by Norman Franklin
Norman Franklin
Hubris abounds. It’s a characteristic of governance through power. Not governance of the people. When one party controls Pennsylvania Avenue, the House and the Senate, arrogance of certainty flexes. And with the stacking of the Supreme Court with a conservative majority, all branches of government—the Executive, Legisla tive, and the Judicial—ideologically sync. The decisions of power brokers move effortlessly through the channels of government without the safeguards the Founders placed in the system.
But that is the blueprint of government operation that Project 2025 implemented on day one of the Trump administration. Although the President disavows any knowledge of the 900-page document developed by the Heritage Foundation, some of the architects of the plan hold key positions in his administration. They made assumptions about the American people—their opacity and lack of critical thinking skills, and their inability to sift through the noise of misinformation and disinformation to find something true, something authentic.
The most ludicrous assumption—Black Americans will succumb to voter suppression tactics without pushing back. After the April Supreme Court ruling, Louisiana v. Callais, state legis latures gerrymandered majority-Black congressional districts. Additionally early voting was framed as a liberal ploy to cast illegal votes. It sets up the narrative for contesting the results. The election was stolen.
There is no integrity in the election process. That has been the narra tive since the elections of 2020. Federal observers are stationed at the polls in some areas. The number of early voting sites were significantly reduced. Polling sites were removed from some HBCU campuses. Students at North Carolina A&T and UNC were not deterred. Hundreds marched 45-minutes to the polls, voted and made the 45-minute journey back to their campuses.
They remembered the counter rhythm of history. They inherited the cadence. They were built for this. The midterms will test the assumptions and prove whether they rest on a solid foundation or whether built on sand, fractured and crumbling.
The early election night returns confirm a colloquial aphorism. I’ll rephrase it since it was a top-down assumption about the American people. “When you assume, you make an %#* of your leadership character.”