Adam Serwer

I think the Cold War put a tremendous amount of pressure on the United States to live up to its ideals domestically.

We were sort of on autopilot in that sense.

After the Cold War and during the War on Terror, there was, I think, not the same kind of pressure, but a similar kind of pressure.

But what really happened was that Trump showed that the price to pay for being overtly racist was not nearly as much as they thought it was.

And so Trump winning two elections.

you know, sends the message.

And I think, you know, even during the Bush era, there was a whole scandal about the civil rights division and in particular the voting section and the people running it saying, you know, we're going to gerrymander all those libs out of the division.

This was from an office of professional responsibility report on the politicized hiring scandal at the time.

So these people did exist, but they were, I think, restrained by leadership because

because they felt like there would be a political cost to pay for overt racism.

And I think Bush, in particular, the Bush-era Republican Party, if you remember the Republican conventions of that era, they had a gospel choir.

There was very much a like, we're not that Republican Party anymore.

And then Trump comes out and he just, you know, he can get away with saying, you know, calling black people garbage, saying, you know, we have these people coming from shithole countries.

We don't want them.

We only want Nordics here in America.

The public's perception of him is so embedded among low information voters of like, he's just the business guy that nobody seems to believe that he is this ideological racist that he is.

And as a result, the Republican Party feels like, oh, there are no rules anymore.

We can get away with all of this.

But, you know, someone like Roberts and someone like Alito, they've been gunning for this for a long time.

They wanted to repeal the Voting Rights Act for a long time.