nation's analysis in their article on the case](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-racial-profiling-la-raids/?ref=notunmindful.org) pointed out the flawed logic: even accepting Kavanaugh's estimates, this would still represent only a minority of the 5 million Latinos living in Los Angeles. Yet his reasoning treats all of them as suspect. Kavanaugh characterized the stops as brief encounters where people can "promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens," a description totally divorced from reality.

## The dissent fights back

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a fierce dissent joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. Sotomayor wrote that "The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents' satisfaction."

She emphasized that the Constitution "prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that 'describes a very large category of presumably innocent' people."

## Community response and ongoing resistance

Civil rights organizations expressed outrage at the decision but vowed to continue fighting. Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network stated, "The court has turned its back on our communities and the Constitution, facilitating the Trump administration's terror campaign against immigrant communities and communities of color."

Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, the named plaintiff whose case brought this issue to light, said: 

> "When ICE grabbed me, they never showed a warrant or explained why. I was treated like I didn't matter–locked up, cold, hungry, and without a lawyer. Now, the Supreme Court says that's okay? That's not justice. That's racism with a badge."

## So, this is where we are

The Supreme Court's order does not halt further proceedings in the case, and federal district court will hear arguments on September 24 regarding whether to issue a preliminary injunction based on additional evidence. However, the 6-3 vote suggests how the conservative majority would rule on the case's merits.

The American Immigration Council warned that this decision "clears the way for the Trump administration to rapidly expand the racially discriminatory ICE practices" and that "these raids are more likely to sweep in US citizens and people with lawful status."

The ruling represents a significant expansion of government authority to conduct immigration enforcement based on racial characteristics, effectively creating what critics describe as a "papers please" regime for anyone who appears Latino in Los Angeles County. 

While technically temporary, the decision signals the Court's willingness to prioritize immigration enforcement over Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The court has said that you can't consider race in college admissions but you can in suspected wrongdoing. This effectively tells us exactly whom they think are Americans.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Charlie Kirk, myth making, and violence
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/charlie-kirk-myth-making-and-violence/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:58:44.000Z
I kind of have to address the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college campus yesterday. It has sent shockwaves through American political discourse, ofcourse. The it's the aftermath reveals more about our current political moment as the tragedy itself. 

Kirk's death represents an inexcusable act of violence that liberals and conservatives have both condemned *en masse* across party lines. But not everyone see this obvious fact. The additional response from conservatives has illuminated deep fissures in how we view events and remember public figures. Some of these lay the groundwork for political retaliation.

## Immediate calls for war and retribution

The response from some prominent right-wing figures was swift and incendiary. As an article in Mother Jones documented, c[onservative figures immediately began calling for retribution against "the left" before any suspect was even identified](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/charlie-kirk-killing-assassination-reactions-right-wing-grief-outrage-retribution/?ref=notunmindful.org) (by Anna Merlan, Julianne Mcshane, and Kiera Butler). 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk immediat4ly declared to his 225 million followers on X(itter) that "The Left is the party of murder," while far-right activist Laura Loomer demanded the Trump administration "shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization." 

No such outcry met the actual political assassination of former Minnesota Democratic speaker Melissa Hortman (and her dog FFS).

The rhetoric quickly escalated to calls for violence. Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon told his followers that Trump had been "appointed by Providence" and commanded "to be a TERROR to those who do evil." Former administration official William Wolfe declared that "the goal for Republicans in the next ten years shouldn't just be to win elections, but to destroy the Democrat Party entirely and salt the earth underneath it."

*Carthago delende est*? That's a bit extreme, but they are who they are. Fascist thugs.

## Institutional power mobilized

According to an [article in Democracy Docket by Jacob Knutson](https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-charlie-kirk-killing-political-crackdown-political-opponents/?ref=notunmindful.org), President Trump aslo seized upon Kirk's killing tojustify a crackdown on political opponents. Before authorities even had a suspect in custody, Trump issued sweeping threats against undefined "organizations" that allegedly support political violence. 

"My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity," Trump declared from the Oval Office. A top MAGA leader was more specific, calling for the administration to “prosecute every single leftist organization.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo invoked historical FBI infiltration tactics, stating it was time to "infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos." , Trump also neglected to mention recent political violence against Democrats, including the assassination of Hortman.

## Memory wars and the erasure of history

The immediate effort to sanitize Kirk's controversial legacy is most rankling. Charlie Kirk did not deserved to be killed, but he was a vile human. As documented by Oliver Willis at Daily Kos, [mainstream media outlets and political figures across the spectrum have engaged in historical whitewashing.](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/11/2342963/-The-whitewashing-of-Charlie-Kirk-s-toxic-legacy-is-underway?ref=notunmindful.org) Trump announced he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, while Democratic governors ordered flags flown at half-staff.

Major news outlets followed suit. Ezra Klein in the The New York Times columnists praised Kirk for "[practicing politics the right way.](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html?ref=notunmindful.org)" and CNN's Brian Stelter portrayed him as someone who "invited people to try and prove him wrong."

This rush to memorialize Kirk overlooks his actual record of inflammatory rhetoric. Willis extensively documents Kirk's history of racist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ statements. In 2023, Kirk said, "It's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment"—ironic given his own death by gun violence.

Kirk promoted the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory, attacked Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy as a "myth," and claimed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had become an "anti-white weapon." He said Black History Month wasn't "worth the kind of full month that it is" and blamed gun violence in Chicago on "a lack-of-father problem in the Black community." 

Even in the moment before his death, he was blaming Blacks for gun violence. (If the killer turns out to be Black, I will eat my hat.)

His antisemitic rhetoric included references to "Jewish dollars" funding "Cultural Marxist ideas," while his anti-LGBTQ+ activism included comparing gender-affirming care to Nazi crimes against humanity. During a 2024 discussion of gay rights, Kirk referenced biblical passages about stoning gay people to death as "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters."

Kirk also pushed COVID-19 conspiracy theories, calling vaccine requirements "medical apartheid" and falsely claiming 1.2 million people died from vaccinations. After Trump's 2020 election loss, he called for Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes and violate the Constitution.

Now that's a legacy of ignorance of hate. Nothing to eulogize at all.

## And now shit gets tense

The conservative calls for retribution arealreeady bearing fruit. As I write this, [HCBUs in Atlanta and across the country are under a shelter in place order or have received threats](https://www.ajc.com/education/2025/09/atlanta-hbcus-issue-shelter-in-place-order-after-threats/?ref=notunmindful.org) (UPDATE: shelter in place now lifted, but still). 

Charlie Kirk's death was a tragedy that no one should celebrate or justify. Political violence has no place in American democracy, regardless of the victim's beliefs or actions. However, condemning violence does not require us to forget history or abandon critical evaluation of public figures' legacies.

The convergence of using Kirk's death to justify political persecution while rehabilitating his public image sets an alarming precedent. When prominent figures call for destroying political parties and using state power to "crush" opponents, they abandon democratic norms for authoritarian tactics.

We can simultaneously condemn a murder and while maintain our intellectual honesty about the ideas and movements that shape our political landscape. The real test of our political maturity lies not in how we respond to tragedy with emotion. It lies in our ability to maintain our commitment to truth and democratic values.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Rejecting Lincoln's America
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/rejecting-lincolns-america/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:58:28.000Z
Jamelle Bouie is always worth a read. Case in point: [in today's New York Times, he describes how far the Right has drifted from Lincoln's vision of America](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/opinion/lincoln-schmitt-trump-vance-citizenship.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.k08.EWYT.UX%5FY4JcGg8XS&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org). The modern Republican Party, Lincoln's own political descendants, actively seek to dismantle the very republic of equals he fought to create. Read thee whole thing, as they say. I have summarized it below though.

## Even the Gettysburg Address had its detractrors

Bouie starts with something I did not know: the Gettysburg Address actually had critics at the time. A Chicago Times editorialist even called Lincoln's famous speech "a perversion of history so flagrant that the most extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful."

The problem? Lincoln's opening line about America being "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." This critic contended that Lincoln was wrong—pointing to the Constitution's slavery provisions and arguing that soldiers at Gettysburg died to uphold that Constitution, not some lofty ideal about equality. 

The editorialist even said the founders "were men possessing too much self-respect to declare that negroes were their equals." And he may well have been right. But Lincoln had other ideas.

## Lincoln's vision versus the hierarchy crowd

This gets to the heart of Bouie's argument. Lincoln imagined America as embodying the Declaration of Independence's principles, while his critics—from Stephen Douglas to Confederate leaders—viewed America as a society of "rigid, permanent hierarchies." Lincoln's side won through force of arms, and Reconstruction attempted to write equality into the Constitution itself.

Because of this, we live in "Lincoln's America," which makes it ironic that today's Republicans want to tear it all down.

## Old ideas, new hoods

Bouie focuses on Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri. [The senator gave a speech at a "National Conservativism" conference that goes even further than JD Vance's usual rhetoric](https://www.notunmindful.org/senator-declares-america-a-white-homeland-in-shocking-national-conference-speech/). Schmitt dismissed America as an "idea" and showed contempt for what he calls "five words about equality" from the Declaration of Independence.

Think about that for a second. He's talking about "all men are created equal"—words that Bouie rightly calls "among the most important in human history." These weren't just nice thoughts; they represented something unprecedented—universal equality merged with revolutionary claims about political authority.

## Those five words changed the world

Bouie traces the influence of those Declaration principles through American history. The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 echoed them for women's rights. Frederick Douglass called them "saving principles." Eugene Debs invoked them for labor rights. Martin Luther King Jr. praised their "profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language" about human dignity.

But Schmitt? He wants none of it. For him, America isn't an idea—it's "blood and soil, a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests." Fascists and their blood and soil. And the blood to be spilled isn't white.

## Ignoring history

Here's where Schmitt's argument falls apart . He defines "Americans" as descendants of "Christian pilgrims," pioneers, and settlers. He dreams of an exclusive club that leaves out huge chunks of people who've been here from the beginning. 

He talks about America as a "homeland for themselves and their descendants," claiming it as "our birthright, our heritage, our destiny."

But as Bouie points out, America's actual heritage is that of a "Creole nation"—a mix of Native, European, African, and Asian influences. Albert Murray captured it perfectly:

> "American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite."

## Nothing new under the sun

Ever the bright bulbs, Schmitt and others present this as some fresh critique of liberal ideology. But we know it's just recycled fascigs, white-supremacist garbage from American racism's greatest hits. George Wallace couldeasily have said it in 1963\. Or from early 20th-century white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard, or from pro-slavery ideologue George Fitzhugh in the 1850s, or from David Duke much more recently.

They all wanted to "turn the page on those 'five words about equality.'"

## The unfinished work

Lincoln challenged Americans to commit to the "great task" of preserving a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." According to Bouie, Schmitt and other "national conservatives" think this work has "already gone too far."

That's the real tragedy here. Instead of continuing Lincoln's unfinished work toward a more perfect union, they want to abandon the whole project and retreat into some mythical homeland that never really existed in the first place. See the Lost Cause bullshit. They have plenty of practice at make believe.

If we survive this, this country will need a full, proper, and finished reconstruction. (*Ed. Note: teaser, more on that to come here.*)

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### ICE opens detention center at Louisiana's notorious Angola Prison: and a dark history returns
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/ice-opens-detention-center-at-louisianas-notorious-angola-prison-and-a-dark-history-returns/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:57:44.000Z
The Trump administration has opened an immigrant detention center at one of America's most notorious prisons, raising serious concerns about human rights and the troubling echoes of historical injustice. Let's call it what it is: an internment camp at best, a concentration camp at worst.

## From plantation to prison to immigration internment

According to reporting by Rick Rojas in The New York Times, [ICE has begun housing immigrant detainees at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/us/ice-detention-center-angola-louisiana.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.jU8.d2r9.EIsfpdvtfwC8&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ref=notunmindful.org). As of Wednesday, ICE had interned 51 male detainees at the facility. It plans to expand capacity to over 200 by month's end and up to 400 people after that.

The choice of Angola is particularly disturbing. Founded in 1901 on the grounds of several former plantations—including one eponymously named Angola where white platners enslaved people and forced them to raise cotton, corn and livestock—the prison has long been synonymous with brutality and racial oppression.

## A violent and exploitative legacy

Angola's racist origins are inseparable from its operational history. The prison initially forced mostly Black inmates to work in the same fields where enslaved people had labored decades earlier. The continuity from slavery to convict labor to mass incarceration represents a continuous chain of racial control and exploitation.

The facility became known as "the bloodiest prison in the South" due to recurring violence and deplorable conditions. In 1951, more than 50 inmates slashed their own Achilles tendons in protest of the brutal conditions and forced field labor—a desperate act that speaks to the depths of suffering inmates endured.

The detention center will occupy "Camp J," one of Angola's most restrictive units. Inmates languished in solitary confinement there for 23 hours daily in conditions described as "dungeon-like." The facility closed in 2018 due to deteriorating conditions and safety concerns.

## "The worst of the worst"

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry said the facility would house the immigrant "worst of the worst," claiming authorities will "consolidate the most violent offenders." Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described detainees as "high risk" individuals convicted of serious crimes including murder and sexual assault.

Given ICE's track record of sweeping up law-abiding U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, this we should consider this bullshit of the highest order. Data shows many ICE arrestees have no criminal convictions or charges. So who will actually be thrown into this maximum-security facility.

## Disturbing parallels

This decision represents a troubling continuation of Angola's history targeting marginalized populations. Just as the facility once exploited Black bodies for agricultural labor, it now serves as a tool for immigration enforcement against predominantly Brown and Black migrants.

Officials have dubbed the detention center "Louisiana Lockup," part of a pattern of giving immigration facilities ludicrous nicknames they think sound tough. They acknowledge hoping Angola's notorious reputation will deter undocumented immigrants from remaining in the country. Let's see how that goes.

Transforming a former plantation into an immigrant internment camp for those seeking refuge in America sadly aligns with our history. The administration has weaponized the legacy of historical racial oppression for current racial oppression—all in the name of immigration enforcement.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The General's Redoubt weighs in again
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-generals-redoubt-weighs-in-again/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:57:30.000Z
It's been a long time since I gave them any attention, but the stick fort is at it again. Surpise! 

While losing their appeal for their new confederate castle to be tax free, they shocking rejoined the anti-DEI chorus revealing the stark contradictions inherent in their stances on academic freedom and "cancel culture." 

[As W&L Professor of English Chris Gavalar notes on his blog, The Patron Saint of Superheros, The General's Reddoubt sent out an email in June that listed a lot courses at t he uni versituy it wants to remove, or cancel.](https://thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/the-new-cancel-culture-conformity-inequity-and-exclusion/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMsDc1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFJak45aTdKQUFQckFIY1ltAR4aolOmF2CE6r0hUCafY83q1Pag8MgwXXdr1ew6lQIXJFpoV9nRtagE3cFeoQ%5Faem%5FxfjEcEQU5O0vbya8AMaWSw&ref=notunmindful.org)

Of course it was a fundraising email. They always are with that lot. 

As they used to say, **read the whole damn thing**, but I've pulled a few quotes from his analysis and observations.

We can start with the fundamental contradiction in this campaign. As Gavalar notes:

> "The claim is ironic, since the W&L that Mr. Robinson knew as a student and now longs to recreate was overwhelmingly discriminatory. When Mr. Robinson entered W&L as an undergraduate, Black men and all women were excluded."

The scope of the proposed course cancellations also reveals a pattern that extends far beyond curriculum concerns into the realm of th4e "huh."?

> "Of the 70 courses he targets, more than a quarter include 'Women' in the titles or prominently in the descriptions. Even mentioning 'sexism' is forbidden."

They are talking both ways. An abyss exist between the organization's mission statement and what it actually wants:

> "The organization's mission statement includes: 'advocate for academic freedom,' and the second of its four primary objectives is: 'Advocate for free speech, civil discourse, and academic freedom.' Mr. Robinson is promoting the opposite values."

You have all the freedom to think as long as it's like we do. 

As usual, their campaign is less about educational quality and more about the "good old days," when they could use those words and women knew their place:

> "The 75-year-old Mr. Robinson wants to remake W&L into the school of his late adolescence when his impressionable mind was protected from people and topics that are commonplace in 21st-century America."

They want to haul W&L back to an era before the civil rights movement, when the only ones that mattered at the school were white elites.

Again, read the whole damn post. I only offer it pale justice via sound bites.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Senator declares America a "white homeland" in shocking national conference speech
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/senator-declares-america-a-white-homeland-in-shocking-national-conference-speech/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:57:10.000Z
A sitting U.S. Senator has made one of the most explicitly white nationalist statements by an elected official since David Duke. He directly repudiated the foundational American principle that "all men are created equal."

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington this week, Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt delivered a speech that rejected the idea that America is built on equality or accessible to people of all races and religions. Instead, [he declared it a "fundamentally a white homeland" as reported by Joshua Shanes in *Slate*](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/eric-schmitt-white-nationalism-national-conservatism-conference.html?fbclid=IwdGcommooRleAMqWztleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHhfMOIJ-wpPDBS%5FoISVACAyxXDR91RCHIea9ojpuWB9fWBH2gVYj6x-VDPk2%5Faem%5FJLxvz4chEU3rrq6HxJ1lsw&ref=notunmindful.org).

## Lincoln who?

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address described America thus: 

> "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Schmitt directly contradicted this." Instead, he argued that the white Europeans who settled America "believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants" and that "America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us." 

The Senator was unambiguous about who "us" are in his vision. "If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all," Schmitt declared. "America is not a 'universal nation.'"

Of course this is all historical nonsense.

## Ignoring America's diverse heritage

Schmitt's definition of "real Americans" excludes many who built the nation. He celebrates German settlers like his own ancestors, but excludes Black slaves who built much of the country. And let's not forget, who predate his ancesatoera here. And of the countless other ethnic groups who have helped build the nation? Silence.

The speech portrayed Americans as "sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe's shores." Then his mask just falls. He celebrating the Native American genocide as proof of white superiority. Schmitt claimed whites destroyed Native Americans "because they were superior in strength and perseverance," which Shanes characterizes as "a fascist vision of natural selection favoring the group with racial and cultural superiority."

Yes, he really used that word positively. Not long ago, that would have ended his career

## Targeting the opposition

The Senator's painted non-white Americans and their allies as existential threats. He referenced Barack Obama and his supporters who "scorned the white patriots," people removing Confederate monuments who turn "yesterday's heroes into today's villains," and "anarchists" behind the "George Floyd riots." 

"When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they're attacking our future as well as our past," Schmitt declared. "But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us." 

He's calling for a return to the confederacy's treason and lost cause mythology.

## Racism ascendant everywhere

This speech represents an escalation within the National Conservatism Conference's increasingly radical rhetoric. The conference "has been promoting blood-and-soil nationalism since its first iteration in 2019," when University of Pennsylvania Law professor Amy Wax argued the country "would be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites." Blood and soil should ring some bells for you. Schmitt is German after all and his heart is in the 1930s.

In 2024, Missouri's senior senator Josh Hawley gave the keynote, celebrating Christian nationalism and warning against "cosmopolitans" and "globalists"—all terms with antisemitic history. Schmitt opened his own speech with similar language, condemning "elites" who "rule everywhere but are not truly from anywhere"—what Shanes calls "the 'rootless cosmopolitan' trope at the heart of modern antisemitism."

This isn't just Klan shit. It's the full on Nazi experience.

## The danger at our door

## 

We must have clear eyes about this and what they mean. As Shanes notes, this represents "a repudiation of our Constitution and the core of a national identity that includes all its citizens" and demonstrates that "the MAGA coalition's endgame" extends beyond opposing illegal immigration to advocating "a white (Christian) nationalist vision of America that claims ownership of power and resources for white (Christian) Americans alone."

The fact that a sitting senator could deliver such remarks "without shame or pushback by his party highlights the extent to which it represents where that party now stands," according to the analysis.

Didn't I say I hate Missouri Nazis? Fuck these guys. A Nazi, any Nazi, must be met with all the force at your disposal. 

![Comic panel of Captain America punching Hitler.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/09/Cap-1.jpeg)

*Non in Cautus Futuri*.

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### Trump's dangerous plan to illegally deploy Texas troops in Illinois
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-dangerous-plan-to-illegally-deploy-texas-troops-in-illinois/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:56:55.000Z
The United States stands at a constitutional crossroads. What began as rhetoric about federal law enforcement has escalated into something far more dangerous—the potential deployment of one state's military forces against another state's citizens. 

According to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, leaked plans reveal that President Trump intends to use Texas National Guard troops to conduct operations in Chicago. 

Such a move that would represent an unprecedented assault on American federalism and the constitutional order itself.

## Imaginary dateline: 0800, 16 September 2025

Mexican Independence Day. 300 troops from the Texas National Guard exit the Great Lakes Naval Station heading to Little Village on Chicago's West Side. They are with a large number of I.C.E. Agents. The Guardsmen don't wear mask though. The Texas Guard is there at the request of President Trump, although they have not been explicitly federalized. They remain under Texas Governor Abbott's nominal charge.

In the preceding days, tensions have been running high. Governor Pritzker of Illinois had also mobilized the Illinois National Guard, as is his right, to try to keep the worst from happening. Texas troops opening fire on civilians, even by accident or terrorizing a Chicago neighborhood.

The war of words has also been hot with Governer Pritzker trading barbs with Trump, VP Vance, sand Abbott. And vice versa.

It promises to be a long day.

## 

## An extraordinary warning

On Tuesday, Governor Pritzker held what can only be described as an extraordinary press conference. Flanked by Chicago's mayor and the Cook County board president, Pritzker announced that Trump was planning what amounts to an invasion of Illinois—not by federal troops, but by units of the Texas National Guard. 

This revelation came after Trump's ominous declaration that he plans to "go into Chicago," adding cryptically, "I'm not saying when, but we're going in."

As [Andy Craig reports in The UnPopulist](https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-leaked-plan-to-deploy-the?triedRedirect=true&ref=notunmindful.org), the governor's warning was triggered by intelligence from what he described as "patriotic Americans within the administration and the military. This astonishing detail would itself represent a breakdown of all civil-military norms. When service members feel compelled to leak classified deployment plans to state governors, it signals a profound crisis in the chain of command and constitutional governance.

While Texas Governor Greg Abbott has issued denials, at least one aspect of Pritzker's allegations has been independently confirmed. [The Washington Post verified that the Pentagon has authorized the use of Great Lakes Naval Station as a staging area](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/04/chicago-navy-base-great-lakes-pritzker-trump-ice/?ref=notunmindful.org). Given the gravity of such an accusation, it's difficult to believe Pritzker would sound this alarm without solid intelligence.

## The legal tangle

To understand why this represents such a dangerous escalation, we must examine the legal framework governing military deployment within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, generally prohibits using the military for civilian law enforcement—arresting people, controlling streets, conducting raids. 

  
This principle reflects a fundamental American value: our soldiers are not our police. [Slate has good summarization of the legal aspects in a conversation between Dahlia Latwick and Elizabeth “Liza” Goitein](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/chicago-trump-national-guard-legal-posse-comitatus-insurrection-act.html?ref=notunmindful.org) (summarized along with Craig throughout).

Trump's previous deployments of Marines and federalized California National Guard in Los Angeles were ruled illegal by a federal judge, precisely because they violated Posse Comitatus. The administration likely understands that repeating this approach in Illinois could face similar judicial rejection.

Enter the legal loophole that makes the Illinois plan so insidious. Rather than federalizing troops, Trump appears poised to invoke 32 U.S.C. § 502(f)(2), a 2006 statute that allows National Guard units to remain under state control while acting "at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense." This provision provides for training exercises on federal bases. it does not allow active deployments in other states.

As constitutional scholar Steve Vladeck explains in Craig's analysis, this creates a dangerous workaround. By keeping Texas troops under Texas command while acting at federal "request," Trump believes he can evade Posse Comitatus restrictions. However, this interpretation stretches the law beyond recognition and creates an even more serious constitutional crisis.

## **Imaginary dateline: 0920, 16 September 2025**

Moving closer to their target, the Texas Guard and I.C.E. agents begin to see Mexican decorations along the street. But as they turn onto the street to take them to the heart of the neighborhood, they see something they were not expecting.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/09/Little_Village_Mural_on_Banco_Popular_-210745577-.jpg)

By Señor Codo from Chicago: Little Village Mural on Banco Popular, CC BY-SA 2.0, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54544324](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54544324&ref=notunmindful.org)

The street already has Guardsmen in place. From the Illinois National Guard.

Everyone stops. The two sets of troops eye one another warily. he quiet is like you hear in the old westerns.

## 

## Invasion by another name

The use of Texas National Guard troops in Illinois, while remaining under Texas command, would represent something unprecedented in American history—the literal invasion of one state by another's military forces. Unlike federal troops, which at least operate under federal authority, state troops have no legal jurisdiction whatsoever in other states without explicit consent.

This isn't merely a technical legal violation—it strikes at the heart of American federalism. In our constitutional system, states are sovereign entities, limited by the Constitution but nevertheless possessing their own territorial integrity and governmental authority. The Illinois state flag bears the phrase "State Sovereignty" for good reason: it reflects a fundamental principle of our federal system.

Governor Pritzker, as Illinois's chief executive, has both the power and constitutional duty to defend his state's sovereignty against such an invasion. This scenario would pit state against state in a way not seen since the Civil War, transforming the National Guard from a force for emergency response into an instrument of partisan political warfare.

This is not the fig-leaf state's rights used to justify secession. It's baked into our governmental system and has been since even before the constitution.

## The pretense of crime fighting

The administration's justification—fighting crime in Chicago—crumbles under scrutiny. Crime in Chicago has actually been plummeting, currently at its lowest point in decades. The city is statistically safer than many in red states. Any appeal to Labor Day weekend incidents is mere pretext for a predetermined political operation.

This exposes the true nature of Trump's plan. He wants to use military force not for genuine public safety, but as political theater. We wants to demonstrate his authoritarian regime over Democratic-controlled jurisdictions. According to Craig's reporting, the targeting of Hispanic communities, particularly around Mexican Independence Day celebrations on September 16, reveals the ethnic and political motivations underlying these operations.

Consider the parallel Pritzker drew; imagine using armed troops to terrorize Irish Americans on St. Patrick's Day. The absurdity and offensiveness of such an action highlights exactly what Trump is proposing for Latino communities in Chicago.

## 

## Constitutional principles under assault

The legal experts are clear about the constraints on presidential power in this area. In Dahlia Lithwick's analysis for Slate, Elizabeth "Liza" Goitein of the Brennan Center explains that the Framers' concerns about military domestic policing as anathema to the fundamental principles of democracy and individual freedom. When soldiers patrol civilian streets, it creates a chilling effect on free expression and dissent—exactly the kind of oppression the Constitution was designed to prevent.

The Posse Comitatus Act exists precisely to prevent this scenario. As Goitein notes in her interview with Lithwick, when military personnel exercise compulsory power over civilians—detaining them, questioning them, compelling their compliance—it triggers all the constitutional concerns about military tyranny that motivated the Founders.

Trump cannot simply federalize the Illinois National Guard for local crime control because no federal law authorizes such action. The Insurrection Act, the broadest domestic military authority available to presidents, only applies to enforcing federal law or protecting constitutional civil rights—not local crime fighting.

As Goitein explains to Lithwick, the administration might attempt to reframe the operation as immigration enforcement, as it did in Los Angeles. However, this faces significant obstacles. Unlike California, there are no mass protests against ICE raids in Chicago to serve as pretext. Sanctuary city policies, while frustrating to the administration, are constitutionally protected under the Tenth Amendment and do not constitute the kind of obstruction that would justify military intervention.

## Historical echoes

The parallels to historical tyranny are not lost on those paying attention. The charges against King George III in the Declaration of Independence included:

- "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
- "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power."
- "For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us."

These weren't abstract grievances. They were specific objections to the use of military force against civilian populations for political purposes. The American Revolution was fought, in part, to establish the principle that military and civilian authority must remain separate, and that soldiers cannot be used as instruments of political oppression.

## The broader implications

What makes this crisis even more alarming is its partisan dimension. Rather than using Illinois's own National Guard for any genuine emergency (as would be normal), the specific choice of Texas forces reveals the administration's intent to weaponize federalism itself. This isn't law enforcement—it's red states versus blue states, Republican governors enabling federal overreach against Democratic jurisdictions.

The precedent this would set is staggering. If a president can "request" friendly governors to send their troops into hostile states, the entire concept of state sovereignty collapses. What prevents future presidents from using this mechanism to effectively occupy political opposition strongholds? What stops the complete militarization of domestic political disputes?

As Craig reports, Pritzker warned, channeling the gravity of wartime communications, these operations would likely involve "masked agents hauling away parents, traumatizing children, disappearing people off the streets." The images from such raids would fundamentally alter the character of American governance, normalizing military occupation of civilian spaces in ways that would have been unthinkable just years ago.

## **Imaginary dateline: 1000, 16 September 2025**

Moving at once without any visible prompt, the Texas troops quickly take position and take an aggressive stance. The I.C.E. Agents, masks rife with sweat even though it's only in the 70s cower behind the National Guard vehicles.

The Illinois Guardsmen also rapidly take defensive positions. All guns are drawn.

And then... is it a tidy withdrawal or is it Fort Sumter again? 

We can only hope it doesn't come to this. 

## The choice we face

The question Pritzker posed cuts to the heart of the matter: "Once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under color of law, what comes next?" History provides sobering answers to that question.

The United States faces a test of its constitutional foundations. Will the courts act swiftly to prevent this unprecedented assault on federalism? Will Congress assert its constitutional role in governing military deployments? Will the American people recognize the danger of allowing one state's troops to occupy another state's territory for partisan political purposes?

The principle at stake transcends party politics. It touches the very essence of what makes America a nation of laws rather than men, a federal republic rather than a centralized autocracy. The response to Trump's Illinois plan will determine whether the constitutional constraints on executive power remain meaningful or become mere parchment barriers to unlimited presidential authority.

In the words of the Declaration of Independence, we are a nation founded on the principle that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." 

The deployment of Texas troops in Illinois would represent the opposite. It would represent an exercise of military power without consent, in defiance of sovereignty, and in violation of the constitutional order that has preserved American liberty for nearly two and a half centuries.

These are dangerous times, and he stakes could not be higher.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #6
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-6/
Last updated: 2025-09-06T01:15:01.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful this week (ending 29 August 2025). Posting was kind of irregular this week as I still had to take care of other things. With any hope, things will return to normal next week. In either, no shortage of news out there.

## Friday

### [Another university president falls: Northwestern's Schill resigns under Trump administration pressure](https://www.notunmindful.org/another-university-president-falls-northwesterns-schill-resigns-under-trump-administration-pressure/)

The university’s president, Michael Schill, said he would step down following months of turbulence, including Trump administration cuts of $790 million from the university’s research funds.

