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Former president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt Saturday during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. While the gunman has been identified, law enforcement have not offered a potential motivation for the attack. The incident comes at a time of heightened political violence, when more Americans think such acts are justifiable.
Guests: Isaac Arnsdorf, national political reporter for The Washington Post, and David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic.
On the next Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup …
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police are investigating a deadly 24 hours after multiple shootings occurred between Monday and Tuesday. It’s part of a rise in homicides in Charlotte this year, which is bucking the national trend in other cities, where homicides are going down. We’ll discuss the latest, including the capture of two teen suspects.
City Manager Marcus Jones is optimistic about our region’s mobility plan, but he also predicts that the price tag for transit and roads will change from its original proposal. We hear more.
Although City Council didn’t meet this week, Malcolm Graham says it’s time for the council to decide the fate of the Eastland Yards proposal. We’ll talk about the latest proposal and the timing of a likely decision.
And an international soccer tournament, the Copa America, comes to Charlotte this week. What is it, and why is it a big deal? We’ll fill you in on Wednesday night’s contest between Colombia and Uruguay and the brawl that followed, and preview Saturday’s match.
Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and more, on the Charlotte Talks local news roundup.
GUESTS:
Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time.” Mary is also a contributor to a new book “We Refuse to Be Silent: Women’s Voices on Justice for Black Men”
Mary Ramsey, local government accountability reporter for the Charlotte Observer
Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV Reporter and host of The Political Beat
It was a milestone that came and went with minimal political fanfare, the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.
Though the political world has had a lot on its mind, it’s important to remember just how revolutionary this sweeping legislation was, and how the rights conferred in it to Americans left behind must be constantly and fiercely protected.
Just as those resistant to American progress managed to replace Reconstruction with Jim Crow, violence and neglect for many decades until citizens nonviolently fought back during the civil rights movement, the powers behind Project 2025 and similar manifestos are architects of modern-day movements that would turn the clock back, and restore basic rights to the few.
Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat who represents the 12th District of North Carolina, wants to tell you and her constituents that, despite the dysfunction that makes the headlines, she and her colleagues have been attending to the people’s business. There are the issues close to her heart, such as affordable health care, closing the maternal health gap for minority moms and providing family care. There is her work supporting historically Black colleges and universities, healthy nutrition programs and more. So, what do we need to know?
Adams joins Equal Time to talk about bipartisan progress, election-year politics and the state of her battleground state.
After the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution — abolishing enslavement, awarding citizenship to Black Americans and guaranteeing their right to vote (Black men, anyway) — it was a time of progress and celebration.
African Americans were elevated to positions in cities, states and at the federal level, including American heroes such as Robert Smalls of South Carolina, first elected in 1874, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was well known by then, though. His sailing skills were crucial in a dramatic escape from enslavement that saw him hijack a Confederate ship he would turn over to the U.S. Navy.
But not everyone viewed the success of Smalls and so many like him as triumphs, proof of the “all men are created equal” doctrine in the Declaration of Independence. For some whites, steeped in the tangled myth of white supremacy and superiority and shocked by the rise of those they considered beneath them, the only answer was repression and violence, often meted out at polling places and the ballot box.
It didn’t matter that these newly elected legislators, when given power, promoted policies that benefited everyone, such as universal public schooling.
In incidents throughout the South, the White League and the Klan killed Black men who had the audacity to exercise their right to vote, intimidating and silencing those who considered doing the same. In the Colfax Massacre in April 1873, an armed group set fire to the Colfax, La., courthouse, where Republicans and freed people had gathered; between 70 and 150 African Americans were killed by gunfire or in the flames. In Wilmington, N.C., white vigilantes intimidated Black voters at the polls, and in 1898, in a bloody coup, overthrew the duly elected, biracial “Fusion” government.
Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” couching a return to white domination in the pious language of religion, not the first or last time God was used so shamelessly as cover.
The perpetrators then were Democrats, allied against Lincoln’s Republican Party.
Today, it’s most often Republicans — afraid they can’t convince a majority with ideas alone — who engage in tactics to shrink the electorate to one more amenable to a “Make America Great Again” promise, one that harks back to a time that was not so great for everyone.
“Are you not entertained?” shouts Maximus as the titular “Gladiator” in the 2000 film. And actor Russell Crowe sells it — enough to snag an Oscar — as he repeats the line to the stadium. “Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?”
Everyone loves a spectacle, even now, which is why more than 123 million viewers reportedly tuned in to this week’s Super Bowl, whether you were there for the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Francisco 49ers — or a shirtless Usher.
