Politics
Granderson: Praising the Jim Crow era? That's a red flag
Jim Crow was not the problem.
Jim Crow was meant to be the solution.
The problem was Rutherford B. Hayes winning the electoral college but losing the popular vote in 1876. To get over the hump — there was a filibuster contesting the results — Hayes agreed to remove federal troops from former Confederate states.
Opinion Columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in America.
In short: The Reconstruction era wasn’t ended because Black Americans had achieved equality. It was ended because Hayes wanted to be president.
Despite being a former Union soldier, he withdrew protection and offered up Black people to the whims of the South’s white supremacists who were still angry about losing the Civil War.
They weren’t going to be allowed to reinstate slavery. So that’s where the “solution” came in. A set of segregationist laws, known as Jim Crow after a minstrel show character, were white Southerners’ best attempt to restore their former way of life. Back when “everyone knew their place.”
This arrangement worked out for Rutherford B. Hayes. Not for Black Southerners or for the country as a whole.
Fast-forward a century and a half. The laws are long dead, and their harms still haunt us. If we can agree on anything as a nation, surely it would be that we’re better off without slavery or slavery lite.
So anyone who feels the need to downplay Jim Crow to gain acceptance from a crowd should probably reevaluate who they are trying to win over.
Last week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a Black Republican who wants to be Donald Trump’s vice president, told voters: “You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together.” Referring to the agency that evolved into the Department of Health and Human Services, he continued: “It was the Democrat policies under H.E.W., under the welfare state, that then helped to destroy the Black family.”
He is trying to sell Trumpists on the idea that Black people were better off when more than half of us lived under the thumb of the KKK and in poverty.
It’s bad enough that Donalds wants power so bad that he’s willing to romanticize legislated Black oppression. But what are his chances of actually clawing his way upward? His run for House speaker was so short that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t have enough time to complain about him.
Apparently undeterred, Donalds is now trying to become Trump’s pick for vice president by looking for Jim Crow’s silver lining. Those racist laws had no silver lining. Black families were suffering because of them. Whenever Black communities started to thrive too much, white supremacists were able to murder residents and burn down businesses without being held accountable — as happened in Tulsa, Wilmington, Atlanta…
In 1919 a union made up of Black sharecroppers had formed to negotiate for better working conditions and pay. Their community in Arkansas was greeted by a racist mob hundreds strong, which left more than 200 Black people dead, including children. The mob abducted and tortured 12 men, forcing them into a false confession of insurrection when in fact they were just pursuing the American dream.
A case representing six of them (Moore vs. Dempsey) eventually reached the Supreme Court, which found in 1923 that they had been denied due process because a mob dominated their trial. The Arkansas governor commuted their death sentences to prison terms, and they were allowed parole in 1925.
They had committed no crime but spent six years incarcerated. More than 200 other members of their community committed no crime but were executed by a mob.
When current-day Black conservatives talk about the “Democrat plantation,” I wonder whether they have a name for the one they live on. Because I do.
To suggest the Black community was better off after federal troops left the South, you have to ignore lynchings. To make the argument that Black people had it better during Jim Crow would require someone to overlook the fact that the authors of the laws had fought a war to keep Black people from being citizens.
In the decades following 1870, when the 15th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote, the Hayes administration did nothing as Southern states passed laws aimed at suppressing their voices. There were literacy tests that white southerners were exempt from. Poll taxes white people did not have to pay. Laws restricting where Black people could stand in public.
Even after the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote in 1920, Jim Crow laws prevented many Black women from doing so.
So if someone like Donalds tries to tell you that Black people had it better during the Jim Crow days, remember this: Those laws were written to keep us in our place.
Politics
Jared Kushner’s overseas luxury resort project faces anti-corruption investigation amid violent protests
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Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors are investigating changes to the protected status of a coastal wetland where a luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, has drawn environmental opposition and protests, according to Politico.
SPAK, Albania’s special anti-corruption prosecution office, has opened a probe into changes made to the status of the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape in Zvërnec, Politico reported. The coastal wetland area is home to flamingos, Mediterranean monk seals, and sea turtle nesting sites, Politico reported.
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Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff participate in a charter announcement for President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace initiative in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2026. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)
In 2024, Kushner publicly discussed plans for his firm, Affinity Partners, to develop luxury tourism projects in Albania, including in the Zvërnec area. Earlier this year, he visited the area with his wife, Ivanka Trump.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama recently confirmed to Politico that talks were ongoing between the government and Kushner over the deal, which is expected to include roughly 10,000 hotel rooms and villas.
EUROPEAN CAPITAL ROCKED BY VIOLENT PROTESTS AS GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION PROBE FUELS UNREST
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama speaks during a press conference following the EU-Albania Intergovernmental Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on May 26, 2026. (Daniel Gnap/NurPhoto)
“I want to make Albania a country that is a destination to be envied in the region, and this project is part of this effort,” Rama said Monday.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Affinity Partners and SPAK for comment.
Protests by Albanian citizens and nonprofit groups began in May when large, barbed-wire-topped fences were erected at the proposed site, preventing locals and tourists from accessing the beach. On Sunday, protesters assembled outside government offices to demand an end to the project as well as Rama’s resignation.
Jared Kushner speaks during the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 19, 2026. Kushner is facing pushback in Albania over a luxury development project. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Following Sunday’s protests, footage emerged showing private security guards appearing to assault and drag a protester along a cliff. Some guards allegedly threatened other demonstrators who were attempting to remove fences and halt construction.