## Thursday

### [When bad AI meets history](https://www.notunmindful.org/when-bad-ai-meets-history/)

The troubling rise of sanitized American narratives Founders Museum' from White House and PragerU blurs history, AI-generated fiction. Plus an joke written by AI that could have been the whole post.

## Wednesday

### [Emory University caves, dismantles DEI programs amid federal pressure](https://www.notunmindful.org/emory-university-caves-dismantles-dei-programs-amid-federal-pressure/)

Emory University announced today the discontinuation od its DEI programs, offices. Georgia’s largest private university had previously embraced diversity efforts.

### [When MAGA intellectuals say the quiet parts out loud](https://www.notunmindful.org/when-maga-intellectuals-say-the-quiet-parts-out-loud/)

The right debates just how weird their authoritarianism should be. A roundtable discussion among leading MAGA intellectuals suggests they might be suffering from success.

## Tuesday 

### [The future of voting rights is on the line at the Supreme Court](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-future-of-voting-rights-is-on-the-line-at-the-supreme-court/)

A supreme court voting rights case could reshape American politics. And we haven't even noticed. And that's not the weird part.

### [The administration wants military women to know their place](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-administration-wants-military-women-to-know-their-place/)

The systematic removal of women from military leadership: a return to 1955? Pete Hegseth seems to be on a mission to erase women from the top ranks of the U.S. armed forces.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

## 

## 

## 

##
### Ohio State bans land acknowledgments in latest bout anti-DEI dipshittery
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/ohio-state-bans-land-acknowledgments-in-latest-bout-anti-dei-dipshittery/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:56:37.000Z
[As Emma Whiford reported for Inside Higer Ed earlier this week](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/09/03/ohio-state-bans-most-land-acknowledgments?ref=notunmindful.org), Ohio State University has prohibited faculty from making land acknowledgments—statements recognizing the Indigenous peoples who originally inhabited university land—unless directly relevant to course material. 

The new policy represents another escalation in the systematic dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across American higher education.

This a jarring attack not only on academic freedom, but upon free speech itself.

## Sweeping restrictions under state law

The ban stems from Ohio's SB 1, a comprehensive law passed in March. The law aims to eliminate DEI offices and scrub all mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion from public universities. Ohio State's response has been particularly aggressive though. It extends beyond typical DEI programs, to restricting basic historical acknowledgments and limit student housing decorations to "Ohio State spirit themes," whatever the fuck that means.

Under the new policy from the Office of University Compliance and Integrity, land acknowledgments are classified as "statements on behalf of an issue or cause" and cannot be made by anyone representing a university unit, college, or department. The restrictions extend to virtual and in-person events, websites, social media, signage, meeting agendas, event programs, syllabi and classroom discussions—unless directly tied to course content like Indigenous history classes.

## The historical irony

The prohibition carries particular irony given Ohio State's origins. Founded in 1870 as a land-grant university under the Morrill Act of 1862, the institution was built on land seized from Indigenous peoples. According to a 2020 High Country News investigation, Ohio State received 614,325 acres of expropriated Indigenous land—the third-most in the nation—taken from more than 100 tribes through the 1795 Treaty of Greeneville and the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

The university's now-shuttered Center for Belonging and Social Change previously acknowledged this history, stating the campus "resides on land ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greeneville and the forced removal of tribes through the Indian Removal Act of 1830." 

Such statements are now prohibited.

## Academic freedom concerns

Richard Finlay Fletcher, an associate professor affiliated with Ohio State's American Indian Studies program, argues that land acknowledgments represent factual statements rather than activism. "Acknowledging the historical and contemporary realities of the university on Indigenous land is not an activist \[act\]. It's a factual statement," he said.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, warns the policy will further chill academic freedom. Enforcement would require students to report professors or record classes to monitor compliance with verbal restrictions. "While neutrality is presented as protecting all voices, its effects are not felt equally across the campus," she noted.

## All by themeselves

Ohio State appears to be the only Ohio public university interpreting SB 1 to prohibit land acknowledgments,. This suggests an over-zealousness beyond legal requirements. Several other universities in the state have not implemented similar restrictions despite operating under the same state law.

## Broader implications

The land acknowledgment ban illustrates how anti-DEI legislation extends beyond formal diversity programs to restrict basic historical education and faculty speech. By classifying factual statements about Indigenous history as political advocacy, the policy demonstrates how "neutrality" policies can effectively silence discussions of historical injustice while claiming to protect academic freedom.

As universities nationwide face similar pressure to eliminate diversity initiatives, Ohio State's broad interpretation of compliance requirements may signal how institutional responses could expand beyond traditional DEI programs to restrict any content deemed potentially controversial—even basic historical acknowledgments.

And that's when it gets really scary.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Another university president falls: Northwestern's Schill resigns under Trump administration pressure
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/another-university-president-falls-northwesterns-schill-resigns-under-trump-administration-pressure/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:56:13.000Z
It feels like I should have a mad-libs style template for this now: **\[University Name\]** caves to pressure from the Trump administration, and **\[President Resigns/Ends All DEI Programs\]**, etc., etc.

[In today's version, Anemone Hartocoliss, Michael, S. Schmidt, and Tyler Page report in the New York Times that Northwestern is the latest to fall.](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/us/ice-detention-center-angola-louisiana.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.jU8.d2r9.EIsfpdvtfwC8&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ref=notunmindful.org)

Northwestern University President Michael H. Schill announced his resignation Thursday. This marks another high-profile casualty in the Trump administration's relentless campaign against American higher education. His departure comes after months of withering Republican attacks and the devastating loss of $790 million in federal research funding—a financial blow that forced the Big Ten university to lay off hundreds of employees.

## Institutional pressure, congressional theater, and real consequences

Schill's resignation fits a troubling pattern we've documented across American universities. Like University of Virginia President James E. Ryan, who [resigned earlier this year](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-fight-with-universities-and-dei-continues/) under Trump administration pressure, and the leadership upheaval at institutions from Harvard to Columbia, Northwestern's situation demonstrates how federal investigations and funding threats are reshaping university leadership nationwide.

The administration has weaponized federal research dollars as a cudgel against institutions don't toe its ideological line. Northwestern's $790 million funding freeze—announced abruptly in April—represents one of the largest such actions to date, forcing the university into what administrators called "the most painful measure we have had to take" through massive layoffs.

Schill has also faced the now-familiar ritual of congressional kabuki that has become the standard. During a May 2024 House Committee hearing, Republican lawmakers accused Northwestern of inadequate response to campus antisemitism. This came amid the first rounds of Gaza war protests. Representative Virginia Foxx declared that university presidents "should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students," telling Schill he "should be doubly ashamed for capitulating to the antisemitic rule breakers."

## Personal history as political weapon

And this merry-go-round has a maximum evil setting. Schill's own family history became fodder for political attack. During congressional testimony, he shared deeply personal details: "My great-grandfather was killed in a pogrom on Good Friday in Russia. Four of my grandmother's five sisters perished in the camps in Poland." This attempt to establish his credibility on antisemitism issues failed to satisfy Republican committee members, who continued their assault despite his family's Holocaust trauma.

Because it was never about ant-semitism from the administration full of actual Nazis, it was about power and fear.

## The broader context of academic freedom under siege

Northwestern's situation must be understood within the wider assault on higher education we've tracked across multiple institutions.[ Just the day before at Emory University](https://www.notunmindful.org/emory-university-caves-dismantles-dei-programs-amid-federal-pressure/), interim president Leah Ward Sears—herself a Black alumna who "reaped the benefits" of diversity programs—was forced to dismantle DEI offices under federal pressure. 

[George Mason University faces Justice Department investigation](https://www.notunmindful.org/faculty-support-for-george-mason-president-triggers-federal-investigation/) of faculty resolutions supporting their president. Brown University paid $510 million, while agreeing to [abandon diversity in admissions and deny transgender students basic accommodations](https://www.notunmindful.org/brown-capitulates/).

These obviously are not isolated incidents. The administration is conducting a coordinated campaign to reshape American higher education according to conservative ideology, using federal funding as the primary weapon. And if they trample a little academic freedom and some students' rights along the way, so be it.

## Faculty resistance and institutional surrender

Northwestern faculty attempted to resist the pressure campaign. In June, 51 faculty members published an open letter criticizing Schill for insufficient consultation and excessive willingness to bend to Trump administration demands. They warned that "the law has now been weaponized to punish institutions and groups the federal government wishes to target. This is a political and constitutional crisis."

Their concerns proved prophetic. Despite some institutional support—including endorsement from university trustees "connected to the Jewish community"—the pressure proved unsustainable. Representative Tim Walberg summoned Schill back for additional closed-door grilling, declaring Northwestern's reforms had not "come to satisfactory fruition."

## The enduring damage

Northwestern's case illustrates how the Trump administration's tactics inflict lasting institutional damage regardless of eventual outcomes. University officials have warned that even a potential deal with the White House "would not be enough to reverse the actions we are taking now." The 425 job cuts, program reductions, and research disruptions create permanent scars on the institution's capacity and mission.

Schill's resignation under pressure establishes a dangerous precedent for federal interference in university governance. When combined with similar actions at UVA, Harvard, Columbia, and other institutions, it demonstrates how investigations and funding threats can effectively remove university leaders who fail to satisfy political demands.

The administration has shown it can force leadership changes without formal legal action—simply by making institutional survival contingent on compliance with its ideological preferences. This is a fundamental threat to academic freedom and institutional autonomy that extends far beyond any individual president or university.

As we've seen across multiple institutions, the pattern is clear: resist federal pressure and face financial ruin, leadership removal, and institutional damage. The message to university presidents nationwide could not be clearer—comply or face the consequences that befell Michael Schill and Northwestern University.

It's especially disheartening to see those instutitions we thought we could count upon as bulwalks so quickly become as flimsy as card houses. I have no idea how these can be rebuilt. Some, however, whether out of the limelight or not big enough game remain.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### When bad AI meets history
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/when-bad-ai-meets-history/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:55:57.000Z
[As reported by NPR this week](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5521261/white-house-ai-founders-museum?ref=notunmindful.org), a new exhibit near the White House is raising eyebrows among historians—not for what it includes, but for what it conspicuously leaves out. The Founders Museum, a collaboration between the Trump administration and conservative nonprofit PragerU, represents trend toward sanitizing American history through the lens of artificial intelligence and selective storytelling.

## TL;DR? Here's a joke about it from an A.I.

I thought I'd ask an [claude.ai](https://claude.ai/new?ref=notunmindful.org) write a joke about it. The AI oputput (unedited):

> Here's a joke about the AI history exhibit:

> "The new White House history museum features AI versions of the founding fathers. Apparently, George Washington's AI avatar keeps saying 'I cannot tell a lie... but my programmers can selectively edit the truth!'

> Meanwhile, the AI Thomas Jefferson has been glitching—every time someone asks about slavery, he just keeps repeating 'Error 404: Context not found.'"

I probably should have just quit when I was ahead.

## The fairy tale version of America's founding

Located in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the museum features 82 paintings of the Declaration of Independence signers alongside AI-generated videos of historical figures sharing their "stories." But these aren't authentic historical accounts—they're carefully curated interpretations that blur the line between documented history and modern political messaging.

The most glaring example? An AI-generated John Adams declaring "Facts do not care about your feelings"—a catchphrase popularized by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, not an 18th-century founding father. This anachronistic mixing of contemporary political rhetoric with historical figures reveals the exhibit's true purpose—reshaping the past to serve present-day ideological goals.

## Erasing complexity for comfort

The treatment of Revolutionary writer Mercy Otis Warren exemplifies the museum's approach to historical complexity. The real Warren was a fierce critic of the founders. she scathingly wrote about America's "restless, vigorous, luxurious youth" lacking the wisdom to govern responsibly. On the other hand, the AI version reduces her to generic platitudes about patriotism. Her actual sharp critiques and nuanced observations have sanitized into comfortable, non-threatening soundbites.

This pattern reflects a broader tendency to present American history as a simple morality tale rather than the complex, often contradictory reality it actually was. As historian Brendan Gillis notes, focusing narrowly on a small set of experiences makes it seem "like this is all the American Revolutionary history that we need to know." A place where everyone was happy, not matter a subject of slavery or genocide.

## The PragerU factor

PragerU's involvement raises another obvious red flag. The organization, which explicitly promotes conservative values through "edutainment" videos, has previously faced criticism for content that downplays slavery's horrors. In one notorious episode, an AI Christopher Columbus tells children that "being taken as a slave is better than being killed." Is it you genocidal maniac?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/09/webp-2.webp)

PragerU Kids' series, **Leo & Layla's History Adventures.*

This track record raises questions about the motivations behind The Founders Museum. PragerU CEO Marissa Streit speaks of using America's 250th birthday to "reignite patriotism" while acknowledging America's "blemishes." they clearly emphasize the former and never reckon with the latter.

## The cost of comfortable narratives

As historian Karin Wulf points out, the fullest understanding of American history requires acknowledging all voices—including the 40% of Virginians who white planters enslaved during the founding era. Yet The Founders Museum appears to be historical comfort food rather than nutritious engagement.

When we reduce history to AI-generated fairy tales that avoid uncomfortable truths, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to understand how we got here—and more importantly, how we might do better. Real patriotism requires grappling with the full story, not just the parts that make us feel good about ourselves.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Emory University caves, dismantles DEI programs amid federal pressure
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/emory-university-caves-dismantles-dei-programs-amid-federal-pressure/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:55:40.000Z
[As first reported in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Emory University announced today that it will discontinue its diversity, equity and inclusion programs and offices](https://www.ajc.com/education/2025/09/emory-university-to-discontinue-its-dei-programs-offices/?ref=notunmindful.org). 

Georgia's largest private Univeisty becomes the latest institution to abandon these initiatives under pressure from the Trump administration's sweeping assault on DEI efforts across higher education.

## Institutional capitulation continues amidst continued federal pressure

The decision at Emory reflects a broader trend affecting universities nationwide. As President Donald Trump has systematically attacked diversity programs through executive orders, institutions nationwide have found themselves reconsidering or dismantling programs once considered essential to their educational missions.

We've written here about [Brown](https://www.notunmindful.org/brown-capitulates/),[ George Mason](https://www.notunmindful.org/faculty-support-for-george-mason-president-triggers-federal-investigation/), [UVA](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-fight-with-universities-and-dei-continues/), and [VCU](https://www.notunmindful.org/vcu-caves-on-dei/), for example.

Emory Interim President Leah Ward Sears, writing to the Emory community, cited federal laws and mandates "that require higher education institutions to alter fundamentally or even close offices and programs focused on DEI." Her message emphasized compliance: "The standards are clear, and we must act accordingly."

Despite these pressures, The Washington Stand [has also reported that nearly 400 colleges and universities have resisted these pressures.](https://washingtonstand.com/news/nearly-400-colleges-and-universities-refuse-to-close-dei-offices?ref=notunmindful.org)

Since taking office in January, Trump has issued multiple executive orders targeting DEI programs, branding them as illegal and arguing that universities "have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences." One executive order specifically claimed these programs "can violate the civil rights laws of this Nation."

The pressure had already reached other Georgia institutions. In late February, Georgia Tech announced it was reviewing its student support programs to ensure compliance with federal mandates against DEI—a sign that the impact extends beyond individual universities to entire state systems.

## The optics here are shattering

The announcement carries particular weight coming from Sears herself—a Black alumna of Emory and former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court who acknowledged being someone "who has reaped the benefits of the needs these programs were meant to address." She described the programs as "created with the best of intentions and staffed by talented, committed professionals."

This personal dimension underscores the complex position many university leaders find themselves in: dismantling programs they may personally value or have benefited from in response to federal pressure.

## Academic freedom under siege

Emory's retreat represents more than just administrative restructuring. It signals a fundamental shift in how universities approach diversity and inclusion. The institution had previously embraced these efforts, winning the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award three consecutive years and maintaining an institutional statement declaring that "diversity is essential to advancing knowledge, addressing society's most pressing issues, and attending to the full spectrum of human needs."

The university's still website lists multiple offices potentially affected, including the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Department of Accessibility Services, and the Belonging and Community Justice group. 

Including the Department of Executive Services makes one wonder about the administration's thoughts on the ADA.

The number of employees facing termination remains unclear, though Sears promised "appropriate support and assistance through the transition."

## 

## Attempting to preserve values while changing structure

Despite dismantling these programs, Sears attempted to frame the decision as structural rather than philosophical. 

"Closing offices or reimagining lawful programs is not, after all, the same as ending our unwavering commitment to fairness, belonging and opportunity for all, values that are part of Emory's DNA." 

This language reflects the delicate balance many institutions are trying to strike. How to comply with federal mandates while maintaining their stated commitment to diversity and inclusion through other means.

## To maintain academic integrity or to not

Emory's decision, following similar moves at other prestigious institutions, suggests that the Trump administration's campaign against DEI programs is achieving its intended effect. Universities that once proudly promoted these initiatives are now quietly dismantling them, fundamentally altering the landscape of higher education and potentially limiting opportunities for underrepresented students and faculty.

The question remains whether institutions can maintain their commitment to diversity and inclusion without the formal structures and dedicated personnel that DEI programs provided—or whether this represents a more fundamental shift away from these values in American higher education.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### When MAGA intellectuals say the quiet parts out loud
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/when-maga-intellectuals-say-the-quiet-parts-out-loud/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:55:22.000Z
Remember when the Democrats said that Trump's platform was Project 2025, only to be roundly denied by the then candidate? Well, here we are. 

[As reported in *Vox*, a recent two-hour roundtable discussion among four leading Trump-aligned intellectuals reveals just how weird the modern MAGA movedment has become](https://apple.news/AkkeaAtUuTRSXrNViU9KHQw?ref=notunmindful.org). It would have given St. Ronny nightmares. What should have been a policy debate instead revealed a blueprint for authoritarianism that would make the founders roll in their graves.

Hosted at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the panel featured tech monarchist Curtis Yarvin, political theorist Patrick Deneen, culture war activist Chris Rufo, and journalist Christopher Caldwell. These aren't fringe figures on the right. They architected Trump's policies, which direct influence on everything from the Department of Government Efficiency to Vice President JD Vance's worldview.

![From left, Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin, Johnny Burtka, Chris Rufo, and Christopher Caldwell.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-03-at-11.14.30---AM.png.webp)

From left, Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin, Johnny Burtka, Chris Rufo, and Christopher Caldwell.

What follows are some of the anti-American, scary, and plain weird views they expressed.

## Turning citizens into "serfs"

The most disturbing moment came when Yarvin proposed dividing Americans into two categories: "modern" Americans who can govern their own lives, and "pre-modern" Americans who "cannot take care of themselves." His example? "A gangbanger in Baltimore"—thinly veiled racial coding that everyone understood. Such have shown themselves to be on the wrong side of history: from U.S. chattel slavery to Apartied to Gaza.

Yarvin's solution? Strip these Americans of basic constitutional rights and place them under church control: 

"You are going to get your welfare check from your minister... Your minister can drug test you, he can assign you work, he can put an AirTag on you, he can tell you where to go \[and\] where not to go." 

Which church? There is an amendment about that. I presume we can all figure it out though.

This is a system of state-sanctioned "serfdom" that would make Black Americans wards of government-approved churches and set up citizenry with different levels of rights. It's slavery with extra steps and a government sanctioned religious veneer. (Because chattel slavery also had it's fake religious excuses.)

No-one else on the panel objected. Instead, Caldwell suggested repealing the 14th Amendment to make it constitutional. Deneen even proposed having the Supreme Court allow states to establish official religions. (They can do anything these days see.). These are the people shaping conservative policy in 2025\. Three constitutional amendments immediately in the cross hairs.

## Democracy as an inconvenience

The conversation revealed how this movement views democratic norms and constitutional protections. It views them as obstacles to brushed aside rather than principles to uphold. When discussing DeSantis, Rufo lamented that the Florida governor should have "repealed term limits" to "rule Florida for 25 years." The language itself is telling—not "govern" or "serve," but "rule."

Yarvin went further, suggesting DeSantis should have created state-controlled youth organizations modeled after Soviet Young Pioneers or Communist China's youth groups. When Rufo noted "it's been tried before"—likely referencing the Hitler Youth—Deneen called it "a good idea" anyway. I remember any passive reference to something once fascistly taboo wouold end a career (see Duke, David).

These aren't isolated comments. They represent a systematic rejection of the democratic pluralism that has defined America since its founding. Where the founders feared concentrated power and built checks and balances, these intellectuals see inefficiency to be eliminated. These are those who actually have their hands on the levers of power within MAGA-land.

## Ideological purges as policy goals

The panel's discussion of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was equally revealing. There was complete consensus that DOGE's real purpose wasn't efficiency but conducting ideological purges of federal employees. The only debate was whether to be honest about it.

Rufo explicitly endorsed removing anyone from government who disagreed with Trump's agenda, calling for "systematic extirpation" of liberals from federal service. When Caldwell worried this "doesn't command majority support," he wasn't questioning the morality of political tests for employment—just the optics.

This is banana republic behavior. In healthy democracies, civil servants serve the constitution and the people, not the personal agenda of whoever holds power. Professional civil service exists precisely to prevent the kind of politicization these intellectuals celebrate. And it has worked well if not perfectly since WWII. I mean, we managed to avoid nuclear war... thus far.

## Through a glass darkly, and now face to face

What makes this conversation so significant but how comfortable these influential figures have become expressing these radical and weird ideas in public. They're no longer dog-whistling—they're saying the quiet part out loud, while letting their slips show.

These are the ideas flowing mainlined into Trump administration policy. Yarvin's concepts helped create DOGE. Deneen influences JD Vance. Rufo shaped education policy. Caldwell's theories inform civil rights enforcement. This isn't academic theorizing—it's the intellectual framework for governing America.

What's most striking about this roundtable is how thoroughly un-American these ideas are. The founders fled systems where church and state were intertwined, where political opponents faced purges, where citizens had different tiers of rights based on their identity or beliefs.

The Constitution they crafted was designed to prevent exactly what these intellectuals advocate: concentrated power, religious establishment, and the elimination of political opposition. When Deneen claims "religion was officially established" in the original Constitution, he's simply wrong—the founders explicitly rejected religious tests and establishments.

These aren't conservative ideas in any traditional American sense. They're revolutionary proposals to tear down the constitutional order and replace it with something that would be recognizable to authoritarians from Louis XIV to Viktor Orbán.

## High on their own supply?

Perhaps most concerning is how these intellectuals seem to believe their own propaganda about having "won the debate" with liberalism. Success has made them bold, and boldness has made them reckless.

When political movements become convinced of their own righteousness and permanence, they often abandon the democratic norms that brought them to power in the first place. History is littered with examples of what happens next.The real question isn't whether these ideas are weird—they obviously are. It's whether enough Americans will recognize how fundamentally at odds they are with everything this country was built to represent, before it's too late to matter.

*Sic Semper Tyrannus. Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The future of voting rights is on the line at the Supreme Court
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-future-of-voting-rights-is-on-the-line-at-the-supreme-court/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:55:06.000Z
[We've written hereabout this case](https://www.notunmindful.org/civil-rights-under-fire-again/) before. But [a new Slate interview between Dahlia Lithwick and UCLA law professor Richard Hasen lays out the stakes](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-v-callais.html?ref=notunmindful.org). A summary of this interview follows below.

The Supreme Court may be preparing to deliver what could be "an earthquake in American politics" when it hears Louisiana v. Callais in its upcoming term. The case, which began as a redistricting dispute, has transformed into a potential death blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

And only a few have really taken notice.

## The stakes are as high as they've been since the 1960s

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been the primary legal tool for combating racial discrimination in voting practices for nearly 60 years. It requires states with large minority populations and racially polarized voting patterns to draw districts that give minority voters equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. 

If the Supreme Court strikes down Section 2, the consequences would ripple across the entire American political landscape. It would allow redistricting black voices our of congress.

## How we got here and a new turn

The case originated when Louisiana was forced to draw a second Black-majority congressional district after courts found their original map violated the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana reluctantly complied. But it drew the district in an unusual shape to protect Republican incumbents, including Speaker Mike Johnson. This led to a new lawsuit claiming the state made race the predominant factor in redistricting, which violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Initially, Louisiana defended its map by arguing politics, not race, drove their decisions. But this summer, the Supreme Court dramatically shifted the case's trajectory with an ominous August order asking parties to brief whether race-conscious districting required by Section 2 could ever be constitutional under a colorblind interpretation of the Constitution.

Another time ignore long esalished prescedents. The race bit was just an added benefit to the bayou state.

This is when things got weird. In a stunning development this week, Louisiana abandoned its defense of the Voting Rights Act entirely. They're not even mailing it in. The state now argues that Section 2 is unconstitutional, declaring it wants out of what it calls "this abhorrent system of racial discrimination." 

Of course the oppressors feel discriminated against. It's not dicrimination, it's seething hate. Bless your hearts.

This leaves voting rights organizations, led by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as the sole defenders of what many consider the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement.

## The potential fallout

If Section 2 falls, the impact would be immediate and nationwide. Professor Hasen warns that legislative bodies across America would become less diverse and whiter. Which has always been their goral. The provision applies not just to congressional districts but to city councils, state legislatures, and any elected body that require drawndistrict lines . This extends far beyond the South to areas across the country where voting patterns split along racial lines.

Many prominent Black and Latino elected officials could lose their seats in subsequent redistricting efforts. States would be free to redraw maps without considering minority voting rights, potentially eliminating districts that currently ensure fair representation for communities of color.

## What's next

The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority has already gutted other parts of the Voting Rights Act in cases like Shelby County v. Holder. Louisiana v. Callais represents the next target in what appears to be a systematic dismantling of voting rights protections that have been in place since the height of the Civil Rights era.

The case will be heard when the Court's new term begins in October, with a decision expected by summer 2026\. The outcome could fundamentally reshape American democracy and minority representation in elected government at every level.

In the meantime, a donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a organization that does active good, might be in order.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The administration wants military women to know their place
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-administration-wants-military-women-to-know-their-place/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T13:54:47.000Z
The following summarizes [reporting by Tom Nichols for The Atlantic Daily, July 22, 2025](https://apple.news/A2kKwY4P6ToCC24Iljuu7Wg?ref=notunmindful.org). It also provides additinionl commentatry adn tries to connect additional dots.

The Trump administration's approach to military leadership has become increasingly clear over recent months. Under the direction of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, there appears to be a deliberate effort to remove women from the highest ranks of America's armed forces, rolling back decades of progress in military gender integration.

## The pattern is clear

The most recent example came last month. Vice Admiral Yvette Davids was abruptly removed from her position as superintendent of the Naval Academy. Davids made history in 2024 as the first woman to lead the prestigious Annapolis institution, but her tenure lasted only 18 months—well short of the typical three-to-five-year term. She was replaced by Lieutenant General Michael Borgschulte, a Marine, marking another first. A Marine had never led the Naval Academy.

This removal follows a series of high-profile firings that have \\ eliminated women from the most senior positions. The administration dismissed the following female leaders: 

- Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of naval operations
- Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female Coast Guard commandant
- Lieutenant General Jennifer Short, a senior military assistant to the secretary of defense
- Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the first female president of the Naval War College and later the U.S. military representative to NATO

## The ideology behind the purge

Secretary Hegseth has been remarkably transparent about his views on women in military leadership. In his 2024 book *The War on Warriors*, he explicitly criticized what he called "social engineering" by the political left, arguing against the integration of women into combat roles and senior positions. Hegseth wrote that "the Left needs every woman to be as successful as every man, so they've redefined success in a counterproductive way."

In his mind, they should be perhaps cleaning the officers' quarters.

This perspective reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of merit-based advancement. Hegseth appears to view the historic achievements of female military officers not as the result of exceptional service and capability, but as products of affirmative action or lowered standards. His characterization suggests that women who reached the military's highest ranks did so through some form of quota system rather than through the same rigorous evaluation process that governs all military promotions.

Every accusation is an admission Pete.

## A vision of military masculinity

Perhaps most telling is Hegseth's own description of his preferred military culture. He advocates for a return to what he sees as traditional military values, writing that the armed forces should focus on "forging young men (mostly) with skills, discipline, pride, and a brotherhood." His exclusion of women centers on the belief that "Men like women and are distracted by women. They also want to impress, and protect, women."

This paternalistic worldview fundamentally undermines the professionalism and capabilities of America's military personnel. It suggests that highly trained service members—individuals prepared to face the world's most dangerous threats—cannot be trusted to maintain focus and professionalism when serving alongside female colleagues.

The systematic removal of women from military leadership sends a chilling message throughout the armed forces. As civil-military relations scholar Nora Bensahel from Johns Hopkins University notes, this approach sends a clear signal to servicewomen and potential recruits that women are not welcome in the military's upper echelons, despite the fact that the military depends on female recruitment to meet its personnel needs.

This regression to a more homogeneous, male-dominated leadership structure represents a dramatic departure from the military's evolution over the past several decades. The armed forces had gradually recognized that effective leadership comes from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and that merit—not gender or, for that matter, race—should determine advancement.

So Pete is keeping the white bit of that silent, though it is literally tattooed all over him.

## Looking backward, not forward

The current administration's approach to military personnel appears driven by nostalgia for an earlier era—if not blatent misogyny. It' certainly not focused strategic thinking about 21st-century defense needs. The Pentagon has prioritized ideological purity over demonstrated competence. Thus, it risks losing some of its most capable leaders and has discouraged the next generation of female service members.

An administration that emphasizes "lethality" and military effectiveness is actively undermining both by removing proven leaders based on gender rather than performance. Oh the irony. This is not only a step backward for gender equality, but potentially a weakening of America's military readiness in an increasingly complex global security environment.

*Non in cactus futuri.*

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #5
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-5/
Last updated: 2025-08-29T13:20:31.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful this week (ending 29 August 2025). Posting was irregular this week as I had to care of other things.

## Friday

### [Trump administration returns traitor's portrait to West Point](https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-returns-traitors-portrait-to-west-point/)

The Pentagon is returning a portrait of General Robert E. Lee at the military academy, as the Trump administration seeks to restore honors for American figures who fought to preserve slavery.

## Thursday

### [When journalism also becomes a target: inside the neo-Nazi war freedom of the press](https://www.notunmindful.org/when-journalism-also-becomes-a-target-inside-the-neo-nazi-war-freedom-of-the-press/)

After he committed to unmasking extremist groups in North Carolina and beyond, reporter Jordan Green got a first-hand look at how a movement known as ‘militant accelerationism’ operates. We should all be worried.

### [Trump's federal takeover of DC echoes decades of racially charged rhetoric](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-federal-takeover-of-dc-echoes-decades-of-racially-charged-rhetoric/)

Trump’s rhetoric on DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime.

