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Even power needs a day off.
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There has never in the history of the United States of America been anything like this five-year-old city. On the southwest outskirts of Atlanta, it is a mostly suburban municipality with a population of some 108,000 in which nine of every 10 of the residents are Black. Of places of its size, it is statistically the Blackest by far.
A hundred or so years after hundreds of thousands of rural Black people began to alter the contours of national politics by migrating toward better jobs and lives in cities, then suburbs, across the country, the existence and the autonomy of South Fulton would seem like a welcome culmination of a long evolution from powerlessness to power.
But the city is tearing itself apart.
Its mayor, khalid kamau — a gay, Christian, socialist, self-described “Black nationalist,” a former film student, flight attendant, bus driver, Black Lives Matter organizer — says that he wants to create a “real-life Wakanda,” a city that’s “Black on purpose.” But he’s brushed up against the incremental, integrationist, typically more moderate politics of Atlanta’s Black elite shared by much of the rest of South Fulton’s local government. And now, he’s accusing the city of hiding public records. He’s attempted to fire the city attorney. He’s reiterated his request to hire a therapist for the city.
Michael Kruse, Brittany Gibson and Delece Smith-Barrow went to this strange, singular capital for our latest installment of “The Next Great Migration” where they began to hear whispers of a next Next Great Migration. Because while South Fulton’s leaders debate issues of identity, most of its residents are wondering if they should stay in a city that promised economic prosperity and security but is instead delivering political strife.
“You are a donkey, Mr. Danger.”
Can you guess what foreign head of state said this about President George W. Bush in a televised speech in 2006? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
When Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wanted to pull a political stunt this week, he got almost effortless media attention by sending two planes full of migrants to, of all places, Martha’s Vineyard.
Republican governors have actually sent more migrants to Chicago, New York and Washington D.C., but there’s a reason the Vineyard story blew up. It’s a blue bubble within a blue bubble, the kind of place rich Democrats go when they want to get away from political turmoil. Here’s what to know about the enclave that DeSantis just crashed:
- If you go there, it’s just called the Vineyard.
- Despite its old-line WASPy reputation, the Vineyard has an immigrant community already and has long been a popular vacation spot for Black families.
- In the summer, there’s reliably a big-money Democratic fundraiser on the social calendar. Just last month, Barack Obama jumped into the midterm fight by headlining an event with Eric Holder.
- It's one place in America you can reliably visit a nude beach and see Alan Dershowitz.
- It's where Obama gets away — even from his friends. His 60th birthday, celebrated on the Vineyard, was famous for how many people he disinvited. Notably still on the list: Jay-Z, Tom Hanks, Eddie Vedder.
- A Vineyard scandal once took down a Democratic presidential hopeful.
Michael Beschloss speaks during a taping of NBC's Meet the Press on Oct. 30, 2005 in Washington, D.C. | Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press
History With a Kick … Historian Michael Beschloss loves the archives. His Twitter is an oddly compelling stream of archival images that has gotten him a touch more than 800,000 followers over a decade. For most of that run, his history lessons have tended towards the anodyne. But in the Trump era, Beschloss has found his inner online provocateur, tweeting out pictures of the Rosenbergs as news broke that federal agents found nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago, or the Munich Beer Hall Putsch on Jan. 6th.
Is he that way “irl”? Michael Schaffer went to see him for this week’s Capital City column, on a mission to figure out whether Beschloss is the classic TV historian, the guy with the quick Twitter fingers or something beyond either of those public personas.
58 percent … of voters who strongly approve of President Joe Biden’s performance also have a favorable opinion of King Charles III. That’s compared to just 45 percent of Democrats writ large.
Photograph by Michelle Gustafson for POLITICO
A Biblical Campaign … Josh Shapiro is trying to become a new kind of Jewish politician as he runs for governor of Pennsylvania. Instead of downplaying his religion out of a fear of appearing different, he thinks he can use his faith — he describes himself as a middle-class Conservative Jew — as a tool to win over voters in his fight against Doug Mastriano. On a bright September morning in Philadelphia, as Shapiro speaks with more than a dozen powerful pastors of nearby A.M.E. churches who could help him turn out Black voters in November, it seems to be working, writes Holly Otterbein.
What AOC and Nixon Have in Common … While ire towards the Supreme Court comes mostly from the left these days, in 1970, angry with a series of liberal rulings, then-President Richard Nixon directed a congressman from Michigan by the name of Gerald Ford to target liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas for impeachment. In a two-hour address, the normally mild-mannered Michigan congressman tore into the veteran sitting justice, accusing Douglas of giving “legitimacy to the militant hippie-yippie movement,” attacking his personal life and linking him with porn and even the Mafia. Frederic J. Frommer looks into the fallout from Ford’s crusade and why getting someone off the bench is never a simple proposition.
These presidential soap busts (yes, we said presidential soap busts), pictured September 1947, were the work of J. T. Taylor from San Antonio, Texas. The soap artist wrote to Harry S. Truman to ask for a portrait of the president without glasses so the sculptor could carve his likeness, as he had done for all prior presidents, writes Ella Creamer.
Presidents and political symbols have often been the subjects of bathroom supplies: The Secret Service once called a California businesswoman to ask if she would stick the presidential insignia on her toiletry range and sell it in the White House gift shop.
Presidents are actually responsible for paying for general household items like toothpaste, toilet paper and deodorant themselves. Since presidents can’t easily pop into a local CVS (and rarely carry a wallet), a White House staff member will pick up those items and then bill the president.
**Who Dissed? answer: It was then-President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez, who repeatedly called Bush "Mr. Danger" and also called him (in Spanish) a liar, drunk, coward and psychologically sick.