thenation--2020-11-16--Democrats Must Keep Their Eyes on the Supreme Court

The rushed confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett has , for the first time in decades , made Democrats think seriously about progressive reforms to the Supreme Court .
Today , conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the court , illegitimately engineered by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell .
This stark reality has radicalized the base .
It has even made some Democratic senators consider using their power to achieve deep structural change , as opposed to cosmetic bipartisan redecorating .
Unfortunately , those senators are likely to be in the minority until at least the beginning of 2023 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority leader , he is unlikely to allow any reforms ( or legislation or democracy ) to go forward in the Senate .
But Democrats must continue to plan for the day when they have enough seats in the chamber to implement a plan that will mitigate Republican lordship over the Supreme Court .
The easiest solution to the Republican stranglehold is court expansion , or increasing the number of justices .
This could be achieved through a simple legislative act and would be inoculated against constitutional challenge because it ’ s been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I mean , what would Chief Justice John Roberts do—lock the doors ?
The Supreme Court doesn ’ t have an army , so unless he has ninja skills I don ’ t know about , there ’ s little he could do if new colleagues show up for work .
The problem is , court expansion sounds radical to people who don ’ t know how the Constitution works .
It sounds political to people who don ’ t realize that increasing the number of justices is the best way to avoid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time one of the nine justices dies or retires .
This has led some Democrats to advance alternative reforms that sound modest but would be , in fact , much more difficult to pull off , because they ’ d require a reimagining of the Constitution .
The most popular of these ostensibly sober but fundamentally improbable proposals is term limits , which got a substantial boost in September , when Representatives Ro Khanna , Joe Kennedy III , and Don Beyer introduced a bill to restrict the nine justices to single 18-year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each president would get to appoint at least two justices to the court per four-year term .
The idea is that this would make the court more responsive to electoral politics and end the current practice of letting justices wield power for 30 or 40 years .
Term limits have substantial support , even across party lines .
Fix the Court , a group that has been pushing this idea for a while , found that 77 percent of Americans favor some form of term limit .
The problem is that they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serve “ during good behavior , ” which functionally means they serve for life , absent impeachment .
Term limit advocates argue that they could get around this by moving term-limited justices down to the federal courts .
They would still get to serve for life , just not entirely on the Supreme Court .
It ’ s a neat trick , one that I think would be constitutional .
Unfortunately , I don ’ t sit on the Supreme Court .
The nine people who do are unlikely to agree that they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s highest court—particularly the five archconservative justices who claim to be guided strictly by the text of the Constitution and Ouija board messages from James Madison .
The proposal would be dead on arrival at the Republican-controlled court that people are trying to reform .
The recognition of this reality has led some Democrats down a more complicated road : jurisdiction stripping .
It surprises some people to learn that the Supreme Court ’ s power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional is not actually in the Constitution .
That power , called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ court in the landmark 1803 case Marbury v. Madison , and Congress has never stopped it .
One solution to illegitimate Republican control , put forward by Ryan Cooper in The Week and Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times , among others , would be for a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass legislation stripping courts of the authority to rule on the constitutionality of certain classes of laws .
The Constitution spells out limited categories of cases over which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction , meaning the ones you can take to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lower courts first .
For everything else , the Constitution grants the Supreme Court appellate review , which technically can be limited by Congress .
But there ’ s a hitch : Even if we assume Congress can limit the kinds of cases the Supreme Court reviews , a court that fails to act is just as damaging to rights as one that acts too much .
Consider 2018 ’ s gerrymandering case Gill v. Whitford , in which the court ruled that it did not have the power to strike down gerrymandering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ensures that when we redraw congressional district lines , GOP-controlled state legislatures will be able to gerrymander their candidates into office despite the will of the electorate .
This shouldn ’ t be a surprise .
Jurisdiction stripping is a Republican idea .
During George W. Bush ’ s administration , the GOP-controlled House voted to exempt silly Pledge of Allegiance laws from judicial review .
Moreover , vulnerable communities tend to need judicial review , because we can ’ t always anticipate what evil the Republicans will think of next .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is that jurisdiction stripping is being presented as some kind of moderate alternative to the “ radicalism ” of court expansion .
Ending or limiting judicial review would involve upending the way our system of checks and balances has worked since the earliest days of the country ; court expansion would involve changing the number of seats in a body that has been changed multiple times already .
Jurisdiction stripping would involve nerfing the power of the Supreme Court because we don ’ t like how it uses its power ; court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any single Supreme Court justice so we don ’ t have to go to the mattresses every time one of them steps down or dies .
Court expansion is constitutional : It has been done before .
It is easy : It could be done through simple legislation .
It is comprehensive : It could depoliticize the Senate confirmation process and open the door to other changes , like ethics reform .
And it is moderate : It wouldn ’ t involve reinventing the system of checks and balances .
But I may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that argument again .
Until the start of 2023 at least , the Supreme Court is secured for Republicans .
Then again , the court is poised to make some abhorrent decisions during the next few years—and that almost guarantees that the idea of court expansion will come back around .

This article appears in the November 30/December 7, 2020 issue.
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The rushed confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett has, for the first time in decades, made Democrats think seriously about progressive reforms to the Supreme Court. Today, conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the court, illegitimately engineered by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. This stark reality has radicalized the base. It has even made some Democratic senators consider using their power to achieve deep structural change, as opposed to cosmetic bipartisan redecorating.
Unfortunately, those senators are likely to be in the minority until at least the beginning of 2023. And as long as McConnell remains the majority leader, he is unlikely to allow any reforms (or legislation or democracy) to go forward in the Senate. But Democrats must continue to plan for the day when they have enough seats in the chamber to implement a plan that will mitigate Republican lordship over the Supreme Court.
The easiest solution to the Republican stranglehold is court expansion, or increasing the number of justices. This could be achieved through a simple legislative act and would be inoculated against constitutional challenge because it’s been done a bunch of times before. I mean, what would Chief Justice John Roberts do—lock the doors? The Supreme Court doesn’t have an army, so unless he has ninja skills I don’t know about, there’s little he could do if new colleagues show up for work.
The problem is, court expansion sounds radical to people who don’t know how the Constitution works. It sounds political to people who don’t realize that increasing the number of justices is the best way to avoid the bare-knuckled partisan fight that happens every time one of the nine justices dies or retires. This has led some Democrats to advance alternative reforms that sound modest but would be, in fact, much more difficult to pull off, because they’d require a reimagining of the Constitution.
The most popular of these ostensibly sober but fundamentally improbable proposals is term limits, which got a substantial boost in September, when Representatives Ro Khanna, Joe Kennedy III, and Don Beyer introduced a bill to restrict the nine justices to single 18-year terms. Their proposal would mean that each president would get to appoint at least two justices to the court per four-year term. The idea is that this would make the court more responsive to electoral politics and end the current practice of letting justices wield power for 30 or 40 years.
Term limits have substantial support, even across party lines. Fix the Court, a group that has been pushing this idea for a while, found that 77 percent of Americans favor some form of term limit. The problem is that they are likely unconstitutional. The Constitution says justices serve “during good behavior,” which functionally means they serve for life, absent impeachment. Term limit advocates argue that they could get around this by moving term-limited justices down to the federal courts. They would still get to serve for life, just not entirely on the Supreme Court. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
It’s a neat trick, one that I think would be constitutional. Unfortunately, I don’t sit on the Supreme Court. The nine people who do are unlikely to agree that they can be kicked off the nation’s highest court—particularly the five archconservative justices who claim to be guided strictly by the text of the Constitution and Ouija board messages from James Madison. The proposal would be dead on arrival at the Republican-controlled court that people are trying to reform. Current Issue View our current issue
The recognition of this reality has led some Democrats down a more complicated road: jurisdiction stripping. It surprises some people to learn that the Supreme Court’s power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional is not actually in the Constitution. That power, called judicial review, was claimed by the court in the landmark 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, and Congress has never stopped it.
One solution to illegitimate Republican control, put forward by Ryan Cooper in The Week and Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times, among others, would be for a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass legislation stripping courts of the authority to rule on the constitutionality of certain classes of laws. The Constitution spells out limited categories of cases over which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, meaning the ones you can take to the Supreme Court without going through the lower courts first. For everything else, the Constitution grants the Supreme Court appellate review, which technically can be limited by Congress.
