Mere days after the Supreme Court of the United States gutted the Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of racial discrimination, like Tennessee, to draw majority-minority districts, the Tennessee Legislature passed a new U.S. House map that will heavily favor Republicans in all nine of the state’s districts. Though the Volunteer State finished its regular legislative session on April 23rd, Governor Bill Lee wasted no time calling lawmakers back for a special session.
These are complicated, nuanced issues that require careful handling — until it’s time to disenfranchise Black voters, at which point Tennessee Republicans will gladly put their vacations on hold. “If one doesn’t feel that a law is restrictive, then why work so hard to repeal it?” any logical person might ask.
“The provisions in the Voting Rights Act are outdated and unnecessary,” Republicans argue, “because America has outgrown its long history of racism. We’re all better now. Really.”
Of course, as soon as the maps could be redrawn, they were. It’s a story we have seen played out in other avenues of public life and national or state policy, and at a certain point, as former President George W. Bush famously said, “fool me twice … you can’t get fooled again.”
During Trump’s first term, he enacted an aggressive deregulation campaign, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, repealing the Clean Power Plan, and reversing dozens of environmental protections. Some talking heads argue that so many regulations prevent business from operating at its full potential.
That’s the point.
Given free rein, the business class will run roughshod over American consumers. Businesses get a refund system for losses sustained because of Trump’s unconstitutional tariffs. Taxpayers who, as individual consumers, paid more for goods and services are out of luck. You don’t close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless your intent is to bilk some consumers. Don’t believe me?
This February, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Minority Staff released a report that calculated that the Trump administration’s attack on the CFPB has cost American consumers $19 billion.
Everything is too expensive, and everyone agrees. So naturally, now is the appropriate time to double down on that ballroom renovation, also known as the “East Wing Modernization Project.”
The ballooning price tag for the new White House ballroom has jumped from $200 million to double that amount at $400 million, and that’s before considering the addendum to Immigration & Customs Enforcement budget, which allocates $1 billion to enhance the security infrastructure of the EWMP.
Why shouldn’t American taxpayers foot the bill for a fancy, schmancy new ballroom where the ultra-wealthy, parasitic Epstein class can enjoy special access to the president and other politicians?
In the ’80s, the Project on Government Oversight reported that the Pentagon had overpaid for several items, including a $435 hammer and a $600 toilet seat, with those items and prices often conflated in the public’s eye, leading to the oft-repeated myth of the “$600 hammer.”
Of course, those prices were a budgetary convenience, a way of accounting for funds. Still, it seems quaint and rustic, the idea of a nation incensed over such a pittance. These days, $200 million becomes $400 million, which then requires an additional $1 billion. All while the price of gas soars with no concerted plan to see American taxpayers through the crisis, even as the country still deals with the cost of the One Big Beautiful Bill (That’s right, I’m still talking about it!). If we cannot afford to keep healthcare premiums from increasing, we cannot afford a gilded ballroom. If we cannot fund the Medicare Savings Program adequately, we cannot afford a war — or “military conflict,” if you prefer — in Iran. Or Venezuela.
Yet for “Ballroom Republicans,” this is national budgetary policy now: There is money for me, but not for thee.
Put simply, it is as ludicrous to believe that regulations enforcing civil and human rights are unnecessary as it is to believe that corporate entities with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders will effectively self-regulate.
These goons need oversight, and they need it now.
Jesse Davis is a former Flyer staffer; he writes a monthly Books feature for Memphis Magazine. His opinions, such as they are, don’t expect to get an invitation to the new ballroom’s grand opening.