## Wednesday

### [Racism endures](https://www.notunmindful.org/racism-endures/)

Despite what we've been told, discrimination dangerously across social groups. And this PEW report summarizes what Americans think of it.*Non in cactus futuri.*

## Monday 

### [The Raids on Bolton's house is another dead canary in the coal mine](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-raids-on-boltons-house-is-another-dead-canary-in-the-coal-mine/)

FBI Raids John Bolton continuing the pattern of authoritarian retaliation, showing a coordinated federal action.

## Saturday (off schedule)

## [Just a reminder](https://www.notunmindful.org/just-a-reminder/)

Friend of Not Unmindful, Ty Seidule nails it again. And this isn't recent but a good reminder.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

## 

## 

## 

##
### Trump administration returns traitor's portrait to West Point
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-returns-traitors-portrait-to-west-point/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T01:04:57.000Z
As reported by [Greg Jaffe](https://www.nytimes.com/by/greg-jaffe?ref=notunmindful.org) in the New York Times, [the Pentagon's has decided to reinstall a portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to West Point](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/us/politics/pentagon-trump-confederate-lee-west-point.html?ref=notunmindful.org). This dramatically reverses recent, needed efforts to root out Confederate symbols from ourmilitary institutions. This represents the administration's commitment to what it calls "honoring history" rather than "erasing it."

As we've [documented previously](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-lives-on/) here, this isn't about preserving history—it's about perpetuating the Lost Cause mythology that has poisoned American understanding of the Civil War for over a century. The West Point portrait's reinstallation fits a troubling pattern that includes [restoring the Arlington Confederate Monument](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-lives-on/) and [reinstalling the Albert Pike statue in Washington, D.C.](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-return-of-a-confederate-general/)

This is the most recognizable move in this direction thus far though.

## The portrait's troubled history

The massive 20-foot painting depicts General Lee in Confederate gray with an enslaved person guiding his horse in the background. It hung prominently in West Point's library for seven decades before its 2022 removal. Its removal came as part of a congressionally mandated effort following the 2020 protests after George Floyd's murder. Lawmakers passed legislation requiring the removal of Confederate names and symbols from military installations.

A federal naming commission specifically ordered West Point to eliminate all displays that "commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy," leading to the portrait's placement in storage alongside the renaming of various campus locations bearing Lee's name, including Lee Barracks, Lee Road, and Lee Gate. 

One of the most forceful voices on this commission was fellow alumnus, General Ty Seidule. He is a renowned scholar on this symbolism and its use. [Read his book](https://a.co/d/3ai9tWT?ref=notunmindful.org)

## Administrative workarounds versus legality

The restoration raises significant legal questions. IT appears to directly contradict the 2020 federal law. Army Communications Director Rebecca Hodson defended the decision, stating that West Point is "prepared to restore historical names, artifacts, and assets to their original form and place" under the current administration's philosophy of honoring rather than erasing history. She is jus toeing the line from above and everyone knows it.

With the legality stark, the administration has employed creative workarounds elsewhere. Renaming military bases after obscure soldiers who shared surnames with Confederate generals provides an obvious example. 

For instance, rather than simply restoring Fort Lee's original name, they honored Private Fitz Lee, a Black Spanish-American War veteran, while Fort Bragg was renamed after Private Roland L. Bragg, who served in World War II.

This pattern of linguistic gymnastics mirrors what we've seen with other Confederate memorials. As [we noted regarding Pete Hegseth's restoration of the Arlington Confederate Monument](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-lives-on/), officials carefully avoid mentioning the Confederacy directly—instead using euphemisms like "reconciliation monument" to circumvent congressional prohibitions against Confederate commemoration while still serving their base.

This restoration does not even pretend to have the fig leaf of reconciliation or Masonic history. The man led a traitorous rebellion and waged war on the United States Army (calling it the Union is also disingenuous).

## Historical context 

The portrait's original installation in 1952 reflected the mid-20th century's effort to rehabilitate Lee's image as a revered military figure. General Maxwell Taylor spoke at its unveiling, arguing that Civil War divisions had "no real meaning to our present generation" —a statement made during the early days of military desegregation while Jim Crow laws still governed much of the South.

This historical context underscores the legacy surrounding Confederate symbols in military settings. The timing wasn't coincidental—as [we've explored regarding Stone Mountain and other Confederate monuments.](https://www.notunmindful.org/confederate-group-fights-to-preserve-dangerous-historical-myths-at-stone-mountain/) These installations typically occurred during periods of white supremacist resurgence, designed to intimidate and remind Black Americans of their "place" in society. 

While Lee did serve as West Point's superintendent and graduated near the top of his class, his decision to lead Confederate forces against the United States remains an act of treason. Venerating him for that sole bit seems like naming a college him where served for less than five years.

## What's next and how far will it go?

The reinstatement reflects the ongoing national debate over how America should commemorate its past, particularly regarding figures who fought to preserve slavery. It pits those who want to falsely glorify the country and mask any wrongdoing agains actual historians.

Chattel slavery was an evil institution. Native American genocide was an evil act. Full stop.

Despite all known facts, Trump has consistently praised Lee as "the greatest strategist of them all" and criticized efforts to remove Confederate monuments as attacks on American heritage. Pickett's charge was one great bit of strategy, no?

This decision will reignite debates about the appropriate place of Confederate symbols in federal institutions, especially military academies that train future American officers. The move represents a significant shift from the previous administration's efforts to confront the military's relationship with Confederate legacy.

The white-supremacists now want to openly embrace that legscy.

Restoring the painting also relates to a broader cultural campaign. As [we've documented regarding the Trump administration's review of Smithsonian museums](https://www.notunmindful.org/white-washing-the-smithsonian/), there's a systematic effort to reshape how America's premier cultural institutions present history. Will they remove what officials call "divisive or partisan narratives" while promoting a vision of American exceptionalism that glosses over uncomfortable truths about slavery and racial oppression. 

From [place names that glorify the racist past](https://www.notunmindful.org/southern-place-names-and-glorification-of-the-racist-past/) to federal monuments, this represents more than policy reversal—it's a deliberate embrace of Lost Cause mythology that has been used for over a century to minimize slavery's horrors and maintain white supremacist narratives.

As this story continues to develop, it highlights the persistent tensions between preserving historical memory and reckoning with the painful aspects of America's past—tensions that remain as relevant today as they were when the portrait was first hung over 70 years ago.

We must hold their feet to the fire on this. It's our *raison d' etre*.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Trump's federal takeover of DC echoes decades of racially charged rhetoric
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-federal-takeover-of-dc-echoes-decades-of-racially-charged-rhetoric/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T01:04:36.000Z
[An article by the AP argues President Donald Trump has taken unprecedented control of Washington DC's law enforcement and deployed National Guard troops to the nation's capital](https://www.mississippifreepress.org/trumps-rhetoric-on-dc-echoes-a-history-of-racist-narratives-about-urban-crime/?ref=notunmindful.org). Trump claims that extraordinary measures are necessary to address what he calls an urgent public safety crisis. 

The move has sparked fierce debate about federal overreach and revived troubling historical patterns of how politicians have characterized urban America.

## A "liberation day" that raises constitutional concerns

Trump framed his actions in dramatic terms, declaring "This is liberation day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back" and promising "historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse." 

District officials have questioned the underlying claims justifying his emergency declaration, with Mayor Muriel Bowser calling it a "so-called emergency" while acknowledging the federal takeover as "unsettling" but not unprecedented.

The deployment does raise significant questions about local governance and constitutional authority. According to the White House, National Guard troops will protect federal assets and create what they term "a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests." However, the administration has provided little clarity on how they define a "safe environment." This has led to concerns among civil rights advocates about potential overreach. Is this "safe environment" mainly a white one?

## A old political playbook

Trump's rhetoric and actions follow a well-established pattern that civil rights advocates say those in power have used for generations to justify aggressive federal intervention in cities with large non-white populations. Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, described this familiar "playbook." Politicians flat out lie to their benefit:

> "\[They\] aint a picture that crime is out of control, even when it is not true, then blame the policies of Democratic lawmakers that are reform- and public safety-minded, and then claim that you have to step in and violate people's rights."

This strategy has deep historical roots. President Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968 campaigning on "law and order" to appeal to white voters, while Ronald Reagan built both his presidential victories around similar themes. The pattern has continued through decades, with politicians from Rudy Giuliani to Bill Clinton citing crime concerns to justify taking power from local authorities.

## A broader target list and alarmed communities

Trump's focus extends well beyond Washington. During his announcement, he specifically criticized several major American cities—Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York—all currently led by Black mayors. 

> "You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is, we're not going to let it happen."

This targeting of minority-majority cities has prompted defensive responses from local leaders. Democratic Maryland Governor Wes Moore pointed to Baltimore's 30-year-low crime rate as evidence. He added that Trump should "consult local leaders rather than antagonize them." And we can all remember The Wire.Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee dismissed Trump's characterization as "fearmongering."For longtime Washington residents and activists, Trump's deployment feels both familiar and ominous. April Goggans, a grassroots organizer who has worked in the district for nearly a decade, said communities have been preparing for potential federal crackdowns since Trump's 2020 deployment of troops during racial justice protests following George Floyd's murder. She added:

> "Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated." 

Goggans further emphasized that the implications extend far beyond political affiliation.Monica Hopkins from the ACLU's DC chapter noted that Trump had "foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities." She also pointed to previous federal interventions, including "military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020," as examples of how federal control can lead to abuse and civil rights violations.

## A pattern of federal intervention

The current situation builds on earlier confrontations between Trump's administration and local authorities. Over the summer, Trump deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles for immigration enforcement operations, despite strong opposition from California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson has been particularly vocal in his opposition, calling Trump's DC action a "federal coup" and questioning the justification. "There's no emergency in D.C., so why would he deploy the National Guard?" Johnson asked, suggesting the move serves as a distraction from other controversies while undermining local self-governance.

The unfolding situation in Washington represents more than a local governance dispute—it's become a test case for how far federal authority can extend into local affairs and whether decades-old patterns of racially charged urban politics will define this administration's approach to American cities.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### When journalism also becomes a target: inside the neo-Nazi war freedom of the press
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/when-journalism-also-becomes-a-target-inside-the-neo-nazi-war-freedom-of-the-press/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T01:04:20.000Z
What began as [one reporter's investigation into a power grid attack has evolved into a chilling firsthand account of how militant neo-Nazi networks operate in America today](https://www.theassemblync.com/media/neo-nazi-militant-accelerationism-movement-north-carolina/?ref=notunmindful.org). Writing for *The Assembly*, Jordan Green's harrowing experience documenting extremist groups reveals not just the personal cost of investigative journalism, but also the sophisticated and dangerous evolution of white supremacist movements that should concern us all.

What follows is a summary of his story, which we should all heed.

## The investigation that started it all

In December 2022, someone shot up two electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina. This caused 40,000 customers to go without power for five days. An 87-year-old woman dependent on an oxygen machine died—a death later ruled a homicide. For Green, a reporter covering right-wing extremism, this incident smelled of something more sinister than random vandalism.

The attack occurred amid protests of a drag show, with Proud Boys members in attendance. Green recognized the hallmarks of "militant accelerationism"—a strain of white power violence that promotes terrorism and insurrection as means to establish a white ethno-state. 

And this wasn't an isolated incident. The FBI had already disrupted similar plots, including one by former Marines at Camp Lejeune who planned widespread blackouts to spark a race war.

Green's pursuit of the story led him deep into the dark corners of encrypted messaging platforms like Telegram, where he discovered channels celebrating the Moore County attack. One user, "BTC," had forwarded posts describing the sabotage as a "beautiful escalation." Characterizing the incident as sending "a terrifyingly clear message to the LGBTQ+ community." 

BTC would later be revealed as Matthew Robert Allison, a leader of the Terrorgram Collective—now designated as a global terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

## The network begins to emerge

Through his investigation, Green began mapping connections between disparate extremist groups. Names like Sean Kauffmann, leader of Tennessee Active Club, and Jarrett William Smith, a former soldier convicted of distributing bomb-making instructions, kept surfacing. 

The Blood and Soil Crew (also known as 2-1-19) appeared repeatedly in graffiti and online boasts, claiming responsibility for antisemitic vandalism across multiple states.These weren't isolated actors but part of a sophisticated network. 

When Kauffmann organized protests at LGBTQ+ events, he openly stated his goal was "essentially to intimidate" what he called "the antifascists, the child groomers, the homosexuals." The movement's rhetoric consistently dehumanized targets while celebrating violence.

## Then journalism becomes the target

Green's reporting quickly made him a target. In August 2023, the Appalachian Archives Telegram channel began doxxing him, publishing his home address, family photos, and personal information. The channel's mission statement was chillingly explicit: 

“To provide Tools of Privacy, Safety and Knowledge to the Activists and Operator. To expose those that attack our people from the Dark, bring them Forth to the Light. We will make it Dangerous for the Reporter to Report Freely.”  
–Mission statement for Appalachian Archives Telegram channel

This led to a campaign of escalating intimidation that would forever alter Green's family life. Anonymous tips suggested Kauffmann had ordered younger members to commit a drive-by shooting at Green's home and had attempted to recruit others to kill him. 

While no charges have been filed in connection with these allegations, the threats were credible enough that the FBI intervened under "duty to warn" protocols.

"Get somewhere safe."

The psychological warfare intensified with surveillance and harassment. A fake pizza delivery in January 2024 led to the FBI warning Green that his license plate was being circulated on extremist channels. Agents advised him to "get somewhere safe." Security footage later revealed a black pickup truck staking out his home, its occupant photographing Green from his front door.

## The photo-op that changed everything

The harassment campaign came to a head in February 2024\. Five men had traveled from multiple states to stage a Nazi salute photo on Green's front lawn. Led by Kauffmann, the group included Smith, David William Fair (founder of Southern Sons Active Club), and Kai Nix, an enlisted soldier at Fort Bragg who operated the doxxing channel.

Enlisted soldiers swear an oath to defend the constitution by the way.

The carefully orchestrated demonstration sent an unmistakable message. Kauffmann's sign read "Freedom of press ≠ freedom of consequence." Another participant wore a shirt referencing Nazi death squads. They then visited the historic marker commemorating the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, where KKK members and neo-Nazis killed five Communist Workers Party members—defendants who successfully claimed self-defense.

The message was clear: they believed they could silence critical reporting through violence with impunity.

## The human cost and transnational threat

For Green's family, particularly his 10-year-old daughter, the harassment campaign became a source of ongoing trauma. Hotel stays became routine whenever threats intensified or stories were published. 

The psychological toll was brought home when his daughter asked through tears:

"Why do you have to write these stories that make Nazis want to kill us?"

The threats weren't limited to online harassment. 

Anonymous messages warned that having his family at home created "a big danger for them." They also claimed the senders were "war trained" and knew how to use weapons. 

These communications bore signatures linking them to international extremist networks, including AAST, a Russian group connected to child exploitation networks.

Green's investigation revealed that militant accelerationism isn't just an American problem—it's a transnational movement, as evidenced above. The Terrorgram Collective claimed credit for a mass shooting at a gay bar in Slovakia. Italian authorities arrested young men accused of being part of Russian accelerationist networks. American teenagers participated in international channels sharing terrorist manifestos and tactical manuals.

These groups represent more than isolated extremists; they're part of a sustained desensitization program designed to lower inhibitions toward violence. Members exchange racist content and gore videos while goading each other toward increasingly brazen acts of intimidation and violence. The brutality will only increase.

## The current threat landscape

According to Jon Lewis, a researcher at George Washington University's Project on Extremism, the domestic terrorism threat has made Americans less safe. He points to troubling parallels between recent presidential communications and mass shooter manifestos, noting that language "would not be out of place in a mass shooter manifesto." This creates a "permissive environment" that could push others toward violence.

While militant accelerationists generally distrust the political process and remain wary of mainstream figures, they now operate in an environment where mainstream media figures endorse white supremacist conspiracy theories and political leaders embrace extremist parties abroad.

With this in mind, Green's story illuminates several critical points about the current extremist landscape:

- **Sophisticated organization**: These aren't lone wolves but networked actors who coordinate across state and international boundaries, sharing resources and intelligence
- **Targeting infrastructure**: The Moore County attack demonstrates extremists' recognition that targeting critical infrastructure can amplify their impact while creating widespread fear
- **Weaponizing technology**: Encrypted messaging platforms and social media enable rapid coordination while providing platforms for harassment and recruitment
- **Normalizing violence**: The sustained harassment campaign against Green represents a broader strategy to silence critics through intimidation, creating space for extremist activities to flourish unchallenged

This ain't grandpa's KKK.

## The stakes for democracy

These networks understand that silencing journalists creates operational space for more serious crimes. By making reporting "dangerous," they hope to operate with impunity. And thus far, it seems to be working. This is a direct assault on democratic institutions. A free press is essential to holding extremist movements accountable.

Green's experience suggests we may be witnessing a preview of things to come. 

As he notes, "the months of harassment and fear my family and I endured are a glimpse into what might lie ahead for others."

Understanding this threat requires recognizing that teenage extremists don't spontaneously decide to vandalize synagogues or intimidate drag show attendees. Instead, the networks direct them in various ways. 

As part of larger communities, they get ideological foundation, tactical guidance, and psychological reinforcement for escalating violence.

The rapid evolution of militant accelerationism, with new groups constantly emerging along a spectrum from nihilism to national socialism, demands urgent attention from law enforcement, policymakers, and civil society. As Green emphasizes, "It's urgent that we understand the threats to date, simply to have a workable baseline to assess what might unfold tomorrow."

Unfortunately, current investigations focus on petty retribution or imagined problems, not important issuesHis investigation, conducted at tremendous personal cost, provides that baseline. The question now is whether we'll heed the warning.

Despite facing sustained harassment and threats, Green continues his vital work documenting extremist movements and their threat to democratic society.Let us pay attention.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Racism endures
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/racism-endures/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T01:03:58.000Z
A comprehensive new survey from the Pew Research Center reveals the enduring reality of discrimination in American society. Majorities of Americans acknowledge that numerous groups face significant bias. The study, conducted in April 2025 among 3,589 U.S. adults, paints a sobering picture of how discrimination continues to affect multiple communities in this country. It cuts across racial, ethnic, religious, and other demographic lines.

## The scope of pereceived discrimination

The findings demonstrate Americans discriminatin viewed as a pervasive issue. They see it affecting a wide range of groups. At the top of Americans' concerns are immigrants in the country "illegally." 82% of respondents say this group faces at least some discrimination—including 57% who believe they experience "a lot" of discrimination.

The data also reveals troubling patterns for racial and ethnic minorities. Three-quarters of Americans (74%) say Black people face discrimination, while 72% say the same about Hispanic people. The study also shows that residents think Asian Americans also face a significant bias. 66% of respondents acknowledge discrimination against this group.

Beyond racial categories, the survey exposes discrimination concerns across many identities. Religious minorities face particular challenges. 74% of Americans say Muslims experience discrimination, and 72% say the same about Jews. 

The LGBTQ+ community also confronts substantial bias. 77% acknowledge discrimination against transgender people, and 70% recognize it against gay and lesbian individuals.

## Persistent and real bias against communities of color

The research data underscore that racism remains a defining feature of American society. While some may point to legal progress or changing attitudes, the survey reveals that discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities is widely recognized as an ongoing problem.

Because it is an ongoing problem. Systemic racism is real, and the curent lot have gutted the protections we fought decades to acquire.

Particularly striking is how Americans of different racial backgrounds perceive discrimination differently. Black adults are far more likely than others to recognize the severity of anti-Black discrimination—70% of Black respondents say Black people face "a lot" of discrimination, compared to just 28% of White adults. This disparity in perception itself reflects the ongoing challenge of racial understanding in America.

****People now no longer be able to walk a mile in someone else's shoes**

The persistence of anti-Hispanic bias is equally concerning. Hispanics represent the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States. That nearly three-quarters of Americans acknowledge discrimination against this community signals serious immigration and integration challenges ahead. People are not inherently illegal. We all where, at one time, new to these shores. We'd be wise to remember that, despite the entitlement built for some of us on the backs of those dragged here unwillingly.

Two-thirds of Americans recognize discrimination againt Asian Americans—a "model minority." are recognized by t. This acknowledgment contradicts those narratives from the right. Those seek to minimize or dismiss these real challenges Asian American communities face. And Blacks. And Hispanics. And LGBTQ people. And other immigrant groups (save white South Africans, hmmmmm.) 

## The partisan divide on discrimination

Perhaps most alarming is how political affiliation shapes Americans' willingness to acknowledge discrimination—a pattern that may hinder efforts to address bias effectively. The Pew Research Center found stark differences between Republicans and Democrats in recognizing discrimination against most groups.

Republicans are significantly less likely than Democrats to acknowledge discrimination against racial minorities. Only 54% of Republicans say Black people face discrimination, compared to 94% of Democrats. Similar gaps exist for Hispanic people (54% vs. 90%) and Asian people (51% vs. 83%).

This partisan divide extends beyond race. Republicans are less likely to recognize discrimination against immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women. However, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to see discrimination against White people, evangelical Christians, men, and religious people generally. Places where no discrimination effectively exists, other than as an anti-"woke" cudgel to score political point.

This polarization suggests that efforts to address bias may themselves become partisan issues. This would make meaningful progress almost impossible.

## Declining recognition of discrimination trends

Discrimination persists, this study found that Americans have become less likely to acknowledge it over the past year. This is primarily driven by changing Republican attitudes, while Democratic views have remained relatively stable. They are more allowed to show their true colors in public.

Between 2024 and 2025, the numbers of Republicans acknowledging discrimination dropped by roughly 10 percentage points for Black people (from 66% to 54%), Hispanic people (from 66% to 54%), and Asian people (from 66% to 51%.

This declining recognition of discrimination doesn't reflect actual improvements in discriminatory treatment. Instead, it may indicate growing political resistance to acknowledging bias or changing media narratives that downplay discrimination. So it is likely being under-reported or ignored.

The trend extends to religious groups as well. Americans are now less likely to say Muslims and Jews face discrimination than they were a year ago. The recognition of anti-Muslim discrimination fell to its lowest point in eight years of Pew tracking.

## Gender and other forms of bias

The survey also reveals that discrimination extends well beyond race and religion. Gender-based discrimination remains a significant concern. 64% of Americans say women face at least some discrimination, compared to just 34% who say the same about men.

These perceptions also swing dramatically by political affiliation and gender. Democratic women are most likely to recognize discrimination against women (85%), while Republican men are least likely (38%). Conversely, Republican men are most likely to say men face discrimination (51%).

Americans also recognize age-based discrimination59 % of Americans acknowledge bias. Compare this to bias for younger people (40%). Geographic discrimination is perceived as affecting rural residents (41%) more than city dwellers (33%).

## The oldest bias is religious bias

Religious discrimination remains a significant concern across faiths. Pew found that most Americans acknowledge discrimination against Muslims (74%) and Jews (72%). Bit it also states the obvious. Fewer recognize bias against evangelical Christians (43%) and—strangely—atheists (33%).

The recognition of anti-Jewish discrimination has fluctuated significantly in recent years, reflecting changing social and political dynamics. While it declined from 2024 to 2025, it remains higher than it was from 2017 to 2021.

The study doens't make it clear how they described anti-Jewish discrimination as precisely as I would have liked. We cannot conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Israel with anti-semitism.

## Implications and ramifications

The Pew Research Center's findings reveal a complex landscape where discrimination is widely acknowledged yet increasingly politicized. The data suggests several troubling realities:

- First, discrimination remains pervasive across multiple demographic categories, with racial and ethnic minorities, religious groups, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ individuals all facing significant bias. And we recognize this to some extent.
- Second, Americans' ability to recognize discrimination is increasingly shaped by political affiliation. This will hamper efforts to build consensus around addressing bias.
- Third, recognition of discrimination appears to be declining. This is particularly among Republicans, even as the underlying conditions that create discriminatory treatment may persist.

The survey results underscore that racism and other forms of discrimination are not historical artifacts but ongoing realities that require sustained attention and action. 

****The institutions still exist. And they still have great power.**

That majorities acknowledged that discrimination exists is heartening. It could even provide a foundation for progress, but the right wing will block it at every turn.

Moving forward, addressing discrimination will require not only policy interventions but also efforts to bridge the perception gaps that prevent Americans from building consensus around these challenges. In short, it will require a new government from top to bottom.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The Raids on Bolton's house is another dead canary in the coal mine
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-raids-on-boltons-house-is-another-dead-canary-in-the-coal-mine/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:56:16.000Z
[Based on a CNBC report by Dan Mangan](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/22/fbi-raid-john-bolton-trump-patel.html?ref=notunmindful.org), FBI agents conducted simultaneous raids on John Bolton's Maryland home and Washington D.C. office last week. Officials described as part of a "national security investigation in search of classified records." 

Ten FBI agents carried boxes from Bolton's M Street office, and the home raid began at 7 a.m. Each raid had a court-authorized search warrant.

Funny how this adminstration is using classified records as an excuse after all those found in Mar-a-Lago.

## Bolton's critical stance on trump-putin relations

The timing and context of these raids reveal concerning fascist undertones. Bolton, who served as Trump's national security advisor from 2018-2019, has since vocally critisized him. He has recently criticized the president about Trump's recent meetings with Vladimir Putin about ending the Ukraine war. 

Just days before the raid, Trump publicly attacked Bolton on Truth Social, calling him a "fired loser" and criticizing his opposition to the Putin meetings.

## Authoritarian raidds as a coordinated federal effort

### Public messaging campaign

The authoritarian implications become more apparent when examining the leadership responses. FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted "NO ONE is above the law" while his agents were conducting the raids, with Attorney General Pam Bondi retweeting this with "America's safety isn't negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always." [According to The New York Post](https://nypost.com/2025/08/22/us-news/patels-fbi-raids-john-boltons-home-in-high-profile-national-security-probe/?ref=notunmindful.org), Patel himself ordered the investigation into Bolton.

Of course their boss has been indicted on many counts. So o o e but Trump. Oh, and all those folks on the unsecure chat about military planing. Rich isn't it.

### A pattern of intimidation

Adding to these concerns, Trump had already canceled Bolton's Secret Service protection detail after taking office in January 2025, despite known Iranian assassination plots against the former advisor. When asked about the raids, Trump claimed ignorance but called Bolton a "lowlife," demonstrating his continued hostility toward his former aide.

## Retaliation, pure and simple

A person close to Bolton characterized the raids as "retribution, pure and simple" in response to Bolton's criticism of the Trump administration. This includes his book "The Room Where it Happened." This interpretation gains credibility given the pattern of Trump targeting critics and the fact that while the investigation allegedly began during the Biden administration, it was revived and executed under Trump's current term with his handpicked FBI leadership.

## Weaponizing federal law enforcement

The simultaneous nature of the raids, the public messaging from Trump's appointees, and the timing following Bolton's criticism of Trump's Russia policy all point to what appears to be the weaponization of federal law enforcement against a prominent administration critic. The coordinated response from multiple Trump appointees suggests this action was designed not just as an investigation, but as a public demonstration of consequences for opposing the administration.

When seen with the actions of ICE, it's pretty obvious where Trump wants this to go. And it's not pretty for those of us who believe in a democratic and just society.

*Non in cactus futuri.*

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### Just a reminder
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/just-a-reminder/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:55:58.000Z
Friend of Not Unmindful, Ty Seidule nails it again. And this isn't recent but a good reminder.

[Was the Civil War about Slavery? | PragerUColonel Ty Seidule clarifies the true causes of the Civil War, debunking myths about states’ rights and slavery.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-3.png)PragerU![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/thumbnail/Web__TySeidule_WasTheCivilWarAboutSlavery-optimized.jpg)](https://www.prageru.com/videos/was-the-civil-war-about-slavery?ref=notunmindful.org)

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #4
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-4/
Last updated: 2025-08-22T17:57:35.000Z
Here are links to what was published to Not Unmindful this week (18 August 2025).

I'm not sure what the schedule will be moving into next week. I have to fight the beast (C).

## Monday

### [Northern Virginia school districts lose federal funding over transgender policies](https://www.notunmindful.org/northern-virginia-school-districts-lose-federal-funding-over-transgender-policies/)

The Education Department says it’ll pull funding from five Virginia districts over gender policies.

### [The great capitulation: how our most powerful institutions bowed to Trump](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-great-capitulation-how-our-most-powerful-institutions-bowed-to-trump/)

Corporations and universities with the power to stand up to Trump are instead bowing to his authoritarianism and fascism.

## Tuesday

### [The war on education trickles down](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-war-on-education-trickles-down/)

Unintended casualties: how Trump's war on "elite" universities devastate America's community colleges.

## Wednesday

### [Civil rights under fire, again](https://www.notunmindful.org/civil-rights-under-fire-again/)

The Supreme Court's war on voting rights how Louisiana v. Callais could End American democracy as we know it.

## Thursday

### [The military won't save us](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-military-wont-save-us/)

The military's changing role under Trump "We Used to Think the Military Would Stand Up to Trump. We Were Wrong."

## Friday

### [We can't count on the Supreme Court](https://www.notunmindful.org/we-cant-count-on-the-supreme-court/)

The umpire picked a side: how John Robert and the Supreme Court is enabling fascism.
### We can't count on the Supreme Court
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/we-cant-count-on-the-supreme-court/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:55:33.000Z
As Ed Pilkington lays out in the Guardian, [the Supreme Court has lost its democratic mooring.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/justice-john-roberts-supreme-court?ref=notunmindful.org) They are with the fascism.

When Donald Trump thanked Chief Justice John Roberts after his 100-minute congressional address in March, observers wondered what prompted such gratitude. The answer has become clear. Roberts has since presided over the systematic dismantling of America's legal guardrails. All, in the service of Trump. The cour has enabled a move to authoritarianism with unprecedented judicial acquiescence.

They are what we feared.

## The shadow docket strangles democracy

In the past few months, the Supreme Courts granted Trump an extraordinary 18 consecutive victories on emergency relief requests. These decisions haven't come through normal judicial processes with public debate and deliberation. Instead, they've emerged from the court's "shadow docket." This is a secretive arena where momentous decisions affecting millions of lives are made at breakneck speed, often without explanation. And it sucks.

Seven of these orders came with no justification whatsoever, leaving Americans in the dark about the court's reasoning. This isn't just poor transparency—it's the hallmark of authoritarian governance, where power is exercised without accountability or public scrutiny. 

Seven of these orders came with no justification whatsoever, leaving Americans in the dark about the court's reasoning. This isn't just poor transparency—it's the hallmark of authoritarian governance, where power is exercised without accountability or public scrutiny. 

The human cost of these shadow rulings is staggering. Federal employees with decades of loyal service can now be fired at whim. Transgender service members face military purges. Over one million people from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and other nations are being stripped of their legal status. Immigrants are being deported to war-torn countries where their lives hang in the balance.

## Rewarding lawlessness

What makes Roberts's this dangerous is that he's not just supporting conservative policies—he's legitimizing outright lawlessness. 

