vox--2020-10-30--Black voter turnout was down in 2016. This time looks to be different.

Black voter turnout was down in 2016 .
This time looks to be different .
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This time looks to be different .
D ’ Angelo Crosby says the demands placed on Black Americans this year are so heavy , they ’ re incapacitating — leaving him undecided in the election .
“ I don ’ t think [ former Vice President Joe ] Biden is willing to help the American people .
...
I just think that he ’ s been in the office a long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notice what he did for young Black men — or Black people in general , ” said Crosby , a junior at Morehouse College who is attending classes remotely from his home in Illinois .
“ I could say this , that my father said that he made more than he had ever made with [ President Donald ] Trump [ in office ] than he did Obama.
” One of Crosby ’ s problems with Biden is that he fears the Democrat would take an overly restrictive approach to containing the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lockdowns that led to his mother losing her job .
“ My mom during the pandemic got laid off .
And that was a really heartbreaking experience for me .
Because my mom had been working that job for over 30 years , ” Crosby said .
“ Before the pandemic , everything was running smoothly .
She was on the path to retire and everything.
” Crosby says the president wasn ’ t “ well equipped ” to handle the pandemic , and both his parents got sick with Covid-19 this year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two that pulled out , ” Crosby said .
And they were , in fact , fortunate .
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) , Black people make up nearly 20 percent of US Covid-19 deaths , despite making up 13 percent of the population .
Crosby tuned in to the first presidential debate to help him settle on a candidate , but he found it disappointing .
“ It was like everything was a joke , ” he said .
The second debate helped Crosby decide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many reservations .
There are many factors motivating voters this year , from the pandemic to the ongoing struggle against systemic racism .
The extraordinary force with which these factors have shaped Black American life is animating Black voters this year — pushing them to vote with far greater energy than they did in 2016 .
Now Black voters have lived under a Trump administration , and many wonder if they can survive another ; they have seen their friends , family , and neighbors taken by Covid-19 , and watched Black people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ve been inspired by the Black Lives Movement but remain deeply fearful about the future .
“ I ’ m not excited .
I ’ m scared , ” Crosby told me .
“ I would definitely say that it feels like , either way that it goes , Black people — just , it doesn ’ t seem like we ’ re in a great position .
It just really doesn ’ t. ” This year , there are high hopes for Black voters to turn out Fewer Black Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And while some election watchers , like the New York Times ’ s Nate Cohn , have argued that a shift of white voters from Democrats to Republicans was the source of Trump ’ s victory in 2016 , others , like Osita Nwanevu for Slate , have posited that lower Black turnout cost Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the election .
Black voter turnout decreased by 7 percentage points from 2012 to 2016 .
It was the first decline in Black voter turnout in 20 years , according to the Pew Research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participation by any ethnic group since white turnout fell by about 10 percentage points from 1992 to 1996 .
It is possible the decline is due to Barack Obama not being on the ticket ; the last election without him , held in 2004 , had a Black voter participation rate of 60.3 percent , 0.7 percentage points higher than in 2016 .
Other hypotheses have been raised as well — like that Black voters soured on Clinton due to her association with criminal justice policies that negatively affected Black communities ( and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them ) or that the Black vote was suppressed by Russian actors and Republican policies .
Whether any , or all of these , or something else entirely was the root cause of the decline is difficult to say — and that ’ s something that ’ s still being researched today .
But the 17 activists , party officials , and voters that I spoke to across the country said they think things might be different this time .
“ After the election in 2016 , you could literally just see all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deck , ” Terri Minor Spencer , founder and president of West End P.O.W.E.R.
, said .
Spencer , who is based in Pittsburgh , said her organization began collaborating with the county jail , working to get voter registration forms to men and women who found themselves there .
And ahead of November ’ s election , Spencer said the group has worked to ensure the imprisoned know their rights : “ If you are not sentenced , you can vote .
If you are sitting in there because you can not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If you ’ re on pretrial , you can vote.
” Like Spencer , many other activists and organizers have been hard at work in their communities for four years — if not longer .
And this year , all of their efforts have only been compounded by the ongoing protests over systemic racism and police violence .
“ The Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged people to realize that we have to participate in the system and create some type of change , ” Cooper Blackwell , an activist and entrepreneur in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
It was a sentiment that was echoed by most I spoke to .
The importance of voting has been a fixture at many of the ongoing protests for racial justice — and there appears to have been an increase in voter registration , particularly among Democrats and independents , because of them .
A message that has been stressed repeatedly at these protests nationwide is that police , mayors , and city budgets are not controlled at the federal level .
And many I spoke to said that message has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seeing a lot of people taking more interest in the local races , understanding that , obviously , the presidency is very important , but honestly , I don ’ t feel like it ’ s a key draw anymore , ” Peggy West-Schroder , the statewide campaign coordinator for Ex-incarcerated People Organizing ( EXPO ) , a civil rights group in Wisconsin that advocates for the currently and formerly incarcerated , told me .
Spencer described how focused those her organization works with have become on the power local magistrates hold over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this has inspired some to work towards becoming magistrates themselves .
And Christopher Walton , the chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County , told me of the new energy Democratic voters have around stopping Wisconsin ’ s legislature from achieving a veto-proof majority in this year ’ s elections .
“ The revolution takes place within our communities , on the ground , ” Blackwell said .
“ The system changes as a result of that.
” The work of activists and the energy created by the Black Lives Matter movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters — particularly young ones , whose turnout was also depressed in 2016 — are feeling as if they have an obligation not just to vote but to ensure others do , too .
Darylette Parker , a 23-year-old from Illinois who said she regretted not voting in 2016 , told me she and many of her friends have been motivating one another to vote — and that she was spurred to action by Michelle Obama , who has spent much of the past few months attempting to drive up turnout .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made a video and she said , ‘ If you think things can ’ t get worse , you ’ re wrong , ’ ” Parker said .
“ So that was kind of like a wake-up call .
And that really motivated me to go make sure I was registered.
” Social media has been a powerful agent for convincing people in Malik Martin ’ s life as well .
A sophomore at North Carolina A & T University , Martin said he ’ s felt a lot of pressure from his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ s seen what happens to those who say they won ’ t participate .
“ I have seen some people on Twitter ... say that , ‘ Well , I ’ m not gon na vote because this or this , ’ and the way that the students responded to it — they were really upset , ” Martin said .
The students who said they didn ’ t want to vote were on the receiving end of a lot of harsh DMs and tweets , according to Martin , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they should vote.
” One other powerful force driving Black voters to fill out ballots this year is the same thing driving turnout among many suburban women , young Latinx voters , and Rust Belt workers : Trump .
“ The Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged people to realize that we have to participate in the system and create some type of change.
” According to Walton , Trump ’ s actions , words , and record have many Black Americans “ just enraged at him , especially amongst the older @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve seen this before .
… People are like , we spent a lot of time fighting to make sure this was never going to happen again .
And here it is happening .
And I ’ ll be damned if I ’ m gon na stand by and allow it to happen again.
” Preliminary indications suggest efforts to energize and empower Black voters have been working .
In an analysis conducted in mid-October , the Associated Press found that about 10 percent of the more than 20 million early votes cast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) were submitted by Black Americans , a number roughly in line with their share of the national electorate .
Since then , the number of early voters has more than tripled , and in the states that provide voter data by race , Black voters have markedly improved on turnout compared to this time in 2016 .
Black voters could swing races in key states — but must overcome voter suppression efforts first Part of what gives Black voters their power is the Electoral College — a recent analysis by the Pew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than a third of Black eligible voters live in swing states , and that in many , they make up a sizable portion of the electorate .
In North Carolina , 22 percent of eligible voters are Black , far more than enough to decide a close race .
And North Carolina , home to 15 electoral votes , is expected to be very close .
The state went to Trump by only 3.8 percentage points in 2016 , and the Biden campaign hopes to run up his vote total in Democratic strongholds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counties like Nash , which Trump won by 118 votes .
So in the weeks before the election , top Biden surrogates , like Sen. Cory Booker ( D-NJ ) , have been dispatched there to secure it for him .
But Trump has also worked hard in recent weeks to boost Republican turnout in the state .
Reportedly , 70 percent of the paths to victory his campaign envisions run through North Carolina , making it a pivotal state for him .
It ’ s one of the few swing states in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and he and his allies have traveled there repeatedly , even holding events in districts that went for him by a large margin in 2016 .
Biden has a slight lead in most North Carolina polls , but Kevin Jones , the first vice chair of the Nash County Democratic Party , said he ’ s concerned about the level of enthusiasm among some of his fellow Democrats .
“ It ’ s bad , ” Jones said .
“ If Donald Trump needs 15 electoral votes to win the presidency , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in North Carolina , it won ’ t be my vote that gets him in there .
But , you know , I don ’ t feel too good about it.