But there’s a hitch: Even if we assume Congress can limit the kinds of cases the Supreme Court reviews, a court that fails to act is just as damaging to rights as one that acts too much. Consider 2018’s gerrymandering case Gill v. Whitford, in which the court ruled that it did not have the power to strike down gerrymandering that favored Republicans. That decision alone ensures that when we redraw congressional district lines, GOP-controlled state legislatures will be able to gerrymander their candidates into office despite the will of the electorate.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Jurisdiction stripping is a Republican idea. During George W. Bush’s administration, the GOP-controlled House voted to exempt silly Pledge of Allegiance laws from judicial review. Moreover, vulnerable communities tend to need judicial review, because we can’t always anticipate what evil the Republicans will think of next.
What’s truly wild, to me, is that jurisdiction stripping is being presented as some kind of moderate alternative to the “radicalism” of court expansion. Ending or limiting judicial review would involve upending the way our system of checks and balances has worked since the earliest days of the country; court expansion would involve changing the number of seats in a body that has been changed multiple times already. Jurisdiction stripping would involve nerfing the power of the Supreme Court because we don’t like how it uses its power; court expansion would involve minimizing the importance of any single Supreme Court justice so we don’t have to go to the mattresses every time one of them steps down or dies.
Court expansion is constitutional: It has been done before. It is easy: It could be done through simple legislation. It is comprehensive: It could depoliticize the Senate confirmation process and open the door to other changes, like ethics reform. And it is moderate: It wouldn’t involve reinventing the system of checks and balances.
But I may have to wait a while to make that argument again. Until the start of 2023 at least, the Supreme Court is secured for Republicans. Then again, the court is poised to make some abhorrent decisions during the next few years—and that almost guarantees that the idea of court expansion will come back around.


thenation--2020-11-16--How Activists Saved Election Day in Pennsylvania

llentown—On the morning of Election Day , Ashleigh Strange was ready for trouble .
As the regional organizer for Lehigh Valley Stands Up , she and her team had spent months doing deep canvassing here .
Working in close coordination with the immigrant rights group Make the Road and the young climate justice campaigners of the Sunrise Movement , they ’ d been talking—and more important , listening—to voters .
These long , frequently sprawling conversations might start with anxieties about rent or child care or worries about immigrants taking away jobs , but they ended , surprisingly often , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ given up on voting deciding to take a chance on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris .
They did this work against the backdrop of the president ’ s fearmongering about election fraud .
On my way northeast from Reading , I saw a Donald Trump campaign bus parked outside a gun shop on Route 222 , in the long stretch of rich farmland where a small cluster of Biden-Harris signs planted by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers gave way to a barrage of MAGA-painted barns and billboards proclaiming “ BLM : Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was coordinating an Election Day rapid response team , and there were reports of armed men at a local polling station .
“ Lehigh County is a swing district in a swing state , ” she told me .
In 2012 , Barack Obama won here by nearly 12,000 votes .
Four years ago , Hillary Clinton ’ s margin shrank by almost 8,000 votes .
If it all came down to Pennsylvania , every vote would matter .
“ This district is 45 percent people of color , ” she said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it ’ s not our time .
We want to put people into office where we don ’ t have to beg anymore.
” For Morgan Tucker , a shift captain for the deep canvassing effort whose introduction to politics here came through the Black Lives Matter protests this summer , the key to talking to voters is “ helping them surface their own issues .
Instead of being about delivering a message and hanging up , it ’ s about having a conversation .
The ones that are working sometimes go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
It ’ s a slow process ; Tucker said she ’ s managed only 20 full canvasses .
But if you want to know who dragged the Democratic ticket over the line in Pennsylvania , just ask Patty Torres , the organizing director for Make the Road Pennsylvania .
Her group made 2.5 million calls to voters and sent 2 million texts—at a time when the state Democratic Party was hardly visible here .
Is she satisfied with the result ?
“ We have so much work to do , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had won , we would have been devastated .
”

This article appears in the November 30/December 7, 2020 issue.
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Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
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Repro Nation A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
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Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
A llentown—On the morning of Election Day, Ashleigh Strange was ready for trouble. As the regional organizer for Lehigh Valley Stands Up, she and her team had spent months doing deep canvassing here. Working in close coordination with the immigrant rights group Make the Road and the young climate justice campaigners of the Sunrise Movement, they’d been talking—and more important, listening—to voters. These long, frequently sprawling conversations might start with anxieties about rent or child care or worries about immigrants taking away jobs, but they ended, surprisingly often, with people who’d long ago given up on voting deciding to take a chance on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Related Article Working People Dragged Joe Biden Over the Finish Line Jane McAlevey and The Nation
They did this work against the backdrop of the president’s fearmongering about election fraud. On my way northeast from Reading, I saw a Donald Trump campaign bus parked outside a gun shop on Route 222, in the long stretch of rich farmland where a small cluster of Biden-Harris signs planted by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers gave way to a barrage of MAGA-painted barns and billboards proclaiming “BLM: Biden’s laptop matters!” Strange was coordinating an Election Day rapid response team, and there were reports of armed men at a local polling station.
“Lehigh County is a swing district in a swing state,” she told me. In 2012, Barack Obama won here by nearly 12,000 votes. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton’s margin shrank by almost 8,000 votes. If it all came down to Pennsylvania, every vote would matter. “This district is 45 percent people of color,” she said. “We’re sick of hearing that it’s not our time. We want to put people into office where we don’t have to beg anymore.”
For Morgan Tucker, a shift captain for the deep canvassing effort whose introduction to politics here came through the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, the key to talking to voters is “helping them surface their own issues. Instead of being about delivering a message and hanging up, it’s about having a conversation. The ones that are working sometimes go on for an hour,” she said. It’s a slow process; Tucker said she’s managed only 20 full canvasses.
But if you want to know who dragged the Democratic ticket over the line in Pennsylvania, just ask Patty Torres, the organizing director for Make the Road Pennsylvania. Her group made 2.5 million calls to voters and sent 2 million texts—at a time when the state Democratic Party was hardly visible here. Is she satisfied with the result? “We have so much work to do,” she said. “But if Trump had won, we would have been devastated.”


thenation--2020-11-16--The Long and Terrifying History of the Blood Libel

Among the more unpleasant mythemes that one group of humans has devised about another is the blood libel : the claim that Jews murder Christian children , often around Easter , and use their blood in Passover rituals .
Bits and pieces of this myth date back to ancient times .
The Greek world produced some sinister stories about Jews annually fattening a Greek in their temples for sacrifice .
And the New Testament ( Acts 7:51–53 ) and the Quran ( 2:87 ) have cast Jews as persecutors and murderers of prophets .
But the specific ingredients of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for blood rituals—were not baked into narrative until a child ’ s corpse was discovered in 12th century England and an enterprising monk accused the local Jewish community of murder .
That first accusation sputtered out , but others soon followed in France and Germany that sometimes resulted in the execution of entire communities .
With the invention of the printing press , the myth spread even more widely , throughout Eastern Europe and , with colonialism , into the Middle East and beyond .
In the 20th century , there was even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the blood from young Christian boys .
Blood Libel : On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth Magda Teter ’ s terrifying and learned new book , Blood Libel : On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth , examines some of the long history of this pernicious idea .
Her focus is firmly on the past and especially on the death in 1473 of one toddler , Simon of Trent .
His lifeless body provided the stage for a spectacular trial against the Jews of that town—one whose consequences would be felt for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to document how the information about Simon ’ s death circulated during and after the trial and how it eventually flowed into Eastern Europe , where the myth put down some of its deepest and cruelest roots .
She certainly succeeds in that historical task .
While her claims are specific and circumspect , her book can be read more broadly as an allegory for our age , a story about how technological change , religious beliefs , struggles for power , and a politics of demonization can produce memes capable of transmitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of time and space .
In the case of the blood libel , that potential remains very much alive .
“ You are not forgotten , Simon of Trent , ” wrote the 19-year-old gunman who stormed a synagogue near San Diego on the final day of Passover last year .
“ The horror that you and countless children have endured at the hands of the Jews will never be forgiven.
” Blood Libel ’ s trail starts almost a millennium ago , in 1144 , with the discovery in Norwich , England @ @ @ @ @ @ @ named William .
Although some of the local clergy may have accused the Jews at the time , little notice was taken until a few years later , when a monk called Thomas of Monmouth moved to town .
He spent the next two decades attempting to establish the dead boy as a martyr killed by Jews and promoting the church where he was buried as a site of pilgrimage .