Supreme Court scholar Steve Vladeck has documented how the court is approving "a truly unprecedented amount of lawlessness by the executive branch." Justice Sonia Sotomayor has repeatedly warned in dissenting opinions that her conservative colleagues are "rewarding lawlessness" and undermining the foundational principle that America is a "government of laws, not of men."

Trump hasn't merely pushed legal boundaries—he's obliterated them. His administration has:

- Violated the 1974 Impoundment Control Act by withholding congressionally approved funds
- Ignored constitutional birthright citizenship protections
- Defied federal court orders on deportations
- Fired federal commissioners without legal cause, usurping Congress's authority

And let's not forget emoluments.

The most chilling example: Trump's administration has deported individuals to dangerous third countries in direct defiance of federal judges who explicitly forbade such actions. Under international law, deporting people to places where they face torture is prohibited. Yet Roberts's court has turned a blind eye.

## Reading a 30s playbook

Roberts's judicial philosophy reveals a disturbing pattern that mirrors classic authoritarian tactics. Throughout his career, from his early days in the Reagan administration to his current role, he has consistently championed executive power while undermining institutional checks and balances.

His Reagan-era memos read like an authoritarian manifesto. He lambasted government officials who dared challenge presidential authority—eerily similar to Trump's war on the "deep state." Ranting of a senile mind. Cover that please.

He railed against civil rights protections and affirmative action programs. Most tellingly, he criticized federal judges for "unwarranted interference" in executive affairs. Today, his court routinely overturns lower court rulings that attempt to constrain Trump's lawless behavior.

The culmination of this philosophy was Roberts's authorship of *Trump v. US*, the devastating ruling that granted presidents absolute immunity for "official acts." This decision didn't just shield Trump from accountability for January 6th—it sent a signal that presidents are above the law. Legal expert Lisa Graves argues this ruling "paved the way for Trump's return" by suggesting "he could do no wrong."

Welcome to the American reich.

Ronald Reagan was the devil. He is why we are in this moment. Had Carter won in 1980, just imagine that. A decent man.

## Checks balances go to hell

What's particularly alarming is Roberts's willingness to undermine the federal judiciary itself. When lower court judges try to uphold the law against Trump's violations, Roberts's court consistently sides with the executive. This represents a fundamental breakdown of the separation of powers that forms the backbone of democratic governance.

Federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig, Roberts's longtime friend and wedding groomsman, has watched this transformation with horror. 

Federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig, Roberts's longtime friend and wedding groomsman, has watched this transformation with horror. 

That message is unmistakable. Institutional norms, congressional authority, and even direct court orders mean nothing when they conflict with presidential power.

## Foregoing the slip for an out and out hood

For two decades, Roberts cultivated an image as a moderate institutionalist. His famous "umpires don't make the rules" confirmation hearing performance convinced many he would be an impartial arbiter. But this carefully constructed persona has proven to be exactly that—a performance.

The mask has slipped completely under Trump's second term. While Roberts was willing to block modest student loan relief under Biden, citing executive overreach, he now greenligths Trump's wholesale violation of federal law. This isn't principled conservatism—it's partisan authoritarianism dressed in judicial robes.

Enabling fascism it the current line.

## Democracy's last line of defense fails

Roberts was supposed to be democracy's final bulwark against authoritarian overreach. The Supreme Court's role as the ultimate guardian of constitutional law makes its capitulation especially devastating. When the highest court in the land abandons the rule of law, there are no institutional safeguards left.

Legal expert Amrit Singh captures the gravity of the moment: 

"When district court orders are ignored, and the supreme court turns a blind eye, then the rule of law has already been sacrificed."

## Are we at the point of no return?

We all hope that Roberts will reassert judicial independence on major constitutional questions. But the damage is already done. By systematically legitimizing lawlessness through shadow docket rulings, Roberts has normalized authoritarian governance.

Every ignored court order, every fired federal employee (full disclosure my friends), every unconstitutional deportation weakens the institutional foundations of American democracy. These aren't temporary setbacks—they're precedents that future authoritarians will cite and expand upon.

Roberts's transformation from self-proclaimed umpire to Trump's judicial enabler represents more than hypocrisy—it's a betrayal of the constitutional order he swore to protect. In his pursuit of executive supremacy, the Chief Justice has become the architect of America's democratic collapse, one shadow docket ruling at a time.

If we do regain power. Pack the court. Or just ignore their BS.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The military won't save us
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-military-wont-save-us/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:55:13.000Z
In a sobering assessment of civil-military relations under the current Trump administration, former National Security Council officials Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argue that [the U.S. military no longer will serve as a constitutional bulwark against authoritarian overreach](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/opinion/trump-military-power.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.d08.tV0A.3pvuo4V5lVdD&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org) (NYT Guest Link).

Their analysis (in the New York Times) challenges previous assumptions about military resistance to questionable presidential directives.

## Military independence has eroded

The authors point to Trump's deployment of 800 National Guard troops to Washington D.C. They've been deplory ostensibly to address crime. But with crimes rates at new low, it's widely viewed as a "test case" for domestic military deployment. This follows the administration's use of military personnel in California for deportation efforts in June 2025\. 

Unlike Trump's first term, when generals like Mark Milley and James Mattis resisted certain orders, today's military leadership appears more compliant. Simon and Stevenson attribute this shift to systematic changes in military promotion practices. Trump has dismissed senior officers without cause while elevating loyalists like former National Guard General Dan Caine. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's firing of top Judge Advocates General further demonstrates the administration's prioritization of loyalty over legal expertise.

## The militarization of domestic policy

The essay details how the administration has restructured military involvement in domestic affairs. The Pentagon has redesignated military personnel from Title 10 to Title 32 status to enable "direct interaction with individuals in ICE custody." Additionally, ICE can now utilize National Guard forces in 20 states for immigrant processing.

This goes against long-standing tradition and precedent.

More significantly, Trump is effectively merging Northern Command (Northcom) and the Department of Homeland Security into a unified internal security apparatus. Both organizations were originally created after 9/11 to address external terrorist threats, but are now being repurposed for domestic operations.

Might I remind everyone that domestic terror is perpetrated by white supremacist males.

## Historical precedent and military culture

The authors draw a parallel to the Army's internment of Japanese Americans in 1942\. Officers carried out these orders despite knowing there was no legitimate security justification. Military culture naturally adapts to new missions, with pragmatic officers advancing over those who resist change.

Current military leadership has shown no public objection to officer dismissals or questionable deployments of Marines to California and Florida. This silence suggests institutional acceptance of the administration's domestic military strategy.

## The risk of escalation and uncertain outcomes

Simon and Stevenson warn that soldiers trained for combat, not law enforcement, may struggle with constabulary duties. We've seen this play out abroad, notably in Iraq. 

Military deployment in urban areas could also provoke armed confrontations with citizens, potentially giving the administration justification for further authoritarian measures.

The second amendment is their north star until is a black man with a gun.

California Governor Gavin Newsom's lawsuit challenging for judicial intervention. While a District Court initially ruled against the administration, the Court of Appeals reversed this decision. The authors suggest that only a unanimous Supreme Court ruling might compel Trump to respect constitutional limits, though they express skepticism about the Court's willingness to constrain presidential power.

I think we see were this will go.

We can no longer count on military institutions to resist authoritarian tendencies. This marks a major shift in the traditional civil-military balance. When the military is the arm of the administration domestically, bad things **will** happen.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Civil rights under fire, again
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/civil-rights-under-fire-again/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:54:34.000Z
It is happening here, make no mistake.

From the New York Times (gift link): one of our favorite columnists, Jamelle Bouie ([@jmellebouie.net](https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net?ref=notunmindful.org)‬.), columnists breaks it down 

The Supreme Court recently signaled its likely intent The Supreme Court recently signaled its likely intent to deliver a [devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/opinion/supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.fk8.NbcF.xRYq8hVkLKXI&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org). 

The case, *Louisiana v. Callais*, centers on Louisiana's congressional redistricting, but its implications stretch far beyond state lines—potentially dismantling the legal foundation that made multiracial democracy possible in America.

This latest challenge represents more than just another legal dispute over district lines. It could mark the final chapter in a decades-long campaign to strip away voting protections. The ones thant atcually maded america an Amerca for all.

## Louisiana case writ wide

Louisiana's demographic reality tells a familiar Southern story. Even though mearly one-third of residents are Black, state lawmakers drew just one congressional district where Black voters could realistically elect their preferred candidate (in 2022). This is textbook vote dilution—the systematic weakening of minority political power through strategic district drawing.

When civil rights groups sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a federal appeals court sided with them. It ordered Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district. The state complied, but then faced a counter-lawsuit from "non-African American" voters claiming the new map constituted illegal racial gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court's decision to hear this case comes with ominous instructions: the parties must address "whether the state's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments." This framing reveals the Court's likely conclusion—that remedying racial discrimination somehow constitutes racial discrimination itself.

And we all know where the current court majority stands—with fascism and bigotry.

## Roberts is the nemesis

Chief Justice John Roberts has spent decades targeting the Voting Rights Act, dating back to his days as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration. Having already gutted the Act's preclearance provision in 2013's *Shelby County v. Holder*, Roberts appears positioned to finish the job by rendering Section 2—and thus the entire law—meaningless.

 Under the current Court's vision of a "colorblind" Constitution, any consideration of race in drawing districts becomes suspect, even when that consideration aims to remedy documented discrimination. This approach ignores both historical context and present-day reality, treating efforts to ensure fair representation as equivalent to the very discrimination they seek to address.

Chief asshole in other words. he only care for white elites.

## American democracy the fourth and maybe final try

To understand what's at stake, we must recognize that American democracy—defined as a pluralistic, multiracial society of political equals—truly began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, not with the Constitution of 1787\. As President Lyndon Johnson observed when signing the Act, voting rights represent "the basic right without which all others are meaningless." The fourth version of our society.

The 15th Amendment had promised that voting rights couldn't be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," but for nearly a century, that promise remained hollow. Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright violence kept millions of Black Americans from the ballot box.

The Voting Rights Act demolished this architecture of disenfranchisement. Its effects were immediate and dramatic: Black voter turnout in the former Confederacy jumped from 25% in 1960 to over 60% in 1968\. Voter registration in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi doubled or tripled within two years.

## We've had four iterations

This is where Bouie is brilliant.

To understand what's at stake, we must recognize that American democracy—defined as a pluralistic, multiracial society of political equals—truly began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, not with the Constitution of 1787\. As President Lyndon Johnson observed when signing the Act, voting rights represent "the basic right without which all others are meaningless."

American democracy—defined as a pluralistic, multiracial society of political equals—is at stake. It truly began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, not with the Constitution of 1787\. As President Lyndon Johnson observed when signing the Act, voting rights represent "the basic right without which all others are meaningless."

The Voting Rights Act demolished this architecture of disenfranchisement. Its effects were immediate and dramatic: Black voter turnout in the former Confederacy jumped from 25% in 1960 to over 60% in 1968\. Voter registration in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi doubled or tripled within two years.

This is what they want to kill.

*Louisiana v. Callais* threatens to end this fourth republic by gutting the legal mechanisms that made multiracial democracy possible. If the Supreme Court rules that creating majority-minority districts violates the Constitution, it will effectively eliminate the primary tool for ensuring fair representation in a racially polarized society.

The timing is no coincidence. This assault on voting rights aligns with broader attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education, and pluralistic society itself—the fascist *modus operandi* of now.

They will condemn multiracial democracy to "the ash heap of history" and return to a system where political power remains concentrated among a shrinking white majority.

Sixty years after the Voting Rights Act promised to make democracy real for all Americans, the Supreme Court seems poised to declare that promise unconstitutional. The question now is whether we'll defend the democracy we've built—or watch it disappear.

We must stop them. Call all your representatives and urge the passage of he John Lewis voter rights act.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The war on education trickles down
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-war-on-education-trickles-down/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:54:09.000Z
Ben Austen, in The New York Times Magazine, recently laid out the consequences of the Trump administrations razed earth policies on higher education ("[How Trump's War on Higher Education Is Hitting Community Colleges](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/magazine/trump-community-college-anti-dei.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.fU8.Vrp0.xfuvNN-aQLXo&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org)," August 4, 2025).

As many of you know, my opportunity at W&L was transformative for me. This is why I fight. But I also have family that had transformative experiences at Virginia's community colleges (Blue Ride and Mountain Gateway, in particular). That meant just as much to them as mine did to me. And everyone is built different when it comes to learning and goals. Community colleges are super important. What follows is a summary of Austen's investigation.

As shown above, in a hydraulics classroom at Delta College near Saginaw, Michigan, instructor Robert Luna Jr. watches as his evening students—factory workers still in their boots and uniforms from their day jobs—methodically build and rebuild pressurized circuits. These men, employed by major companies like Dow and Nexteer Automotive, are here to advance their careers, moving from apprentice machinists to full journeymen. Their employers pay for the training because they need skilled workers. It's a quintessentially American story of upward mobility through education.

But this classroom scene, described in Austen's recent New York Times investigation, represents something much larger and more vulnerable than it might appear. Community colleges play a critical role in America's economy and social mobility. And that is now under threat.

## The crisis spans all society's strata

While the Trump administration has declared war on elite universities like Harvard and Columbia, freezing billions in research grants and attacking institutional autonomy, the collateral damage has spread far beyond the ivory towers. America's 1,100 community colleges also face an existential crisis. They educate 6.4 million undergraduates annually—roughly 40% of all college students. This is more than twice the enrollment of all the highly selective institution combined.

Dark irony yet again. Policies designed to punish wealthy, prestigious, "woke" universities also devastate those institutions that serve working-class Americans, first-generation college students, and the skilled workforce that keeps local economies humming.

In other words, poor people get the shaft again too—all in the name of being "anti-woke". The death of empathy hurts everyone.

## The hidden infrastructure of economic growth

Community colleges function as the unsung heroes of American economic development. At Durham Tech in North Carolina, students train on robotic medical mannequins and work with pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk, which recently donated $6 million for a new life-sciences facility. When the city of Durham faced a shortage of emergency-dispatch operators, the college developed a credentialing program in under three months.

This rapid response capability isn't unique to Durham Tech. Across the country, community colleges serve as the workforce development arms of their local economies, partnering with employers to provide precisely the training needed for available jobs. They're producing the nurses, technicians, electricians, and skilled manufacturers that keep communities functioning.

These are the essential workers that are often on the front lines of any crisis.

Mike Gavin, president of Delta College and a leading voice for community colleges, put it simply: 

"While elite universities 'go out and identify talent,' community colleges' job is 'talent development.'"

They accept everyone and then do the hard work of helping historically underserved students catch up and succeed.

People like my family.

## Devastating cuts

The administration's assault on higher education has hit community colleges in multiple ways:

### **Financial aid** 

Proposed cuts to Pell Grants, which help low-income students pay for college, directly target community college students—three-quarters of whom attend part-time while working jobs. 

The elimination of TRIO grants, designed to support first-generation college students, removes crucial support for students like James Martin at Durham Tech, whose family has no history of college attendance. And would have affected no less than five of my own cousins, were this implemented in the 90s. But Clinton, for all his faults, gave a shit then.

A Pell Grant made my own education a reality. I was also first generation. This is why I am angry.

### **Workforce development** 

Federal grants supporting cybersecurity, semiconductor, and automotive technology training have been canceled. The Department of Education eliminated millions in teacher training funds, calling programs "divisive" and "inappropriate."

This is why Russia and China are happy. They see the pipeline of hackers and security experts drying up here as they institionalize them.

### **Diversity programs**

The administration's war on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has forced community colleges to shutter programs designed to recruit women and minorities into high-demand fields. Durham Tech lost Department of Labor funding for its Hope Renovations partnership, which trained women for construction jobs—a program with 77% job placement rates in an industry facing severe labor shortages.

I worked in road construction as a summer job in my student days, and the women and minorities were the hardest workers on the crew. I'd go to war for them and in a sense, I am.

### **Student support services**

Cuts to English-as-a-second-language programs threaten nearly 300,000 students in California alone. I taught these classes as an associate at William & Mary while earning my master's there. This was the most fulfilliing expereience I have.

Emergency assistance funds that help homeless students and food pantries serving 500 students monthly at schools like Durham Tech now face uncertain futures. Again, empathy loses.

## This really hurts people

The statistics tell only part of the story. Laura Harris, a Costa Rican immigrant and single mother at Durham Tech, relied on the school's comprehensive support system. This ranged from English-learner classes to a food pantry she worked toward transferring to UNC Chapel Hill to study psychology. rewardStudents like Harris represent the American dream in action: immigrants and first-generation college students using education to transform their lives and contribute to their communities.

But as federal support evaporates, these pathways to mobility are closing. Community college leaders report students feeling unwelcome and questioning whether they belong in higher education. In Texas, more than half of LGBTQ college students now feel unwelcome and are considering leaving school entirely.

## The economic stupidity

The administration's policies reveal a fundamental contradiction in current political rhetoric. While promoting domestic manufacturing and job creation, federal actions are undermining the very institutions that train the workforce for these jobs. Currently, 400,000 factory jobs sit vacant across America—positions that community college graduates could fill if the training infrastructure remains intact.

Community colleges operate on budgets that four-year institutions would find laughably small, yet they deliver enormous returns on investment for their regions. As one anonymous community college leader told Austen: 

Get care at a local doctor's office, or prepped for surgery at a hospital, or treated after an accident, or have someone come to your home to do repairs—those are all community-college grads, all of them."

## A resistance network

In response to this crisis, community college leaders have formed Education for All, an improvised coalition led by figures like Gavin and Keith Curry of Compton College. The group, which has grown to 2,200 members including 250 community college presidents, provides legal guidance, strategic planning, and emotional support to institutions navigating an increasingly hostile environment.

Unlike elite universities with teams of lawyers, most community colleges can't afford in-house counsel. Education for All fills this gap, helping schools distinguish between actual legal requirements and mere threats, preventing overcompliance that could unnecessarily restrict their mission.

We should support them whenever and however we can.

## The bridge and how we can maintain it

The assault on community colleges represents more than educational policy. It attack the economic mobility and regional prosperity of Trump's base. These institutions serve as bridges, bringing women, racial minorities, immigrants, and first-generation students into higher education and skilled careers. The minute brown people or women succeed, they hate you. 

They're the engines of local economic development, training workers for specific regional needs while maintaining affordability and accessibility.

Basic economic reality should transcend political ideology. But we the people are not their true targets. They disdain us all.

As Gavin notes, it's "far too late to stop the war on higher education," but community colleges may hold the key to reframing how Americans view the entire educational sector. These institutions embody the democratic promise of education—open access, affordability, and pathways to better lives within local communities.

The hydraulics class at Delta College where this story began illustrates what's at stake. Luna's students aren't just learning to troubleshoot circuits—they're troubleshooting their own economic futures, using education to advance from apprentices to journeymen. They represent the millions of Americans who depend on community colleges for economic mobility and the thousands of communities that depend on these institutions for economic vitality.

The question now is whether American policymakers will recognize community colleges' worth. They act as essential engines for prosperity and opportunity. This is still the American dream. And community colleges make it possible for working families across the nation.

As the Trump administration continues its assault on education, the stakes extend far beyond university campuses to the very foundation of American economic mobility and community prosperity. The collateral damage to community colleges isn't just an educational crisis—it's an economic and social catastrophe that will reverberate through communities for generations to come.

As ever, *Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The great capitulation: how our most powerful institutions bowed to Trump
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-great-capitulation-how-our-most-powerful-institutions-bowed-to-trump/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:49:01.000Z
How do we live in a world were the leading lights of responsible journalism are Rolling Stonee (which has a lot to make up for), Teen Vouge, and most surprisingly of all, Wired magazine, which had become a bit of a joke in the industry it covers.

Most recently, [Rolling Stone detailed how great America institutions](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-corporations-universities-executives-caving-fascism-1235409987/?ref=notunmindful.org)[ chose submission over resistance to authoritarianism](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-corporations-universities-executives-caving-fascism-1235409987/?ref=notunmindful.org). From Silicon Valley giants to Ivy League universities, corporate titans to big-city mayors, the response has been disturbingly uniform: to bend the knee.

These institutional surrenders that should alarm anyone who values democratic principles. These aren't small, vulnerable organizations being steamrolled—they're trillion-dollar corporations, massive news organizatinos, and prestigious universities. They all have the resources, legal firepower, and public influence to resist. Instead, they've chosen to "create a glide-path" for fascism.

## A presidential protection racket

This doesn't involve stereotypical gangsters threatening to break legs if you don't pay. It's much white collar than that. Major media companies are paying what looks like extortion money disguised as legal settlements.

### **Disney**

Disney's agreed to pay a $16 million settlement for a Geoerge Stephanopoulous report. The ABC's reporter accurately described Trump's sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll as "rape". This was the precedent. The company settled a weak defamation case by donating $15 million to Trump's future library. It also paid $1 million in legal fees—despite a judge explicitly stating that Carroll's assault could indeed be described as rape in common usage.

### **Paramount, Skydance, and CBS News**

Paramount and Skydance went even further, paying $16 million to settle Trump's frivolous lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. The companies, seeking federal approval for an $8 billion merger, threw in additional concessions: 

- Goodbye Stephen Colbert
- Hello to a "viewpoint diversity" overseer(i.e., politcal officer) at CBS
- All DEI programs eliminated

CBS had already lost Bill Owens, thee executive producer of its news flagship, 60 Minutes. 

****"\[It has\] become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.” – Bill Owens**

Trump has also brazenly announced he expected another $20 million in advertising, bringing his total haul to over $36 million.

### **The Washington Post tries preemption**

Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos announced a "significant shift" at The Washington Post, restricting the opinion section to two editorial "pillars": free markets and personal liberties, while excluding opposing viewpoints. Editorial page editor David Shipley resigned rather than lead this transformation. 

Post staffers publicly criticized the move as abandonment of journalistic principles and "self-interested agenda," while conservatives celebrated. 

The overhaul follows Bezos blocking the paper's Kamala Harris endorsement, which triggered 250,000 subscription cancellations and multiple staff resignations. Former editors called the changes a betrayal of the Post's principles, with some vowing never to write for the paper again under Bezos's ownership.

t doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see this an abondonment of journalistic integrity for the Trump administration's approval.

### Sucking up across the board

These aren't business decisions—they're tribute payments and evasive actions to appease an authoritarian regime.

## Tech companies capitulate

Silicon Valley's response has been particularly nauseating. The industry that once prided itself on disruption and independence has become a parade of billionaires bending the knee at Mar-a-Lago.

### **Apple's gold-plated bullshit**

Tim Cook's performance stands out for its sheer obsequiousness. The Apple CEO didn't just attend Trump's inauguration after donating $1 million—he personally hand-assembled a 24-karat gold desk ornament for the Oval Office. His reward? Exemptions from Trump's China tariffs for smartphones and computers. 

### **Amazon's sweetheart deal with Melania.**

Amazon inked a $40 million deal with Melania Trump and brought The Apprentice exclusively to Prime Video. Bezos's rocket company Blue Origin conveniently won a $2.3 billion Space Force contract.

### **Meta as MAGA enabler**

Mark Zuckerberg's transformation from Trump critic to his enabler exemplifies the moral bankruptcy. Meta paid $25 million to settle Trump's lawsuit over his post-January 6th deplatforming, eliminated fact-checking (earning FCC approval), reversed policies protecting LGBTQ users from hate speech, and jettisoned all diversity initiatives. 

Zuckerberg has even shut down a free school serving underrepresented minorities.

### **Open AI is the scarecrow and lion in Oz simlultaneously**

Sam Altman went from calling Trump "an unprecedented threat to America" to flattering him at the Stargate AI announcement: "We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President." OpenAI now provides its platform to federal agencies for $1 annually, effectively making the government dependent on their technology.

In short, these are all assholes that care more about laying low for sweetheart deals and increased profits in the short term. Don't be evil my ass (Alphabet is hell for other, more insidious reasons).

## Universities under siege surrender

Higher education's actions have been particularly devastating for vulnerable student populations. Universities that could afford lengthy legal battles instead chose to sacrifice principles for federal funding. And I'd never thought I'd write defending Harvard's steel, but event that may be wavering.

### **Penn**

The University of Pennsylvania banned transgender athletes and erased swimmer Lia Thomas's records to unlock $175 million in frozen federal funds. President J. Larry Jameson publicly apologized to those who "experienced anxiety" due to transgender inclusion—a breathtaking betrayal of students under his care.

### **Columbia**

Columbia University paid $221 million to resolve fabricated antisemitism charges while agreeing to abandon diversity in admissions and hiring. The 22-page agreement forbids using "diversity narratives" or any reference to racial identity in applications.

### **Brown**

Brown University's $510 million concession may be the most harmful. The institution committed to denying gender-affirming care to minor transgender students and appears to exclude trans students from single-sex bathrooms and housing, making the university "functionally inaccessible" to transgender students, according to LGBTQ advocates.

### **UVA**

The meddling at th University of Virginia was direct. President James E. Ryan resign under pressure from the Trump administration to step down amid the Justice Department’s probe into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices. As Ryan said: 

****“To make a long story short, I am inclined to fight for what I believe in, and I believe deeply in this University. But I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job."**

## Corporate Cowardice Across Industries

The rot extends beyond tech and education. Target's CEO Brian Cornell reversed diversity initiatives that he had previously credited with "much of our growth over the last nine years." The NCAA banned transgender women from competition, with former GOP governor Charlie Baker framing discrimination as "bringing much needed clarity."

Go shop at Costco instead, who staunchly stand defiant in support of diversity.

Even blue-city mayors have capitulated. Washington D.C.'s Muriel Bowser dismantled Black Lives Matter Plaza to appease the White House, only to see federal troops invade her city anyway. D.C.'s reward, a pilot program for a police state as National Guard troops from red states arrive there for optics.

In Portland, mayor Keith Wilson stripped racial and gender preferences from city programs. He did so to protect $350 million in grants. Local NAACP president James Posey condemning the "normalization of political coercion."

## History will judge, but we can only save ourselves

All the systemic bulwarks against fascism are caving like a house of cards. This institutional surrender represents more than individual acts of cowardice—it's a systematic dismantling of checks and balances that protect our democracy. These capitulations to authoritarian demands are more than just protecting their bottom lines. They legitimizing and enable further abuses of power.

The pattern is clear: threaten federal funding, file frivolous lawsuits, and watch America's most powerful institutions fold. These organizations have the resources to fight, the legal standing to resist, and the public platform to expose authoritarian overreach. Instead, they have chosen short-term financial protection over long-term democratic preservation.

The fascist goodellas don't even need to break a sweat, much less a leg.

History will remember this moment not for the authoritarian's demands, but for the shameful ease with which America's supposed guardians of democracy chose collaboration over resistance. When fascism came to America, it didn't need to break down doors (though ICE does plenty of that too)—the institutions opened them voluntarily.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Northern Virginia school districts lose federal funding over transgender policies
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/northern-virginia-school-districts-lose-federal-funding-over-transgender-policies/
Last updated: 2025-10-07T00:48:23.000Z
The Washington Post reports that [the Education Department is putting the pressure on Virginia schools over their transgender policies](https://apple.news/AWyyioG2nQ0KXXPAf3Rd2wA?ref=notunmindful.org).

ive Northern Virginia school districts face the loss of federal funding after refusing to change policies that support transgender students. The Education Department announced Friday that it would begin suspending financial assistance to districts in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William counties, and Alexandria.

## What's happening

These districts allow transgender students to use bathrooms and facilities matching their gender identity. Following a complaint by America First Legal—a conservative group founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—the Education Department determined these policies violate Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination.

Do we need reminding that Stephen Miller is a primary architect of Project 2025 and an unmitigated [racist](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/stephen-millers-affinity-white-nationalism-revealed-leaked-emails/?ref=notunmindful.org) and [anti-trans bigot](https://www.them.us/story/stephen-miller-donald-trump-deputy-chief-of-staff-policy?ref=notunmindful.org). 

The federal agency gave the districts until Friday to comply with demands including rescinding existing gender identity policies and adopting "biology-based definitions" of male and female. All five districts refused, with officials arguing their policies comply with federal and state antidiscrimination laws while creating safe learning environments.

## A huge financial hit

The funding cuts represent significant financial losses. Fairfax County, Virginia's largest school district, risks losing up to $160 million in federal support. Loudoun County stands to lose approximately $47 million from its $2.5 billion budget, while Alexandria faces a $20 million reduction. 

These funds support special education, nutrition programs, and additional resources for serving low-income students. So it's also about screwing over the poor too.

## Districts respond

School officials across the affected districts maintained unified opposition to the federal demands. Fairfax County stated it had demonstrated how its policies align with existing law. I also requested the Office of Civil Rights halt further action pending court clarification. 

Arlington's leadership emphasized that federal and state laws "require us to uphold our current policy." And Prince William requested continued dialogue to find solutions serving their diverse student community.  

LGBTQ advocacy groups praised the districts' stance. They noted that thousands of residents had urged officials to maintain the protections. Research indicates transgender students represent about 1.18% of Virginia's teenage population. But they face higher rates of mental health challenges and suicide attempts.

The funding cuts align with broader Trump administration efforts to roll back transgender youth resources, including recent executive orders targeting gender-transition care funding and threatening schools that allow transgender students in girls' sports.

And we've also seen, poor people, regardless of gender or color, also will suffer. And they don't care.

The school districts now face the challenge of maintaining services while pursuing legal remedies to restore their federal funding.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Not Unmindful weekly digest #3
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/not-unmindful-weekly-digest-3/
Last updated: 2025-08-15T19:17:28.000Z
It's been busier than usual on the site this week. My ongoing goal is to publish one story a day during the work week, but the stories within our purview just keep coming and there are still many I can't get to. So posting has been heavier than normal because of what is happening and my actual availability.

I will still occasionally send out a longer story on it's own, but most will be captured here.

All that said, here are the stories we posted on the site the week of August 11, 2025.

## Monday

### [Trump administration takes new aim at higher education with new directives.](https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-takes-new-aim-at-higher-education-with-new-directives/)

The administration tightens it's grip on higher education, trying to exert more control on who colleges enroll and which grants are funded.

### [Turning back the clock, women's suffrage edition](https://www.notunmindful.org/turning-back-the-clock-womens-suffrage-edition/)

Hegseth reposts video on social media featuring pastors saying women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

## Tuesday

### [An assault on civil rights 60 years in the making](https://www.notunmindful.org/an-assault-on-civil-rights-60-years-in-the-making/)

Sixty years after its groundbreaking passage, the Voting Rights Act faces its gravest threats yet. It has evolved into a legal battlefield where the very foundations of American democracy are being contested.

### [The Lost Cause lives on](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-lives-on/)

Hegseth's order to restore a confederate memorial (without calling it what it is) perpetuates America's most pernicious historical lie.

## Wednesday

### [VCU preemptively caves on DEI](https://www.notunmindful.org/vcu-caves-on-dei/)

VCU scrubs race references from scholarships amid federal DEI crackdown.