” And there ’ s one big reason for this , Jones thinks : “ The BLM [ Black Lives Matter ] piece has supercharged , I think , Trump ’ s base .
I think that the BLM , that ’ s been used as a tool and a firestarter , if you will , to really rally people.
” Nearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ North Carolina cited a similar concern about the effect anti-BLM sentiment will have on voting in the state .
Many also said they were worried about a related issue : finding ways to empower voters in the face of attempted voter suppression .
D ’ atra Jackson — the national co-director of the BYP100 Action Fund , who is based in Durham , North Carolina — said there is a “ very real threat of white supremacist , white nationalist violence in North Carolina .
And those are things that have been threats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white nationalists have led her organization , and its partners , to set up a program around polling sites to reassure Black voters and to provide for their safety .
Blackwell , who hopes to overcome any concerns with positivity , is organizing virtual parties and DJs outside of polling places , and recounted how even in Rocky Mount — a city largely controlled by Black people — the risk of violence is inescapable .
Citizens there faced have implicit and explicit threats , including the appearance of a noose in a park @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Narratives like these are a reminder that it ’ s not necessarily a dislike of either candidate , or apathy , or a lack of Obama on the ballot that may have led to lower Black voter turnout in 2016 , but concern for safety .
There are barriers put up by state actors as well : Cooper complained that a longstanding polling place had been moved to an area more difficult to access — and nationally , nearly 21,000 polling places have been shuttered this year , according to Vice News @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been an acute problem for them this year .
“ There was only four polling places open in a whole city , and it was just — it was bad , ” West-Schroder said of Milwaukee , Wisconsin ’ s most recent elections .
“ And we do feel like some of that was done to disenfranchise Black voters.
” The number of polling places has been expanded for the general election , but she said EXPO faces a new challenge in the amount of “ miscommunication , misinformation that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that is a deliberate attempt to stifle the Black vote.
” “ So what we like to teach our members , ” West-Schroder said , “ is that if your vote didn ’ t matter , they wouldn ’ t be trying so hard to take it away from you.
” Not all Black voters are thrilled about Biden and Harris — particularly because of their backgrounds Most Black voters seem poised to vote for Biden , based on recent polls ; Morning Consult ’ s tracking poll for the week on October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent of Black likely voters favored Biden , and 9 percent favored Trump .
But Jones says he ’ s still nervous about the results of the election because “ the enthusiasm is not there.
” This too is reflected in polling ; for example , an Economist/YouGov poll taken in mid-October found Black voters to be split when it comes to their enthusiasm about Biden — 48 percent said they were enthusiastic about the nominee ; 49 percent said they were not .
Part of that gap might stem from a longing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I don ’ t care how good you are at basketball , if you go play for the Chicago Bulls you ’ re gon na be measured up against Michael Jordan , ” Jones said .
“ I think for the rest of my lifetime , we will measure up every Democratic presidential candidate against Barack Obama ... .
and Joe Biden , you know , can ’ t be Jordan.
” Perhaps a more widespread issue , however , is the slightly more distant past : Many told me voters often bring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason they can ’ t get behind Biden .
That bill , called the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act , was written in part by Biden , and he played a key role in getting it passed into law during his time in the Senate , two things he bragged about as recently as 2016 .
Essentially , the law was meant to stem a decades-long rise in crime and signal to voters that Democrats were tougher on crime than Republicans .
As Vox ’ s German Lopez has explained , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either , but it did do a lot of other things : Particularly during the past 10 years , advocacy groups , think tanks , and scholars have argued that the 1994 crime bill helped encourage racially biased mass incarceration and , along with the crime laws of the 1980s , exacerbated systemic inequality .
The general consensus now , as Princeton African American studies professor Naomi Murakawa put it to the Marshall Project in 2015 , is “ that 1994 act is overwhelmingly , incredibly punitive.
” Throughout the Democratic primary campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this record ; Sen. Cory Booker called the crime bill “ shameful , ” while Biden ’ s current running mate , Sen. Kamala Harris , accused him of contributing to mass incarceration .
The attacks stuck — and were quickly adopted by Trump , who has continued to use them against Biden in the general election .
But Curmilus Dancy II , a political blogger in North Carolina , argued that the criticism makes little sense : “ You want Black folk to be mad because you say they were hard on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them doing a job , and what some Black folk wanted , at that particular time.
” To Dancy ’ s point , the crime bill was popular at the time .
As the Brookings Institution ’ s Rashawn Ray and William A. Galston have explained , in 1994 , “ 58 % of African Americans supported the crime bill , compared to 49 % of white Americans.
” After several different responses to these attacks ( some less convincing than others ) , Biden has simplified his message .
“ It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked about the crime bill at the second presidential debate .
“ I ’ ve been trying to change it since then , particularly the portion on cocaine.
” It ’ s an answer that impressed Crosby , and Biden ’ s new stance on the bill has impressed others as well ; that he ’ s willing to say when he is wrong and knows when “ it ’ s time to step up ” is something Spencer said she liked about him .
While Biden was ultimately able to satisfy Crosby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criminal justice , Harris has been able to do no such thing .
“ She prosecuted so many Black men , and it ’ s just like , do you , also feel the struggle of Black people ?
Or are you at a place right now where it ’ s just you and your family , and you don ’ t care about oppression anymore ?
” Crosby asked .
“ That ’ s so sad to me , to see that you can not be empathetic and sympathetic to Black people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on to explain that he can not understand why Harris accrued the record she did as San Francisco ’ s district attorney , and later as California ’ s attorney general .
Harris had a somewhat contradictory record in those two roles , as Vox ’ s Lopez explained : She implemented some progressive reforms , but there are also prosecutorial choices she made that critics say were particularly harmful to people of color .
This record means that when she was announced as Biden ’ s vice presidential pick , “ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some other people were , just because her track record hasn ’ t hasn ’ t been that great in regards to criminal justice , reform , and second chances , ” West-Schroder of EXPO said , noting the group is nonpartisan .
Harris has since stressed that she has left behind the “ smart on crime ” stances she took while in California in order to advocate for progressive criminal justice reform in the Senate — including by introducing bail reform , anti-lynching , and marijuana decriminalization bills .
And like Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during a recent debate , saying , “ We need reform of policing in America , and our criminal justice system.
” This new stance won over some of the voters I spoke with ; but others were excited more by what she represents — potentially , the first Black and first Asian American woman to be vice president .
“ A lot of people were already like , ‘ Eh , yeah , I ’ ll vote for him , I ’ ll do what I got to do.
’ And then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it was , ‘ I ’ m voting !
’ ” said Walton , the Milwaukee party chair .
“ The fact that she would be the first woman vice president is lit , ” Blackwell said , noting that he also thought she would be helpful in balancing a potential President Biden : “ It ’ s hard to trust any old white man with a lot of power , to be honest.
” “ There ’ s a contradiction that folks are holding , ” Jackson said , noting “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we need to be on ” to achieve aims like defunding the police .
But many are willing to embrace that contradiction and come out for Biden and Harris regardless of their pasts , because , as Jackson said , “ this is such a high-stakes election.
” There is a lot at stake for Black Americans The stakes feel — and are — existential for Black Americans .
For many , the Covid-19 death toll isn ’ t just numbers of a graph ; they have been personally swept up by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waves .
Branden Snyder , the executive director of Detroit Action , told me , “ In Detroit , you know , it ’ s six degrees of separation , everyone is seeing someone that they know who passed from from Covid .
I know somebody — we ’ ve had … two of our members pass , we ’ ve had staff members who ’ ve been infected.
” More than 27,000 Black Americans have died .
And that means Black Americans “ have the kind of collective experience of grieving and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Jackson said .
It is not just the coronavirus that is taking Black lives .
This year , Black Americans have been killed by vigilantes and police officers , by guns and knees , on snow-covered pavement and in their own homes .
Black men have a 1-in-1,000 chance of being killed by police , a recent study found .
One in 920 Black Americans has been killed by Covid-19 .
It can feel as though if one does not get you , the other will .
“ I just don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I don ’ t see why we ’ re not getting helped.
” Spencer expressed similar frustration : “ How are we still fighting for the same things that my mom was fighting for ?
My mom is 90 .
How ?
How ?
I mean , how ?
!
” Many I spoke to expressed particular concern for racist violence from non-state actors .
“ The KKK , the white supremacists , the racist individuals , they have taken off their hoods , ” Spencer said .
“ They are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They are embracing it , actually .
They are embracing white supremacy.
” The president has had a strong hand in this .
In the words of my colleague Fabiola Cineas , “ Trump is the accelerant ” — he habitually quickens racist fires , from insisting that Obama was a Muslim with ill intent to telling the far-right hate group the Proud Boys to “ stand back ” and “ stand by ” on national television .
In his staffing choices , rhetoric , and policies , he has advanced the cause @ @ @ @ @ @ @ physical or spiritual white state .