In The Life and Passion of William of Norwich , Thomas developed many of the themes that would become staples of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with which Jews seduce an innocent child ; the hideous tortures to which they subject him in reenacting Christ ’ s passion ; the ritual nature of the crime , repeated annually ; the Jewish community ’ s “ inborn hatred of the Christian name ” ; the conspiracy by state authorities , bribed by Jewish money , to cover up the crime ; and the many miracles by which the Christian truth overpowers the lies of murderous Jews and their corrupt Christian allies .
As far as we know , very few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Middle Ages .
We can ’ t say with any confidence that it was the origin of the blood libels to come .
What we can say is that its basic storyline soon appeared elsewhere in Europe .
Perhaps this success was the product of more general trends in Christian piety : With increasing devotion to the cult of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus , it became easier to see in every Christian child a figure of the Savior , supposedly hated by Jews .
Or perhaps it was animated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their governments , which sometimes used Jewish moneylenders and tax collectors to extend their power , providing the Christian populace with new reasons to resent the tiny minority living among them .
In short , we really don ’ t know why this particular story suddenly became so convincing .
But we do know that its main themes reemerged in 1171 , when the leading Jews in Blois , France , were accused of killing a Christian child and were burned alive for the crime , despite the fact that no child was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found .
It then cropped up in 1235 , when 34 Jews were executed in Fulda , Germany , after five children burned to death in their home while their parents were at church .
Twelve years later , the Jews of Valréas in southern France were tortured and executed after being accused of extracting the blood from a 2-year-old girl named Meilla during Holy Week .
Blood Libel recounts all of these early examples .
But Teter makes clear that she doesn ’ t think of the blood libel as particularly medieval @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the accusation of ritual murder , but in her view it was only in the modern era , with new technologies like the printing press and new conflicts between princes and popes , that the libel became a powerful and dangerous myth capable of spreading across Europe .
Teter is right to note that during the Middle Ages these charges were sometimes met with skepticism as well as credulity .
In 1247 , after the attacks in Fulda and Valréas , Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Sicut Judaeis , in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ using human blood in their rituals , on pain of excommunication .
The pontiff pointed out that “ in the Old Testament they are instructed not to use blood of any kind , let alone human blood.
” That official medieval skepticism , Teter writes , disappeared with modernity .
The Enlightenment Pope Benedict XIV ( 1740–58 ) notably condemned slavery and appointed a woman as a professor of the sciences at the University of Bologna .
But he was also the first pope to formally approve the cults of Simon of Trent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Innocent ’ s teaching and affirming the accusations against Jews .
The cult of Simon was not formally abolished by the Catholic Church until the 20th century , with a brief “ Notification ” published in the diocesan bulletin of Trent in October 1965 .
While it is true that medieval monarchs and popes could be quite skeptical of the blood libel , it was likely more widespread in the Middle Ages than Teter allows .
Even in regions where there were few full-blown ritual murder trials , like Spain , there may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Alfonso de Espina , the confessor to the king of Castile and one of the most influential Castilian clerics , was loudly urging prosecutions for blood libel over a decade before Trent .
And though he doesn ’ t seem to have succeeded in staging a trial , he did play a very important role in disseminating the accusation .
In 1458 he penned a massive tome , The Fortress of Faith , dedicated to proclaiming the crimes of Jews , Muslims , and heretics against Christianity , including a history of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The treatise was among the very first books to be produced on the newly invented printing press in Gutenberg ’ s Germany ; it then circulated widely in Europe and became an authoritative reference for those arguing that Jews ritually murder Christians for their blood .
In fact , long before de Espina , stories of ritual murder were sufficiently well known on the Iberian Peninsula for Jewish communities to worry about them .
When the Jews of Barcelona found a baby ’ s corpse in their meat market in 1301 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authorities , fearing that violence would follow .
The Jews of Trent did the same in 1475 , when they found little Simon floating in the canal beneath their homes .
In other words , even where we find few records of trials , the libel may have been bubbling beneath the surface , widely available to the late-medieval Christian imagination .
Even so , why did the Barcelona baby disappear into the archival dust while Simon of Trent was thrust onto the historical stage ?
Although Teter never asks that question , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : The new technologies and sciences that we associate with the Renaissance , the Enlightenment , and modernity are what made the attack on Trent ’ s Jews so powerfully meaningful for the future .
The printing press , which entered the world not long before Simon was born , was one of those technologies .
And history , newly empowered by humanism and the emergence of new reading publics , was one of those sciences .
Among this book ’ s grimmest pages are those that discuss the “ strategic communications ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johannes Hinderbach of Trent to deploy .
Simon wandered away from his home on Holy Thursday , March 23 , and was found dead on Easter Sunday .
By the 31st , the bishop ’ s notaries were preparing for the press records of miracles allegedly performed by the boy ’ s corpse .
A narrative of the murder by the bishop ’ s personal physician was quickly published in Latin , German , and Italian accusing Jews of the crime , calling them a “ savage race , ” and demanding their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” This account was then sent to a poet in the bishop ’ s circle to be rendered into verse and song , thereby making it easier to remember and declaim , and soon printed in multiple languages for the broadest possible audience .
This media storm succeeded in motivating judicial proceedings against the Jews in Trent and legitimizing their torture .
When that torture took place , it isn ’ t surprising that the interrogators ’ script followed the physician ’ s and poet ’ s , already widely circulated and read @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and persuasive , so much so that when one of the accused women refused to speak , officials could explain her resistance only as magic .
The bishop ordered her to be washed from head to toe with the urine of a virginal boy to counteract the spell—this from a man accusing Jews of using Christian bodily fluids in their rituals !
—but to no avail .
Apparently , she never confessed .
But others were less enduring .
“ Tell me what you want me to say and I will say it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interrogators .
Small wonder that some of the resulting confessions follow the initial accusations or that the defendants were all convicted .
The images and arguments created and transmitted by the impresarios of the Trent ritual murder trial , the chapels those impresarios built , and the pilgrimages they promoted and popularized found their way into the Christian imagination .
Teter ’ s book is particularly strong—and original—in following those images , arguments , and pilgrimages as they flowed to and from Eastern Europe , driving accusations , trials , and massacres in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ukraine , and Lithuania .
Some of those stories from Eastern Europe would in turn make their way westward , put to work by the Nazis in their extermination of Jews .
Twentieth century Germans could send one another gruesome postcards , like the one urging its recipient to “ Remember the 11th of March , 1900 , ” when the Jews of Konitz were accused of sacrificing a Christian student for Passover .
( This example is not in Teter ’ s book . )
Little Simon had a starring role in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue in 1934 .
Today such murderous messages are seldom delivered on paper , but they are no less accessible for that , as Blood Libel ’ s first sentence makes clear : “ In 2014 , the Anti-Defamation League appealed to Facebook to take down a page titled ‘ Jewish Ritual Murder.
’ It took four years until the page was finally removed.
” New types of media don ’ t merely disseminate knowledge in new ways ; they also generate forms of knowledge .
This was as true of the rise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our age of social media .
And here we come to what has to be , for anyone in my profession , the saddest of this sad book ’ s lessons : the complicity of history and historians in the transformation of the blood libel from superstition ( as Innocent IV might have called it ) into scholarship .
As Teter documents , that transformation took place with stunning rapidity .
An illustrated Hystorie von Simon zu Trient was published with the bishop ’ s support in early September 1475 .
Its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and again by historians .
Among the most influential of these was “ the highly learned Doctor Hartmann Schedel , ” whose history “ from the beginning of the world to our own time ” is known today as the Nuremberg Chronicle because it was published in that German city in 1493 .
( De Espina ’ s Fortress was published by the same press eight years earlier and was republished by it the following year . )
The Chronicle incorporated the blood libel into its version of world history .
Its entry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Norwich and for 1475 the “ Blessed Simon of Trent.
” The image illustrating Simon ’ s story on the reverse of the Chronicle ’ s folio 254 is perhaps the most famous representation of ritual murder in history .
It is worth noting that the image is virtually identical to the one that Hinderbach ’ s printers produced for the posters they distributed in Trent in 1475 .
Historians have always been ecologically minded , recycling materials they find in earlier sources .
In this instance , they repackaged innovative propaganda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wherever the blood libel traveled , it was accompanied by historians .
This was as true of its dispersal in 17th and 18th century Poland and Lithuania as it was of its diffusion in the 19th and 20th century Islamic world ( a subject not covered in this book ) .
On each stage of the journey we find the past marshaled as evidence , either to support the charge of ritual murder or to rebut it .
The Polish priest Stefan Żuchowski , the impresario behind not one but two blood libel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1698 and 1710 , certainly understood this .
