Gov. Mike Lee (R) signed into law a new congressional map that will effectively erase the last Democratic, majority-Black district, in a move that some are calling "Jim Crow on steroids." The legislation, which looks a whole lot like racial gerrymandering, comes a whole week after the Supreme Court hollowed out the last of the Voting Rights Act... removing the last protections to prevent racial gerrymandering.
"It got me to thinking about political lines, pendulums, they're always moving ... I kind of think that way about tenure," Republican Justin Lafferty told his subcommittee Wednesday in a brief but wide-ranging explanation for dropping the bill. According to a video of the meeting posted on the state General Assembly's website, Lafferty said tenure goes back to the 1600s or 1700s, "a time when there weren't that many highly educated folks," so "it was very important to keep the best and the brightest."
The heart that beats in my chest today is the same one that quickened when, at 11 years old, I stood with my father along Union Avenue waiting to catch a glimpse of John F. Kennedy-the young senator from Massachusetts running for president. The photograph I snapped that day-now framed on my office wall in Washington-isn't sharp, but the moment was. It captured something lasting: a call to public service that has guided me ever since.