Spencer said many Black voters she ’ s talked to believe the price of a second Trump term will be high .
She said they are “ extremely worried that if there ’ s four more years of this administration , we will be under 2.5 seconds away from chains and cotton fields.
” Even if such a dire reprisal of history isn ’ t in Black Americans ’ future , they will still be faced with the economic remnants of that past .
In good times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landscape , one bereft of benefits accessible to white Americans , like homeownership and being on the high end of a persistent wage gap .
Now is not a good time , nor will the foreseeable future be .
There is no simple solution to these monumental problems that are so ingrained in American life .
Trump may be the accelerant , but he is not the root cause .
“ We ’ ve got to delete Trump out of the picture , ” according to Blackwell .
“ It ’ s not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us.
” Crosby was always sure he was going to vote , but he also wanted to be sure he was casting his ballot for the candidate who would most benefit his community .
And he said , after watching the final debate , he ’ s no longer undecided .
With a pandemic , systemic racism , economic inequality , and the shadow of white nationalism haunting the US , he said , “ I don ’ t know who ’ s truly going to help me .
But it sounds like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to help people.
” That is enough for him , and enough for nearly everyone I spoke to .
They all just want to use their voting power to install leaders who will actually work for — and with — them to make life better .
“ We just have to get to the next level , ” Blackwell said .
“ So we can change , really , the system.
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Black voter turnout was down in 2016. This time looks to be different.
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This is the fourth in a series of stories looking at the people who could cast the most decisive votes in the 2020 election. You can read Ella Nilsen’s story on suburban women here, Dylan Scott’s story on Rust Belt workers here, and Nicole Narea’s story on young Latinx voters here.
D’Angelo Crosby says the demands placed on Black Americans this year are so heavy, they’re incapacitating — leaving him undecided in the election.
“I don’t think [former Vice President Joe] Biden is willing to help the American people. ... I just think that he’s been in the office a long time. And I don’t notice what he did for young Black men — or Black people in general,” said Crosby, a junior at Morehouse College who is attending classes remotely from his home in Illinois. “I could say this, that my father said that he made more than he had ever made with [President Donald] Trump [in office] than he did Obama.”
One of Crosby’s problems with Biden is that he fears the Democrat would take an overly restrictive approach to containing the coronavirus, including by encouraging the sorts of lockdowns that led to his mother losing her job.
“My mom during the pandemic got laid off. And that was a really heartbreaking experience for me. Because my mom had been working that job for over 30 years,” Crosby said. “Before the pandemic, everything was running smoothly. She was on the path to retire and everything.”
Crosby says the president wasn’t “well equipped” to handle the pandemic, and both his parents got sick with Covid-19 this year. “They were, fortunately, two that pulled out,” Crosby said. And they were, in fact, fortunate. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black people make up nearly 20 percent of US Covid-19 deaths, despite making up 13 percent of the population.
Crosby tuned in to the first presidential debate to help him settle on a candidate, but he found it disappointing. “It was like everything was a joke,” he said. The second debate helped Crosby decide on Biden, but he still has many reservations.
There are many factors motivating voters this year, from the pandemic to the ongoing struggle against systemic racism. The extraordinary force with which these factors have shaped Black American life is animating Black voters this year — pushing them to vote with far greater energy than they did in 2016.
Now Black voters have lived under a Trump administration, and many wonder if they can survive another; they have seen their friends, family, and neighbors taken by Covid-19, and watched Black people taken time and again by police; they’ve been inspired by the Black Lives Movement but remain deeply fearful about the future.
“I’m not excited. I’m scared,” Crosby told me. “I would definitely say that it feels like, either way that it goes, Black people — just, it doesn’t seem like we’re in a great position. It just really doesn’t.”
This year, there are high hopes for Black voters to turn out
Fewer Black Americans voted in 2016 than did in 2012.
And while some election watchers, like the New York Times’s Nate Cohn, have argued that a shift of white voters from Democrats to Republicans was the source of Trump’s victory in 2016, others, like Osita Nwanevu for Slate, have posited that lower Black turnout cost Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the election.
Black voter turnout decreased by 7 percentage points from 2012 to 2016. It was the first decline in Black voter turnout in 20 years, according to the Pew Research Center, and the steepest decline in participation by any ethnic group since white turnout fell by about 10 percentage points from 1992 to 1996.
It is possible the decline is due to Barack Obama not being on the ticket; the last election without him, held in 2004, had a Black voter participation rate of 60.3 percent, 0.7 percentage points higher than in 2016. Other hypotheses have been raised as well — like that Black voters soured on Clinton due to her association with criminal justice policies that negatively affected Black communities (and her use of racist language to defend them) or that the Black vote was suppressed by Russian actors and Republican policies.
Whether any, or all of these, or something else entirely was the root cause of the decline is difficult to say — and that’s something that’s still being researched today. But the 17 activists, party officials, and voters that I spoke to across the country said they think things might be different this time.
“After the election in 2016, you could literally just see all the organizations collaborating with all hands on deck,” Terri Minor Spencer, founder and president of West End P.O.W.E.R., said.
Spencer, who is based in Pittsburgh, said her organization began collaborating with the county jail, working to get voter registration forms to men and women who found themselves there. And ahead of November’s election, Spencer said the group has worked to ensure the imprisoned know their rights: “If you are not sentenced, you can vote. If you are sitting in there because you cannot make bond, you can vote. If you’re on pretrial, you can vote.”
Like Spencer, many other activists and organizers have been hard at work in their communities for four years — if not longer. And this year, all of their efforts have only been compounded by the ongoing protests over systemic racism and police violence.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged people to realize that we have to participate in the system and create some type of change,” Cooper Blackwell, an activist and entrepreneur in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, told me. It was a sentiment that was echoed by most I spoke to.
The importance of voting has been a fixture at many of the ongoing protests for racial justice — and there appears to have been an increase in voter registration, particularly among Democrats and independents, because of them. A message that has been stressed repeatedly at these protests nationwide is that police, mayors, and city budgets are not controlled at the federal level. And many I spoke to said that message has been fully absorbed.
“We are actually seeing a lot of people taking more interest in the local races, understanding that, obviously, the presidency is very important, but honestly, I don’t feel like it’s a key draw anymore,” Peggy West-Schroder, the statewide campaign coordinator for Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO), a civil rights group in Wisconsin that advocates for the currently and formerly incarcerated, told me.
Spencer described how focused those her organization works with have become on the power local magistrates hold over the quality of housing, and how this has inspired some to work towards becoming magistrates themselves. And Christopher Walton, the chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County, told me of the new energy Democratic voters have around stopping Wisconsin’s legislature from achieving a veto-proof majority in this year’s elections.
“The revolution takes place within our communities, on the ground,” Blackwell said. “The system changes as a result of that.”
The work of activists and the energy created by the Black Lives Matter movement has culminated in a moment where Black voters — particularly young ones, whose turnout was also depressed in 2016 — are feeling as if they have an obligation not just to vote but to ensure others do, too.
Darylette Parker, a 23-year-old from Illinois who said she regretted not voting in 2016, told me she and many of her friends have been motivating one another to vote — and that she was spurred to action by Michelle Obama, who has spent much of the past few months attempting to drive up turnout.
Here’s my full closing argument for Joe Biden. I hope you’ll share this, too. https://t.co/y3KzekerTU — Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) October 19, 2020
“Through her Instagram, [Obama] made a video and she said, ‘If you think things can’t get worse, you’re wrong,’” Parker said. “So that was kind of like a wake-up call. And that really motivated me to go make sure I was registered.”
Social media has been a powerful agent for convincing people in Malik Martin’s life as well. A sophomore at North Carolina A&T University, Martin said he’s felt a lot of pressure from his classmates online to vote — and that he’s seen what happens to those who say they won’t participate.
“I have seen some people on Twitter ... say that, ‘Well, I’m not gonna vote because this or this,’ and the way that the students responded to it — they were really upset,” Martin said. The students who said they didn’t want to vote were on the receiving end of a lot of harsh DMs and tweets, according to Martin, “just trying to get them to understand that they should vote.”
One other powerful force driving Black voters to fill out ballots this year is the same thing driving turnout among many suburban women, young Latinx voters, and Rust Belt workers: Trump.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged people to realize that we have to participate in the system and create some type of change.”
According to Walton, Trump’s actions, words, and record have many Black Americans “just enraged at him, especially amongst the older African American population, because they’ve seen this before. … People are like, we spent a lot of time fighting to make sure this was never going to happen again. And here it is happening. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stand by and allow it to happen again.”
Preliminary indications suggest efforts to energize and empower Black voters have been working.
In an analysis conducted in mid-October, the Associated Press found that about 10 percent of the more than 20 million early votes cast nationally (both in person and mail-in) were submitted by Black Americans, a number roughly in line with their share of the national electorate. Since then, the number of early voters has more than tripled, and in the states that provide voter data by race, Black voters have markedly improved on turnout compared to this time in 2016.