Don’t forget, though, that the shouted movie line was about a lot more than the show. It was a taunt, used to communicate the gladiator’s disgust with the reason the crowd cheered him. They weren’t interested in a game well-played by evenly matched opponents, which I’ll wager was the main reason Sunday’s Las Vegas event was a must-see.
That ancient Roman audience showed up for the blood. The more gruesomely the gladiator dispatched the fighters in front of him, the louder the crowd’s approval, no quarter nor empathy given.
In politics today, I’m afraid too many political gladiators are harking back to the example of ancient Rome’s idea of what will win over the citizenry, rather than pulling a page from Kansas City coach Andy Reid’s strategic playbook.
Entertainment, sure. As fractious as possible.
Valentina Gomez, 24, a Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state, wants to make sure voters know what she thinks of LGBTQ-inclusive books. A campaign video that went viral on social media shows the candidate using a flamethrower to torch a few, with the message: “When I’m Secretary of State, I will BURN all books that are grooming, indoctrinating, and sexualizing our children. MAGA. America First.”
Rather than back away, her campaign responded in a statement to NBC News: “You want to be gay? Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children.”
“The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” might have been published in 2007, but its message is as relevant as ever, especially as the 2024 campaign ramps up. Author Drew Westen, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has for 20 years explored the role of emotions in how the brain processes information.
That’s true in life — and in politics. And that explains why Westen has advised or worked as a political consultant for Democratic candidates, progressive and labor organizations and Fortune 500 companies for 20 years. Equal Time speaks to Westen on how a better understanding of the mind and brain translates into more compelling political messaging. Who is doing it right, and who could most use his help right now?
On the next Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup…
More plans are ahead to replace Charlotte’s Discovery Place Nature Museum in Freedom Park — with a hefty price tag. We’ll hear about the contentious debate that led to county commissioners agreeing to pay $10 million more towards the museum, and why that still may not be enough.
Dante Anderson is the new mayor pro tem after a contentious debate at City Council this week. We’ll talk about the vote.
We learned this week that North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry will not run for re-election. We’ll discuss what this might do to the political picture in the state.
We’re near the end of the second academic quarter for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, but the school board this week approved the budget for the current school year. We’ll discuss the reasons for the delay.
Most North Carolina Democrats voted in favor of an antisemitism resolution this week. We’ll talk about what the resolution says and who voted.
And former North Carolina Senator Fountain Odom has died. We’ll have a remembrance.
Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and more, on this week’s Charlotte Talks Local News Roundup.
GUESTS:
Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s executive producer for investigations & chief investigative reporter
Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”
Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter
Ann Doss Helms, WFAE education reporter
A look at topics impacting our decisions for 2024 elections. Plus, renewed debate about monuments and our country’s history of slavery raises a question: are we’re preserving history or our future? Host Kenia Thompson discusses these topics and more with Immanuel Jarvis, chairman of the Durham County GOP; columnist Mary C. Curtis (Roll Call); and Brett Chambers, lecturer at NC Central University.
“Some of my best friends are Black” is a phrase that has become cliché, and deservedly so, since it is essentially a dodge. Folks uttering those words are looking for a free pass, credit for knowing what it means to be Black in America without doing the work.
By now, most people know that proximity does not equal understanding.
Most, but not all.
The new speaker of the House, GOP Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has been known to showcase the Black child in his family’s life over two decades, usually when his empathy on matters of race needs a boost. Johnson controls the narrative. He doesn’t want to infringe on the privacy of a now-grown man with a family, he says, so he won’t go into too much detail.
Just enough, though, to show he gets it.
I have nothing against any person of any race who wants to foster, mentor or teach any young person in need of guidance. I applaud the realization that all parties on both sides of such relationships have opportunities to learn and grow. At the same time, I think it’s fair that reporters question just how formal the relationship between congressman and child has been, and why this child is conspicuously missing from family biographies and photographs.
I also wonder about any story cut from the same cloth as “The Blind Side,” with its simple tale of a wealthy white family “adopting” a deprived Black child, rescuing him from an ignoble fate and smoothing his way to football glory in college and the pros. That “just like a movie” story, which has been cited by Johnson as a template, was far more complicated, as the world has come to learn.
Johnson’s tale seems to be similar in many ways, with one particular problem common to these kinds of inspirational parables. They almost always place the white benefactor front and center, instead of the person who was a person before being molded by a Good Samaritan.