In his efforts and in a how-to manual he produced for future accusers , Żuchowski stressed the importance of sifting through history to find examples of Christian blood spilled by Jews in “ foreign and [ Polish ] chronicles.
” It was as a reward for his mastery of this vicious science that the synod of Kraków diocese bestowed on him the title of commissary for Jewish affairs in 1711 .
Blood Libel is not only about those Christians who put these new technologies to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us to some who used the printing press and the cutting edge of historical scholarship in defense of the accused .
In 1669 , 3-year-old Didier and his mother were in a forest near Metz , at the border between France and the Duchy of Lorraine , when the boy disappeared .
His body was never found , but the rumor of a Jewish kidnapping spread , and soon enough Raphaël Levy , a Jew from Lorraine , was charged with the crime , an accusation that then spread to include the Jews @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without French protectors , was publicly executed in January 1670 .
Though it came too late to save him , the Jews of Metz managed to secure the intervention of the Parisian scholar and theologian Richard Simon .
The brief he produced in 1670 was replete with documentation , from medieval papal bulls to records from a blood libel trial held in Verona in 1603 .
Its goal was to demonstrate that the historical references favored by Levy ’ s accusers , drawn from books like the Nuremberg Chronicle and the Annales Ecclesiastici @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the scandalous products of ill-intentioned and shoddy research .
The idea behind Simon ’ s work was that in a court of law , good histories—accurate , learned , well argued—would defeat bad ones .
That hope animated Gottfried Ollearius ’ s brief on behalf of the theology faculty of Leipzig , which was consulted in a blood libel accusation in 1714 .
The faculty ’ s report began by pointing out that the blood libel was unknown in the first 13 centuries after Christ ’ s birth .
Why , if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , had they refrained from seeking it for 1,300 years ?
The report then went on to confront the historical arguments of the libel ’ s many advocates , including de Espina and Baronio , to show that they contradicted themselves .
Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli did something similar in Rome in 1759 , when the Holy Office of the Inquisition was consulted about a blood libel accusation in the Polish diocese of Łuck .
Ganganelli ’ s job was complicated by the fact that he undertook his task under Pope Benedict XIV , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier endorsed the story of another child ’ s murder , that of Andreas of Rinn , at the hands of the Jews .
Ganganelli ’ s conclusions were mixed : He asserted that the Jews of Poland did not deserve Christian sympathy but allowed that the ritual murder of children was probably not among their crimes .
All of these scholars fought fire with fire , writing histories that pointed out the interpretive errors and manipulations of the accusers .
But the hope that good history would drive out bad history was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scholarly reports did much to lessen the power of the blood libel against Jews .
Perhaps that is in part because , as Teter notes , they were not widely distributed .
Simon ’ s work appeared in a very limited edition .
The Leipzig brief went unprinted for 40 years .
Ganganelli ’ s report was buried in the Vatican archives until the 20th century .
Would things be different if these historical inquiries into the blood libel had circulated more broadly ?
Lord Nathaniel Rothschild certainly thought so .
When Mendel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was accused of killing a 13-year-old Christian boy in 1911 , Rothschild wrote to the Vatican ’ s secretary of state , Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val , asking him to confirm the existence of Innocent IV ’ s medieval absolution of the Jews and of the Ganganelli report , two documents he thought would make clear to Christians the falsity of the accusations .
( The cardinal responded by certifying the existence of both documents . )
The great Jewish historian Cecil Roth did something similar in 1935 , when he responded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue by publishing Rothschild ’ s correspondence with the Vatican , including a photograph of the envelope in which the Vatican had sent its response , lest anyone doubt its authenticity .
I am not as optimistic as Roth , Rothschild , and presumably Teter that the availability of better , truer histories of the blood libel can defeat this vicious myth .
Such works—I ’ ll call them forensic histories—are certainly important , but they are also clearly insufficient .
The forensic historian engages in a critical reexamination of the evidence in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , much as the researchers of the Innocence Project today might bring new proof to a court of law in order to overturn a wrongful conviction .
Teter ’ s book assumes a well-deserved place in this illustrious tradition of forensic history on the blood libel , and we should all be grateful for it , since the task remains vitally necessary .
But if pointing out to the libel ’ s purveyors that their forensics and history are wrong were enough to defeat it , there would be no blood libel today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Trent were arrested on the grounds that Simon ’ s body bled when they were in its presence , many doctors knew better than to accept the prosecutor ’ s argument that “ experience shows that wounds on the dead emit blood when a murderer stands near the corpse.
” They also knew better in 1747 , 1753 , and 1766 , when the same bleeding-corpse argument was used to accuse Jews of ritual murder in Poland .
The limitations of forensic history are not only that it doesn ’ t circulate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to counter .
It also says too little about why certain ideas about Jews and other marginalized groups have proved so resonant in particular times and places , so capable of promoting violence , and so foundational to the exclusions and inclusions that societies have come to regard as necessary .
To reverse wrongful convictions past and present , therefore , it ’ s just as important to bring to light the structural conditions that nourish and are nourished by those injustices .
The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg once suggested that conspiracy theories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were scheming to destroy society—accusations like the blood libel and the witches ’ Sabbath—were the product of a fundamental shift in European mentalities and myths that took place amid the famines , plagues , and wars of the 14th century .
If that is true , then our structural question only becomes more pressing .
Why have these ways of thinking about the world proved so persistent and so capable of dissemination across historical periods and cultures , even into our own era ?
Regardless of the historical context in which they may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of conspiracy the ability to draw renewed life from the technologies , disciplines , and communications techniques of every subsequent age , including our own ?
For it is all too clear that the trail that Blood Libel set out to follow has not yet come to an end .
Today ’ s conspiratorial myths , such as the replacement theory—the idea that Jews seek to destroy white , Christian Europe and the United States by promoting immigration , integration , and civil rights—come shrouded like their predecessors in arguments drawn from disciplines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , disseminated now not only by the printing press but also by the latest in algorithms and bots .
As I write , Facebook is working to remove posts blaming the spread of the coronavirus on Jews .
Why are such myths so persistent ?
What makes them so appealing and therefore so useful ?
Forensic histories may help us reverse wrongful convictions , but they can ’ t answer these structural questions .
We need histories that teach us how our societies learned to imagine themselves ( as they still too often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conspiracies of the marginalized .
Then we could begin the critical work of unlearning them .

This article appears in the November 30/December 7, 2020 issue.
Among the more unpleasant mythemes that one group of humans has devised about another is the blood libel: the claim that Jews murder Christian children, often around Easter, and use their blood in Passover rituals. Bits and pieces of this myth date back to ancient times. The Greek world produced some sinister stories about Jews annually fattening a Greek in their temples for sacrifice. And the New Testament (Acts 7:51–53) and the Quran (2:87) have cast Jews as persecutors and murderers of prophets. But the specific ingredients of the blood libel—innocent children murdered by conspiratorial Jews for blood rituals—were not baked into narrative until a child’s corpse was discovered in 12th century England and an enterprising monk accused the local Jewish community of murder. That first accusation sputtered out, but others soon followed in France and Germany that sometimes resulted in the execution of entire communities. With the invention of the printing press, the myth spread even more widely, throughout Eastern Europe and, with colonialism, into the Middle East and beyond. In the 20th century, there was even a genre of postcards depicting Jews draining the blood from young Christian boys. Books in Review Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth By Magda Teter Buy this book
Magda Teter’s terrifying and learned new book, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth, examines some of the long history of this pernicious idea. Her focus is firmly on the past and especially on the death in 1473 of one toddler, Simon of Trent. His lifeless body provided the stage for a spectacular trial against the Jews of that town—one whose consequences would be felt for hundreds of years. Teter sets out to document how the information about Simon’s death circulated during and after the trial and how it eventually flowed into Eastern Europe, where the myth put down some of its deepest and cruelest roots. She certainly succeeds in that historical task. While her claims are specific and circumspect, her book can be read more broadly as an allegory for our age, a story about how technological change, religious beliefs, struggles for power, and a politics of demonization can produce memes capable of transmitting the potential for violence across vast amounts of time and space.
In the case of the blood libel, that potential remains very much alive. “You are not forgotten, Simon of Trent,” wrote the 19-year-old gunman who stormed a synagogue near San Diego on the final day of Passover last year. “The horror that you and countless children have endured at the hands of the Jews will never be forgiven.”