Black voters could swing races in key states — but must overcome voter suppression efforts first
Part of what gives Black voters their power is the Electoral College — a recent analysis by the Pew Research Center found that a little more than a third of Black eligible voters live in swing states, and that in many, they make up a sizable portion of the electorate.
In North Carolina, 22 percent of eligible voters are Black, far more than enough to decide a close race. And North Carolina, home to 15 electoral votes, is expected to be very close.
The state went to Trump by only 3.8 percentage points in 2016, and the Biden campaign hopes to run up his vote total in Democratic strongholds like Raleigh, but also in swing counties like Nash, which Trump won by 118 votes. So in the weeks before the election, top Biden surrogates, like Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), have been dispatched there to secure it for him.
But Trump has also worked hard in recent weeks to boost Republican turnout in the state. Reportedly, 70 percent of the paths to victory his campaign envisions run through North Carolina, making it a pivotal state for him. It’s one of the few swing states in which he has spent more than Biden, and he and his allies have traveled there repeatedly, even holding events in districts that went for him by a large margin in 2016.
Biden has a slight lead in most North Carolina polls, but Kevin Jones, the first vice chair of the Nash County Democratic Party, said he’s concerned about the level of enthusiasm among some of his fellow Democrats.
“It’s bad,” Jones said. “If Donald Trump needs 15 electoral votes to win the presidency, and it comes down to one vote in North Carolina, it won’t be my vote that gets him in there. But, you know, I don’t feel too good about it.”
And there’s one big reason for this, Jones thinks: “The BLM [Black Lives Matter] piece has supercharged, I think, Trump’s base. I think that the BLM, that’s been used as a tool and a firestarter, if you will, to really rally people.”
Nearly all of those I spoke with in North Carolina cited a similar concern about the effect anti-BLM sentiment will have on voting in the state. Many also said they were worried about a related issue: finding ways to empower voters in the face of attempted voter suppression.
D’atra Jackson — the national co-director of the BYP100 Action Fund, who is based in Durham, North Carolina — said there is a “very real threat of white supremacist, white nationalist violence in North Carolina. And those are things that have been threats, literally every election.”
Threats from white nationalists have led her organization, and its partners, to set up a program around polling sites to reassure Black voters and to provide for their safety. Blackwell, who hopes to overcome any concerns with positivity, is organizing virtual parties and DJs outside of polling places, and recounted how even in Rocky Mount — a city largely controlled by Black people — the risk of violence is inescapable. Citizens there faced have implicit and explicit threats, including the appearance of a noose in a park after a Confederate monument was recently removed.
Narratives like these are a reminder that it’s not necessarily a dislike of either candidate, or apathy, or a lack of Obama on the ballot that may have led to lower Black voter turnout in 2016, but concern for safety. There are barriers put up by state actors as well: Cooper complained that a longstanding polling place had been moved to an area more difficult to access — and nationally, nearly 21,000 polling places have been shuttered this year, according to Vice News. Activists in swing states said this had been an acute problem for them this year.
“There was only four polling places open in a whole city, and it was just — it was bad,” West-Schroder said of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s most recent elections. “And we do feel like some of that was done to disenfranchise Black voters.”
The number of polling places has been expanded for the general election, but she said EXPO faces a new challenge in the amount of “miscommunication, misinformation that’s being spread. And I think that that is a deliberate attempt to stifle the Black vote.”
“So what we like to teach our members,” West-Schroder said, “is that if your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to take it away from you.”
Not all Black voters are thrilled about Biden and Harris — particularly because of their backgrounds
Most Black voters seem poised to vote for Biden, based on recent polls; Morning Consult’s tracking poll for the week on October 25, for instance, found 86 percent of Black likely voters favored Biden, and 9 percent favored Trump.
But Jones says he’s still nervous about the results of the election because “the enthusiasm is not there.” This too is reflected in polling; for example, an Economist/YouGov poll taken in mid-October found Black voters to be split when it comes to their enthusiasm about Biden — 48 percent said they were enthusiastic about the nominee; 49 percent said they were not.
Part of that gap might stem from a longing for another candidate like Obama.
“I don’t care how good you are at basketball, if you go play for the Chicago Bulls you’re gonna be measured up against Michael Jordan,” Jones said. “I think for the rest of my lifetime, we will measure up every Democratic presidential candidate against Barack Obama .... and Joe Biden, you know, can’t be Jordan.”
Perhaps a more widespread issue, however, is the slightly more distant past: Many told me voters often bring up a 1994 crime bill as a reason they can’t get behind Biden.
That bill, called the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, was written in part by Biden, and he played a key role in getting it passed into law during his time in the Senate, two things he bragged about as recently as 2016.
Essentially, the law was meant to stem a decades-long rise in crime and signal to voters that Democrats were tougher on crime than Republicans. As Vox’s German Lopez has explained, it was not very successful at doing either, but it did do a lot of other things:
The law imposed tougher prison sentences at the federal level and encouraged states to do the same. It provided funds for states to build more prisons, aimed to fund 100,000 more cops, and backed grant programs that encouraged police officers to carry out more drug-related arrests — an escalation of the war on drugs. At the same time, the law included several measures that would be far less controversial among Democrats today. The Violence Against Women Act provided more resources to crack down on domestic violence and rape. A provision helped fund background checks for guns. The law encouraged states to back drug courts, which attempt to divert drug offenders from prison into treatment, and also helped fund some addiction treatment.
Particularly during the past 10 years, advocacy groups, think tanks, and scholars have argued that the 1994 crime bill helped encourage racially biased mass incarceration and, along with the crime laws of the 1980s, exacerbated systemic inequality. The general consensus now, as Princeton African American studies professor Naomi Murakawa put it to the Marshall Project in 2015, is “that 1994 act is overwhelmingly, incredibly punitive.”
Throughout the Democratic primary campaign, Biden’s then-rivals brought up this record; Sen. Cory Booker called the crime bill “shameful,” while Biden’s current running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, accused him of contributing to mass incarceration. The attacks stuck — and were quickly adopted by Trump, who has continued to use them against Biden in the general election.
But Curmilus Dancy II, a political blogger in North Carolina, argued that the criticism makes little sense: “You want Black folk to be mad because you say they were hard on them, but I see it as them doing a job, and what some Black folk wanted, at that particular time.”
To Dancy’s point, the crime bill was popular at the time. As the Brookings Institution’s Rashawn Ray and William A. Galston have explained, in 1994, “58% of African Americans supported the crime bill, compared to 49% of white Americans.”
After several different responses to these attacks (some less convincing than others), Biden has simplified his message.
“It was a mistake,” he said when asked about the crime bill at the second presidential debate. “I’ve been trying to change it since then, particularly the portion on cocaine.”
It’s an answer that impressed Crosby, and Biden’s new stance on the bill has impressed others as well; that he’s willing to say when he is wrong and knows when “it’s time to step up” is something Spencer said she liked about him.
While Biden was ultimately able to satisfy Crosby’s concerns about his record on criminal justice, Harris has been able to do no such thing.
“She prosecuted so many Black men, and it’s just like, do you, also feel the struggle of Black people? Or are you at a place right now where it’s just you and your family, and you don’t care about oppression anymore?” Crosby asked. “That’s so sad to me, to see that you cannot be empathetic and sympathetic to Black people, your own race.”
He went on to explain that he cannot understand why Harris accrued the record she did as San Francisco’s district attorney, and later as California’s attorney general.
Harris had a somewhat contradictory record in those two roles, as Vox’s Lopez explained: She implemented some progressive reforms, but there are also prosecutorial choices she made that critics say were particularly harmful to people of color.
This record means that when she was announced as Biden’s vice presidential pick, “We weren’t as excited maybe as some other people were, just because her track record hasn’t hasn’t been that great in regards to criminal justice, reform, and second chances,” West-Schroder of EXPO said, noting the group is nonpartisan.
Harris has since stressed that she has left behind the “smart on crime” stances she took while in California in order to advocate for progressive criminal justice reform in the Senate — including by introducing bail reform, anti-lynching, and marijuana decriminalization bills. And like Biden, she clarified where she stands now during a recent debate, saying, “We need reform of policing in America, and our criminal justice system.”
This new stance won over some of the voters I spoke with; but others were excited more by what she represents — potentially, the first Black and first Asian American woman to be vice president.
“A lot of people were already like, ‘Eh, yeah, I’ll vote for him, I’ll do what I got to do.’ And then when she was put on the ticket, it was, ‘I’m voting!’” said Walton, the Milwaukee party chair.
“The fact that she would be the first woman vice president is lit,” Blackwell said, noting that he also thought she would be helpful in balancing a potential President Biden: “It’s hard to trust any old white man with a lot of power, to be honest.”