### [LGBTQ+ rights back in the crosshairs](https://www.notunmindful.org/lgbtq-rights-back-in-the-crosshairs/)

Supreme Court may face first direct challenge to same-sex marriage rights Since 2015, courtesy of Kim Davis, of course (15 minutes weren't enough).

## Thursday

### [White-washing the Smithsonian](https://www.notunmindful.org/white-washing-the-smithsonian/)

White House orders sweeping review of Smithsonian Museums to ensure they align with their mythologies.

### [Civil servants at risk](https://www.notunmindful.org/civil-servants-at-risk/)

First they came for the universities. Now for the expertise in state craft. Federal workers are now also under fire. How a pro-Trump group Is waging war on civil servants.

### [Update](https://www.notunmindful.org/the-return-of-a-confederate-general/) on the Pike Statue story:

Pike didn’t serve in the Confederate Army for long before resigning in July 1862 after he was [accused](https://www.newsweek.com/washington-confederate-statue-albert-pike-2108887?ref=notunmindful.org) of committing war crimes against Union soldiers. And he's thus honored? Jeebus. These assholes.

## Friday

### [DHS goes fully fascist in plain sight](https://www.notunmindful.org/dhs-goes-fully-fascist-in-plain-sight/)

DHS's troubling social media campaign is more than mere "mean memes." It's full on use of imagery from fascist and white supremacist propaganda.

###
### DHS goes fully fascist in plain sight
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/dhs-goes-fully-fascist-in-plain-sight/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:14:11.000Z
[As detailed in The New Republic](https://newrepublic.com/article/199094/dhs-neo-nazi-memes-no-surprise?ref=notunmindful.org), the Department of Homeland Security's recent social media recruitment drive has sparked controversy and outrage. The implications of this campaign run deeper than "edgy" or "mean" government messaging. What appears to be a crude online marketing for immigration enforcement positions uses neo-Nazi dog whistles, imagery, and white nationalist propaganda. All of this is very calculated.

## Obvious red flags abound

The most egregious example came in a recent post from @DHSgov featuring an AI-generated cartoon of Uncle Sam choosing between road signs labeled "Cultural Decline," "Homeland," "Invasion," and "Opportunity." The caption read "Which way, American man?"—a direct reference to the 1978 white nationalist foundational text, *Which Way, Western Man?* 

William Luther Pierce III wrote this book, which was published by neo-Nazi press National Vanguard Books. Pierce also wrote *The Turner Diaries.* This racist novel inspired the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and influenced the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

This wasn't an isolated incident. Other recent DHS posts have included:

- A message calling immigrants an "existential threat" accompanied by a militaristic video aesthetically reminiscent of the darnker Batman movies
- [A post featuring the 1872 painting "American Progress," depicting white settlers displacing Indigenous people](https://www.notunmindful.org/americana-becomes-anti-immigrant-propaganda/)
- A caption with language eerily similar to the neo-Nazi "14 Words" slogan about securing white children's future

When questioned about these posts, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin dismissed criticism. She said the administration is "unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage."

## Willful blindness

DHS knows exactly what these references evoke. The agency has historically monitored domestic violent extremism, including white nationalist groups. The department has downplayed white supremacist threats, while focusing enforcement on Muslims, immigrants, and left-wing activists. Even as white supremacists have perpetuated the most terror attacks in the U.S.

This bias was evident as far back as the 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally. Despite being advertised as the largest far-right gathering in recent memory, DHS's intelligence bulletin characterized it as a "free speech event" and identified "anarchist extremists" as the primary threat, not the thousand white nationalists who actually attended. 

Law enforcement "stood back and stood by," as one observer noted, until James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.

I've stood on Heather Heyer way. I have friends that work at the CDC. I've been to Charleston. I've been to Pittsburgh. I live in Atlanta, where Eric Rudolph perpetuated multiple attacks. The source of all these attacks? Radical white supremacists.

Congress also has ignored this trend, focusing on Muslim extremism, where no has really existed here. The agency's 2009 paper warning about domestic violent extremism was later repudiated and the team behind it disbanded. Every part of government has ignored the white supremacist threat. And now they use it.

## Built to a purpose

DHS's current behavior isn't an aberration—it reflects the agency's fundamental nature. Created as part of the "global war on terror," it was designed from the start with an exclusionary mindset. As legal scholar Patricia J. Williams observed in 2001, the very term "homeland" sounded exclusionary and was calculated to "denationalize and fuse enemy status with that of domestic criminality."

The agency didn't reluctantly accept weaponization under the current administration; it eagerly embraced the mass deportation mission, adopted its language, and became its online standard-bearer.

When the White House responded to the criticism by declaring they "won't apologize for posting banger memes." This has revealed how this casual cruelty has become normalized. This isn't just about poor social media judgment (there is plenty of that to go around though)—it's about a federal agency actively recruiting from and appealing to white nationalist networks while systematically downplaying the very threats these groups represent.

The masked agents and brutal enforcement tactics should have made this clear already, but DHS's unhinged online propaganda confirms how proud our government has become of dehumanizing people—and how desperately it wants others to join in.

And many will eagerly heed this call if the history of this country has taught us anything at all.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Civil servants at risk
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/civil-servants-at-risk/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:13:46.000Z
Reuters recently published a long special feature on[ how Trump aligned groups are trying to "root out" ~~communists~~ subversive federal workers](https://www.reuters.com/investigations/pro-trump-group-wages-campaign-purge-subversive-federal-workers-2025-08-07/?utm%5Fsource=Facebook&utm%5Fmedium=Social&fbclid=IwY2xjawMG-wtleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFnd3JTYWhBUk1hMnRBT3cyAR6eVR7AHuyIT3p5c8wU1CpTt1omkCa3AsvynppdN1RUmRbYTM7FUc%5FQ2BwXLA%5Faem%5Fcn9bl-qLTyk4k3jU-zIcLQ). *\[Ed. note: strikethrough is mine.\]*

In an unprecedented campaign, a pro-Trump organization has systematically targeted federal employees through online "watchlists." It reads like something from a dystopian nove. The campaign has already upended lives, destroyed careers, and forced some Americans to flee their own country. 

The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) has created what amounts to digital wanted posters for civil servant as enemies of the state for doing their jobs—nothing more. *\[Ed. Note: will not link to these asshats.\]*

## Political warfare with a human cost

As the report notes, Stefanie Anderson never imagined she'd have to ask whether her children were safe. She is a longtime public health worker who was deployed to Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis and worked on HIV prevention programs. 

She found herself staring at her own photo on AAF's "DEI Watchlist" in February. Her telephone immediately began ringing with 30 calls daily from unknown numbers. The caused a devastating and immediate impact on her life. Anderson changed her hairstyle to avoid recognition, stayed indoors, rerouted packages from her home, and constantly reminded her children to lock doors and check security cameras. As a Black woman, she said the experience reminded her of 19th-century fugitive slave advertisements. 

****"It made me feel like a criminal on a wanted poster."**

Her story isn't unique. Across the country, federal employees of all backgrounds have been living in fear:

- A stranger who recognized her from the list confronted a mother at a Maryland library
- Someone calling her a "traitor" shattered windows in an immigration judge's home in Texas
- A CDC employee in Georgia required police protection outside her home for a week (on top of everything else they've had to endure)

Many workers have deleted their social media accounts, bolstered home security, and sought therapy for anxiety and depression because of harassment.

They are being treated as enemies of the state.

## The watchlist machine

Since October, AAF has published three distinct watchlists targeting different segments of the federal workforce:

### The DHS Watchlist

This has branded 60 federal employees as "targets" for their immigration work, including nearly a dozen immigration judges. 

### The Education Department list

This identifies staff in the department as "political ideologues." Every accusation is a confession as a friend of my often says these days (chapeaux John F.).

### The DEI Watchlist

You had to know there would bo one of these, since it's the new bugaboo for MAGA and Republicans in general. This one features employees who worked on diversity initiatives across agencies.

This all, of course, aligns with other efforts the administration has taken this year: trageting immigration and DEI, specifically.

Each site functions like a digital pillory, featuring photos and personal details drawn from public records and social media. The accusations are inflammatory: "subversive," "divisive," or "left-wing" activities that often amount to nothing more than donating to Democrats or supporting immigrant aid groups—activities that are entirely legal under federal employment law. 

It is constitutionally protected as well. Not that anything other than the second amendment matters to this lot.

The message to these workers is chilling and clear—toe the line:

****"If you see yourself on this list and wish to be removed, please forward us evidence that you've resigned or been fired."**

## Lives and careers destroyed

The consequences have been swift and severe. Noelle Sharp, a federal immigration judge in Houston with three years of incident-free service, saw her life crumble after appearing on the DHS Watchlist. AAF accused her of bias based on her previous work as an immigration attorney and with Catholic Charities.

![Screenshot of DHS Bureaucratic Watch List Targets, featuring Noelle Sharp, Department of Immigration Judges.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/08/JMFSYPX6JFHAHD6DOTYJNGSN4Q.png.jpeg)

Pixelated for her protection by Reuters.

A week after the list went live, a stranger appeared at her home, pounding on her door until a window shattered. "Terrorist," he called her, threatening that "someone should do something about you." Later, her car windshield was smashed. The U.S. Marshals Service gave her an emergency alert app.

On February 14, Sharp was unceremoniously fired. She believes her inclusion on the watchlist contributed directly to her dismissal. Fearing for her safety, she and her husband have moved to Mexico, where she now works remotely as an immigration attorney.

Sharp's firing coincides with a broader purge—at least 106 immigration judges have been fired, reassigned, or accepted buyouts since Trump took office in January.

Anything that could be seen to aid immigration is a threat to this xenophobic and race-baiting administration.

## The network at work on this fascist campaign

AAF didn't emerge from nowhere. The organization launched in December 2020\. It started with backing from a network of Trump-aligned nonprofits. These include groups led by Russell Vought (now Trump's budget director). More worryingly, Stephen Miller (senior Trump advisor, scary asshole, and Musk cuckold) also backs the group. The Conservative Partnership Institute provided over $335,000 in first-year funding. *\[Ed. Note: Sue me bitch.\]*

Tom Jones, AAF's president, advised the Heritage Foundation on Project 2025\. We now live in that project. It calls for slashing the federal workforce among other more heinous things. It gave us DOGE after all. In 2024, Heritage awarded AAF $100,000 to support its work. Jones has been clear about his mission: "We're gonna tell you who these people are and what they're about."

The group's evolution from a Biden-focused opposition research outfit to a weapon for targeting civil servants represents a new front in political warfare. It treats career government employees as enemy combatants rather than public servants. 

Papers please. Prove your loyalty.

## Targeting the vulnerable

The demographics of AAF's targets reveal troubling patterns. Women make up more than two-thirds of the 175 federal employees named across the lists, despite comprising less than half the federal workforce. About 50% are racial and ethnic minorities, compared with 41% of all federal workers. This shocks exactly no one that's been paying attention.

Patricia Kramer, a 43-year-old Army veteran and Hispanic employment strategist at the National Institutes of Health, compared seeing her name on the list to the anxiety she felt during her 2009 deployment to Iraq. The daughter of Mexican immigrants who earned a psychology degree to help veterans with mental health struggles, Kramer's work focused on improving Hispanic representation in federal staffing and research. God forbid our civil service look like society at large.

After being listed, she became hypervigilant, avoided leaving home, and constantly monitored her surroundings. She mostly feared for her 17-year-old son. When she tried to get her photo removed from the site, AAF fought back. 

They eventually replaced it with an illustration captioned: "DEI bureaucrats are so ashamed of what they're doing that they don't want to show their faces." Apparently, only the brown shirts get to show the faces of their perceived enemies.

Kramer was terminated from her job in July. 

##  Gray legality

Free-speech experts note that AAF operates in a carefully calculated legal gray area. The sites omit home addresses, phone numbers, and other intimate details associated with doxxing. This keeps them just beyond the boundaries of criminal violations.

"What is so ominous about these sites is that they're close to the line of illegal, but not crossing the line," said University of Virginia law professor Danielle Citron. 

****"They are designed to silence and intimidate and to inspire other people to hurt people named on the site."**   

This creates a "chilling effect" that deters civil servants from necessary work. All because it is from politically sensitive. These efforts undermine effective governance.

A government that works for society is the last thing they want. They have demonized government in all forms for decades now. St. Ronnie was the devil. And know we have to pay him.

## Not going quietly into the good night

Some targeted employees aren't going quietly. Anderson and others have filed a complaint with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. It accuses the Trump administration of violating federal workers' civil and constitutional rights. The federal Civil Service Reform Act prohibits personnel decisions based on perceived political affiliation. 

Not that actual laws matter to this lot. At least they can tie things up for a time until we have some change in regime.

****"You can't mistreat government workers because you assume they do not share your politics."** – Kelly Dermody attorney for the employees.

Others, like Kiana Atkins, have made the heartbreaking decision to leave the country. The 46-year-old NIH employee, whose work focused on reducing employment barriers for Black employees, accepted a government buyout and moved to Central America in February.

****"I did not feel safe, I felt like I had to disappear."**

## The broader assault on democratic governance

The watchlists represent just one component of a broader assault on the federal workforce. More than 200,000 federal employees have left government service since Trump took office—roughly 154,000 through buyouts and an estimated 55,000 through firings or layoffs. Thanks DOGE. (full disclosure, I've had close friends affected by this at CDC and contracting for DOD.)

Meanwhile, the administration has relaxed the enforcement of the Hatch Act, allowing federal employees to openly support the president at work. This effectively politicizes the civil service system that had been designed to remain nonpartisan. They are also seeking to expand political appointees to the civil service to replaces those with actual expertise in those jobs. 

Breaking government just to rail against it.

What's happening to these federal workers represents an assault on the very concept of professional, nonpartisan government service. When they can target civil servants for firing for doing their jobs, when they treat career professionals as enemies of the state, the foundations of effective governance crumble. 

Just as they desire.

****As Anderson's 13-year-old daughter asked her mother through tears: "Do people hate us?"**

The question that should haunt us all. 

In a functioning democracy, the answer should be an unequivocal no. But as these watchlists demonstrate, we're living in times when even asking that question has become necessary—and terrifying.

We must cut them off entirely. The country will require a new reconstruction, fully executed. Do we have the pro-democracy leader to make this happen? I think we do, should they be allowed to do their work by the old guard.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### White-washing the Smithsonian
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/white-washing-the-smithsonian/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:13:11.000Z
As reported in the *Wall Street Journal* (that well-know liberal rag), [the Trump administration wants to reshape how the Smithsonian tells the nation's story](https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/white-house-to-vet-smithsonian-museums-to-fit-trumps-historical-vision-78875c8a?st=rG76mH&reflink=desktopwebshare%5Fpermalink&ref=notunmindful.org).

In a letter sent to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch on August 12, three senior White House officials announced a comprehensive review of museum exhibitions, operations, and collections ahead of America's 250th anniversary in 2026.

We all know the stories they want to tell and the ones they want to bury. Official American history is about to become a lot whiter and jingoistic.

****UPDATE: This** [****Bluesky thread**](https://bsky.app/profile/sethcotlar.bsky.social/post/3lwjkynxo6k2i?ref=notunmindful.org) **sheds further light on what is really going on here. "Americanism" has a particular history, and it's not pretty. Shocking I know.**

## History itself will be "assessed" at the Smithsonian

The review will scrutinize eight major Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., including the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and the National Air and Space Museum. White House officials want to ensure these institutions present what they call the "unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story."

[Manifest destiny and all that](https://www.notunmindful.org/americana-becomes-anti-immigrant-propaganda/).

Again, we the "values" they look to the museum to express will have to align with a particular worldview—a Republican one. The blinders that will be required for exhibits will excise large chunks of the more distateful bits of the American story—or, you know, actual history.

## It's always the politics

This initiative stems directly from [President Trump's executive order](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/?ref=notunmindful.org) on "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." The order criticized the Smithsonian for coming under the influence of what he termed "divisive, race-centered ideology" that portrays American values as "inherently harmful and oppressive." 

White House senior associate Lindsey Halligan, domestic policy director Vince Haley, and budget director Russ Vought signed the letter outlining the review. They stated the goal is to "celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions." To that end: 

****White House teams will conduct "observational visits" of current exhibits.**

Following the assessment, museums will have to replace "divisive or ideologically driven" language with "unifying, historically accurate" materials. But who determines what is "accurate." And ingnoring the uglier parts will make things inherently more inaccurate.

Or, As Mark Jacob put it on Bluesky: 

"You can't teach U.S. history without "divisive" narratives. Slavery wasn't "unifying." The Japanese incarceration wasn't "unifying." The anti-immigrant Operation Wetback (real name) wasn't "unifying." It's history's job to tell the truth, not cover up past racism to pave the way for future racism. " –‪@markjacob.bsky.social

## Academic pushback and the institutional response

The announcement has drawn sharp criticism from historians and academic organizations. Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, called the effort "an affront to the historians and curators trained to ensure historical accuracy."

Harvard history professor Tiya Miles expressed concern that the Smithsonian will interpret history based on "one man's view" rather than scholarly research. She emphasized that the museums have traditionally "reflected the composite research, analysis, discussion, findings of many different people, scholars and researchers."

The Smithsonian issued a measured response, stating that its work is "grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history." The institution said it would review the letter with this commitment in mind while continuing to collaborate with the White House and Congress.

Notably, the Smithsonian's Board of Regents had already agreed to conduct their own review of museum content to eliminate political bias, as [previously reported in the *WSJ*](https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/smithsonian-to-conduct-wide-content-review-requested-by-trump-94012153?ref=notunmindful.org). 

## It all fits together with other efforts

This Smithsonian review represents part of a larger Trump administration effort to reshape cultural and educational institutions across the country. The president has also targeted universities and other cultural organizations as part of his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Fake hillbilly and Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, will likely play a key role in blocking appropriations for exhibitions that don't align with the administration's vision. As America approaches its 250th anniversary, this review will likely determine how the nation's premier museums present American history to millions of visitors in the coming years.

It's a re-writing of America's history. All tailored to suit a narrative and mythology that aligns with their needs and desires. This fake narrative includes the Lost Cause mythology, ignores Black and Native history, and discounts any criticisms of how the U.S. government and culture has marginalized large sectors of our society. You can also see this in the ICE crackdown on anyone who looks vaguely hispanic—be they illegal or an actual citizen. 

It explicitly is a move to make narrow-minded white people feel better about themselves. It will allow them to conintue to look down on and discriminate against the "other."

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### LGBTQ+ rights back in the crosshairs
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/lgbtq-rights-back-in-the-crosshairs/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:12:51.000Z
Devin Dwyer reported for ABC News on August 11, that the "[Supreme Court \[is being\] formally asked to overturn landmark same-sex marriage ruling](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-formally-asked-overturn-landmark-same-sex/story?id=124465302&ref=notunmindful.org)," A summary with additional commentary follows.

Ten years after the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, the Supreme Court is being asked to overturn that ruling directly. The challenge comes from a familiar source: one Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who had her 15 minutes in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She did so in the face of actual law.

## The case against Davis and questionable legal standing

Davis was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds. She is now appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees. Her legal team argues that First Amendment religious protections should shield her from personal liability.

But the petition goes much further. Davis claims the high court's decision in Obergefell v Hodges was "egregiously wrong" and that "the mistake must be corrected." Her attourney, Matthew Staver, calls Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell "legal fiction."

Davis is seen as one of the only Americans currently that may have legal standing to challenge the precedent. However, legal experts remain deeply skeptical of her chances. A federal appeals court panel concluded earlier this year that the former clerk "cannot raise the First Amendment as a defense because she is being held liable for state action, which the First Amendment does not protect."

William Powell, attorney for the married couple that successfully sued Davis, expressed confidence that "the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis's arguments do not merit further attention."

As for Davis, she seems to selectively pick which parts of the Old Testament apply. She's been married four separate times (via [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim%5FDavis?ref=notunmindful.org)). I'd bet she enjoys a cheeseburger too, even though the Pentateuch is just as clear on dairy and meat as it is on homosexuality (i.e., not very unless you carefully pick and choose).

## A broader conservative campaign against equal rights

Davis's petition isn't happening in isolation. Conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples have renewed their campaign to reverse legal precedent and allow each state to set its own policy. In 2015, 35 states had statutory or constitutional bans on same-sex marriages. The Obergefell decision made these bans unconstitutional.

So far this year, at least nine states have either introduced legislation aimed at blocking new marriage licenses for LGBTQ people or passed resolutions urging the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell at the earliest opportunity. 

Of course major conservative religious organizations have joined the effort. The Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly voted in June to make "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges" a top priority.

Southern Baptists don't represent the majority of U.S. Christians. But their political views hold great sway in the currrent conservative movement.

## Shifts in public opinion and shifts on the court

While same-sex marriage remains popular, support has shown some concerning trends. Support rose from 60% in 2015 to 70% , but it has plateaued since 2020\. Among Republicans, support has fallen over, down from 55% in 2021 to 41% this year. The forces of discrimination are now emboldened.

Davis's strategy explicitly mirrors the successful challenge to *Roe v. Wade*. Her petition references Justice Thomas's concurring opinion in the 2022 abortion decision. Then, he explicitly called for revisiting Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. He wrote justices "should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents...."

The court's composition has also shifted dramatically since 2015\. It now includes three Trump appointees, giving the court a 6-justice conservative supermajority. Notably, Chief Roberts, who dissented in Obergefell, criticized the original ruling as "an act of will, not legal judgment" with "no basis in the Constitution."

Legal analysts still remain skeptical the court will take the case. As ABC News legal analyst Sarah Isgur noted, "There is no world in which the court takes the case as a straight gay marriage case."

But that is exactly what we thought about abortion. We all know in our heart of hearts this will be overturned despite what the precedent says. It may even be from the shadow docket.

The court will likely consider Davis's petition this fall. Any potential oral arguments would occur in spring 2026\. For the estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S., including 591,000 that wed after 2015, the outcome could reshape the legal landscape of marriage equality once again. 

And it would re-enshrine legal discrimination nationwide. Just because we can't have nice things and they have to be assholes about everything.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### VCU preemptively caves on DEI
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/vcu-caves-on-dei/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:12:37.000Z
As reported by VPM, [Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is rewriting the language of race-based scholarships](https://www.vpm.org/news/2025-08-08/vcu-scholarship-language-dei-martin-feingold-black-bov-belgrave-narro?ref=notunmindful.org). The rewrite replaces specific demographic criteria with broader terms in what legal experts call "overcompliance" with evolving federal guidance on diversity programs.

This just goest to show how the federal anti-DEI efforts have a chilling effect without direct intervention, as we've seen at other universities.

## What's changing

VCU identified seven scholarships for "immediate action" earlier this year. Three of these already reflect new language, while the other four still await approval. 

For example, a 1989 Martin Agency scholarship previously reserved for "rising senior minority students majoring in advertising" now targets students who "overcome barriers to access" with preference for those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds or first-generation college students. (Full disclosure, I've worked alongside the Martin Agency in the past.)

The university has also hired an outside law firm to review 60 additional scholarships, with results set for discussion at the Board of Visitors meeting in mid-September.

## The legal landscape and "overcompliance"

The changes stem from multiple pressures:

- The [2023 Supreme Court decision](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1181138066/affirmative-action-supreme-court-decision?ref=notunmindful.org) barring race-conscious college admissions
- [Federal orders](https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1409486/dl?inline=&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fsource=govdelivery) targeting campus diversity programs
- The university's Board of Visitors [passing a related resolution](https://president.vcu.edu/media/president/bov/VCUBOVResolution3.21.pdf?ref=notunmindful.org) in March.

However, many legal experts argue VCU may be going further than required. Boston University law professor Jonathan Feingold is one. He notes the Supreme Court decision was "limited in its application to admissions" and doesn't apply to scholarships. He further states that recent federal guidance declaring race-based scholarships illegal represents the Department of Justice's current interpretation, not established law.

"There's just a sort of widespread phenomenon of universities changing more than what they were required to do," Feingold also related to VPM News in the article referenced here. Universities appear to be preemptively scrubbing racial references to reduce future legal scrutiny and risk. 

They are preemptively bowing down because of the climate of fear that has rightly taken hold in academia.

Another law professor, Derek Black from the University of South Carolina suggests that this trend predates the current assault on higher education. He noted, "the Harvard case was moving universities in this direction, regardless of who the current occupant of the White House is." However, he adds that the current federal environment makes institutions "feel like you need to move quicker."

## What does this mean for students, present and future?

The changes affect scholarships like one created by VCU alum Victor Narro. It was originally designed for DACA recipients interested in migration studies. After agreeing to remove specific DACA references, the scholarship now targets any history or political science major eligible for in-state tuition under a 2021 law, while maintaining preference for students serving immigrant communities.

Narro remains committed to supporting DACA students despite federal pressure, including recent calls for recipients to self-deport. "These students have done everything that they possibly can do to excel," he said. "These are the cream of the crop students that we want to invest in." These are the very students that public schools like VCU are meant to support and grow.

Former VCU chief diversity officer Faye Belgrave views the language changes as an attempt to "bend over backwards" to comply with perceived discrimination concerns. As universities grapple with similar pressures, VCU's approach reflects a broader institutional shift away from explicit diversity programming toward coded language designed to achieve similar goals while avoiding legal challenges. The scholarship review represents just one facet of the ongoing national debate over diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in higher education.

We can only hope that the rewriting doesn't fundamentally alter the aims of the institution.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The Lost Cause lives on
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-lost-cause-lives-on/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:12:13.000Z
Friend of Not Unmindul, [Ty Seidule writes a daming review of the decision to restore a Confereate monument to Arlington Natinoal Cemetary](https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/5444429-racist-monument-arlington-cemetery/amp/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMG1ztleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHpnZxOGq3u3VNPyYSTXkX1%5Fwhk22haX5qSjqwkwCv8KERYsKYDAsLIZJyoKg%5Faem%5FUWZsYzHemx5paDVsmqrEYQ&ref=notunmindful.org). This summarizes his take, but read the whole thing! (Also read his book, [Robert E. Lee and Me](https://a.co/d/3nb7Bwm?ref=notunmindful.org).) 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered the restoration of the Arlington Confederate Monument. More than a policy reversal, it represents a deliberate embrace of America's racist past. It resurrects our most dangerous and lasting historical mythology. 

By spending $10 million to bring back what he calls a "reconciliation monument," Hegseth has breathed new life into the Lost Cause narrative. This narrative has poisoned American understanding of the Civil War for well over a century. 

## A language of carefully obscured lies

Hegseth carefully avoids mentioning the Confederacy in his remarks. In his announcement ordering the monument's restoration, he instead calls it a "reconciliation monument." His first wink to his base? Stating that "woke lemmings" removed the statue in the first place. 

His use of these linguistic gymnastics isn't accidental. Congress explicitly prohibited the Department of Defense from naming anything after the Confederacy in 2019, forcing Hegseth into verbal contortions to justify his decision.

The monument's actual name? The Arlington Confederate Monument.  
  
Its actual purpose? To celebrate the Lost Cause mythology that portrayed slavery as benevolent and the Confederacy as noble.

In other words, it's meant to perpetuate a myth that obscures the evil of chattel slavery and those that fought to preserve it. We know this all too well based on our shared university experience.

## Mythology carved into stone

This 1914 monument embodies every toxic element of Lost Cause mythology. At its center stands the racist "mammy" stereotype—a "tearful, overweight enslaved woman" cradling her enslaver's child as he departs for war. This imagery promotes the historical lie that enslaved people were content, even devoted, to their oppressors.

![Men in gray walk away from the Arlington Confederate Monument at its deci](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/08/Confederate_Memorial_Day_services_-_Confederate_Memorial_-_Arlington_National_Cemetery_-_1922-06-05-1.jpg)

Dedication of the memorial. Note the gray uniforms.

As Brigadier General Ty Seidule, who served on the congressional Naming Commission, continues: "The monument portrays faithful slaves and kind white masters, a historical lie. Slavery featured legal rape, torture and selling husband from wife, child from mother."

This is Lost Cause mythology in its purest form—the deliberate rewriting of history to transform a brutal system of human bondage into a romanticized tale of mutual affection and noble sacrifice.

## What "reconciliation" means

Hegseth claims the monument represents reconciliation, but the historical timeline exposes this as another Lost Cause fabrication. True reconciliation had already occurred decades before the monument's construction. President Andrew Johnson granted amnesty to all Confederates in 1868\. By 1877, all former Confederate states had regained full political rights.

The 1914 monument didn't celebrate reconciliation—it celebrated the triumph of white supremacy during the height of Jim Crow. While over 2,000 Black men held elective office during Reconstruction, by 1914 virtually no African Americans could vote in the South despite large majorities in southern states.

The monument was erected during this reign of terror. In 1914 alone, 55 African Americans were lynched, including three men burned alive at the stake in Louisiana and another doused with gasoline and burned in Texas. None of the perpetrators faced justice. This was the "reconciliation" the monument actually celebrated.

Remember the Reconciliation Ball at Fancy Dress in 1988\. Just recall the posters, shirts, and cups. This was also this vision of history.

## Congress acts against Lost Cause revisionism

The monument was removed following a 2019 congressional mandate to eliminate all Confederate commemoration from military installations. This wasn't the work of "woke lemmings"—it was a bipartisan effort that included a Republican-controlled Senate. When Trump vetoed the defense bill over these provisions, Congress overturned his veto with a supermajority.

The Naming Commission that recommended the monument's removal included three Republicans, one Democrat, and four retired military officers. They voted unanimously after being "shocked by its overt racist imagery and anti-U.S. sentiments."

The Conferacy was a treasonous revolt despite all efforts to cloak it in something else.

## The stakes of historical memory and today

By restoring this monument, Hegseth not only defies Congress—he endorses a worldview—white supremacy and Jim Crow. Lost Cause mythology has always operated by normalizing and romanticizing a system built on racial oppression.

The Lost Cause isn't ancient history. It's a living ideology that continues to shape American politics and racial understanding. When officials use euphemisms like "reconciliation monument" to avoid saying "Confederate," when they portray removal efforts as "erasing history" rather than correcting it, they use the same rhetorical strategies that have sustained Lost Cause mythology for generations.

Hegseth's order represents a dangerous precedent. It show the willingness of a government official to overturn a congressional mandate. All in service of a historical narrative designed to minimize slavery's horrors and glorify its defenders.

As we witness this latest chapter in America's ongoing struggle with its Confederate past, one thing becomes clear. The Lost Cause mythology isn't fading into history. Given the current views of those it power, it's finding new champions willing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to keep its lies alive in stone.

They no longer care if their slips are showing. They can say the quiet parts out loud now. Reconciliation my ass. Straight up white nationalist bullshit.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### An assault on civil rights 60 years in the making
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/an-assault-on-civil-rights-60-years-in-the-making/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:11:40.000Z
George Chidi writes in The Guardian about the renewed assault on civil rights: "[The Voting Rights Act Under Siege: 60 Years Later, Democracy Hangs in the Balance.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/voting-rights-act-at-60?ref=notunmindful.org)" A summary and additional commentary follows.