Blood Libel’s trail starts almost a millennium ago, in 1144, with the discovery in Norwich, England, of the corpse of a 12-year-old named William. Although some of the local clergy may have accused the Jews at the time, little notice was taken until a few years later, when a monk called Thomas of Monmouth moved to town. He spent the next two decades attempting to establish the dead boy as a martyr killed by Jews and promoting the church where he was buried as a site of pilgrimage. In The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, Thomas developed many of the themes that would become staples of the blood libel genre: the seeming kindness with which Jews seduce an innocent child; the hideous tortures to which they subject him in reenacting Christ’s passion; the ritual nature of the crime, repeated annually; the Jewish community’s “inborn hatred of the Christian name”; the conspiracy by state authorities, bribed by Jewish money, to cover up the crime; and the many miracles by which the Christian truth overpowers the lies of murderous Jews and their corrupt Christian allies. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
As far as we know, very few people read Thomas’s manuscript in the Middle Ages. We can’t say with any confidence that it was the origin of the blood libels to come. What we can say is that its basic storyline soon appeared elsewhere in Europe. Perhaps this success was the product of more general trends in Christian piety: With increasing devotion to the cult of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, it became easier to see in every Christian child a figure of the Savior, supposedly hated by Jews. Or perhaps it was animated by the increasing reach of kings and their governments, which sometimes used Jewish moneylenders and tax collectors to extend their power, providing the Christian populace with new reasons to resent the tiny minority living among them.
In short, we really don’t know why this particular story suddenly became so convincing. But we do know that its main themes reemerged in 1171, when the leading Jews in Blois, France, were accused of killing a Christian child and were burned alive for the crime, despite the fact that no child was reported missing and no body was ever found. It then cropped up in 1235, when 34 Jews were executed in Fulda, Germany, after five children burned to death in their home while their parents were at church. Twelve years later, the Jews of Valréas in southern France were tortured and executed after being accused of extracting the blood from a 2-year-old girl named Meilla during Holy Week. Blood Libel recounts all of these early examples. But Teter makes clear that she doesn’t think of the blood libel as particularly medieval. The Middle Ages may have pioneered the accusation of ritual murder, but in her view it was only in the modern era, with new technologies like the printing press and new conflicts between princes and popes, that the libel became a powerful and dangerous myth capable of spreading across Europe.
Teter is right to note that during the Middle Ages these charges were sometimes met with skepticism as well as credulity. In 1247, after the attacks in Fulda and Valréas, Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Sicut Judaeis, in which he forbade Christians to accuse Jews of using human blood in their rituals, on pain of excommunication. The pontiff pointed out that “in the Old Testament they are instructed not to use blood of any kind, let alone human blood.” That official medieval skepticism, Teter writes, disappeared with modernity. The Enlightenment Pope Benedict XIV (1740–58) notably condemned slavery and appointed a woman as a professor of the sciences at the University of Bologna. But he was also the first pope to formally approve the cults of Simon of Trent and other child martyrs, effectively annulling Innocent’s teaching and affirming the accusations against Jews. The cult of Simon was not formally abolished by the Catholic Church until the 20th century, with a brief “Notification” published in the diocesan bulletin of Trent in October 1965. Current Issue View our current issue
While it is true that medieval monarchs and popes could be quite skeptical of the blood libel, it was likely more widespread in the Middle Ages than Teter allows. Even in regions where there were few full-blown ritual murder trials, like Spain, there may have been widespread awareness of the charge. Alfonso de Espina, the confessor to the king of Castile and one of the most influential Castilian clerics, was loudly urging prosecutions for blood libel over a decade before Trent. And though he doesn’t seem to have succeeded in staging a trial, he did play a very important role in disseminating the accusation. In 1458 he penned a massive tome, The Fortress of Faith, dedicated to proclaiming the crimes of Jews, Muslims, and heretics against Christianity, including a history of the ritual murders allegedly committed by Jews. The treatise was among the very first books to be produced on the newly invented printing press in Gutenberg’s Germany; it then circulated widely in Europe and became an authoritative reference for those arguing that Jews ritually murder Christians for their blood.
In fact, long before de Espina, stories of ritual murder were sufficiently well known on the Iberian Peninsula for Jewish communities to worry about them. When the Jews of Barcelona found a baby’s corpse in their meat market in 1301, they reached out immediately to the municipal authorities, fearing that violence would follow. The Jews of Trent did the same in 1475, when they found little Simon floating in the canal beneath their homes. In other words, even where we find few records of trials, the libel may have been bubbling beneath the surface, widely available to the late-medieval Christian imagination.
Even so, why did the Barcelona baby disappear into the archival dust while Simon of Trent was thrust onto the historical stage? Although Teter never asks that question, she provides an indirect answer to it: The new technologies and sciences that we associate with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modernity are what made the attack on Trent’s Jews so powerfully meaningful for the future. The printing press, which entered the world not long before Simon was born, was one of those technologies. And history, newly empowered by humanism and the emergence of new reading publics, was one of those sciences.
Among this book’s grimmest pages are those that discuss the “strategic communications” techniques that this new technology enabled Bishop Johannes Hinderbach of Trent to deploy. Simon wandered away from his home on Holy Thursday, March 23, and was found dead on Easter Sunday. By the 31st, the bishop’s notaries were preparing for the press records of miracles allegedly performed by the boy’s corpse. A narrative of the murder by the bishop’s personal physician was quickly published in Latin, German, and Italian accusing Jews of the crime, calling them a “savage race,” and demanding their elimination “from the whole Christian world.” This account was then sent to a poet in the bishop’s circle to be rendered into verse and song, thereby making it easier to remember and declaim, and soon printed in multiple languages for the broadest possible audience. Related Article Is Populism What’s Really Threatening Democracy? Steven Hahn
This media storm succeeded in motivating judicial proceedings against the Jews in Trent and legitimizing their torture. When that torture took place, it isn’t surprising that the interrogators’ script followed the physician’s and poet’s, already widely circulated and read. The pain of torture was extreme and persuasive, so much so that when one of the accused women refused to speak, officials could explain her resistance only as magic. The bishop ordered her to be washed from head to toe with the urine of a virginal boy to counteract the spell—this from a man accusing Jews of using Christian bodily fluids in their rituals!—but to no avail. Apparently, she never confessed. But others were less enduring. “Tell me what you want me to say and I will say it,” pleaded one defendant to his interrogators. Small wonder that some of the resulting confessions follow the initial accusations or that the defendants were all convicted.
The images and arguments created and transmitted by the impresarios of the Trent ritual murder trial, the chapels those impresarios built, and the pilgrimages they promoted and popularized found their way into the Christian imagination. Teter’s book is particularly strong—and original—in following those images, arguments, and pilgrimages as they flowed to and from Eastern Europe, driving accusations, trials, and massacres in the lands we today call Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania. Some of those stories from Eastern Europe would in turn make their way westward, put to work by the Nazis in their extermination of Jews. Twentieth century Germans could send one another gruesome postcards, like the one urging its recipient to “Remember the 11th of March, 1900,” when the Jews of Konitz were accused of sacrificing a Christian student for Passover. (This example is not in Teter’s book.) Little Simon had a starring role in Der Stürmer’s special ritual murder issue in 1934. Today such murderous messages are seldom delivered on paper, but they are no less accessible for that, as Blood Libel’s first sentence makes clear: “In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League appealed to Facebook to take down a page titled ‘Jewish Ritual Murder.’ It took four years until the page was finally removed.”
New types of media don’t merely disseminate knowledge in new ways; they also generate forms of knowledge. This was as true of the rise of the printing press as it is in our age of social media. And here we come to what has to be, for anyone in my profession, the saddest of this sad book’s lessons: the complicity of history and historians in the transformation of the blood libel from superstition (as Innocent IV might have called it) into scholarship.
As Teter documents, that transformation took place with stunning rapidity. An illustrated Hystorie von Simon zu Trient was published with the bishop’s support in early September 1475. Its images and its narrative were repeated again and again by historians. Among the most influential of these was “the highly learned Doctor Hartmann Schedel,” whose history “from the beginning of the world to our own time” is known today as the Nuremberg Chronicle because it was published in that German city in 1493. (De Espina’s Fortress was published by the same press eight years earlier and was republished by it the following year.)
The Chronicle incorporated the blood libel into its version of world history. Its entry for 1144 is the story of William of Norwich and for 1475 the “Blessed Simon of Trent.” The image illustrating Simon’s story on the reverse of the Chronicle’s folio 254 is perhaps the most famous representation of ritual murder in history. It is worth noting that the image is virtually identical to the one that Hinderbach’s printers produced for the posters they distributed in Trent in 1475. Historians have always been ecologically minded, recycling materials they find in earlier sources. In this instance, they repackaged innovative propaganda into the most up-to-date “scholarship.”