“There’s a contradiction that folks are holding,” Jackson said, noting “there’s a particular political terrain that we need to be on” to achieve aims like defunding the police. But many are willing to embrace that contradiction and come out for Biden and Harris regardless of their pasts, because, as Jackson said, “this is such a high-stakes election.”
There is a lot at stake for Black Americans
The stakes feel — and are — existential for Black Americans.
For many, the Covid-19 death toll isn’t just numbers of a graph; they have been personally swept up by the first, second, and third waves.
Branden Snyder, the executive director of Detroit Action, told me, “In Detroit, you know, it’s six degrees of separation, everyone is seeing someone that they know who passed from from Covid. I know somebody — we’ve had … two of our members pass, we’ve had staff members who’ve been infected.”
More than 27,000 Black Americans have died. And that means Black Americans “have the kind of collective experience of grieving and mourning people that should be here,” Jackson said.
It is not just the coronavirus that is taking Black lives. This year, Black Americans have been killed by vigilantes and police officers, by guns and knees, on snow-covered pavement and in their own homes. Black men have a 1-in-1,000 chance of being killed by police, a recent study found. One in 920 Black Americans has been killed by Covid-19. It can feel as though if one does not get you, the other will.
“I just don’t understand it,” Crosby said. “I don’t see why we’re not getting helped.”
Spencer expressed similar frustration: “How are we still fighting for the same things that my mom was fighting for? My mom is 90. How? How? I mean, how?!”
Many I spoke to expressed particular concern for racist violence from non-state actors. “The KKK, the white supremacists, the racist individuals, they have taken off their hoods,” Spencer said. “They are no longer hiding who they are. They are embracing it, actually. They are embracing white supremacy.”
The president has had a strong hand in this. In the words of my colleague Fabiola Cineas, “Trump is the accelerant” — he habitually quickens racist fires, from insisting that Obama was a Muslim with ill intent to telling the far-right hate group the Proud Boys to “stand back” and “stand by” on national television. In his staffing choices, rhetoric, and policies, he has advanced the cause of white nationalists, who desire a physical or spiritual white state.
Spencer said many Black voters she’s talked to believe the price of a second Trump term will be high. She said they are “extremely worried that if there’s four more years of this administration, we will be under 2.5 seconds away from chains and cotton fields.”
Even if such a dire reprisal of history isn’t in Black Americans’ future, they will still be faced with the economic remnants of that past. In good times, Black Americans faced a desolate economic landscape, one bereft of benefits accessible to white Americans, like homeownership and being on the high end of a persistent wage gap. Now is not a good time, nor will the foreseeable future be.
There is no simple solution to these monumental problems that are so ingrained in American life. Trump may be the accelerant, but he is not the root cause.
“We’ve got to delete Trump out of the picture,” according to Blackwell. “It’s not about him. It’s about us.”
Crosby was always sure he was going to vote, but he also wanted to be sure he was casting his ballot for the candidate who would most benefit his community. And he said, after watching the final debate, he’s no longer undecided.
With a pandemic, systemic racism, economic inequality, and the shadow of white nationalism haunting the US, he said, “I don’t know who’s truly going to help me. But it sounds like Biden is more on the side of trying to help people.”
That is enough for him, and enough for nearly everyone I spoke to. They all just want to use their voting power to install leaders who will actually work for — and with — them to make life better.
“We just have to get to the next level,” Blackwell said. “So we can change, really, the system.”


vox--2020-10-30--One Good Thing: A nonfiction portrait of witchcraft that becomes a spiritual quest

One Good Thing is Vox ’ s recommendations series .
In each edition , we ’ ll tell you about something from the world of culture that we think you should check out .
This week , in honor of Halloween , we ’ re summoning five recommendations involving witches .
When I first started reading Alex Mar ’ s 2015 nonfiction book Witches of America , I couldn ’ t help but think of author Frank Peretti .
As an evangelical kid in the 1980s and ‘ 90s , I devoured Peretti ’ s novels , which I found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Christian horror mixed with comic-book-style battles , although there weren ’ t any pictures involved .
Bestsellers that some churches evidently began to regard as manuals for “ spiritual warfare , ” with titles like This Present Darkness and Prophet , they were dense with angels and demons summoned by small-town folks .
Their plots were full of good , decent church people who prayed , and angels came ; bad church people , who didn ’ t really believe and had demons invisibly skulking around them ; and “ ordinary ” people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , professors at the local college — who summoned demons on purpose , engaging in seances , rituals , and , if I remember correctly , even blood sacrifices in order to please the Prince of Darkness and his minions .
It was the era of the Satanic Panic , after all .
On the surface , Peretti has very little to do with Witches of America , but when I first read Mar ’ s elegant , earnest memoir-history-journalism hybrid , I thought about his work anyhow .
Peretti ’ s novels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be honest , entire ) introduction to the world of paganism and witchcraft .
I hadn ’ t earnestly thought about those topics at all as an adult .
And so the stereotype of the modern witch — who , in Peretti ’ s stories , was usually a devious , scheming , evil-intentioned woman who lured men into her snares so they would do her bidding — loomed somewhere in the back of my mind .
When I picked up Mar ’ s book , it was out of a longstanding interest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ belief systems that are outside the mainstream and like it that way .
( Also , I had just started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer . )
And I found so much more than I expected .
Witches of America is deeply researched , giving a long history of witches and witchcraft and , more specifically , the European roots of Wicca , which Mar positions as the parent of one big strain in the modern witchcraft movement .
She weaves history into the narrative carefully , like a dark-red thread through a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ haven ’ t learned everything about modern witches — that would be impossible to cover in a single volume — but you ’ ve learned quite a bit .
But the history may be the least interesting part of the book .
Another rich stripe comes in the form of intimate reportage , as Mar engages with several pagan communities and follows key figures to create a portrait of the people who practice these religions .
The most memorable is Morpheus , a priestess devoted to the ancient Celtic goddess known as “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she was making American Mystic , Mar ’ s 2010 documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival .
The movie is interesting in its own right , a modest and intimate look at Americans in three religious communities that exist on the fringes of American society : a Lakota Sioux sundancer , a Spiritualist medium , and Morpheus .
But it turns out that making the film only scratched the surface of Mar ’ s interest in witchcraft , and Witches of America became her next project .
Mar follows Morpheus for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seasons as she engages in her community ’ s rituals and goes to conventions .
One of the book ’ s most memorable scenes is set at the 2012 PantheaCon , a gathering for American Pagans at a DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose , California , where Morpheus channels the Morrigan and , later , Mar participates in an exorcism — though it ’ s nothing like what you might know from The Exorcist .
She eventually moves on to other practitioners and communities , but what makes Witches of America unforgettable isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with witchcraft practitioners — it ’ s also what she experiences herself .
After the book was published , Mar came under fire from some in the pagan community for being , in essence , a religious tourist , and for failing to fully represent the people she wrote about .
All of which is a common risk for any book of nonfiction .
But it ’ s hard to read Witches of America and not understand it as a work of someone who longs to be part of what she sees but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book , Mar describes herself as a skeptical New Yorker , attuned to second-guessing every experience she has .
Even when she begins studying witchcraft seriously with a woman Morpheus recommends , she feels a little on the outside , unsure of whether she will ever belong to the community , or if she wants to .
She ends the book in much the same place : a skeptic , having observed all of the religious experiences and wishing she could be part of them .
Near the end , she ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of a ritual designed to foster wisdom and revelation in the participant .
“ Here in the dark confines of the swamp , I ’ ve lost perspective , ” she writes .
“ How can I tell the difference between a transcendent experience and the desire for transcendence ?
Between magic and the hope of magic ?
” A few pages later , she starts to have a true self-realization that helps put the rest of the book into perspective : In the days and weeks that follow the ceremony in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no longer drunk on it , I will realize that I am just as much a priest as Josh is , or Karina or Morpheus , and I have just as much ritual in my life , because I have built that ritual , built it around the thing I live for — which is this , the collecting and scrubbing and remixing and chiseling out of other people ’ s stories .
And this collecting and connecting with others , sometimes as a kind of trick , as a way of getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of myself and mixes Me up with Them , and we all become part of a new beast in the writing of it .
This is what I found so moving about Witches of America .
Aside from history or ethnology or a piece of longform journalism about a hidden world , it ’ s a vulnerable story about one woman who ’ s looking for community and meaning .
And not just one woman , really .
Unlike the wild-eyed portraits painted by Peretti ’ s novels and by Hollywood and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Witches of America delivers an empathetic , thoughtful profile — clearly written with love — of a whole community of people seeking to touch something together , to be in touch with their humanity and the world around them in a way that most people miss .
They are interested in power , in summoning something larger than them , but the scheming deviousness of Peretti ’ s novels is gone .
And of course it is — they ’ re people , not cartoons .
Witches of America does what good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ takes people at their word and sees their beliefs as both integral to who they are and not determinative of their entire individuality .