## It started in Selma

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 emerged from brutal images that shocked America. As 600 demonstrators crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police met them with truncheons and teargas. Future Congressman John Lewis was beaten unconscious on live television. (Full disclosure: he was my congressman for almost 30 years.) National outrage force Congress to the political will to act. 

The law aimed to end the discriminatory "whack-a-mole" games local officials played with voting rights. States had developed creative ways to disenfranchise Black voters—literacy tests, poll taxes, separate ballot boxes, white-only primaries, and discriminatory redistricting. Some of this should start to sound familiar to our modern ears.

The Act's solution provided an elegant, simple solution. It forced jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to receive federal approval before changing election rules. 

## Erosion of the act by the courts

The law was reauthorized four times under Republican presidents. But now, the law has beegun to be systematically dismantled by Republican led courts. With *Shelby County v. Holder* in 2013, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to what had been the uncontested law of the land.

The Court ruled that data identifying discriminatory jurisdictions was outdated, and that Congress needed to update the formula. But Republican have repeatedly blocked the primary effort to do so, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Sophia Lin Lakin of the ACLU's voting rights project explains: "It was a pretty significant blow to the project of ensuring voting free of racial discrimination.... It really accelerated attacks on voting access across the country." 

States previously restricted by federal oversight immediately began to play fast and loose with voting. They employed tactics such as: 

- Closing polling places
- Changing polling place locations
- Changing voter registration rules
- Purging vote rolls without justification
- Redrawing precinct lines without review
- Requiring IDs to vote (a *de facto* poll tax)

I've witnessed most of these tactics in Georgia, and they have been focused on minority (i.e., solidly Democratic) voters and areas.

## How it looks in the real world today

The article focuses on the hijinks occurring in Texas, of course. The state's Republican-led, off-cycle redistricting that could grant the GOP five additional congressional seats. So this is playing out in real time. The proposed maps would concentrate minority voters into fewer districts while diluting others—exactly what the Voting Rights Act was designed to prevent.

Democratic legislators have fled the state to deny the legislature the quorum needed to pass this. Despite the huffing and puffing by the Republicans, this is a Texas tradition dating back to 1970\. 

Under the old system, these maps would have required federal pre-approval. Now they can only be challenged after implementation—a much weaker, time-consuming process that would likely be dismissed or blocked by Republicans on the courts.

The assault extends beyond redistricting. Federal courts have limited who can bring voting rights cases. The Eighth Circuit ruled that only the Department of Justice—not private groups—can challenge election laws under the Act. Such challenges are unlikely in a republican administration—they hated this act since the beginning.

## The coming death blow

The Supreme Court will likely deliver the final blow to the act. In *Louisiana v. Callais*, the Court will consider whether requiring majority-minority districts violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. This attempts to put the Voting Rights Act against the Constitution itself.

If (ahem, when) this succeeds, it would create grounds for white voters to challenge any law protecting minority voting rights, turning decades of civil rights law on its head. The racist rail on top yet again.

## Democracy itself is at stake 

Todd Cox of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund states it plainly: 

"Democracy is at stake."

The systematic dismantling of voting rights protections comes amid unprecedented political polarization and declining faith in democratic institutions. The death of the Voting Rights act will only accelerate the latter trend among a significant portion of non-white voters.

But the current regime cares nothing about them. Only their white based matters, and they've moved beyond mere dog whistles.

Ironically, the success of the act (progress in voter engagement among communities of color) has triggered a backlash designed to cause its demise. "This is a cyclical part of history," Cox observes. "When we see success in advancing rights, there's always backlash."

As the Voting Rights Act enters its seventh decade, America faces a critical question: will the law that once transformed a nation survive to protect future generations, or will equal representation become another casualty in the struggle for democracy?

The stakes couldn't be higher, and the outcome will determine whether America lives up to its democratic ideals or retreats into the shadows of its discriminatory past.

So what can be done? This first step is Democratic success in blocking the Texas redistricting. If that fails, California, Illinois, New York, and other democratic should respond in kind, together. 

Finally, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act must be passed as soon as Democrats have the majorities required.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Turning back the clock, women's suffrage edition
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/turning-back-the-clock-womens-suffrage-edition/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:11:00.000Z
[As reported by the AP](https://apnews.com/article/women-hegseth-defense-secretary-religion-d962f472910fb47a0c66cd37b01f550d?ref=notunmindful.org), Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ignited controversy Thursday night and again showed what the members of this administration think of equal rights. 

He reposted a CNN video examining Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson's church on everyone's favorite social fascist haven. The video featured pastors advocating for the repeal of women's voting rights and promoting household-based voting systems.

Hegseth accompanied the repost with "All of Christ for All of Life," highlighting his connections to Christian nationalist ideology. The post garnered over 12,000 likes and 2,000 shares, drawing both support and alarm from users concerned about the defense secretary promoting extreme religious views that would strip fundamental democratic rights from women.

They won't stop until they turn back the clock to 1860.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Trump administration takes new aim at higher education with new directives
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-administration-takes-new-aim-at-higher-education-with-new-directives/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:09:41.000Z
As outlined in [this article by Natalie Swartz in *Higher Ed Div*e](https://www.highereddive.com/news/trump-orders-college-admissions-research-grants/757166/?ref=notunmindful.org), the Trump administration has issued two significant directives that will fundamentally reshape how colleges operate and how federal research funding flows to universities across the country.

These directives come on the heels of very public fights over funding at Harvard and Brown Universities. 

A summary of these changes follows.

## Admissions data requirements

In his sweeping memo to the Department of Education, President Trump has ordered colleges and universities to dramatically expand the admissions data they must report to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Until now, institutions only had to provide racial enrollment data for students who actually enrolled. Now they must report comprehensive information about:

- Race and sex of all applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students
- Standardized test scores and GPAs for each group
- Other academic qualifications across the admissions pipeline

This expanded reporting applies not only to undergraduate programs but also select graduate and professional programs. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has also directed the development of audit processes to ensure data accuracy.

Their stated goal is clear. The directive aim to prevent any consideration of race in university admissions. McMahon flatly stated it: "We will not allow institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments." 

This move comes two years after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions in cases involving Harvard and UNC. Many selective institutions have since seen decreased enrollment of Black and Hispanic students. Needs based admissions will likely be next on the chopping block.

So merit matters, but it will matter more if you are white and privileged.

## Oversight of federal grants

The second directive takes aim at the allocation of federal research funding. The executive order requires review and approval grant awards and funding announcements. However, politcal appointees will perform these reviews. 

While these appointees will supposedly work with subject matter experts to evaluate projects. As political appointees, of course their aim will be to fund only those research projects that align with Trump administration priorities. Actual expertise will be subject to ideology.

The order take aims at all the usual Republican bogeymen. It specifically criticizes grants that funded:

- Transgender sexual education programs
- Critical race theory training for graduate students
- What it terms "Marxism, class warfare propaganda, and other anti-American ideologies" (as defined by them of course)

Under the new system, grants could be immediately terminated if they "no longer advance agency priorities or the national interest." The directive also states that funding should not go to projects that deny biological sex is binary or promote "anti-American values." 

They continue to use trans rights and recognition as a cudgel to beat a non-existent issue. It's the latest "anti-American" ideology in their book, and it's their scary thing to be used to win elections.

But who gets to decide what "American values" are? I think that question answers itself based on over three decades of political observation. Anything that doesn't align with the Republican view is automatically "Anti American," at least according to them.

## The overall impact

These directives aim to exert unprecedented government control over two critical aspects of higher education: student enrollment patterns and research priorities. The first, enhanced data collection, will provide the federal government with detailed insight into admissions practices. 

The grant oversight mechanism could reshape the entire landscape of federally funded research. This, worrying development could squash independent research and academic freedom.

Universities now face the prospect of increased federal scrutiny at every level—from who they admit to what research they pursue. How institutions adapt to these new requirements will likely define the relationship between higher education and the federal government for years to come.

The administration signals this is just the beginning of broader reforms aimed at what it calls restoring "meritocracy and excellence" to American higher education.

## Legal challenges and what we can do

These moves will face significant legal hurdles. Researchers have already successfully challenged previous Trump administration attempts to control grant funding. And a federal judge recently ruled against NIH grant cancellations related to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, with the Government Accountability Office deeming such actions illegal.

Given the currently climate of the courts and the Supreme Court's willingness to rubber stamp Trump policies, no matter how outragerous, lega lintervention seems unlikely to hold.

In the meantime, we can support existing litigation from groups including the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Contacting your representatives to make you feelings know can also work if enough people do it.

We must be vigilant in our protections of academic freedom and continue to be mindful of the future.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Pam Bondi just declared war on Civil Rights
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/pam-bondi-just-declared-war-on-civil-rights/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:10:32.000Z
The hits just keep on coming don't they?

If you thought the Trump administration's attack on DEI was bad before, buckle up. 

[As reported in *The New Republic*](https://newrepublic.com/post/198662/pam-bondi-justice-department-funding-dei-white-people?utm%5Fsource=Bluesky&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=SF%5FTNR), Attorney General Pam Bondi recently released a memo that does more than roll back diversity programs. Instead, it actively weaponizes the Justice Department against any attempt to address racial and gender inequities.

In a nutshell, the Department of Justice (DOJ) now wants to pull federal funding from organizations that acknowledge that discrimination exists and tries to do something about it.

## This is about more than DEI

Bondi's memo reads like a fever dream of conservative grievance as federal policy. The scope is astounding:

- State agencies ca no longer prioritize contracts for women-owned or minority-owned businesses
- Schools can't have "diverse slate" hiring practices
- Scholarships specifically for Black students are now considered discrimination
- Employee training that mentions concepts like "toxic masculinity" is banned
- Even college lounges designated for specific identity groups are being called "unlawful segregation"

Read that last one again. They're literally comparing safe spaces for marginalized students to Jim Crow segregation. 

The audacity is insane. They truly think they are beyond reproach.

## The new Newspeak

The Trump administration is taking the language of civil rights and turning it inside out and upside down. Programs designed to remedy centuries of discrimination are now labeled as discrimination themselves. It's like saying a bandage discriminates against healthy skin.

This memo not only eliminates DEI programs, but also makess them illegal for Federally funded organizations. They can no longer acknowledge systemic barriers with falling afoul of the law. 

Do you want to help women break into male-dominated fields? Discrimination.   
  
Do you want to support Black students with targeted scholarships? Also discrimination.

No for the real upside down bit that the memo makes crystal clear. 

While student lounges for marginalized groups are "segregation," allowing transgender people to use bathrooms matching their gender identity "can also violate federal law." 

So inclusion is segregation, but actual exclusion is fine.

## How this plays out in the real world

This memo isn't just a PR stunt, it has real-world impact:

- underrepresented groups
- It makes it harder for women and minority-owned businesses to compete for government contracts
- It strips protections and resources for marginalized communities

Most of all, it creates a chilling effect effectively forcing organizations to avoid diversity initiatives or lose federal funding.

This is all being done under the banner of "civil rights." It's perverse.

## Part of a larger effort to turn back the clock

This isn't happening in isolation. [Remember that poll data showing Americans are backing away from believing discrimination is real?](https://www.notunmindful.org/this-has-always-been-the-endgame/) This memo is both a symptom and a cause of that shift. When the Justice Department itself declares that efforts to address inequality are actually the real discrimination, it gives cover to those who pretends we live in a post-racial society.

The message is clear. The U.S. government has decided that white discomfort and the ability to discriminate is more important than the actual barriers that women and people of color still face.

## **Now what?**

This memo doesn't just eliminate existing programs. It creates a framework where any acknowledgment of systemic inequality becomes legally problematic. How do you address discrimination when you're not allowed to name it or target solutions toward affected groups?

You don't. Which is exactly the point. Again, this is their endgame. Officially ignoring and denying discrimination so they can practice it out in the open without any consequences.

They're not just moving us backwards on racial justice, but also actively making it illegal to move forward. The Trump administration is using the power of federal funding to force organizations to pretend that centuries of discrimination never happened or have no lasting effect. 

It's a "meritocracy" for the white elite. Because make no mistake about it. Poor whites are not invited to this party either. Ever. Same as it ever was. 

## Looking for optimism

This feels overwhelming. The Justice Department itself has become an obstacle to justice (and even a weapon against it). Where do we begin?

First, organizations must get creative about how they support marginalized communities. Legal challenges are already being planned. But we know where the Supreme Court lies on this issue.

Also, we need to keep having honest conversations about what's really happening here. 

Most importantly, we must speak truth to power in any way we can. This is why this site exists. The audience may be small, but the share passion is real.

Make no mistake: this isn't about ensuring fairness or protecting civil rights. This is about dismantling decades of progress and returning to a system where inequality is just accepted as the natural order of things. This is about rolling back all the gains we've made since the passage of the civil rights act. 

This government wants to consign it to oblivion.

We cannot let that happen without a fight.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### This has always been the endgame
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/this-has-always-been-the-endgame/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:10:08.000Z
[A recent poll from the Associated Press includes data that Americans are backing away from believing that racial discrimination is a real problem](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/poll-shows-decline-belief-blacks-asians-face-racial-discrimination-rcna222217?ref=notunmindful.org). It also notes they're turning against DEI programs at an alarming rate. This shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention, and it is deeply troubling. 

Let's call it like it is.

## There's no sugarcoating the numbers

After George Floyd's 2021 murder sparked nationwide protests and what many called a "racial reckoning," 60% of Americans believed Black people faced significant discrimination. In other words, they recognized the truth of this society at long last. Now however? That number has dropped to just 45%.

Think about that for a second. In just four years, we've gone from a solid majority recognizing the reality of anti-Black discrimination to less than half the country believing it's a serious issue. Belief in discrimination agains Asian Americans also dropped—from 45% to 32%. This drop occurred despite the horrific Atlanta spa shootings targeting Asian women.

Society is taking its cues from the top and deciding that racism is "fake news."

This isn't just a shift in opinion. This is America collectively deciding to look the other way. 

## The DEI backlash is real

Here's where it gets really concerning: about 30% of Americans now think DEI programs actually *increase* discrimination against white people. Increase. Among white adults, that number jumps to 39%.

But then it getsreally complicated as you drill down. Even Black and Hispanic people now say DEI programs increase discrimination against their own communities. About 40% of Black adults think DEI increases discrimination against Black people. 

To be honest, I'm not sure how to explain this. The constant narrative barrage from rightwing media may be the reason. This would certainly be the desired effect.

The lived experience of people in these programs often differs from their goal. As one woman in the poll put it, when you're a Black woman in an engineering program, people assume "you're only here to meet a quota." 

The program meant to help thus becomes another burden to carry. But does this reflect poorly on the program itself or society at large. I'd argue the latter.

## What's really happening 

This is the end game. We're witnessing a coordinated retreat from any serious commitment to racial justice. Companies that embraced diversity after 2020 are now backing away from those commitments. Sometimes quietly and sometimes very publicly. 

This isn't happening in a vacuum. The Trump administration isa ctively defunding DEI programs. Sometimes seeing DEI programs where none actually exist. 

When political leaders spend their time attacking DEI as "reverse racism" and companies and universities cave to pressure rather than standing by their values, of course public opinion shifts. 

Americans are being told that caring about racial equity is somehow discriminatory against white people, as ludicrous as that is.

Public opinion is just following suit.

## The real problem

But the truth of discrimination remains. It didn't magically disappear between 2021 and 2025\. Systemic barriers didn't suddenly evaporate. What changed was our willingness to acknowledge and address them.

The skepticism of those within affected communities should tell us something important about how these programs are being talked about, not whether discrimination exists. When help becomes hindrance, we need to push back against the constant negative messaging. We should not to give up entirely.

## Where do we go from here?

Easy answers don't exist, and honestly, anyone offering them is probably full of it. Pretending discrimination doesn't exist won't make it go away. Abandoning programs without replacing them with something better isn't progress—it's surrender. Ceding the playing field to right-wing talking points is such a surrender.

Ceding the playing field to right-wing talking points is such a surrender.

We need to have honest conversations about what's working and what isn't. We need to listen to people who say current DEI approaches aren't helping them. We need to fight back against the constant right-wing barrage of bullshit and call it what it is: racism disguised as policy.

And we absolutely cannot let the pendulum swing all the way back to pretending systemic racism is ancient history.

The same structural inequalities that existed in 2020 still exist today. The only thing that's changed is our collective willingness to do something about them.

And we should all worry about that.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Texas Democrats flee to block Republican's unprecedented redistricting effort
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/texas-democrats-flee-to-block-republicans-unprecedented-redistricting-effort/
Last updated: 2025-08-06T14:00:35.000Z
As usual, [Heather Cox Richardson is the voice to trust](https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-3-2025) (a national treasure). I can only summarize. (via [Lawyers, Guns, and Money](https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/08/trump-take-house-of-representatives?ref=notunmindful.org).)

Texas House Democrats have dramatically left the state. All to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass off cycle redistricting maps. This would change maps the Republicans gerrymandered only a few years ago \[inset expletive\].

The new maps would strip five Democratic seats and hand them to Republicans. This unprecedented mid-decade redistricting, demanded by President Trump to maintain GOP control of the House in 2026, poses a direct threat to communities of color across Texas.

## High stakes for communities of color

While redistricting might seem like political inside baseball, the implications for Texas's diverse communities are devastating. The proposed maps would systematically dilute the growing political power of Hispanic, Black, and Asian American voters through classic gerrymandering tactics:

- **"Cracking" minority communities** by splitting them across multiple districts to reduce collective influence
- **"Packing" others** into fewer districts to limit overall representation
- **Splitting diverse urban areas** that have elected representatives of their choice
- **Undermining coalition districts** where different communities have successfully joined forces

This assault comes as Texas communities of color are experiencing unprecedented political engagement. Much of the state's population growth over the past decade has been concentrated among minority communities, yet the new maps would ensure their growing numbers don't translate to political power.

They have to keep Texas's representation as white as possible to maintain the Republican majorities both within the state and nationally.

Of couse, Governor Abbott is being disingenuous, acting like this is something new. [This has been happening in Texas since the late 1800s](https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/03/texas-quorum-breaks-history/?ref=notunmindful.org). Can we respect this bit of history?

## Disenfranchisement is a Texas thing

Texas has a long, documented history of using redistricting to suppress minority voting rights. Federal courts have repeatedly found the state's maps discriminatory. The new changes would reverse decades of hard-fought progress in minority political representation. They would essentially rwind the clock on voting rights just as communities of color reach critical political mass.

They always want to return to the mythical past where everything was great and white.Republican State Representative Cody Vasut admitted this to NBC News: 

"This map was politically based, and that's totally legal, totally allowed and totally fair." 

He states the obvious. Redistricting has nothing to do with fair representation and everything to do with maintaining power. 

## And the Democrats?

Faced with a rushed process that included only one public hearing that showed overwhelming opposition, about 30 Texas House Democrats fled to Chicago, Boston, and Albany. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker welcomed the largest group, providing logistical support and moral backing (and some sweet accommodations at his Hyatt hotels).

"We are not fighting for the Democratic Party. We are fighting for the democratic process," explained State Representative James Talarico (a rising star). "They're turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026 elections."

Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu warned of national implications:

"If Donald Trump is allowed to do this, if he is allowed to once again cheat and get away with it, there's no stopping this. This will spread across the country."

## And the thugs will do thug things

Governor Greg Abbott responded with unprecedented intimidation tactics, threatening to:

- Remove Democrats from office if they don't return by Monday's vote
- Replace them with his own appointees
- Charge them as felons for accepting food and housing money
- Use "full extradition authority" to force their return

Dude is trying on that brown shirt for real. That seems to be *de rigueur* these days.

## It's bad, it's Nationwide (yeah, I did that)

Trump has explicitly called for similar mid-decade redistricting in all Republican-controlled states, creating a coordinated national assault on fair representation. If successful in Texas, this strategy could spread nationwide, systematically locking in minority rule regardless of changing demographics or voter preferences.

Governor Pritzker framed the stakes clearly: 

"This is not just rigging the system in Texas. It's about rigging the system against the rights of all Americans for years to come."

The question is, will Democrats fight back? Do this in California and New York? To do so would bury them. But is there the political will to fight fire with fire? That hasn't been the strong suit of Democrats of late.

##   **It's worse on the ground in Texas**

For communities of color in Texas, this isn't just about political maneuvering. If you are a minority in Texas, it's about your voice. It's you fundamental representation and voice in government.

The proposed redistricting would silence growing Latino political power, undermine Black representation, and entrench minority rule precisely when demographic trends favor greater diversity and inclusion.

The Texas Democrats' courageous stand represents more than parliamentary procedure—it's a direct challenge to the normalization of anti-democratic tactics. As Governor Pritzker noted, "The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will always expect you to be courageous."

The outcome of this battle will determine whether the growing political power of communities of color translates into meaningful representation or is systematically diluted through partisan manipulation. The stakes couldn't be higher for Texas—or for American democracy itself.

*Non in cautus futuri.*
### FCC approves Skydance's CBS takeover after major concessions to Trump
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/fcc-approves-skydances-cbs-takeover-after-major-concessions-to-trump/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:08:47.000Z
[The Federal Communications Commission has approved Skydance Media's $8 billion acquisition of Paramount](https://www.npr.org/2025/07/24/nx-s1-5477530/paramount-cbs-skydance-sale-fcc-approves?ref=notunmindful.org). This marks the end of a controversial approval process that has fundamentally reshaped the relationship between media companies and the Trump administration.

After months of negotiations, concessions, and "capitulation," the FCC allowed the takeover of the media conglomerate. Paramount owns all CBS properties. The path to this approval came at a steep price—one that may have lasting implications for American journalism. 

We've already seen the fallout at CBS News, with the departure of award-winning producers at 60 Minutes. 

## **What Skydance gave away**

To secure the Trump administration's blessing, Skydance made unprecedented commitments. These commitments go far beyond typical merger conditions.

### **Bias monitoring** 

Skydance pledged to install an ombudsman for at least two years to investigate complaints about "ideological bias" in CBS News coverage and report findings directly to company leadership.

Of course, we know where the source of all such complaints will lie. And it starts at the top all the way down through MAGA land. Even the most spurious complaints will need to be investigated.

### **Rooting out DEI**

Skydance committed to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across Paramount's U.S. operations. Skydance itself maintains no such initiatives.

This is yet another front on the war on diversity and inclusion in our society. It's their new bogeyman after all. They've finally found something easier to explain to low attention votes than critical race theory.

### **Editorial "diversity"**

Skydance also promised to ensure CBS programming "embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum." 

This has journalists rightly worried about editorial interference. Even the threat of this caused leading lights at CBS's flagship news program, 60 Minutes, to resign rather than comply.

The last thing this administration would want is latter-day Mike Wallace hounding them after all.

### **Financial concessions**

Reports suggest Skydance agreed to run $20 million worth of public service announcements aligned with Trump's ideological priorities, though the company hasn't denied these claims.

So, CBS will now be the Trump administration’s personal propaganda channel? What would Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite think of this. Sadly, the is no Walter Cronkite for Trump to lose these days. That's how badly trust in these institutions has eroded due to the constant barrage of bullshit on FOX News.

## **The settlement heard round the** media **landscape**

Of course, this all started with Paramount's decision to pay Trump $16 million to settle the frivolous lawsuit over Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes. 

Trump's suit alleged the network committed "election interference" by editing Harris's response to a question about the Israel/Hamas conflict differently across two shows. Anyone who has ever done anything in this realm realizes the reality of how editing works. 

The settlement led both the executive producer of "60 Minutes" and the president of CBS News and Stations to resign in protest. This is a sign of things to come. At least CBS refused to include an apology in the settlement terms. There was still a bit of a heartbeat.

## **And then they came for Colbert (South Park may be next)**

To add insult to injury, Paramount announced the cancellation of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," effective June 2025\. The company claims the move was financial. The timing of the announcement after Colbert's sharp criticisms of the administration suggests otherwise.

Even South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone—who just signed a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount—mocked the decision in their season debut, implying it was done solely to please Trump. 

It's only a matter of time before they are also in the crosshairs too.

## **Where does this leave freedom of the press**

This whole episode could have a "chilling effect" on how the press covers the administration. Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf notes that these settlements collectively expose all media companies to similar pressure. As he explains:

"It's primarily about exerting dominance and creating a chilling effect for other actors.... "Media organizations will think twice about putting on news that is against to the president's perceived self-interest."

This deal represents more than a corporate merger—it's a test case for how media companies will navigate an era of unprecedented political pressure. Can CBS News maintain its editorial independence while satisfying an ombudsman tasked with rooting out "bias"? 

Given the current climate, I think the answer is rather obvious. Thus, the exodus of journalists from CBS, which has already begun. We can only hope that 60 Minutes stands firm as their history suggests they will.

The message to other media companies is clear: resistance may be costly, but capitulation comes with its own price—one measured not just in dollars, but in the erosion of press freedom that has long been considered essential to American democracy.

"Good night and good luck," because "That's the way it is, Tuesday, August 5th, 2025."

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The return of a confederate general
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-return-of-a-confederate-general/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:08:17.000Z
[A statue commemorating General Albert Pike is being reinstalled in D.C. after being toppled by protestors in June 2020.](https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/confederate-general-statue-toppled-in-2020-to-be-reinstalled-in-dc/3970324/?ref=notunmindful.org)

## **Decades of democratic opposition**

The statue had long faced local opposition. The D.C. Council first called for the statue's removal in 1992—over 30 years ago. For three decades, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced multiple bills in Congress seeking its removal. This wasn't a sudden, reactive decision made in the heat of 2020's protests—it represented the consistent will of D.C. residents.

The reinstallation highlights a troubling disconnect between federal authority and local democratic will. All local efforts have been overruled by federal intervention.

## **A monument from the Jim Crow era**

As with most confederate monuments, the Pike statue wasn't erected during the the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. It was dedicated in 1901, during the height of the Jim Crow era when Confederate monuments were being constructed across the South as symbols of white supremacy and resistance to Black civil rights. This timing wasn't coincidental—these monuments served to intimidate and remind newly freed Black Americans of their "place" in society.

Pike himself remains a controversial figure, with critics pointing to accusations linking him to the founding of the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan. The Masons, who revere Pike as one of their own, dispute this, but of course they would, wouldn't they.

Whether or not these specific Klan claims are verified, the statue's 1901 dedication date places it squarely within the period when Confederate symbolism was being weaponized against civil rights progress.

## Federal trampling of local will

The decision to restore the statue represents a troubling pattern. Federal authorities from the current administration overriding the expressed wishes of local communities. 

The fact that it glorifies the confederacy is surely just a coincidence.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### 60 year old archive faces cuts due to the war on Black history
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/60-year-old-archive-faces-cuts-due-to-the-war-on-black-history/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:07:45.000Z
A recent article in The Washington Post, "[60-year-old Black history archive faces uncertain future after federal cuts](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/23/amistad-black-history-trump/?utm%5Fsource=flipboard&utm%5Fcontent=topic%2Fblackhistory)," highlights how [the Amistad Research Center](https://www.amistadresearchcenter.org/?ref=notunmindful.org) was forced to lay off half its staff and drastically reduce its hours after the Trump administration terminated four of its federal grants in April.

The Amistad Research Center is home to 15 million rare documents dating back to the 1780s and works by Jacob Lawrence. The end of its funding sources exemplifies a larger struggle to retain and celebrate Black history against an assault on it by the current administration.

Black history institutions across America are in crisis. Similar cuts hit the [Whitney Plantation](https://whitneyplantation.org/?ref=notunmindful.org), the [Pauli Murray Center](https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/?ref=notunmindful.org), and the [Evansville African American Museum](https://www.evvaam.org/?ref=notunmindful.org), forcing some to charge for previously free programs.

The timing is particularly devastating. As documentary filmmaker [Brad Lichtenstein](https://371productions.com/staff/brad?ref=notunmindful.org) notes, these archives finally allowi us to incorporate Black stories into American history. This is essential "catch-up work" after centuries of systematic exclusion due to white supremacy. Now, just as progress is being made, the resources are disappearing.

Bureaucratic processes have made things worse. While the Institute of Museum and Library Services offered appeals for terminated grants, many Black history organizations couldn't navigate the unclear process. About 220 grants were restored, but institutions like Amistad fell through the cracks.

The human cost is immediate: fewer staff means research requests go unfulfilled, new materials can't be accepted, and projects stall. 

Despite the current administration's desire to erase black history, there's resilience. Amistad's executive director Kathe Hambrick launched a $1 million fundraising campaign, declaring: "We're not going down now. We're just slowing down, but we're not going anywhere."

These institutions aren't just storing documents—they're preserving pieces of American democracy itself. The collections remain safe for now, but their accessibility hangs in the balance.

Black history is American history.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Americana becomes anti-immigrant propaganda
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/americana-becomes-anti-immigrant-propaganda/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:07:16.000Z
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has weaponized art for political messaging. How the works are being used has horrified the artist's estates. 

## The background

As reported in the [Los Angeles Times](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-26/dhs-manifest-destiny-american-progress-painting?ref=notunmindful.org), [The Hill](https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5426804-thomas-kinkade-family-denounces-dhs-post/?ref=notunmindful.org), and [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/07/29/trump-dhs-immigrants-social-paintings/?ref=notunmindful.org), DHS made a number of social media posts depicting innocent Americana paintings. But context is everything, and these were more than aesthetic choices. 

The paintings appear between posts about the usual MAGA obsessions: "Alligator Alcatraz" (the concentration camp built in the Florida Everglades), immigrant mug shots, and promises to "MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN" through mass deportations. These posts lend the paintings a much darker meaning.

The three works posted tell a story when viewed together. [Thomas Kinkade's "Morning Pledge"](https://www.thomaskinkade.com/products/69398?ref=notunmindful.org) depicts children walking to a schoolhouse with an American flag. [Morgan Weistling's "A Prayer for a New Life"](https://www.morganweistling.com/?ref=notunmindful.org) shows pioneer parents with a baby on a covered wagon. The most controversial, [John Gast's 1872 "American Progress"](https://collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=M545330;type=101&ref=notunmindful.org) (see above) shows a very white version of Manifest Destiny.

## Artists and their estates fight back

This has elicited an unprecedented response from artists and their families. The Kinkade Family Foundation immediately sent a cease-and-desist letter to DHS. The letter demands the removal the post featuring "Morning Pledge:" 

 "We were deeply troubled to see this image used to promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS, as this is antithetical to our mission. We stand firmly with our communities threatened and targeted by DHS, especially our immigrant, BIPOC, undocumented, LGBTQ+, and disabled relatives and neighbors."