Wherever the blood libel traveled, it was accompanied by historians. This was as true of its dispersal in 17th and 18th century Poland and Lithuania as it was of its diffusion in the 19th and 20th century Islamic world (a subject not covered in this book). On each stage of the journey we find the past marshaled as evidence, either to support the charge of ritual murder or to rebut it.
The Polish priest Stefan Żuchowski, the impresario behind not one but two blood libel accusations in the city of Sandomierz in 1698 and 1710, certainly understood this. In his efforts and in a how-to manual he produced for future accusers, Żuchowski stressed the importance of sifting through history to find examples of Christian blood spilled by Jews in “foreign and [Polish] chronicles.” It was as a reward for his mastery of this vicious science that the synod of Kraków diocese bestowed on him the title of commissary for Jewish affairs in 1711.
Blood Libel is not only about those Christians who put these new technologies to work against Jews. Teter also introduces us to some who used the printing press and the cutting edge of historical scholarship in defense of the accused. In 1669, 3-year-old Didier and his mother were in a forest near Metz, at the border between France and the Duchy of Lorraine, when the boy disappeared. His body was never found, but the rumor of a Jewish kidnapping spread, and soon enough Raphaël Levy, a Jew from Lorraine, was charged with the crime, an accusation that then spread to include the Jews of Metz. Levy, a foreigner without French protectors, was publicly executed in January 1670. Though it came too late to save him, the Jews of Metz managed to secure the intervention of the Parisian scholar and theologian Richard Simon. The brief he produced in 1670 was replete with documentation, from medieval papal bulls to records from a blood libel trial held in Verona in 1603. Its goal was to demonstrate that the historical references favored by Levy’s accusers, drawn from books like the Nuremberg Chronicle and the Annales Ecclesiastici of Cesare Baronio, were erroneous, the scandalous products of ill-intentioned and shoddy research.
The idea behind Simon’s work was that in a court of law, good histories—accurate, learned, well argued—would defeat bad ones. Related Article Can Humanitarianism Address Inequality? Bruce Robbins
That hope animated Gottfried Ollearius’s brief on behalf of the theology faculty of Leipzig, which was consulted in a blood libel accusation in 1714. The faculty’s report began by pointing out that the blood libel was unknown in the first 13 centuries after Christ’s birth. Why, if the Jews needed Christian blood for their rituals, had they refrained from seeking it for 1,300 years? The report then went on to confront the historical arguments of the libel’s many advocates, including de Espina and Baronio, to show that they contradicted themselves. Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli did something similar in Rome in 1759, when the Holy Office of the Inquisition was consulted about a blood libel accusation in the Polish diocese of Łuck. Ganganelli’s job was complicated by the fact that he undertook his task under Pope Benedict XIV, whose bull Beatus Andreas just four years earlier endorsed the story of another child’s murder, that of Andreas of Rinn, at the hands of the Jews. Ganganelli’s conclusions were mixed: He asserted that the Jews of Poland did not deserve Christian sympathy but allowed that the ritual murder of children was probably not among their crimes.
All of these scholars fought fire with fire, writing histories that pointed out the interpretive errors and manipulations of the accusers. But the hope that good history would drive out bad history was almost always disappointed: None of these scholarly reports did much to lessen the power of the blood libel against Jews. Perhaps that is in part because, as Teter notes, they were not widely distributed. Simon’s work appeared in a very limited edition. The Leipzig brief went unprinted for 40 years. Ganganelli’s report was buried in the Vatican archives until the 20th century.
Would things be different if these historical inquiries into the blood libel had circulated more broadly? Lord Nathaniel Rothschild certainly thought so. When Mendel Beilis, a Jew of Kiev, was accused of killing a 13-year-old Christian boy in 1911, Rothschild wrote to the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, asking him to confirm the existence of Innocent IV’s medieval absolution of the Jews and of the Ganganelli report, two documents he thought would make clear to Christians the falsity of the accusations. (The cardinal responded by certifying the existence of both documents.) The great Jewish historian Cecil Roth did something similar in 1935, when he responded to Der Stürmer’s ritual murder issue by publishing Rothschild’s correspondence with the Vatican, including a photograph of the envelope in which the Vatican had sent its response, lest anyone doubt its authenticity.
I am not as optimistic as Roth, Rothschild, and presumably Teter that the availability of better, truer histories of the blood libel can defeat this vicious myth. Such works—I’ll call them forensic histories—are certainly important, but they are also clearly insufficient. The forensic historian engages in a critical reexamination of the evidence in the hope of reversing a historical injustice, much as the researchers of the Innocence Project today might bring new proof to a court of law in order to overturn a wrongful conviction. Teter’s book assumes a well-deserved place in this illustrious tradition of forensic history on the blood libel, and we should all be grateful for it, since the task remains vitally necessary.
But if pointing out to the libel’s purveyors that their forensics and history are wrong were enough to defeat it, there would be no blood libel today. Already in 1475, when Jews in Trent were arrested on the grounds that Simon’s body bled when they were in its presence, many doctors knew better than to accept the prosecutor’s argument that “experience shows that wounds on the dead emit blood when a murderer stands near the corpse.” They also knew better in 1747, 1753, and 1766, when the same bleeding-corpse argument was used to accuse Jews of ritual murder in Poland.
The limitations of forensic history are not only that it doesn’t circulate as widely as the libels it seeks to counter. It also says too little about why certain ideas about Jews and other marginalized groups have proved so resonant in particular times and places, so capable of promoting violence, and so foundational to the exclusions and inclusions that societies have come to regard as necessary. To reverse wrongful convictions past and present, therefore, it’s just as important to bring to light the structural conditions that nourish and are nourished by those injustices.
The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg once suggested that conspiracy theories about how Jews and other marginalized groups were scheming to destroy society—accusations like the blood libel and the witches’ Sabbath—were the product of a fundamental shift in European mentalities and myths that took place amid the famines, plagues, and wars of the 14th century. If that is true, then our structural question only becomes more pressing. Why have these ways of thinking about the world proved so persistent and so capable of dissemination across historical periods and cultures, even into our own era? Regardless of the historical context in which they may have originated, what has given logics of conspiracy the ability to draw renewed life from the technologies, disciplines, and communications techniques of every subsequent age, including our own? For it is all too clear that the trail that Blood Libel set out to follow has not yet come to an end.
Today’s conspiratorial myths, such as the replacement theory—the idea that Jews seek to destroy white, Christian Europe and the United States by promoting immigration, integration, and civil rights—come shrouded like their predecessors in arguments drawn from disciplines like history, psychology, and biology, disseminated now not only by the printing press but also by the latest in algorithms and bots. As I write, Facebook is working to remove posts blaming the spread of the coronavirus on Jews.
Why are such myths so persistent? What makes them so appealing and therefore so useful? Forensic histories may help us reverse wrongful convictions, but they can’t answer these structural questions. We need histories that teach us how our societies learned to imagine themselves (as they still too often do) as threatened by the malevolent conspiracies of the marginalized. Then we could begin the critical work of unlearning them.


thenation--2020-11-16--What Bernie Sanders Could Do as Secretary of Labor

Bernie Sanders ’ s greatest strength has always been his determination to push the boundaries of our politics .
The fact that he is currently considering the idea of joining President-elect Joe Biden ’ s administration as secretary of labor is the latest example of his readiness to think outside the box .
The senator from Vermont ’ s interest in the position has been an open secret for weeks .
He ’ s now said , “ If I had a portfolio that allowed me to stand up and fight for working families , would I do it ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he could take over the Department of Labor is just that : a prospect .
The two-time presidential candidate put things in perspective when he told CNN ’ s Wolf Blitzer , “ What ’ s true is I want to do everything I can to protect the working families of this country who are under tremendous duress right now .
Whether that ’ s in the Senate , whether that ’ s in the Biden administration , who knows.
” As Sanders says , “ Well , let ’ s see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arguments for Sanders to remain in the Senate , where he has used his platform to fight for everything from Medicare for All to net neutrality to a humane foreign policy .
He has assembled an exceptional staff that has made his office a vital entry point for activists on economic and social and racial justice issues , as well as the climate crisis .
This Would Be a Very Good Time to Impeach William Barr John Kasich Contributed Nothing to Biden ’ s Election , So Why Should Democrats Listen to His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the chamber ’ s delicate balance .