I found the book fascinating , but even more so , I found that it challenged my preconceptions in a whole new way — and maybe a slightly witchy one , too .
What we think we know about the world may be just a slice of the whole picture .
Witches of America was published in 2015 by Sarah Crichton Books .
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When I first started reading Alex Mar’s 2015 nonfiction book Witches of America, I couldn’t help but think of author Frank Peretti.
As an evangelical kid in the 1980s and ‘90s, I devoured Peretti’s novels, which I found in the church library. They were Christian horror mixed with comic-book-style battles, although there weren’t any pictures involved.
Bestsellers that some churches evidently began to regard as manuals for “spiritual warfare,” with titles like This Present Darkness and Prophet, they were dense with angels and demons summoned by small-town folks. Their plots were full of good, decent church people who prayed, and angels came; bad church people, who didn’t really believe and had demons invisibly skulking around them; and “ordinary” people — newscasters, elementary-school teachers, councilmen, professors at the local college — who summoned demons on purpose, engaging in seances, rituals, and, if I remember correctly, even blood sacrifices in order to please the Prince of Darkness and his minions.
It was the era of the Satanic Panic, after all.
On the surface, Peretti has very little to do with Witches of America, but when I first read Mar’s elegant, earnest memoir-history-journalism hybrid, I thought about his work anyhow. Peretti’s novels were my first (and, to be honest, entire) introduction to the world of paganism and witchcraft. I hadn’t earnestly thought about those topics at all as an adult. And so the stereotype of the modern witch — who, in Peretti’s stories, was usually a devious, scheming, evil-intentioned woman who lured men into her snares so they would do her bidding — loomed somewhere in the back of my mind.
When I picked up Mar’s book, it was out of a longstanding interest in religion writing, the exploration of belief systems that are outside the mainstream and like it that way. (Also, I had just started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
And I found so much more than I expected. Witches of America is deeply researched, giving a long history of witches and witchcraft and, more specifically, the European roots of Wicca, which Mar positions as the parent of one big strain in the modern witchcraft movement. She weaves history into the narrative carefully, like a dark-red thread through a tapestry. By the end, you haven’t learned everything about modern witches — that would be impossible to cover in a single volume — but you’ve learned quite a bit.
But the history may be the least interesting part of the book. Another rich stripe comes in the form of intimate reportage, as Mar engages with several pagan communities and follows key figures to create a portrait of the people who practice these religions. The most memorable is Morpheus, a priestess devoted to the ancient Celtic goddess known as “the Morrigan.” Mar met Morpheus when she was making American Mystic, Mar’s 2010 documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The movie is interesting in its own right, a modest and intimate look at Americans in three religious communities that exist on the fringes of American society: a Lakota Sioux sundancer, a Spiritualist medium, and Morpheus.
But it turns out that making the film only scratched the surface of Mar’s interest in witchcraft, and Witches of America became her next project. Mar follows Morpheus for several years, visiting her over the seasons as she engages in her community’s rituals and goes to conventions. One of the book’s most memorable scenes is set at the 2012 PantheaCon, a gathering for American Pagans at a DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose, California, where Morpheus channels the Morrigan and, later, Mar participates in an exorcism — though it’s nothing like what you might know from The Exorcist.
She eventually moves on to other practitioners and communities, but what makes Witches of America unforgettable isn’t only the encounters Mar has with witchcraft practitioners — it’s also what she experiences herself.
After the book was published, Mar came under fire from some in the pagan community for being, in essence, a religious tourist, and for failing to fully represent the people she wrote about. All of which is a common risk for any book of nonfiction.
But it’s hard to read Witches of America and not understand it as a work of someone who longs to be part of what she sees but has trouble getting there. Throughout the book, Mar describes herself as a skeptical New Yorker, attuned to second-guessing every experience she has. Even when she begins studying witchcraft seriously with a woman Morpheus recommends, she feels a little on the outside, unsure of whether she will ever belong to the community, or if she wants to. She ends the book in much the same place: a skeptic, having observed all of the religious experiences and wishing she could be part of them.
Near the end, she’s spending the night in a swamp as part of a ritual designed to foster wisdom and revelation in the participant. “Here in the dark confines of the swamp, I’ve lost perspective,” she writes. “How can I tell the difference between a transcendent experience and the desire for transcendence? Between magic and the hope of magic?”
A few pages later, she starts to have a true self-realization that helps put the rest of the book into perspective:
In the days and weeks that follow the ceremony in the swamp, after I’m no longer drunk on it, I will realize that I am just as much a priest as Josh is, or Karina or Morpheus, and I have just as much ritual in my life, because I have built that ritual, built it around the thing I live for — which is this, the collecting and scrubbing and remixing and chiseling out of other people’s stories. And this collecting and connecting with others, sometimes as a kind of trick, as a way of getting what I need, necessarily draws me out of myself and mixes Me up with Them, and we all become part of a new beast in the writing of it.
This is what I found so moving about Witches of America. Aside from history or ethnology or a piece of longform journalism about a hidden world, it’s a vulnerable story about one woman who’s looking for community and meaning.
And not just one woman, really. Unlike the wild-eyed portraits painted by Peretti’s novels and by Hollywood and by the remnants of the Satanic Panic, Witches of America delivers an empathetic, thoughtful profile — clearly written with love — of a whole community of people seeking to touch something together, to be in touch with their humanity and the world around them in a way that most people miss. They are interested in power, in summoning something larger than them, but the scheming deviousness of Peretti’s novels is gone. And of course it is — they’re people, not cartoons.
Witches of America does what good religious journalism has always done: It takes people at their word and sees their beliefs as both integral to who they are and not determinative of their entire individuality. I found the book fascinating, but even more so, I found that it challenged my preconceptions in a whole new way — and maybe a slightly witchy one, too. What we think we know about the world may be just a slice of the whole picture.
Witches of America was published in 2015 by Sarah Crichton Books. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.


vox--2020-10-30--One of Barrett’s first cases asks if religion is a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people

Just one day after the election , the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could hand religious conservatives total victory in a longstanding battle over whether the Constitution protects the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people on religious grounds .
On Wednesday , the justices will hear a case brought by a government contractor that claims a constitutional right to discriminate — and to still receive a government contract while it refuses to provide government services to same-sex couples .
Fulton v. City of Philadelphia was likely to end in victory for the religious right even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confirmation gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court .
With Barrett now on the Court , Fulton is overwhelmingly likely to end in a major defeat for LGBTQ equality .
And the case also has implications that stretch far beyond anti-discrimination law .
The Fulton plaintiffs attack two well-established constitutional doctrines .
The first provides that laws that apply equally to religious and secular parties , without singling out people of faith for inferior treatment , are generally constitutional .
The second provides that the government has wide-ranging authority to regulate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demands on such contractors that it might not be able to place on private businesses .
Both of these doctrines could fall now that a 6-3 conservative Court has taken up Fulton .
The government could lose much of its ability to control how its own services are provided One of the plaintiffs in Fulton is Catholic Social Services ( CSS ) .
Until recently , CSS was one of 30 different organizations that contracted with the city of Philadelphia to identify potential foster parents and to help the city place foster children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however , a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer discovered that CSS discriminates against same-sex couples , in violation of its contract with the city forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation .
After an investigation , the city determined that CSS was , indeed , engaged in discrimination , and it did not renew its foster placement contract with CSS .
( The city says in its brief that it wishes to renew its contract with CSS , which has otherwise “ performed its contractual duties with distinction , ” but will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be bound by the non-discrimination requirement . )
CSS ’ s primary argument is that the Constitution ’ s safeguards protecting “ free exercise ” of religion entitles it to continue to contract with the city , even if it refuses to comply with one of the terms of that contract because it objects to that term on religious grounds .
For this reason , Fulton is a significant escalation in the legal war over whether and when people of faith may violate laws that they object to for religious reasons .
Other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law , such as Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ( 2018 ) , involved private businesses that claimed a right to defy certain laws regulating their business .
Fulton , by contrast , involves an organization that contracts with the government to provide governmental services to the public .
Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop , in other words , ask whether the government can regulate how private business owners conduct their own affairs .
Fulton asks whether a private religious organization can dictate how the government conducts its business .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distinction as significant .
“ There is a crucial difference , with respect to constitutional analysis , ” the Court explained in Engquist v. Oregon Dept .
of Agriculture ( 2008 ) , “ between the government exercising ‘ the power to regulate or license , as lawmaker , ’ and the government acting ‘ as proprietor , to manage [ its ] internal operation.
’ ” But it ’ s far from clear that the current Court will consider the distinction between purely private actors and government contractors to be dispositive — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely to support an unprecedented expansion of religious objectors ’ rights to defy the law The rights of religious objectors have ebbed and flowed at various points since Sherbert v. Verner ( 1963 ) , a seminal decision holding that the Constitution limits the government ’ s ability to enforce laws that impose a “ substantial infringement ” on someone ’ s religious beliefs .