Morgan Weistling, the only living artist among the three, also condemned DHS's unauthorized use of his work. He wrote that DHS used the painting, which he painted in 2020, without his permission. 

The painting was meant to depict "two parents out on the trail in a covered wagon and on their journey with a baby" who are "depicted here praying to God for his fragile life on their perilous journey."

## The Manifest Destiny problem

Their use of John Gast's "American Progress" gets to the heart the most troubling aspect of this controversy. This 1872 painting is recognized as an allegory of manifest destiny. It shows a blonde female figure (*Columbia*) leading settlers westward while Native Americans and buffalo flee into darkness.

Anyone can recognize the implications. The painting is a visual representation of Manifest Destiny. The idea that it was the divine purpose and right of European-descended settlers to spread across North America. The concept was also used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes.

The DHS posted this image with the caption "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending." The message was clear and chilling. If you are antything other than white, you are not welcome here.

## Beyond appreciation

This isn't just about copyright infringement or artistic integrity—though those are serious issues. As historian Heather Cox Richardson noted, rather than advancing the concept of manifest destiny, the Trump administration's reposting of "American Progress" uses American symbols to advance the idea of "[blood and soil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%5Fand%5Fsoil?ref=notunmindful.org)" citizenship. 

This should ring alarm bells as 1930s Nazi Germany used this phrase and concept.

The timing makes the intent even more transparent. These paintings appeared on DHS feeds that celebrate deportation operations and promote fear-based messaging about immigrants. The images have been widely shared by conservatives. This has sparked alarm among the artists, their families, and historians. They see their use as part of an effort to rewrite the past with an exclusionary view of American history.

## The wider battle

What we're witnessing goes beyond a few controversial social media posts. The use of the paintings does not exist in a vacuum. It comes amid a broader effort by the administration to bend country's arts and cultural landscape to its will 

This includes drastic cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and a major overhaul of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Some have even floated the idea of renaming the Kennedy Center after Trump or the First Lady. Such a move would be blatantly illegal, since the statute creating the Kennedy Center specifies its name.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin defended the agency's posts: the art "celebrates America's heritage and history." 

But whose heritage? Whose history? I think we all know the answer to those questions.

## Artistic intent versus government use

But these works are being used contrary to their creators' intentions: 

A Kinkade Family Foundation spokesman noted the intent of "Morning Pledge" was to express his desire for a place where "basic human rights are granted regardless of where we come from or who we may be." Kinkade was deeply committed to humanitarian causes and made paintings that offered a sense of dignity and hope, especially to those denied basic human rights.

Even the description of "Morning Pledge" on Kinkade's own website contradicts DHS's use of it: 

The artist "absolutely knew that the United States was a beacon of hope for the world, promising fundamental justice and dignity for all those living here and help for those not allowed their basic human rights no matter where they might be."

## What this means for the country

This controversy reveals something crucial about how symbols and imagery can be co-opted for political purposes. When a government agency uses beloved American art to promote exclusionary policies, it's not just about aesthetics—it's about who gets to define what America means.

Most of the people destined for detention at "Alligator Alcatraz" are guilty of nothing more than hoping for the vision of life presented in "Morning Pledge." That's the bitter irony at the heart the misuse of these works of art.

The artists and their families fighting back remind us that art can represent hope, dignity, and the possibility of redemption for all—not just a chosen few.

We must remain vigilant about how the use of our cultural symbols tell about who we are as a nation.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Brown capitulates
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/brown-capitulates/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:06:35.000Z
Another Ivy League institution has caved to the Trump administration' war on higher education ([New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/us/brown-university-makes-a-deal-with-the-white-house-to-restore-funding.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.aU8.kvnG.zyBYnQv%5FIMWV&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ref=notunmindful.org) /[Boston Globe](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/30/metro/brown-university-deal-trump-research-federal-funding/?ref=notunmindful.org)). Brown University announced yesterday that it has struck a deal with the White House. It becomes the third elite school in a month to capitulate to academic extortion.

[Full agreement here (PDF).](https://www.brown.edu/sites/default/files/brown-and-united-states-resolution-agreement%5FJuly-30-2025.pdf?ref=notunmindful.org)

## The price of "peace"

Brown has agreed to pay $50 million over ten years to state workforce development programs. This creative workaround avoids writing a direct check to Trump's government, unlike Columbia. But the financial cost pales in comparison to what Brown has surrendered. It has ceded its institutional integrity and gutted civil-rights protections.

## **Erasing trans students from campus**

This "resolution agreement" buries provisions that will make Brown's campus actively hostile to transgender students. The university has committed to:

- Enforcing sex-separated athletic facilities based on biological sex
- Providing only "female-only" and "male-only" housing options using the Trump administration's restrictive definitions
- Maintaining single-sex bathroom and locker room policies
- Prohibiting any gender reassignment procedures for minors—effectively making Brown complicit in denying healthcare to trans youth

This isn't just policy—it's state-sanctioned discrimination dressed up in legalese.

## The return of Jim Crow in admissions

Even worse, Brown's has agreed to dismantle any consideration of race or ethnicity in its admissions process. The university has pledged to:

- Maintain "merit-based admissions" without any racial preferences
- End all race-based programs, quotas, or diversity targets
- Stop using diversity narratives or any reference to racial identity in admissions decisions
- Provide detailed racial breakdowns of admissions data to federal overseers

Think about that last one for just a minute. If the federal overseers don't like the percentage of whiteness? What then?

This represents a fundamental rollback of decades of progress toward educational equity. Brown has agreed to pretend that systemic racism doesn't exist and that "merit" exists in a vacuum. This pollyanna vision ignores the historical and social reality. What consititutes merit. Did Trump "merit" admission to Penn? Or did the money make the merit?

## The death of academic freedom

Brown President Christina Paxson tried to spin this capitulation as preserving Brown's "academic foundation." But actions speak louder than press releases. When faced with the loss of $510 million in research funding, Brown chose money over moral leadership. Surely, Brown has a large endowment to help weather such storms?

The university borrowed $800 million rather than fight these demands in court. This reveals the complete succes of the Trump administration's extortion tactics. As one critic noted, "This isn't policy. This is simple extortion and deal-making, which has no place in a democracy."

## A domino effect

Brown's surrender follows similar deals by Penn and Columbia. This has created a model for the Trump administration's war on inclusive higher education. Harvard is reportedly next in the crosshairs. While initially steadfast in it's resistance to such extortion, it is in negotiations ongoing over a potential $500 million settlement.

The Trump administration has also targetedd Duke University, [freezing $108 million in research funding.](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/30/nation/trump-administration-duke-university-research-funding-freeze/?p1=Article%5FInline%5FText%5FLink&ref=notunmindful.org) The federal government accused the school of racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action.

On other fronts, [George Mason](https://www.notunmindful.org/faculty-support-for-george-mason-president-triggers-federal-investigation/) and UVA have undergone attacks from a different direction. In these cases, the government has attacked the Presidents of the institutions to make changes there. [It worked at UVA](https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-fight-with-universities-and-dei-continues/).

Each capitulation makes it easier for the administration to squeeze the next target. What we're witnessing isn't just policy disagreement—it's the methodical destruction of institutional independence in American higher education.

## The ultimate cost for society

Yes, Brown avoided an independent monitor and kept some control over how their penalty money gets spent. That may be all well and good on its surface. But they've also agreed to actively discriminate against trans students and abandon any commitment to racial equity in admissions.

For these elite universities, your civil rights are negotiable when enough federal dollars are on the line. I'm not so worried about our alma mater. It's pretty adept at keeping its head down, but still.

This is how fascism works—not through dramatic overnight changes, but through incremental surrenders. They eventually hollow out the institutions that once stood as bulwarks against discrimination. Universities are the first against the wall. 

Brown University became the latest casualty in Trump's war on inclusive education.

How quickly have all the institutions that were built to withstand these things have surrendered.

The question now is whether any institution will have the courage to stand firm. Or will they all eventually fold under financial pressure. And if they do, marginalized students will bear the cost of their institutional cowardice. Because it won't end with the other. It will ensure the elites thrive. And the rest of us? We can pound sand.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Help support Not Unmindful
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/help-support-not-unmindful/
Last updated: 2026-02-10T13:19:00.000Z
As you know I helped build and then maintained the original Not Unmindful site, and I resurrected it earlier this year on a more cost effective and simpler platform to ease publication. One of the “benefits” of the new platform is to introduced tiered, subscription pricing for payment.

This content, however, must remain free. That is my promise. 

Now and always, choosing to subscribe means you’ll get a weekly digest along with an occasional piece of longer form content—not a constant plea for cash like they do at the stick fort (or annual fund even).

I love doing this as a purpose driven project (atoning for some dodgy former clients). 

All that said, it does incur personal costs and has so since Tom H. and I built the first site over a weekend, so if you find the site valuable and you would like to chip in a buck or two for hosting and the like, I would appreciate it. [Just let me know](mailto:tim@notunmindful.org) and we can arrange details. 

Alternatively, you can leave a tip via my [Venmo](https://account.venmo.com/u/Tim-Truxell?ref=notunmindful.org) or [PayPal](https://paypal.me/timtruxell?ref=notunmindful.org).

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### A nationwide network of racist Ruby Ridges?
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/a-nationwide-network-of-racist-ruby-ridges/
Last updated: 2026-02-10T13:11:46.000Z
A group called Return to the Land, founded by Eric Orwoll and Peter Csere, has established two self-described “whites-only” residential communities in the Ozark hills of Arkansas. 

## Further expansion planned

The first, was founded on 160 acres in the Ozark hills near Ravenden, Arkansas in October 2023\. It currently has over 400 hundred residents. The second, also in the Ozark hills of Arkansas in January 2025, according to the group's website (sorry, no link to racists, just search it). [A third is planned in the Ozarks, near Springfield, Missouri](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/return-to-the-land-whites-only-community-b2795213.html?ref=notunmindful.org).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-29-at-11.12.48---AM-1.png)

****Ozarks communities**

The group plans further expansions: one in the Deep South and two in the Appalachians. All of which are allegedly in the initial planning phases.

## What they are all about

These settlements explicitly exclude non-whites, Jewish people, non-Christians, and LGBTQ+ individuals, promoting what its founders call “traditional views and European ancestry.” The group’s reported motto, “No Blacks. No Jews. No Gays,” has ignited widespread condemnation for its overt racism, antisemitism, and homphobia. 

## Domestic versus international news coverage

While national news in the US has barely paid any attention to them, save [this short online only piece by NBC news](https://www.nbcnews.com/video/shorts/inside-a-whites-only-community-in-arkansas-243787333559?ref=notunmindful.org), they are garnering much more attention in more independent and targeted US publications: [Forward](https://forward.com/news/733168/return-to-the-land-arkansas-jews-eric-orwoll/?ref=notunmindful.org), [JFeed](https://www.jfeed.com/antisemitism/whites-only-community-arkansas?ref=notunmindful.org), and Atlanta Black Star, to name a few. Coverage abroad of this movement has been much more wide ranging from [The Times of Israel](https://www.timesofisrael.com/return-to-the-land-white-supremacists-building-whites-only-settlement-in-arkansas/?ref=notunmindful.org) to [The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/return-to-the-land-whites-only-community-b2795213.html?ref=notunmindful.org) to [The Times of India](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/return-to-the-land-group-sets-up-all-white-town-in-arkansas-civil-rights-activists-raise-alarm/articleshow/122932169.cms?ref=notunmindful.org).

The most in-depth coverage, however, can be found in [this excellent piece by Sky News](https://news.sky.com/story/inside-the-whites-only-settlement-in-arkansas-the-group-building-a-fortress-for-the-white-race-13399875?ref=notunmindful.org) in the UK. 

According to this in-depth report: the 160-acre settlement, founded by Eric Orwoll, houses residents who describe it as a "fortress for the white race." Members undergo ethnic vetting through video interviews and can purchase land shares within the compound, which features residential cabins, communal facilities, and a homeschool.

The report continues, beyond housing the discrimination described above the settlement explicitly bans followers of "non-European religions" while actively incentivizing white population growth through cash rewards for newborns. The group recently awarded $1,000 to a family for having their sixth child.

This is one of the best interactive pieces I've seen in quite a while.

This focus on increasing white births has long been part of a nativist agenda to help offset the "great replacement theory" that they subscribe too, despite all evidence to contradict them from history. They cherry pick what they want. In their eyes, they have always been here and this is their promised land given to them by God and manifest destiny. Never mind the millions upon millions of Native Americans that were here when Columbus arrived with germs and guns. (See the book [1491](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/?ref=notunmindful.org) for more information about this bit.)

## Avoiding civil rights lawsuits

[According to The Atlanta Black Star report](https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/07/24/arkansas-man-raises-50k-whites-only-fortress-lawsuits/?ref=notunmindful.org), the group is already deploying strategies to avoid lawsuits.

While they currently investigate legal protections that might protect them from civil rights and housing discrimination lawsuits and injunctions, they maintain its private association status without commercial aims shields if from civil rights laws. And they are raising money for attorneys that share these views, using online fundraising campaigns.

## Just what do they mean by traditional?

The group is target at individuals and families with traditional views and European ancestry. They help groups of our members form European heritage communities. As covered above, this means whites only. The aim to "promote strong families with common ancestry" share their traditional values. So not only is the group racist, but they are also misogynistic. 

To achieve these aims, they say they will refuse to lower their standards or lose sight of their goals. Their standards sound awfully a lot like racial purity tests. In fact on of the commenters on one of their fundraising campaigns practically begged for DNA testing for aspiring members. Never mind there is no such thing as purity.

They want to create many independent and fully-functioning parallel societies. In short, they want turn back there clock to the 1800s. I'd *antebellum*, but that would mean blacks would be near by, which they will not abide.

## Connections to our recent history

If the focus on a separate society sounds familiar it should. It certainly calls to mind the 90s militia movement that metastasized in the wake of the stand-off at Ruby Ridge in Idaho (ed. note: again Idaho? really). 

The militia movement was an explicitly right-wing movement that inherited paramilitary traditions of earlier groups, especially the conspiratorial, anti-government *Posse Comitatus*. The militia movement claimed that the groups were sanctioned by law but uncontrolled by government; in fact, they were designed to oppose a tyrannical government. Somehow, this opposition is nowhere to be found now.

No for the scary part, the movement's ideology has led to some truly atrocious successful and attempted criminal acts, including stockpiling illegal weapons and explosives and plotting to destroy buildings or assassinate public officials, as well as lesser confrontations. It was behind the Oklahoma City bombing, the attempted Olympic bombing in Atlanta, and the bombing of the Otherside lounge, a Lesbian bar also in Atlanta. Is this starting to rhyme yet for anyone else?

***The worst domestic terrorists are always racist white men.**

Many parts of the militia movement were explicitly tied to Christian nationalist. All the parts were inherently white and inverterately racist, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-semitic. 

And it was violent as hell.

## The danger of Return to the Land

Given our recent history in the US, a group of racist white people wanted to separate themselves from society invariably leads to first violence and then domestic terrorism

If Return to the the Land expands as they wish, can arming themselves be far behind (if hey haven't started already). 

What we could be looking at is a regional network of Ruby Ridges and I doubt that our government now has the institutional will to try to stop that and may currently embrace it. By the time the wind turns, if it turns, it may already be too late.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Faculty support for George Mason President triggers federal investigation
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/faculty-support-for-george-mason-president-triggers-federal-investigation/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:05:17.000Z
According to an article by Vimal Patel, "[Faculty Support of George Mason's President Draws Federal Investigation](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/justice-department-george-mason-faculty-senate-investigation.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.Z08.Bn9V.7i0r9vSjZFy3&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ref=notunmindful.org)," in he New York Times*,* the Justice Department has opened a federal investigation into George Mason University's Faculty Senate after professors passed a resolution supporting their president and the school's diversity initiatives, according to reporting by *The New York Times*.

President Washington has been specifically targeted for promoting these policies. President Washington is, of course, Black.

The administration is using anti-semitism accusations as a cudgel once again. It has accused George Mason of having antisemitism problems. Furthermore, it claims university policies encouraging the hiring and advancement of women and faculty of color are discriminatory. 

The controversy began when the Trump administration launched an investigation into George Mason University over allegations that the Virginia school's diversity programs were discriminatory. In response, faculty members quickly drafted and adopted a resolution defending university President Gregory Washington and affirming that "diversity is our strength."

## **Targeting academic freedom**

Free speech advocates have condemned the move as an attack on academic freedom. Faculty resolutions rarely result in any concete action. As we recall, such a vote occurred at our alma mater in 2020\. 

The Justice Department's interest suggests the Trump administration is expanding its university targets. It's moved beyond the pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia and other institutaions. Now it sees its as an effort to combat "left-leaning" campus climates nationwide.

## A pattern of leadership changes

The follow pressure on Virginia higher education leaders who have supported diversity efforts. Two other public college leaders in the state have lost their jobs this year. University of Virginia President James E. Ryan resigned in June under pressure from the Trump administration and conservative alumni. 

Closer to home VMI declined to renew the contract of Cedric T. Wins, its first Black superintendent, after alumni attacked the school's "woke agenda."

## Disputed language

Justice Department Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon criticized the faculty resolution for praising Washington's efforts "to ensure 'faculty and staff demographics . . . mirror student demographics'" at GMU, calling this "concerning" as it suggested "race- or sex-motivated hiring decisions."

Faculty Senate President Solon Simmons disputed this characterization, calling the inquiry "flabbergasting." He explained that the language was actually a direct quote from a strategic document adopted by the university's Board of Visitors, not original faculty language praising Washington.

## **Concerns about University governance**

Faculty members worry the investigations will be used to justify removing Washington when the Board of Visitors—appointed by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin—meets Friday to examine his performance.

Tim Gibson, a George Mason associate professor and American Association of University Professors leader, described concerns about "a new model of how universities are to be governed—it's much more top-down from the federal government."

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called a federal investigation of a non-binding faculty opinion "highly unusual" and warned it represents "the latest in a pattern of shakedowns against colleges and universities that will certainly chill faculty speech." 

## No university is safe

Is any university safe from such efforts when they are so contrived? This is not only an assault on DEI efforts. It is an assault against higher education itself. The anti-intellectualism is as much as point as the racism and sexism.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Neo-confederates fight to preserve lost cause myths at Stone Mountain
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/confederate-group-fights-to-preserve-dangerous-historical-myths-at-stone-mountain/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:04:54.000Z
[Charlotte Kramon reports in an for the AP that the Georgia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has filed a desperate lawsuit](https://www.yahoo.com/news/confederacy-group-sues-georgia-park-212944851.html?guccounter=1&guce%5Freferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce%5Freferrer%5Fsig=AQAAAE4mJRucOaPD0ax-vnPe3tTIJmEkoUkCTyWaV8zrAXvQy4hBk2CPWbgcuINITnHXeJqibdHRAX9-y7dWh6ySsFlfQODaU8xeZwlNlLl7IRxTNUdUctJecF2zQ3r3VkG0YhtgML6eMzYp7N68Cfam%5FsVq8U4wANLBP5nZNhGfSN61&ref=notunmindful.org). It aims to prevent Stone Mountain Park from changing the signs in park. The new signs do not feature imagery of the large confederate monument on the rock's side. 

The article outlines how this effort would help put the false narratives about one of America's most problematic monuments. Such groups stuck in the mythological past continue to weaponize the false historical narrative.

## Background we all know

Stone Mountain's massive carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson stands as a towering symbol of the "Lost Cause" mythology—a deliberate campaign of historical distortion that has poisoned American understanding of the Civil War for over a century. This pernicious narrative falsely reframes a war fought to preserve slavery as a noble struggle for states' rights, whitewashing the Confederacy's brutal defense of human bondage.

This fabricated narrative became the foundation for the Lost Cause movement—a coordinated effort to rehabilitate the Confederate cause and justify continued racial oppression.

## Fighting for the lost cause is very much alive

The park's planned exhibit threatens to shatter these carefully constructed lies. The "truth-telling" installation would expose how white Southerners systematically manufactured a sanitized version of history. This statue is a big part of what the exhibit describes as a "collective memory" designed to obscure slavery's central role in the conflict. 

As Kramon points out, the exhibit would reveal the sinister role organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans played in spreading this propaganda through monument campaigns, corrupted educational programs, and support for Jim Crow segregation laws. These groups didn't just honor dead soldiers—they actively promoted a racist ideology that inflicted generations of harm on Black Americans.

Stone Mountain's history exemplifies this destructive legacy. The KKK's 1915 revival ceremony atop the mountain, timed with the release of the white supremacist film "Birth of a Nation," demonstrates how Lost Cause mythology directly enabled racial terrorism. The monument itself was commissioned as part of this broader campaign to legitimize white supremacy through romanticized Confederate imagery.

The lawsuit reveals that these organizations remain committed to protecting their false historical narrative, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence of its harmful impact. Their resistance to historical truth demonstrates that the Lost Cause mythology was never about heritage—it was always about maintaining white supremacist power structures through the manipulation of public memory.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Housekeeping notes
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/housekeeping-notes/
Last updated: 2025-07-22T17:26:10.000Z
Just a reminder that this is a labor of love for me. 

Please share the word with like-minded friends, and I would encourage you to comment and participate. 

I have no intention of monetizing this.
### Women’s contributions and men’s racism erased from history of national monument
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/womens-contributions-and-mens-racism-erased-from-history-of-national-monument/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:04:30.000Z
Update 8/4/25: [A ranger at the monument weighs in with her perspective on Medium](https://medium.com/@elizabethmilano/this-is-what-censorship-looks-like-in-a-national-park-the-first-park-sign-that-came-down-168dc5120319?ref=notunmindful.org).

*Note: The following is republished directly from* [*The 19th\**](https://19thnews.org/?ref=notunmindful.org)*—an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy—and is licensed according to their guidelines.*

*[This story](https://19thnews.org/2025/07/public-lands-women-monuments-erasure?utm%5Fsource=partner&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=19th-republishing&utm%5Fcontent=/2025/07/public-lands-women-monuments-erasure) was originally reported by Jessica Kutz of [The 19th](https://19thnews.org/?utm%5Fsource=partner&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=19th-republishing&utm%5Fcontent=/2025/07/public-lands-women-monuments-erasure). [ Meet Jessica and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy](https://19thnews.org/author/jessica-kutz?utm%5Fsource=partner&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=19th-republishing&utm%5Fcontent=/2025/07/public-lands-women-monuments-erasure).*

Under pressure from the Trump administration, the National Park Service (NPS) removed historical context from signage that explained the role women played in the creation of the Muir Woods National Monument and highlighted the racist ideologies of some of the men associated with the site. 

A ranger for the monument confirmed that the information removed last week originated from an initiative by NPS officials called “History Under Construction” that filled in gaps in the timeline of the park to offer a more comprehensive history of the monument in Marin County, California, which is known for its old-growth redwood trees.

An[ article on the National Park Service ](https://www.nps.gov/articles/history-under-construction.htm?ref=notunmindful.org)(NPS) website explains what new information park officials had added to the interpretive signs in 2021\. This had included highlighting the work of a women’s club, called The California Club, which launched the first campaign to save what was then known as Sequoia Canyon. 

The updated text also detailed the racist backgrounds of otherwise celebrated men associated with creating the monument. For example, it added the political views of William Kent, who was credited with buying and later donating the land that would become the national monument to President Theodore Roosevelt. The additions referenced that he worked on anti-Asian policies during his time in Congress, which laid the groundwork for Japanese mass internment during World War II. 

It also pointed out that important conservation figures of that time like Gifford Pinchot, who was appointed chief of what is now the U.S. Forest Service in 1898, was also a eugenicist who believed the human race could be improved by “selective breeding.” He served a 10-year term on an advisory council of the American Eugenics Society. 

The additional text also highlighted the original caretakers of the land, the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo tribes, as well as pointing out that their lands were stripped from them and later became places like the national monument. 

All of the additions associated with the initiative have been removed.

NPS did not respond to a request for comment by The 19th as of press time. 

The monument’s ranger office confirmed that the language was taken down at the direction of the NPS’s Washington, D.C., office following a [secretarial order ](https://www.doi.gov/document-library/secretary-order/so-3431-restoring-truth-and-sanity-american-history?ref=notunmindful.org)issued by the Department of Interior (DOI). 

The order outlined how the agency would implement the Trump administration’s executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, that stated the federal government would take action to ensure that any monuments, memorials, statues or markers managed by DOI do not contain “descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” Instead it stated the agency should focus “on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”

In a March press release, Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit that advocates for the park system said, “The president’s executive order could jeopardize the Park Service’s mission to protect and interpret American history.” He continued, “Every American who cares about our country’s history should be worried about what people, places, and themes disappear next.”

A separate follow up order issued in June by the DOI asks land managers to report any language that was added after 2020 that could potentially violate the executive order. It also required land agencies to post notices that would allow members of the public to report any language via a QR code. 

Prior to the executive orders, the Trump administration was already taking action to revise information on park websites that did not align with its priorities. For example, NPS removed references to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument’s webpage in February. The monument, in New York City, was created to honor the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.

![](https://pixel.19thnews.org/2025/07/public-lands-women-monuments-erasure) 

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Learning to love the hard truths
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/learning-to-love-the-hard-truths/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:03:41.000Z
## **Oklahoma's legacy and W&L's reckoning Problem**

[In a poweerful](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/20/oklahoma-united-states?CMP=Share%5FiOSApp%5FOther&ref=notunmindful.org)[ essay in The Guardian, Caleb Gayle explores how he learned to love Oklahoma](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/20/oklahoma-united-states?CMP=Share%5FiOSApp%5FOther&ref=notunmindful.org): He does so not despite its violent history, but because of his willingness to confront it. His recounts his journey. As a Black child, he reenacted land runs in school. Now as an adult scholar, he's traced buried stories of Black sovereignty. This can offer a profound insight for our University. It has continued to struggle with meaningful historical reckoning.

Other institutions in state, UVA and William & Mary have met this in a much more head on way. 

![UVA Monument to the Enslaved](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/07/Memorial-to-enslaved-laborers-07.jpg)

UVA Monument to the Enslaved: Image Credit: WomenArtistUpdates - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121127424](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121127424&ref=notunmindful.org)

William & Mary even puts it front and center, very near the Wren Building, the foundational heart of the campus.

![Heart Memorial to the Enslaved at the College of William & Mary. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/07/Heart_Memorial_to_the_Enslaved_in_daylight-_2022.jpg)

Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved at the College of William & Mary. Image credit: Pbritti - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124076284](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124076284&ref=notunmindful.org)

## The sanitization problem

Gayle's childhood experience is haunting: fourth-graders equipped with wagons and stakes, racing across a schoolyard to claim "their" land in a cheerful reenactment of the land runs that dispossessed Indigenous peoples. Oklahoma's public schools didn't ban these exercises until 2014\. The schools replaced them with, "a sanitized, feel-good version of state history."

This sanitization isn't unique to Oklahoma's elementary schools. At the University of Oklahoma, crowds still chant "Boomer! Sooner!"—celebrating the very settlers and cheaters whose "pioneering spirit" was built on "theft and violence." The university's mascot remains a covered wagon, an emblem of dispossession transformed into school pride.

Washington and Lee faces a strikingly parallel challenge. Despite removing Confederate flags and adding contextualization, it still bear the name of a slaveholder who committed treason. Like Oklahoma's "Boomer Sooner" chant, the name represents more than historical acknowledgment—they actively celebrate figures whose legacies are inseparable from systems of oppression.

The University still remains the country's largest Confederate memorial. Hiding the Recumbent Lee statue is only a baby step.

## The deeper threat of true reckoning

Gayle's then relates the story of Edward McCabe. And how it reveals why authentic historical reckoning feels so threatening. McCabe, the first Black statewide elected official in the old West, envisioned something radical: a Black-governed state where African Americans could live "unmolested by the selfish greed of the white man." His dream wasn't just about survival—it was about sovereignty, self-determination, and belonging on Black people's own terms.

That vision was "mocked, sabotaged and eventually erased from civic memory" because, as t represented "not just a land grab, but a claim to belong. A declaration of autonomy."

Universities face similar fears when confronted with calls for genuine transformation. True reckoning with institutional histories of slavery, segregation, and exclusion inevitably raises uncomfortable questions about power, belonging, and who gets to define institutional identity. 

It's far easier to add a plaque or change the name of a building than to fundamentally reimagine how an institution understands itself. 

## Why cosmetic change isn't enough

Gayle describes Oklahoma's current reinvention strategy: courting artists, remote workers, and digital nomads with financial incentives while asking "far less of itself when it comes to honoring the people and histories already here." The result brings headlines but "rarely brings healing."

Higher education's approach to historical reckoning often follows a similar pattern. Name changes, diversity initiatives, and Land Acknowledgments can become performative gestures that allow institutions to claim progress while avoiding deeper structural changes. The decision to keep Lee's name while adding "contextualization" exemplifies this approach—acknowledging discomfort without addressing its fundamental source.

## The theology of place

Perhaps most powerfully, Gayle argues that "place matters. Not just as geography, but as some kind of theology." The physical spaces we inhabit and celebrate carry moral weight. When universities maintain buildings, traditions, and naming conventions that honor those who perpetrated historical violence, they're making theological statements about whose lives and dreams matter.

McCabe understood this. His vision of Black sovereignty wasn't just political—it was sacred, an attempt to create sanctified ground where Black belonging could flourish without white oversight. Though his dream was violently suppressed, the 13 all-Black towns that remain in Oklahoma (down from 50) still testify to the possibility of spaces organized around different values.

## **Learning to love hard truths**

What makes Gayle's essay so compelling is his insistence that love and pride can coexist with historical honesty. His affection for Oklahoma doesn't come from its "polished reinvention" but from "the hard work of seeing my state clearly, in all its contradictions: the violence and the love, the buried history and the stubborn hope."

This mirrors why we care so much about change at the University. It transformed my life and many others'.

It also offers a model for universities wrestling with difficult legacies. Rather than sanitizing or minimizing historical violence, institutions could find their strength in unflinching examination of how they've participated in systems of oppression—and how they might participate in repair.

For Washington and Lee, this might mean moving beyond the current compromise of keeping Lee's name while adding context. True reckoning would require asking harder questions: What would it mean to organize the university around different values? How might the institution honor those who suffered under the systems that Lee (i.e., chattel slavery)? What would true inclusion look like for communities that have been historically exclude

Only by confronting the full truth of institutional histories can universities begin to imagine what genuine transformation might look like.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### A theocratic movement takes root in D.C.
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/a-theocratic-movement-takes-root-in-d-c/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:03:01.000Z
What follows is a summary of this excellent article at talkingpointsmemo.com (well worth a follow by the way) by Josh Kovensky: [Fire, Brimstone, and Hegseth: Idaho Christian Nationalists Establish a DC Beachhead.](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/christ-church-dc-hegseth?ref=notunmindful.org) Read the whole thing. It's scary as hell, given how they view diversity in all of its aspects.

## Beachhead Established

This past Sunday, a new church, Christ Kirk Washington, opened its doors within sight of the U.S. Capitol. Among the congregants sat Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. As a branch of the Moscow, Idaho-based Christ Kirk, it represents something more ambitious than your typical church. It's part of a growing movement to reshape American politics through hardline Christian nationalism.

## The Moscow Mood 

Led by Reformed Christian minister Doug Wilson, Christ Kirk is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), an international network that has built what some describe as a "theocratic empire" in Moscow, Idaho. Despite its remote location, the church has gained significant influence among right-wing circles through sermons, publishing, and what followers call the "Moscow Mood"—a postmillennialist belief that Christians should aggressively fight to dominate culture and use government to enact religious policy.

Pastor Jared Longshore, delivering the inaugural sermon, didn't mince words about the church's vision:

***"The option before you is quite plain," he told the congregation. "It is Christ or chaos, Christ or destruction."** 

In a later interview, Longshore explained that he wants a Christian government where all officials must "acknowledge that Christ is Lord" and "execute the wrath of God against the wrongdoer."

We all know whom he is talking about. Anyone that isn't a white evangelical. And where does this leave women? Do the math.

## A Network of Influence

The Sunday service read like a who's who of New Right politics. Beyond Hegseth, attendees included Nick Solheim, Chief Operations Officer of American Moment—a JD Vance-backed organization that helps recruit right-wing staffers for the Trump administration. The service took place in a building owned by a firm linked to the Conservative Partnership Institute, Mark Meadows' organization that develops MAGA operatives.

The church's political agenda is explicit. A pamphlet distributed at the service noted that members' "voting practices will generally follow a conservative/libertarian pattern," and when they don't vote, "it is generally because the available options don't go far enough." The document mockingly noted that cars with "COEXIST" bumper stickers would be "pretty lonely" in their parking lot.

So, goodbye First Amendment.

## Beyond Politics: A Lifestyle Movement

Christ Kirk's influence extends beyond electoral politics into cultural transformation. The congregation embodied what critics call "trad" aesthetics—men in suspenders and blazers, women in long dresses, large families—representing their vision of patriarchal, traditional America. Their agenda includes banning homosexuality, ending abortion, removing women from combat roles, and establishing more patriarchal family structures.

In other words, keeping women in their places.

## The Big Picture

The D.C. church represents a strategic expansion for a movement that sees itself fighting a "rear-guard action" against secular America. Despite evidence of Christian right influence—from overturning Roe to a conservative Supreme Court majority—these believers view themselves as besieged underdogs seeking to reclaim a "Christian America."

As Longshore put it during his sermon: "We understand that worship is warfare. We mean that." With allies in the highest levels of government, Christ Kirk's Washington branch signals an ambitious attempt to transform that rhetoric into policy reality.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### W&L and endowment taxes
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/w-l/
Last updated: 2025-07-17T15:29:49.000Z
After President Dudley's remarks in the commencement speech about the effort to tax endowments.[ According to the The Chronicle of Higher Education, W&L made out a lot better than a lot of other institutions](https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-damaging-endowment-tax-crosses-the-finish-line?ref=notunmindful.org) (Page 2 of the chart).

Not only did W&L avoid paying higher taxes on the endowment, but it seems the university is getting more than $2 million back. 

Dartmouth, Emory, and Richmond were not so lucky.

*Non in cautus futuri.*
### Idaho bans "Everyone is Welcome Here" in school
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/idaho-bans-everyone-is-welcome-here-in-school/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:02:21.000Z
[Emma Epperly writing for ](https://www.idahoednews.org/author/emma-epperly/?ref=notunmindful.org) Idaho EdNews, reports that Idaho's attorney general has ruled that "Everyone is Welcome Here" signs can no longer be displayed in public schools under a new state law restricting political messaging in classrooms.

House Bill 41 prohibits flags or banners depicting political viewpoints in Idaho's public schools. The Idaho Department of Education sought guidance from the attorney general's office on whether specific signs displayed by West Ada School District teacher Sarah Inama violated the new law.

The attorney general's office determined that Inama's "Everyone is Welcome Here" sign constituted a political statement, citing the sign's origins in a Minnesota movement that began after Donald Trump's 2016 election. 

The opinion noted that the Idaho Democratic Party sells similar signs as fundraising items.However, Inama disputes several key facts in the attorney general's opinion. She told Idaho EdNews she wasn't even teaching in 2017 as claimed, and didn't display the signs until 2020 or 2021\. 

She purchased her sign at a local craft store and did not know of the Minnesota connection."To say that 'Everyone is Welcome' in a public school system is not political, it's the law," Inama argued. She also noted that both state and federal law requires public schools to accept all children without discrimination.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Returning to our past instead
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/returning-to-our-past-instead/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:01:32.000Z
[John Pavlovitz, on his substack argues that America is experiencing a profound moral crisis, not just political dysfunction.](https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/america-is-losing-its-soul-in-brown)

I'd argue that we are just returning to the racist norm. But he makes very good points. 

- He contends that the nation's "soul is dying" due to what they describe as widespread mistreatment of brown-skinned immigrants (ed. note, I'd add all people of color here—I remember George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubery, etc.)
- He presents a contrast between the "screams" of those being harmed and the "silence" of privileged white Americans who arguably are failing to respond
- He calls for white Americans to actively oppose what the systematic brutalization of immigrant communities
- Remaining silent in the face of perceived injustice is itself a moral failure

**Our Call to Action**

I agree with the final bit 100%. 

****"Find the courage to speak with clarity"**

"Silence will not protect anyone from eventual consequences."

That is our mission here as well.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Southern place names and glorification of the racist past
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/southern-place-names-and-glorification-of-the-racist-past/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:01:04.000Z
[Robert Harrell, a rising senior at Martin Luther Kind Jr. Academic Magnet School writes a striking reminder of this in the Tennessean](https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2025/07/09/nashville-street-names-robert-e-lee-j-t-moore/84509636007/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLeLqBleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFyQm1uZjRFR0JZSVlyaGo4AR7djjoqRrRzRaaKbQoBr3yYMkeWuXLCXMY2JyqjE65ZNsAq8kZqWHIWuioZPw%5Faem%5FqxOL9Gz1gd4yA-cCc10cpg&ref=notunmindful.org): 

"Walking to school each day, I'm reminded of the power that's literally written in stone—or in this case, on street signs. As Robert Harrell, a rising senior at Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Magnet, I see firsthand how meaningful it is to honor genuine American heroes through our public spaces.  
  
When I pass Rep. John Lewis Way or Korean Veterans Boulevard, I feel pride in my city's recognition of people who embodied our nation's best values. These names serve as daily reminders of positive change and civic good. They represent Nashville at its finest.  
  
But here's the uncomfortable truth: these inspiring designations are the exception, not the rule."

We all know, dear readers, where we stand on the removal of this misguided commemoration. These opinions are his and [my own](https://nonincautusfuturi.org/?ref=notunmindful.org). And, I know many of you may share these, but that isn't for me to say or state.

But as monuments go, Washington & Lee is the largest confederate monument in the country.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### JD Vance's dangerous vision of American citizenship
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/jd-vances-dangerous-vision-of-american-citizenship/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T21:00:35.000Z
## When ancestry trumps ideals

In his remarks, the fake hillbilly Vice President articulated a vision of citizenship that fundamentally rejects the principle that America is defined by its ideals rather than by blood and soil.

Vance explicitly criticized what he called "the logic of America as a purely creedal nation"—the idea that American citizenship is defined by commitment to the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. He argued this approach is both "over-inclusive" and "under-inclusive."

Over-inclusive, he claimed, because it "would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree" with Declaration principles. Under-inclusive because it would "reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War."

## A Telling Choice of Words

Vance's reference to the Anti-Defamation League is particularly troubling. As critics have noted, the ADL – founded to combat antisemitism—tracks groups like neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and Klansmen. Vance's implicit argument seems to be that ancestral American roots should grant citizenship privileges regardless of one's commitment to democratic values or even basic human equality.

In other words, his slip is showing if you know what I mean.

## The Irony of Location

There's a bitter irony in Vance delivering this speech at the Claremont Institute, founded by students of Harry Jaffa—one of conservatism's most powerful defenders of Lincoln's interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. Jaffa's life's work centered on defending the proposition that "all men are created equal" means exactly what it says. His famous work on the Lincoln-Douglas debates argued precisely the opposite of Vance's position.

## Spitting on Civil War Graves

Perhaps most disturbing is how Vance invokes Civil War soldiers while simultaneously repudiating everything they died for. His speech represents an exact rejection of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address—the greatest consecration of those war dead in American history. While claiming to honor Union soldiers, Vance advocates for a vision of citizenship that would negate the "new birth of freedom" they sacrificed their lives to secure.

Remember, he claims Kentucky and Ohio as homes. Just down the street to me is a monument to a real American hero, James McPherson, the highest ranking U.S. Army officer to be killed in battle (the Battle of Atlanta).

## The Larger Pattern

This isn't just rhetorical positioning. Vance's speech provides the ideological framework for concrete policy actions—from pardoning January 6th insurrectionists to attempts at nullifying the 14th Amendment through executive order. These aren't separate issues but parts of a coherent worldview that rejects equal citizenship under law. 

We've seen them go after the 14th Amendment already.

## What's at Stake

America has never perfectly lived up to its founding ideals, but those ideals – that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights—have served as the "electric cord" linking us across generations and backgrounds. Vance wants to sever that cord, replacing it with a vision of citizenship based on ancestry and heritage rather than shared commitment to democratic values.

This represents nothing less than an attack on the constitutional order established by the Civil War Amendments. Maybe they should check the copy of the constitution they purport to have in their pockets. It's a lot more than the fucking 2nd Amendment.

It's a vision that would make some Americans more equal than others based on how long their families have been here and what their ancestors believed—a fundamental betrayal of everything America aspires to be. All the while forgetting that we white Europeans were the original invaders

The stakes couldn't be higher. What we're witnessing an attempt to redefine American citizenship in ways that would exclude the principles that make America exceptional among nations. That's not conservative—it's revolutionary, and not in a good way because it is fascist. Read some history and it's as obvious as the nose on your face.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### No news today
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/no-news-today/
Last updated: 2025-07-08T15:13:52.000Z
But this is a good time to ask if anyone wants to help. This is a labor that started for me in 2020, shortly after I started my own business. I'd welcome other folks as authors, editors, researchers, and the like. Just let me know if you want to get involved: tim@notundminful.org.

Our mission remains, but we have widened it to a much larger focus. 

We got it from here (props to Tribe).

*Non in cautus futuri.*
### Always worth remembering
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/always-worth-remembering/
Last updated: 2026-02-10T13:12:20.000Z
I know this is a few days late, but I took the long weekend off to mourn.

[What to the Slave is fourth of July](https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/frederick-douglass-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-1852?ref=notunmindful.org).

Read it, hear it:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8a/e4/8ae4eaf9-c7d7-4aa3-bb99-97e627b56292/content/images/2025/10/iStock-1065210670.jpg) 

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### Anti-semitism too from the top
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/anti-semitism-too-from-the-top/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:59:10.000Z
Last week, [Trump railed against ‘Shylocks and bad People’ in Iowa speech](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-rails-against-shylocks-and-bad-people-in-iowa-speech?ref=notunmindful.org). Again, saying the quiet part out loud. Full quote:

“No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker and in some cases shylocks and bad people,” Trump said, adding, “They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite.”

Actual anti-semites using anti-semitism as a cudgel, while destroying many families in the process. I despise this. 

And the fact that his denials make it obvious he has no clue about ***The Merchant of Venice*** just makes me shake my head.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The assault on birthright citizenship
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-assault-on-birthright-citizenship/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:58:45.000Z
[This article by Ezekiel Kweku in the New York Times examines President Trump's second-term efforts to fundamentally redefine American citizenship](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/opinion/birthright-citizenship.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.Tk8.n3H0.4BApDIkFr1xn&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org), with particular focus on his administration's attempts to end birthright citizenship—a policy that Kweku calls "American identity at its fullest and most audacious."

### **Trump's Citizenship Assault**

The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive campaign to narrow who can be considered American. Beyond traditional immigration enforcement like terminating migrant protections and increasing deportations, the administration has taken the extraordinary step of attempting to use executive power to limit birthright citizenship. They're denying citizenship to children born on U.S. soil whose parents were here temporarily or illegally. The Supreme Court recently gave Trump a procedural victory by limiting lower courts' ability to block this policy nationwide.

### **The Stakes of Birthright Citizenship**

As Kweku elegantly states, unrestricted birthright citizenship represents the essence of American exceptionalism—"the characteristically New World notion that being born on a country's soil is enough to make a person its inheritor and steward." 

This is America's foundational belief. Anyone can be enlisted in the democratic experiment, regardless of their parents' status.

### **Historical Irony**

There is a crucial irony though: birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th Amendment specifically to resolve the moral contradiction of slavery. After emancipation, the Constitution was amended to declare that formerly enslaved people—and all future children born on American soil—were citizens by birthright. The article argues that America might never have adopted such expansive citizenship policies without this historical necessity. One forged in the blood of a racist rebellion.

Do we need to point out this points back to the racism underlying the current administration.

### **The Heritage American Movement**

Trump's efforts align with rising conservative promotion of "Heritage American" identity—the idea that true Americanness requires ancestral lineage stretching back generations. And to be white.

This represents a fundamental shift from viewing America as a creed anyone can adopt to seeing it as an inherited bloodline. Some use this term to suggest multi-generational Americans have stronger claims to citizenship; others use it to disguise white nationalism. We all know which of the two it is.

### **Current Immigration Reality**

The U.S. hosts 17% of all international migrants despite being only 4% of world population. About 15% of Americans are foreign-born—the same percentage as during the second great immigration wave in 1910\. This demographic reality fuels Trump's "Make America Great Again" nostalgia for pre-1965 America.

That is, before civil rights were enshrined in law—Jim Crow America.

### **The Broader Battle**

Beyond policy mechanics, Kweku frames Trump's actions as part of a larger struggle over American identity. The question isn't just legal—who gets citizenship—but philosophical: 

Is America a set of ideals anyone can embrace, or is it fundamentally about ancestry and lineage?

We agree with Kweku that Trump's assault on birthright citizenship represents an attempt to resolve America's current identity crisis through exclusion rather than inclusion. By restricting who can become American, the administration is trying to return to a more ethnically homogeneous vision (i.e., white males) of national identity, abandoning the expansive democratic ideals that have historically defined American exceptionalism.

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### "We're all rats now"
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/welcome-to-the-racist-police-state/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:58:31.000Z
[Paul Krugman's Substack article, We're All Rats Now, gets right to the point](https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/were-all-rats-now).

He discusses the backlash against Zohran Mamdani's Democratic primary victory in New York and rightly argues it reflects a broader resurgence of racism in American politics under the Trump administration.

He highlights three particularly harsh reactions to Mamdani's win: Stephen Miller warning of societal collapse, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent comparing New York to "Caracas on the Hudson," and [Senator Tommy Tuberville calling urban voters "inner-city rats" who should be "sent back home."](https://www.notunmindful.org/southern-politicians-and-racism-alabama-edition/) These responses are driven by bigotry rather than legitimate policy concerns. They aren't hiding their slips anymore. Hoods might be next.

Miller's alarm stems from discomfort with non-white political power, while Bessent feels free to use inflammatory language against a foreign-born Muslim that he wouldn't apply to white Christian politicians. Tuberville dehumanizes Americans with rhetoric that is as clear as day for anyone who has studied history. It, as Krugman states, "raw racism is rapidly becoming mainstream in American politics."

Of course, this is enabled by the larger context of the American polity today. Examples abound:

- Cuts at the National Institutes of Health that a Reagan-appointed federal judge called the most "palpable" racial discrimination he'd seen in 40 years on the bench
- [Renaming military bases after Confederate generals](https://www.notunmindful.org/renaming-and-dog-whistles/)
- Changes to military shaving policies allegedly designed to drive Black recruits from service

As he says, nobody is safe from this "new reign of bigotry." Legal immigrants face potential status revocation after a Supreme Court decision, while unidentified agents claiming to be ICE are reportedly detaining people based on appearance. The proposed "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" would significantly expand ICE funding, creating what will be "a huge national secret police force." The will have a budget larger than the US Marine Corps, and will be in the top 10 largest ten armed \_\_\_\_\_ in the world.

It's not limited to the usual "brown folks" either. He points to antisemitic connections within the Trump administration and argues that the "Great Replacement Theory"—now part of MAGA ideology, which specifically blames Jewish people for demographic changes. 

Meanwhile, most Jews in NY are "not frightened at all by the prospect that New York may soon have a somewhat leftist Muslim mayor." Just look at the vote tallies and breakdowns. 

All Americans who want to "keep America America" must oppose this resurgence of bigotry. Krugman ends with a very sobering declaration: "we're all rats now." This dehumanizing language used against specific groups ultimately threatens everyone. We could all be next, and yes, my name is on all these posts, and I own that.

Ultimately, his article is a dire warning about normalized racism and discrimination under our current political leadership, arguing that what began as attacks on specific communities poses a broader threat to American democratic values and safety for all citizens.

We must overturn this lawless regime. 2026 looms. Get out and vote. Make the numbers so large that their cheating and voter suppression can't make it go away.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### This is the history they are trying to erase
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/this-is-the-history-they-are-trying-to-erase/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:57:58.000Z
Almost all the figures in [this Mental Floss article about eight forgotten figures from the American Revolution](https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/american-revolution-forgotten-figures?ref=notunmindful.org) would be erased from our educations given the current anti DEI crusade by the Republicans because only of of them is a white male.

Of these eight figures, I only knew of one of them from my early education in the Jurassic era (1970s): Crispus Attucks. The first person killed by the British in the American Revolution at the Boston Massacre.

These are the stories we desperately need to be taught to future generations. Not the mythos of a bunch of white men doing everything. 

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Southern politicians and racism, Alabama edition
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/southern-politicians-and-racism-alabama-edition/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:57:38.000Z
Everyone's favorite fake Alabama resident and senator said the quiet part out loud again.

We talk about dog whistles a lot. This is not that. This is straight out of the fascist playbook. [As reported at Alabama.com, Senator Tuberville says ‘inner city rats’ live off the American taxpayers](https://www.al.com/politics/2025/06/tuberville-says-inner-city-rats-live-off-the-american-taxpayers-trump-should-send-them-back-home.html?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLNCh9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHjbxQAtd6mg7sl5l%5F9wu%5FSBWyEtX9IvVrBrLMkIoRFnLZkItsxNejBigJDvO%5Faem%5F6RQX8cXKK4ZLnUKcaTbu4A&ref=notunmindful.org). Rats. Remember your history.

Of course, this is in response to a muslim-American winning the NYC mayoral primary. Every shade of brown equals evil to these white supremacist assholes. If you aren't white, rich, and elite, you are the scum of the earth. I'm about as white as it gets, but I'm sure his ire will turn to poor white folks too once they hopefully realize they are being played for fools.

It's a story that goes back to Reconstruction. Divide poor people of all races so you can repeated screw them over.

For what it's worth, I wish Mamdani all the success in the world. And the furor that ensues is pure Islamophobia. When will that get treated the same way as anti-semitism? 

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### UPDATE: University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trumps-fight-with-universities-and-dei-continues/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:57:20.000Z
[UPDATE: University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/us/politics/uva-president-resigns-jim-ryan-trump.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.SE8.45pw.t93EUUm253I0&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org)

The Trump administration doubled down on it's war against higher education and DEI taking aim at (and now succeeding with UVA). Thomas Jefferson would not be pleased

## Original post:

After a much publicized feud with Harvard University, The New York Times reported on June 26, 2025, that Trump has no turned his attention to the University just over Afton Mountain, [pressuring the University of Virginia's President, James E. Ryan, to resign](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/us/politics/university-of-virginia-president-trump.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.R08.zs95.365uTWgHamUu&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwY2xjawLLhNtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETF6Q2pUTzhwRDZvQmdBWWxEAR7TQjWRKlTDjhC3yiGBcv2L5EZb379C8y7Tq646WXBKd71KW10iPWgnbbn6IQ%5Faem%5FlWnLUMPrq9LbqJyXq8tuaw&ref=notunmindful.org). (Gift Link)

### What's happening at UVA

According to the article, the Trump administration has escalated its campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in higher education by privately demanding that the University of Virginia remove President James E. Ryan to resolve a Justice Department investigation into the school's DEI practices.

Justice Department officials have told UVA that hundreds of millions in federal funding are at risk due to what they claim is the university's violation of civil rights law through its diversity programs. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Gregory Brown, a UVA graduate who previously sued the school as a private lawyer, has repeatedly told university officials over the past month that Ryan must be removed for investigation resolution talks to begin.

This pressure campaign stems from Trump's executive order targeting DEI practices across federal agencies, educational institutions, and private companies. The administration has already stripped billions from elite universities, with Harvard facing investigations from at least six federal agencies. However, this marks the first time the administration has demanded a university president's removal.

To his credit, Ryan, hired in 2018 as UVA's ninth president, has focused on increasing diversity, supporting first-generation students, and promoting community service—an approach he says will make the university "both great and good." His leadership style has drawn criticism from conservative alumni and Republican board members who view him as "too woke."

Of course his appointment came in the wake of the 2017 racist rally in Charlottesville to took the life of Heather Heyer. 

This is just part of a broader pattern that reflects the Trump administration's broader assault on higher education, driven partly by advisor Stephen Miller. Conservative group America First Legal, founded by Miller, has accused UVA of merely rebranding its DEI programs rather than eliminating them, calling for DOJ accountability measures.

The administration has also used similar tactics elsewhere, forcing Harvard Law Review editors to withdraw a reprimand against a student who violated privacy policies by downloading internal documents. That student, Daniel Wasserman, now works in the White House for Miller.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### The war on DEI
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/the-war-on-dei/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:57:01.000Z
[This New York Times feature article reveals the inner workings of a coordinated conservative campaign to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from American universities](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/us/dei-woke-claremont-institute.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.Qk8.ry-s.pN5qZqhbs%5FX5&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org). This effort has been primarily led by the Claremont Institute, a conservative California-based think tank.

Starting in 2021, conservative activists formed a network across at least a dozen states to systematically target DEI programs. They researched university personnel and offices to be eliminated, lobbied sympathetic officials, and successfully pushed legislation in states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee that banned such programs from public institutions.

While publicly advocating for "academic freedom" and "intellectual diversity," internal documents reveal more extreme private views. Participants discussed purging liberal professors, mocked diversity efforts, and expressed discriminatory views about race, gender, and sexuality. Some wrote favorably about criminalizing homosexuality and criticized working mothers who employ caregivers from "the low IQ 3rd world." 

We seen much of this time of rhetoric from The General's Redoubt, obviously taking their cue from this (adding to their own hyper-conservative stances)

The documents the Times has uncovered expose a gap between the movement's public rhetoric about protecting free speech and its private goal of replacing what organizers called "leftist social justice revolution" with more "patriotic" and traditionalist education. This means, ending any discussion of systemic racism and teaching black history in any way—even to the point of trying to erase things from public view, so their lily-white view of history becomes predominant.

Thus far, our alma mater has remained mostly silent on this. They have not joined with other universities in the effort to resist the pressure from the current administration. How the hell did we get to a place that we should be more like Harvard?

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Corporations and Juneteenth
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/corporations-and-juneteenth/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:56:37.000Z
[The Associated Press has reported that Juneteenth celebrations have been scaled back this year](https://apnews.com/article/juneteenth-trump-diversity-e441197492e4360f3b7a8cbbc00b5c79?ref=notunmindful.org) due to funding shortfalls as companies and municipalities across the country reconsider their support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Many companies have withdrawn sponsorship from Juneteenth events, with some citing budget cuts related to DEI program reductions. In Denver, more than a dozen companies backed out of supporting the Juneteenth Music Festival, forcing organizers to scale back from two days to one.

In addition to these corporations, some state and local governments have also reduced support. West Virginia won't be hosting any Juneteenth events this year for the first time since 2017 due to a budget deficit, and cities like Scottsdale, Arizona canceled their festivals after dissolving DEI offices.

Of course, this all comes back to the current administration's war on DEI. The National Endowment for the Arts had to pull funding for numerous grants in May, including a $25,000 grant to the Cooper Family Foundation in San Diego for one of the city's largest celebrations.

**A**ll the funding challenges coincide with broader corporate retreat from diversity initiatives and President Trump's efforts to eliminate DEI programs in federal government. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, many companies pursued efforts to make their branding more inclusive, but it has slowed down over the past few years after some received blowback from conservatives.

This is yet another way in which the current climate of the nation is outright hostile to black history as part of its war on DEI. 

We must, however, remember, and celebrate as best we can.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Trump and black history
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/trump-and-black-history/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:56:08.000Z
Last week, the President chose to completely ignore the Juneteenth holiday. This should have come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to this administration.

[This article by Erica L. Green in the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/us/politics/trump-black-history-federal-holidays.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.Qk8.Fpng.0P49EthNhity&smid=url-share&ref=notunmindful.org), goes into much further detail about how Trump ignores and minimizes Black History and its indelible effect on all of American history.

Since taking office, he has attacked any mention of DEI throughout the government, even erasing Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson! He has consistently tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened. Yes, his slip is showing, but we all knew this going back to his early days as a NY real estate developer denying access to his properties for people of color.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### Renaming and dog whistles
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/renaming-and-dog-whistles/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:55:28.000Z
On June 10, the Army announced that seven Army bases whose names were changed in 2023 because they honored Confederate leaders [would revert back to their original names](https://apnews.com/article/trump-army-bases-confederate-names-69f63771d0e7ca859d42c485129d1228?ref=notunmindful.org), just hours after President Donald Trump [previewed the decision](https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-fort-bragg-6df36485dec1df2350d5b7be0882a703?ref=notunmindful.org), telling troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, that he was changing the names back. 

These include the following Army bases:

1. Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia (from Fort Walker)
2. Fort Pickett in Virginia (from Fort Barfoot)
3. Fort Lee in Virginia (from Fort Gregg-Adams)
4. Fort Gordon in Georgia (from Fort Eisenhower)
5. Fort Hood in Texas (from Fort Cavazos)
6. Fort Polk in Louisiana (from Fort Johnson)
7. Fort Rucker in Alabama (from Fort Novosel)

This announcement follows similar reversals for Fort Benning and Fort Bragg. 

Fort Bragg, which was changed to Fort Liberty was the first to have its original name restored after the Army found another person with the same last name in February. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then [reversed the decision to rename Fort Benning to Fort Moore](https://apnews.com/article/benning-bragg-confederate-names-bases-military-a117d5152fdedeb8852770276f5acdab?ref=notunmindful.org) in March.

In the new re-renamings, the Army again found servicemen (and they are all white men, shocker) with the same name. This gives them the fig leaf that they aren't restoring the names of traitors to these bases.

If you squint hard enough, these seems pretty legitimate. I understand the cache some of these names have among those in the Army. I mean you survive Fort Bragg and endure Fort Benning (that heat and humidity). But the others, well, that fig leaf just blows away with the wind, gone you might say, when you examine the case of Fort A.P. Hill.

Unlike Fort Lee, which is ostensibly now going to be named after Pvt. Fitz Lee, who received the Medal of Honor during the Spanish-American War, Fort A.P. Hill makes the dog whistle to the racist rump of the lost cause obvious. Get this:

**Now it will be named to commemorate three different people: Medal of Honor recipients Lt. Col. Edward Hill, 1st Sgt. Robert A. Pinn and Pvt. Bruce Anderson for heroism during the Civil War. —from the* [**A.P. Article*](https://apnews.com/article/trump-army-bases-confederate-names-69f63771d0e7ca859d42c485129d1228?ref=notunmindful.org)

They just really aren't even trying to hide it here.

A.P. Hill was a right bastard even by the standards of the time, and we know what that means.

*Non in cautus futuri*

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### On Juneteenth
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/on-juneteenth/
Last updated: 2025-10-06T20:55:10.000Z
This is a day of celebration. 

And as a reminder, this is day of commemoration of something that Lee fought and rebelled to ensure never happened.

Today, there was no celebration at the highest level of government. Has the confederacy finally won? It's close, but we must fight on every front.

*Non in cautus futuri.*

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### A bit of history
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/a-bit-of-history/
Last updated: 2025-06-20T17:59:47.000Z
Why do I care so much? Well, the very beginning of this institution (often said near Greenville) was actually very close to the South Mountain Meeting House (Presbyterians). South Mountain Meeting House became Old Providence ARP church, which I attended for the entirety of my life before leaving Virginia. The university says near Fairfield which a long way away but.

I did a lot of research working on the sesquicentennial history of said church. James Alexander and William Graham, were mentioned often in the records that remain in the church basement. 

Best I can figure, it was actually between current day Raphine and Spottswood. On the opposite hill from the hill I actually grew up on (the meeting house was on the north face of the former). 

I had no idea about any of this before attending our alma mater. W&L sort of was the best accident to ever happen to me. Given the aid available, it turned out to be more affordable than UVA, JMU, and William & Mary (all state schools). It gave me the finest education I could have imagined. 

But now that is threatened for other by clinging to a pollyanna past that never really existed. Reality and facts were a lot starker and damning.

*Non in cautus futuri.*
### So, yeah we start again
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/so-yeah-we-start-again/
Last updated: 2025-06-20T18:00:16.000Z
I mean with everything else going on in our country, we have a lot to confront. 

And anything that ties back to the original sin of the USA (Faulkner said that not me), must be addressed. We cannot march toward a racist, fascist state. And our university has mostly remained silent on all fronts as those in power are targeting higher learning. We are not Harvard, but the endowment is big enough to do what Williams College did.

All that said, I love the institution and what it allowed me do to. I turned down UVA and William & Mary to go there based on a tour given to me by an African-American student (I wish I could remember his name, but he was a member of ZBT). It lifted this poor white boy from Appalachia to heights even I never thought I'd reach, and now, as I retire, this is now my mission.

*Non in cautus futuri.*
### About Not Unmindful
URL: https://www.notunmindful.org/about-not-unmindful/
Last updated: 2026-02-10T13:08:16.000Z
This is a focal point for alumni who would like to see Washington & Lee change its name and make changes to make the campus more welcoming to those students that have not historically felt that. Removing Lee and all the baggage the his name brings, however, is only our first goal, but without achieving this, everything else we seek will be for nought.

First, we want the University to change its name, removing Lee from the equation, removing that millstone around the University's neck. But that is only the beginning of the work we must do. We must support efforts to address the systemic racism and ostracization of the different (i.e., non-white, non-elite) at the University to make a truly world-class institution.

Without all of these efforts, the University will return its dark ages academically. We are boldly thinking about how the entirety of the University community can stride boldly and proudly into the future.

Great strides have been made, but there is a lot of work still to be done.

*Non Incautus Futuri.*