Republicans could lose their Senate majority if Georgia voters choose Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev .
Raphael Warnock in January 5 runoff voting .
With two more Democratic seats , the Senate would be split 50-50 , allowing incoming Vice President Kamala Harris to tip the balance in favor of the new president ’ s party .
The idea of removing a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus is understandably unsettling—even if the Republican governor of Vermont , Phil Scott , has signaled that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ independent who would caucus with the Democrats .
Then there are deeper questions of whether Biden is really prepared to supercharge the Department of Labor and put a former rival at its head .
But let ’ s suppose boldness wins out .
What could Sanders do as the most prominent member of Biden ’ s cabinet ?
With Biden ’ s blessing and a portfolio that allowed him to act with authority and a reasonable measure of independence , Sanders could turn the Labor Department into a center of advocacy and service @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it needs to be in a moment so economically turbulent as the one on which the United States finds itself .
The Labor Department was founded in 1913 with a mission to “ to foster , promote , and develop the welfare of the wage earners , job seekers , and retirees of the United States ; improve working conditions ; advance opportunities for profitable employment ; and assure work-related benefits and rights.
” At its best , as when Frances Perkins served as President Franklin Roosevelt ’ s labor secretary from 1933 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a transformative role in the lives of working-class people .
And it will need to be at its best if the Biden administration is serious about addressing the economic devastation that extends from the coronavirus pandemic .
Sanders has focused on the pandemic and worker concerns relating to it since the last days of his 2020 presidential bid , when he explained to me that in addition to the health crisis , “ we ’ re looking at an economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
” The Trump administration ’ s Labor Department has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and workers in general , since the pandemic hit .
Sanders recognizes the need for action that addresses the immediate crisis and the stark injustice it has revealed .
“ I think that what this crisis does is rip away the Band-Aid and say , ‘ Hey , this is the reality.
’ And the reality is today that there are people going to work in dangerous jobs where they could catch the virus because they have to go to work , ” he told me in April .
“ They ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and they ’ re scared to death about working in that grocery store or the drugstore or wherever they ’ re working , but they have to do it .
And while rich folks are heading out to their second or third homes , these people are putting their lives on the line in order to take care of their families.
” As the highest-profile labor secretary since Perkins , with a charge from the president to act decisively , Sanders would be uniquely positioned to meet the crisis head-on .
No one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He ’ d have to wrestle not just with Republicans but also with cautious Democrats .
But he ’ s got a track record of doing just that .
Sanders would have a bully pulpit from which to advocate for replacing the minimum wage with a living-wage formula to lift workers out of poverty .
He could lambaste anti-union “ right-to-work ” laws .
And he could push for labor-law reforms , like those outlined in his 2020 presidential campaign ’ s “ Workplace Democracy ” agenda , which proposed to double @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden politically savvy enough to give his formal rival the go-ahead , Sanders could leverage his prominence and his national network of supporters to make the Labor Department a venue for advancing a workers ’ rights agenda every bit as ambitious as the one FDR and Perkins championed in the 1930s .
He could use the vast resources of a department with 15,000 employees and a budget of $ 50 billion not merely to enforce existing laws to protect working-class Americans but to develop new legislative strategies , regulations , and programs to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the immediate struggles of workers , and ramp up research on the future of work , automation , and the gig economy .
We ’ re in a moment of great enthusiasm for advancing worker rights and labor rights , and Sanders would not have to do it all on his own .
In the tradition of the New Deal era , when cabinet members such as Perkins and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace surrounded themselves with the country ’ s boldest thinkers and doers , Sanders could build a team to lead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Now , but Be Ready to Push Later There are a number of impressive prospects for the Labor Secretary position in a Biden administration , several of whom Sanders has worked with over the years .
Were the senator to get the nod from the president-elect , he could reach out to the best of these prospects .
Imagine fully empowered assistant secretaries of labor such as Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson developing programs to give workers a real voice on the job and across their industries ; California Labor Secretary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Watch , focusing attention on workplace discrimination and safety issues ; AFL-CIO chief economist and former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy William Spriggs , an economics professor at Howard University , seizing “ a teachable moment ” to address statistical discrimination and to engage in deeper , smarter and more honest explorations of racial disparities in economic outcomes .
Sanders might even consider Andrew Yang for a role framing the strategies that are needed to provide meaningful work and compensation in the next economy .
Joe Biden traveled just days before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where he took on the mantle of FDR and promised a presidency that would enact an “ economic plan that will finally reward work , not wealth in this country.
” That ’ s a noble goal rooted in the ambitions of the New Deal .
To realize it , Biden will need a Labor Department as visionary and bold as the one Frances Perkins ran in Roosevelt ’ s day .
If Biden were to give him the go-ahead , Bernie Sanders and a team of visionary leaders could make the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new New Deal .

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Bernie Sanders’s greatest strength has always been his determination to push the boundaries of our politics. The fact that he is currently considering the idea of joining President-elect Joe Biden’s administration as secretary of labor is the latest example of his readiness to think outside the box.
The senator from Vermont’s interest in the position has been an open secret for weeks. He’s now said, “If I had a portfolio that allowed me to stand up and fight for working families, would I do it? Yes, I would.”
The prospect that he could take over the Department of Labor is just that: a prospect. The two-time presidential candidate put things in perspective when he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “What’s true is I want to do everything I can to protect the working families of this country who are under tremendous duress right now. Whether that’s in the Senate, whether that’s in the Biden administration, who knows.” As Sanders says, “Well, let’s see how that unfolds.”
There are sound arguments for Sanders to remain in the Senate, where he has used his platform to fight for everything from Medicare for All to net neutrality to a humane foreign policy. He has assembled an exceptional staff that has made his office a vital entry point for activists on economic and social and racial justice issues, as well as the climate crisis. More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
There is also the matter of the chamber’s delicate balance. Republicans could lose their Senate majority if Georgia voters choose Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock in January 5 runoff voting. With two more Democratic seats, the Senate would be split 50-50, allowing incoming Vice President Kamala Harris to tip the balance in favor of the new president’s party. The idea of removing a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus is understandably unsettling—even if the Republican governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, has signaled that he would fill a vacancy with an independent who would caucus with the Democrats. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Then there are deeper questions of whether Biden is really prepared to supercharge the Department of Labor and put a former rival at its head.
But let’s suppose boldness wins out. What could Sanders do as the most prominent member of Biden’s cabinet? Current Issue View our current issue
With Biden’s blessing and a portfolio that allowed him to act with authority and a reasonable measure of independence, Sanders could turn the Labor Department into a center of advocacy and service for American workers, which is what it needs to be in a moment so economically turbulent as the one on which the United States finds itself.
The Labor Department was founded in 1913 with a mission to “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.” At its best, as when Frances Perkins served as President Franklin Roosevelt’s labor secretary from 1933 to 1945, the department has played a transformative role in the lives of working-class people. And it will need to be at its best if the Biden administration is serious about addressing the economic devastation that extends from the coronavirus pandemic.
Sanders has focused on the pandemic and worker concerns relating to it since the last days of his 2020 presidential bid, when he explained to me that in addition to the health crisis, “we’re looking at an economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude.”
The Trump administration’s Labor Department has failed to protect frontline workers in particular, and workers in general, since the pandemic hit. Sanders recognizes the need for action that addresses the immediate crisis and the stark injustice it has revealed. “I think that what this crisis does is rip away the Band-Aid and say, ‘Hey, this is the reality.’ And the reality is today that there are people going to work in dangerous jobs where they could catch the virus because they have to go to work,” he told me in April. “They’re making $12 an hour, and they’re scared to death about working in that grocery store or the drugstore or wherever they’re working, but they have to do it. And while rich folks are heading out to their second or third homes, these people are putting their lives on the line in order to take care of their families.”
As the highest-profile labor secretary since Perkins, with a charge from the president to act decisively, Sanders would be uniquely positioned to meet the crisis head-on. No one suggests that the task would be easy. He’d have to wrestle not just with Republicans but also with cautious Democrats. But he’s got a track record of doing just that. The Agenda Bernie Sanders on How He’ll Rally Progressives John Nichols
Sanders would have a bully pulpit from which to advocate for replacing the minimum wage with a living-wage formula to lift workers out of poverty. He could lambaste anti-union “right-to-work” laws. And he could push for labor-law reforms, like those outlined in his 2020 presidential campaign’s “Workplace Democracy” agenda, which proposed to double union membership in four years.