Understanding how the Court ’ s approach to religious liberty has changed over time is important to understanding the Fulton case — and to understanding why the Fulton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with nearly all of the Court ’ s previous precedents interpreting the Constitution ’ s free exercise protections .
A big reason why the Supreme Court ’ s religious liberty cases can be confusing is that the Court made an unfortunate choice of words in Sherbert .
Sherbert held that the government typically can not enforce a particular law against someone who objects to that law on religious grounds unless the government ’ s reasons for doing so are supported by a compelling state interest .
These three words , compelling state interest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ student who has completed their first semester of constitutional law .
When the Court uses the words “ compelling interest , ” it typically signals that the Constitution applies the highest possible safeguards against a particular kind of government action .
Laws that discriminate on the basis of race , for example , must overcome a “ compelling interest ” test .
Most laws that are subjected to such a test — lawyers refer to this rigorous level of constitutional analysis as “ strict scrutiny ” — are struck down .
Yet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Sherbert , the judiciary applied something much less rigorous than strict scrutiny in cases involving religious objectors .
A 1992 study by James E. Ryan , now the president of the University of Virginia , found that federal courts of appeals heard 97 free exercise cases applying the “ compelling interest ” test between 1980 and 1990 , and those courts rejected 85 of these cases .
A similar study by UCLA law professor Adam Winkler , which looked at cases between 1990 and 2003 , found that federal courts upheld 59 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during that period .
By contrast , Winkler found that federal courts applying the compelling interest test upheld only 22 percent of free speech restrictions and 27 percent of laws that engaged in discrimination on disfavored grounds such as race .
So , while the courts often used the rhetoric of strict scrutiny when confronted with religious objectors , they weren ’ t actually engaged in strict scrutiny .
Claims by religious objectors typically failed during the periods studied by Ryan and Winkler .
Indeed , while Sherbert technically remained good law for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court ’ s decisions often emphasized that courts should be reluctant to grant exemptions to business regulations or other laws that applied evenly to secular business and to people of faith .
As the Court held in United States v. Lee ( 1982 ) , “ when followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice , the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Court seemed to abandon Sherbert altogether — and it did so in a majority opinion written by one of the conservative movement ’ s heroes .
“ To make an individual ’ s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law ’ s coincidence with his religious beliefs , except where the State ’ s interest is ‘ compelling , ’ ” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the Court in Employment Division v. Smith ( 1990 ) , is “ permitting him , by virtue of his beliefs , ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Such an outcome , according to Scalia , “ contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.
” Religious objectors must follow “ neutral law [ s ] of general applicability , ” Scalia wrote in Smith .
So long as a law applied equally to religious and secular actors , religious objectors had to follow it .
Smith announced a new rule — a rule that the Fulton plaintiffs explicitly ask the Supreme Court to abandon now .
Smith triggered an immediate backlash from people across the political spectrum who believed that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ liberties .
Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 ( RFRA ) by an overwhelming margin , which sought to “ restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert ” and one other related case .
Significantly , RFRA only applies to the federal government .
States may still enforce their own laws against religious objectors so long as the state obeys the neutrality rules laid out in Smith .
One more legal development is worth noting here .
As Ryan ’ s and Winkler ’ s research demonstrates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set forth in Sherbert ” is far less strict than the rigid strict scrutiny test that the Court applies to laws that discriminate on the basis of race .
Nevertheless , in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ( 2014 ) , the Supreme Court reinterpreted RFRA to apply full-bore strict scrutiny when a religious objector claims an exemption to a federal law .
To summarize this somewhat convoluted history : Current law provides that religious objectors to federal laws will frequently prevail .
But religious objectors to state law will typically lose their case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state imposes restrictions on religious actors that it does not impose on secular actors .
And that brings us back to Fulton .
The Fulton plaintiffs offer several reasons why they think that Smith should not apply to their particular case , but they also make a big ask : The Court should “ revisit Smith and apply strict scrutiny to government actions infringing on religious exercise.
” The plaintiffs in Fulton , in other words , seek broad , unprecedented legal immunity from federal and state law .
And they claim that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself .
Not that long ago , the Supreme Court indicated that cases like Fulton were frivolous The idea that religious objectors should be free to violate anti-discrimination laws is not new .
But the Supreme Court used to treat this idea very dismissively .
Maurice Bessinger owned a South Carolina chain of restaurants known as Piggie Park that sold barbecue served with the mustard-based sauce peculiar to that state .
He was also a virulent racist , who distributed literature to his customers claiming that African slaves “ blessed the Lord for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to America.
” When Congress banned whites-only restaurants in 1964 , Bessinger claimed that this ban “ contravenes the will of God , ” and that the Piggie Park restaurants should be allowed to ignore this new law .
But the Supreme Court rejected Bessinger ’ s religious liberty argument in the most dismissive way possible .
In its unanimous decision in Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises ( 1968 ) , the Court concluded that “ this is not even a borderline case , ” and that Bessinger ’ s claim that his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patently frivolous.
” At least some members of the Court ’ s right flank appear to concede that religious objectors can not engage in at least some forms of race discrimination .
As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in Hobby Lobby , “ the Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race , and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.
” But Fulton is likely to establish that religious objectors do have a constitutional right to discriminate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could potentially permit other forms of discrimination — such as if someone who claims that their religion requires them to discriminate against women seeks an exemption from anti-discrimination law .
Unless Congress adds new seats to the Supreme Court , the Court ’ s new majority is likely to give religious conservatives unprecedented new rights — and to do so at the expense of many victims of discrimination .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little as $ 3 .

Just one day after the election, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could hand religious conservatives total victory in a longstanding battle over whether the Constitution protects the right to discriminate against LGBTQ people on religious grounds.
On Wednesday, the justices will hear a case brought by a government contractor that claims a constitutional right to discriminate — and to still receive a government contract while it refuses to provide government services to same-sex couples.
Fulton v. City of Philadelphia was likely to end in victory for the religious right even before Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. With Barrett now on the Court, Fulton is overwhelmingly likely to end in a major defeat for LGBTQ equality.
And the case also has implications that stretch far beyond anti-discrimination law. The Fulton plaintiffs attack two well-established constitutional doctrines. The first provides that laws that apply equally to religious and secular parties, without singling out people of faith for inferior treatment, are generally constitutional. The second provides that the government has wide-ranging authority to regulate its own contractors, and may place demands on such contractors that it might not be able to place on private businesses.
Both of these doctrines could fall now that a 6-3 conservative Court has taken up Fulton.
The government could lose much of its ability to control how its own services are provided
One of the plaintiffs in Fulton is Catholic Social Services (CSS). Until recently, CSS was one of 30 different organizations that contracted with the city of Philadelphia to identify potential foster parents and to help the city place foster children in suitable homes. In 2018, however, a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer discovered that CSS discriminates against same-sex couples, in violation of its contract with the city forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
After an investigation, the city determined that CSS was, indeed, engaged in discrimination, and it did not renew its foster placement contract with CSS. (The city says in its brief that it wishes to renew its contract with CSS, which has otherwise “performed its contractual duties with distinction,” but will only do so if CSS agrees to be bound by the non-discrimination requirement.)
CSS’s primary argument is that the Constitution’s safeguards protecting “free exercise” of religion entitles it to continue to contract with the city, even if it refuses to comply with one of the terms of that contract because it objects to that term on religious grounds.
For this reason, Fulton is a significant escalation in the legal war over whether and when people of faith may violate laws that they object to for religious reasons.
Other recent cases seeking religious exemptions from the law, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), involved private businesses that claimed a right to defy certain laws regulating their business. Fulton, by contrast, involves an organization that contracts with the government to provide governmental services to the public.
Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop, in other words, ask whether the government can regulate how private business owners conduct their own affairs. Fulton asks whether a private religious organization can dictate how the government conducts its business.
In the past, the Supreme Court treated this distinction as significant. “There is a crucial difference, with respect to constitutional analysis,” the Court explained in Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture (2008), “between the government exercising ‘the power to regulate or license, as lawmaker,’ and the government acting ‘as proprietor, to manage [its] internal operation.’”
But it’s far from clear that the current Court will consider the distinction between purely private actors and government contractors to be dispositive — or even relevant.
The Court is likely to support an unprecedented expansion of religious objectors’ rights to defy the law
The rights of religious objectors have ebbed and flowed at various points since Sherbert v. Verner (1963), a seminal decision holding that the Constitution limits the government’s ability to enforce laws that impose a “substantial infringement” on someone’s religious beliefs. Understanding how the Court’s approach to religious liberty has changed over time is important to understanding the Fulton case — and to understanding why the Fulton plaintiffs’ position is a radical break with nearly all of the Court’s previous precedents interpreting the Constitution’s free exercise protections.