The licenses of two private security companies were revoked following the incident. Meanwhile, around 15 protesters have been charged, and the local police chief has been stripped of his duties.
Politics
NBC News will put ‘Kornacki Cam’ on the L.A. mayoral, California gubernatorial races
After the polls close in California on Tuesday, NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki will just be getting started.
Since December, the khaki-clad vote-counting guru has been going live and uninterrupted on streaming platforms to provide results and analysis of every special election and even some state Senate contests.
The stream — called the Kornacki Cam — provides unadulterated number crunching without any pundits weighing in. Rather than getting updates that last a few minutes, Kornacki provides continuous real-time results until the last available total is counted.
“This all happens in full view,” Kornacki said Monday in a phone interview. “The audience gets to see the whole thing. They get to see the buildup, the anticipation, the payoff.”
In the 10 Kornacki Cam sessions streamed by NBC News so far, 19 million viewers have sampled them across all platforms. The coverage — consisting of Kornacki, his Big Board, his producer and a Stedicam operator — is available on YouTube, NBCNews.com, the NBC News app and the division’s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
The Kornacki Cam will focus on the primaries for Los Angeles mayor, California and several congressional districts, shortly after the state’s polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific. NBC News has its own decision desk, which the network said has called the results of 70% of the 2026 elections ahead of the Associated Press.
In a Monday chat with The Times, here are the trends Kornacki says he’ll be looking for on the night.
Polling in mayoral races is typically pretty unreliable. What do you make of the contest based on what you’ve seen?
You don’t always have super-competitive mayoral elections and they’re not all created equal. It’s not quite like a presidential election so you just don’t have a wealth of data to draw on for expectations either.
I’ve seen the polling you’ve seen. It suggests that of the three candidates (Mayor Karen Bass, reality TV star Spencer Pratt and City Council member Nithya Raman), Bass is in the best position to get into the runoff. It also suggests that Spencer Pratt has had the most positive movement in the last month or so of the campaign. But we go in knowing there will be volatility and I’m open to any and all possibilities.
Spencer Pratt is an unusual candidate who has been able to take up a lot of oxygen in the race. Is there a hidden vote for him that people might not be eager to admit to pollsters?
You can look at the city and know where to look for whether Pratt is having a big night. The San Fernando Valley is gonna be more than a third of the vote, probably close to 40%. If he gets in the general election, he wants to be winning there by a big margin. If it’s not happening there for Pratt, I don’t think it’s happening anywhere else. Karen Bass is going to rely on central and South L.A., with probably a third of the vote coming out of those two places. Those should be her bulwarks. The Westside, I think could be more of a toss-up. There’s a fair chunk of the vote there.
We don’t do a ton of mayoral races around the country. So we’re still trying to figure out exactly how detailed we’re going to be able to zoom in, at the neighborhood level and the precinct level.
Turnouts usually are low for Los Angeles mayoral races. Will this year be different?
This mayoral race has received a lot more national attention than 2022. So my thought is that the turnout would be higher, just based on that. But this is something that is resonating nationally because Pratt has that celebrity factor. The number was 646,000 (total votes) for 2022. So that’s something we’ll be following — are we trending over or under that?
And what will be the best indicators for the gubernatorial race?
The place that I kind of got circled here is Orange County. In the last two sort of major statewide elections, it was the first to report out (its) vote. At 8:06 p.m local time in California, in 2024, Orange County reported out half of its vote, right? So you’re getting, you know, you’re getting hundreds of thousands of votes, potentially, from this enormous county within, potentially within 10 minutes of polls closing. There were a couple others — the Central Valley, and we got a good chunk of Merced and Fresno quickly.
So how long are we going to have to wait for a result on Tuesday night?
One of the other things that just surrounds everything in California, whether it’s the mayor’s race, or governor’s race, or anything else, is nothing is definitive in the first hour or so after the polls close. We’re probably realistically looking at a days or even weeks-long process of getting all the vote counted.
I know it drives many people nuts. Without editorializing on that, it’s just a fact that they can get out of about two-thirds of their vote on election night, and if the races aren’t clear and definitive, then you’re generally in for a pretty long haul.
We do know in California that they’re not going (to count) nonstop until they get a result. They’re going to then start doing updates as they process and count the remaining vote by mail, which is usually a considerable pile in a lot of these places. The vote by mail in California can continue coming in for seven days after the election.
So do you think your coverage reflects a shift in what the consumer wants? We already know how fragmented the audience is. Are there now enough political junkies who want the pure uncut stuff?
I’ve been doing this about 20 years, and when I would tell people that I reported on politics for a living, they either moved away from me or changed the subject. And now, you know, I found the last, you know, 10 years or something, has just totally changed. People come up to me, even if they don’t know I work in politics, and they want to talk politics. Everybody seems into it whatever side they’re on.
Politics
Video: Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
new video loaded: Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
transcript
transcript
Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
Utah district judge, Tony Graf, rejected the defense’s bid to close the hearings in the Charlie Kirk murder case. The defendant, Tyler J. Robinson, is accused of fatally shooting Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist.
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A party seeking to close a preliminary hearing must show that adverse publicity traceable to the opening hearing poses a realistic likelihood of prejudice to a fair trial. Public access to the judicial — to judicial proceedings also serve in an important role in maintaining confidence in the fairness and transparency of the judicial process. This court finds these showings have not been made here.
By Meg Felling
June 1, 2026
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