Were Biden politically savvy enough to give his formal rival the go-ahead, Sanders could leverage his prominence and his national network of supporters to make the Labor Department a venue for advancing a workers’ rights agenda every bit as ambitious as the one FDR and Perkins championed in the 1930s. He could use the vast resources of a department with 15,000 employees and a budget of $50 billion not merely to enforce existing laws to protect working-class Americans but to develop new legislative strategies, regulations, and programs to extend those protections. He could highlight the immediate struggles of workers, and ramp up research on the future of work, automation, and the gig economy.
We’re in a moment of great enthusiasm for advancing worker rights and labor rights, and Sanders would not have to do it all on his own. In the tradition of the New Deal era, when cabinet members such as Perkins and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace surrounded themselves with the country’s boldest thinkers and doers, Sanders could build a team to lead with him. The Push Progressives Should Support Biden Now, but Be Ready to Push Later Katrina vanden Heuvel
There are a number of impressive prospects for the Labor Secretary position in a Biden administration, several of whom Sanders has worked with over the years. Were the senator to get the nod from the president-elect, he could reach out to the best of these prospects. Imagine fully empowered assistant secretaries of labor such as Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson developing programs to give workers a real voice on the job and across their industries; California Labor Secretary Julie Su, a cofounder of Sweatshop Watch, focusing attention on workplace discrimination and safety issues; AFL-CIO chief economist and former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University, seizing “a teachable moment” to address statistical discrimination and to engage in deeper, smarter and more honest explorations of racial disparities in economic outcomes. Sanders might even consider Andrew Yang for a role framing the strategies that are needed to provide meaningful work and compensation in the next economy.
Joe Biden traveled just days before the 2020 election to Warm Springs, Ga., where he took on the mantle of FDR and promised a presidency that would enact an “economic plan that will finally reward work, not wealth in this country.” That’s a noble goal rooted in the ambitions of the New Deal. To realize it, Biden will need a Labor Department as visionary and bold as the one Frances Perkins ran in Roosevelt’s day. If Biden were to give him the go-ahead, Bernie Sanders and a team of visionary leaders could make the Labor Department a platform for launching a new New Deal.


thenation--2020-11-17--Georgia Senator David Perdue Is Terrified That Jon Ossoff Will Shred Him in Another Debate

Georgia Senator David Perdue , the scandal-plagued millionaire who bought himself a Senate seat six years ago , has a strategy for keeping that seat in a critical January 5 runoff election that will help determine which party is going to control the chamber : He plans to hide .
On Monday the 70-year-old Republican incumbent signaled that he won ’ t participate in one of the Atlanta Press Club debates scheduled for December 6 , the day before the registration deadline for voting in the pair of runoffs that pit Perdue against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff and the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Loeffler , against Democratic challenger the Rev .
Raphael Warnock .
“ I guess David Perdue doesn ’ t like being held accountable , ” says Ossoff , the 33-year-old former intern for Representative John Lewis and aide to Representative Hank Johnson whose strong November 3 showing forced Perdue into the runoff election .
The high-stakes Georgia votes will occur because state law decrees that if no Senate candidate gets 50 percent of the vote in the initial balloting , a second election between the top two contenders must be held .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats 50 US Senate seats , allowing Vice President–elect Kamala Harris to break a tie and shift control of the chamber to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus .
Referring to participation in debates as the “ bare minimum ” voters should be able to expect of runoff candidates , Ossoff ripped into his rival for dodging the discourse .
“ Looks like Sen. David Perdue is too much of a coward to debate me again , ” declared the Democrat .
“ Perdue can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , self-dealing stock trades , his bigotry , or his votes to take away Georgians ’ health care .
Senator , come on out and try to defend your record .
I ’ m ready to go.
” What Bernie Sanders Could Do as Secretary of Labor This Would Be a Very Good Time to Impeach William Barr Ossoff ’ s sharp and unshrinking reference to Perdue ’ s lies , stock trades , and bigotry explain why the incumbent is so afraid to debate .
When the two candidates faced each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shredded Perdue so devastatingly that videos from their exchange went viral .
Referring to complaints that Perdue engaged in self-serving stock trades early in the pandemic , when senators were being briefed on its potential impact and before the danger was widely understood , Ossoff said during an October 28 debate , “ Perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the Covid-19 pandemic if you hadn ’ t been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading .
It ’ s not just that you ’ re a crook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re attacking the health of the people that you represent .
You did say Covid-19 was no deadlier than the flu .
You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases .
All the while , you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio.
” Perdue was so overwhelmed by the criticism , and so ineffectual in responding to it , that a day later , his campaign announced that he would not attend a final scheduled debate with Ossoff .
Instead , a Perdue aide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as another debate listening to Jon Ossoff lie to the people of Georgia sounds , Senator Perdue will not be participating in the WSB-TV debate but will instead join the 45th president , Donald J. Trump , for a huge Get-Out-The-Vote rally in Northwest Georgia.
” The decision to skip that last debate and tie the Trump and Perdue campaigns together for a big close did not end well .
Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden—becoming the first Republican presidential contender to lose the state since 1992 .
And Perdue , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prohibitive front-runner , fell below the 50 percent mark—barely finishing ahead of the Democrat , with 49.7 percent to 48 percent for Ossoff .
Now , Perdue is skipping another debate , and the Democratic challenger is skewering the Republican incumbent with a new line : “ David Perdue isn ’ t just a crook—he ’ s a coward , too .
”

Georgia Senator David Perdue, the scandal-plagued millionaire who bought himself a Senate seat six years ago, has a strategy for keeping that seat in a critical January 5 runoff election that will help determine which party is going to control the chamber: He plans to hide.
On Monday the 70-year-old Republican incumbent signaled that he won’t participate in one of the Atlanta Press Club debates scheduled for December 6, the day before the registration deadline for voting in the pair of runoffs that pit Perdue against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff and the state’s appointed Republican senator, Kelly Loeffler, against Democratic challenger the Rev. Raphael Warnock.
“I guess David Perdue doesn’t like being held accountable,” says Ossoff, the 33-year-old former intern for Representative John Lewis and aide to Representative Hank Johnson whose strong November 3 showing forced Perdue into the runoff election. The high-stakes Georgia votes will occur because state law decrees that if no Senate candidate gets 50 percent of the vote in the initial balloting, a second election between the top two contenders must be held. The stakes could not be higher: Wins by Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats 50 US Senate seats, allowing Vice President–elect Kamala Harris to break a tie and shift control of the chamber to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus.
Referring to participation in debates as the “bare minimum” voters should be able to expect of runoff candidates, Ossoff ripped into his rival for dodging the discourse. “Looks like Sen. David Perdue is too much of a coward to debate me again,” declared the Democrat. “Perdue can’t defend his lies about COVID-19, self-dealing stock trades, his bigotry, or his votes to take away Georgians’ health care. Senator, come on out and try to defend your record. I’m ready to go.” More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
Ossoff’s sharp and unshrinking reference to Perdue’s lies, stock trades, and bigotry explain why the incumbent is so afraid to debate.
When the two candidates faced each other before the November 3 election, Ossoff shredded Perdue so devastatingly that videos from their exchange went viral.
Referring to complaints that Perdue engaged in self-serving stock trades early in the pandemic, when senators were being briefed on its potential impact and before the danger was widely understood, Ossoff said during an October 28 debate, “Perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the Covid-19 pandemic if you hadn’t been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading. It’s not just that you’re a crook, senator. It’s that you’re attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say Covid-19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while, you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio.” Current Issue View our current issue
Perdue was so overwhelmed by the criticism, and so ineffectual in responding to it, that a day later, his campaign announced that he would not attend a final scheduled debate with Ossoff. Instead, a Perdue aide offered this spin: “As lovely as another debate listening to Jon Ossoff lie to the people of Georgia sounds, Senator Perdue will not be participating in the WSB-TV debate but will instead join the 45th president, Donald J. Trump, for a huge Get-Out-The-Vote rally in Northwest Georgia.”
The decision to skip that last debate and tie the Trump and Perdue campaigns together for a big close did not end well. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden—becoming the first Republican presidential contender to lose the state since 1992. And Perdue, who had started the race as a prohibitive front-runner, fell below the 50 percent mark—barely finishing ahead of the Democrat, with 49.7 percent to 48 percent for Ossoff.
Now, Perdue is skipping another debate, and the Democratic challenger is skewering the Republican incumbent with a new line: “David Perdue isn’t just a crook—he’s a coward, too.”