A big reason why the Supreme Court’s religious liberty cases can be confusing is that the Court made an unfortunate choice of words in Sherbert. Sherbert held that the government typically cannot enforce a particular law against someone who objects to that law on religious grounds unless the government’s reasons for doing so are supported by a compelling state interest.
These three words, compelling state interest, will leap out to any law student who has completed their first semester of constitutional law. When the Court uses the words “compelling interest,” it typically signals that the Constitution applies the highest possible safeguards against a particular kind of government action. Laws that discriminate on the basis of race, for example, must overcome a “compelling interest” test.
Most laws that are subjected to such a test — lawyers refer to this rigorous level of constitutional analysis as “strict scrutiny” — are struck down.
Yet, while the Court used three loaded words in Sherbert, the judiciary applied something much less rigorous than strict scrutiny in cases involving religious objectors. A 1992 study by James E. Ryan, now the president of the University of Virginia, found that federal courts of appeals heard 97 free exercise cases applying the “compelling interest” test between 1980 and 1990, and those courts rejected 85 of these cases.
A similar study by UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, which looked at cases between 1990 and 2003, found that federal courts upheld 59 percent of “religious liberty burdens” during that period. By contrast, Winkler found that federal courts applying the compelling interest test upheld only 22 percent of free speech restrictions and 27 percent of laws that engaged in discrimination on disfavored grounds such as race.
So, while the courts often used the rhetoric of strict scrutiny when confronted with religious objectors, they weren’t actually engaged in strict scrutiny. Claims by religious objectors typically failed during the periods studied by Ryan and Winkler.
Indeed, while Sherbert technically remained good law for much of this time, the Supreme Court’s decisions often emphasized that courts should be reluctant to grant exemptions to business regulations or other laws that applied evenly to secular business and to people of faith. As the Court held in United States v. Lee (1982), “when followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.”
Eight years after Lee, the Court seemed to abandon Sherbert altogether — and it did so in a majority opinion written by one of the conservative movement’s heroes. “To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s interest is ‘compelling,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the Court in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), is “permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, ‘to become a law unto himself.’” Such an outcome, according to Scalia, “contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.”
Religious objectors must follow “neutral law[s] of general applicability,” Scalia wrote in Smith. So long as a law applied equally to religious and secular actors, religious objectors had to follow it. Smith announced a new rule — a rule that the Fulton plaintiffs explicitly ask the Supreme Court to abandon now.
Smith triggered an immediate backlash from people across the political spectrum who believed that it did too much to limit religious liberties. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) by an overwhelming margin, which sought to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert” and one other related case.
Significantly, RFRA only applies to the federal government. States may still enforce their own laws against religious objectors so long as the state obeys the neutrality rules laid out in Smith.
One more legal development is worth noting here. As Ryan’s and Winkler’s research demonstrates, “the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert” is far less strict than the rigid strict scrutiny test that the Court applies to laws that discriminate on the basis of race. Nevertheless, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), the Supreme Court reinterpreted RFRA to apply full-bore strict scrutiny when a religious objector claims an exemption to a federal law.
To summarize this somewhat convoluted history: Current law provides that religious objectors to federal laws will frequently prevail. But religious objectors to state law will typically lose their case unless the objector can show that the state imposes restrictions on religious actors that it does not impose on secular actors.
And that brings us back to Fulton. The Fulton plaintiffs offer several reasons why they think that Smith should not apply to their particular case, but they also make a big ask: The Court should “revisit Smith and apply strict scrutiny to government actions infringing on religious exercise.”
The plaintiffs in Fulton, in other words, seek broad, unprecedented legal immunity from federal and state law. And they claim that this immunity is written into the Constitution itself.
Not that long ago, the Supreme Court indicated that cases like Fulton were frivolous
The idea that religious objectors should be free to violate anti-discrimination laws is not new. But the Supreme Court used to treat this idea very dismissively.
Maurice Bessinger owned a South Carolina chain of restaurants known as Piggie Park that sold barbecue served with the mustard-based sauce peculiar to that state. He was also a virulent racist, who distributed literature to his customers claiming that African slaves “blessed the Lord for allowing them to be enslaved and sent to America.” When Congress banned whites-only restaurants in 1964, Bessinger claimed that this ban “contravenes the will of God,” and that the Piggie Park restaurants should be allowed to ignore this new law.
But the Supreme Court rejected Bessinger’s religious liberty argument in the most dismissive way possible. In its unanimous decision in Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises (1968), the Court concluded that “this is not even a borderline case,” and that Bessinger’s claim that his religion empowers him to discriminate is “patently frivolous.”
At least some members of the Court’s right flank appear to concede that religious objectors cannot engage in at least some forms of race discrimination. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in Hobby Lobby, “the Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.”
But Fulton is likely to establish that religious objectors do have a constitutional right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. And future cases could potentially permit other forms of discrimination — such as if someone who claims that their religion requires them to discriminate against women seeks an exemption from anti-discrimination law.
Unless Congress adds new seats to the Supreme Court, the Court’s new majority is likely to give religious conservatives unprecedented new rights — and to do so at the expense of many victims of discrimination.


vox--2020-10-30--A guide to the Trump administration’s biggest scandals, accomplishments, and policies

Four years ago , Donald Trump won the presidency and our shared reality hasn ’ t been the same since .
The relentless pace of headlines , controversies , and tweets has rendered the country divided and unable to fully recollect the past .
We struggle to recall what this president said or did last month , let alone in 2017 .
Leading up to the 2020 election , Today , Explained will help you remember .
In a five-part series , we ’ re bringing you The Trump Years : a look back at what Donald Trump did during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States and what it means for the future of the American political experiment .
The series will explore President Trump ’ s legacy , from health care to the coronavirus pandemic , from the economy and immigration to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and impeachment .
Remember impeachment ?
Subscribe to Today , Explained wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , and Spotify — to automatically get new episodes when they publish .
Episode 1 | When President Trump entered the White House , his administration had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eight years of the Obama administration .
Much of the deregulating that has happened in the last four years has not dominated the headlines , but it will have a huge impact on the environment and financial systems in this country for years to come .
Episode 2 | On immigration and foreign policy , the president has kept a lot of his promises .
But does a more broken immigration system and shaken alliances really put “ America First ” ?
Episode 3 | After four years of investigations , whistleblower complaints @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still a lot we don ’ t know about Russia ’ s attempts to interfere with the 2016 election .
But one thing Robert Mueller ’ s investigation and the impeachment trial revealed is President Trump and his campaign will go to any lengths to win .
Episode 4 | President Trump failed to overturn the Affordable Care Act in his first days in office , but what has his administration done to change the health care system in the US ?
And months into a pandemic , what state is that system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been illuminated in the past four years : From the Women ’ s March to the Black Lives Matter movement , from economic inequalities and a fractured health care system to a shift in the balance of the US judicial branch — and more .
These issues didn ’ t begin when President Trump entered the White House , and they will continue long after he ’ s gone .
So how does the country move forward ?
Want to hear more 2020 election coverage from Vox podcasts ?
Check out this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Four years ago, Donald Trump won the presidency and our shared reality hasn’t been the same since. The relentless pace of headlines, controversies, and tweets has rendered the country divided and unable to fully recollect the past. We struggle to recall what this president said or did last month, let alone in 2017.
Leading up to the 2020 election, Today, Explained will help you remember. In a five-part series, we’re bringing you The Trump Years: a look back at what Donald Trump did during his four years as president of the United States and what it means for the future of the American political experiment. The series will explore President Trump’s legacy, from health care to the coronavirus pandemic, from the economy and immigration to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and impeachment. Remember impeachment?
Subscribe to Today, Explained wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify — to automatically get new episodes when they publish.
Deregulating America
Episode 1 | When President Trump entered the White House, his administration had a clear goal: erase the last eight years of the Obama administration. Much of the deregulating that has happened in the last four years has not dominated the headlines, but it will have a huge impact on the environment and financial systems in this country for years to come.
America First?
Episode 2 | On immigration and foreign policy, the president has kept a lot of his promises. But does a more broken immigration system and shaken alliances really put “America First”?
The investigations
Episode 3 | After four years of investigations, whistleblower complaints, indictments and trials, there is still a lot we don’t know about Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 election. But one thing Robert Mueller’s investigation and the impeachment trial revealed is President Trump and his campaign will go to any lengths to win.
Health of the nation
Episode 4 | President Trump failed to overturn the Affordable Care Act in his first days in office, but what has his administration done to change the health care system in the US? And months into a pandemic, what state is that system in?
State of our union
Episode 5 | Many issues have been illuminated in the past four years: From the Women’s March to the Black Lives Matter movement, from economic inequalities and a fractured health care system to a shift in the balance of the US judicial branch — and more. These issues didn’t begin when President Trump entered the White House, and they will continue long after he’s gone. So how does the country move forward?
Want to hear more 2020 election coverage from Vox podcasts? Check out this Spotify playlist: