✏️ A NOTE FROM BARRINGTON

For three weeks this newsletter has been making one argument over and over again. The racial framing the political class runs on redistricting is the cover story for a partisan power fight. Race is the weapon. Power is the target. Both parties pick the racial frame because the structural truth does not move voters or generate donations. Two weeks ago this newsletter said the people running that operation know exactly what they are doing and are choosing the deceptive framing on purpose.

This week the operation got caught on tape.

On Tuesday, May 19, the NAACP launched a national campaign called “Out of Bounds” asking Black college athletes to boycott public universities in eight Southern states over congressional redistricting. The president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, accused those states of trying to reinstitute, in his exact words, a “sharecropping reality” by recruiting Black athletic talent while limiting Black voting representation. The Congressional Black Caucus formally backed the campaign Monday. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries amplified it Tuesday. The SEC, the ACC, and seven flagship Southern universities have not responded publicly. Georgia is on the target list. Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Florida, South Carolina, Texas A&M, and Georgia are all named or implied.

That is your lead this week. The boycott itself is the operation laid bare. But the deeper story is the institution running the operation. The NAACP at this point is not a shell of its former self. It has proven itself largely worthless in an era when Black Americans are excelling everywhere they have access to compete on merit. Advancement is in the organization’s name. What has it advanced in the last sixty years besides outdated ideologies, inferiority complexes, and a sustained record of being a Democratic Party auxiliary? The honest answer is almost nothing measurable. The rest of the newsletter covers the Louisiana SB 121 vote that triggered the boycott, Kemp’s gas tax extension (TBR called this correctly), the Federal Reserve transition with the just-released April minutes showing the institutional Fed wants rate hikes not cuts, and a closing piece on what Killer Mike just announced in Atlanta that almost no one outside the city is paying attention to. Killer Mike is doing in one Atlanta press release what the NAACP has not done in sixty years of institutional existence. Build something.

🔥 LEAD STORY: THE OPERATION JUST GOT CAUGHT ON TAPE

The NAACP Is Now Openly Using Black Athletic Labor as Political Leverage in a Redistricting Fight. This Is What the Race-Versus-Power Operation Looks Like When It Stops Hiding.

On Tuesday, May 19, the NAACP launched a national boycott campaign called “Out of Bounds” urging Black college athletes, their families, their fans, and their alumni to withhold athletic and financial support from public universities in eight Southern states. The targeted states are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The campaign is the NAACP’s response to recent Republican-led congressional redistricting efforts that have followed the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. NAACP President Derrick Johnson stated the goal plainly. He wants Black athletes to deny these universities the talent that makes their football and basketball programs profitable until the universities publicly oppose their states’ redistricting moves.

In a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Johnson accused Republican-led Southern states of, and these are his exact words, “seeking to reinstitute a sharecropping reality” by recruiting Black athletic talent to play for flagship universities while limiting, in his view, Black voters’ ability to elect candidates of their choice. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, amplified the boycott from the same press event. Jeffries called the silence of the universities “complicity” and accused Southern states of using “Jim Crow-like racially oppressive tactics.” The CBC sent formal letters Monday to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, and NCAA President Charlie Baker demanding action.

That is the news. Now we are going to walk through what just actually happened, because TBR readers have earned the version of this story the rest of the media is not going to give you.

Stop and read the sentence again. The president of the NAACP just compared a system in which Black college athletes voluntarily attend universities that pay them six-figure name-image-likeness deals, provide free tuition, free housing, free food, free medical care, free academic support, and free national exposure to professional careers, to a sharecropping reality. Sharecropping was a coercive labor system in which Black families had no legal alternative, no contract negotiation, no upward mobility, and no exit. A nineteen-year-old four-star running back accepting a scholarship to LSU has the legal freedom to attend any of more than 100 Division I football programs in America, including every historically Black college and university the NAACP is now telling him to choose instead. He has agents. He has NIL revenue. He has transfer portal rights. He has a draft pipeline. He is not sharecropping. Comparing his situation to sharecropping is one of the most insulting things a major civil rights leader has said about the actual conditions Black Americans endured during Reconstruction in modern memory. And the man who said it leads the institution that, more than any other, is supposed to remember what sharecropping actually was.

That comparison is not a slip. It is the operation. The NAACP needs the racial framing to be apocalyptic in order to mobilize. The actual ask is for Black 18-year-olds to give up scholarships worth, in many cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition value plus six-figure NIL deals, in order to pressure state legislatures the athletes do not vote in, on legislation the athletes mostly do not follow, over congressional districts the athletes mostly do not live in. The cost of the action falls entirely on the Black athlete and the Black family. The benefit, if any benefit materializes at all, accrues to the Democratic Party, which loses fewer congressional seats in the South in 2028 if the universities pressure their legislatures, who then pressure their state Republican parties, who then back off the redistricting moves. That is the chain of causation. Read it again. The cost is borne by an 18-year-old who turns down LSU. The benefit accrues to House Democratic caucus seat counts in 2028.

And the comparison gets sharper. The Congressional Black Caucus sent its letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker the same week that collective bargaining for NCAA athletes remains illegal under federal law because Congress has not passed the SCORE Act or any successor framework. The CBC letter to Baker did not demand expansion of athlete labor rights. It did not demand revenue sharing. It did not demand health care for college athletes after eligibility expires. It demanded that the NCAA pressure SEC and ACC schools to take a political position on congressional redistricting. The civil rights organization claiming to defend Black labor is not asking for Black labor protections. It is asking Black labor to subsidize a political fight in exchange for nothing.

And then there is the constituency the operation actually serves. Look at the eight states. Every single one is a state where Black voters are reliably Democratic. Every single one is a state where Republican legislatures are in control. Every single redistricting move the NAACP is protesting has the same political consequence: fewer reliably Democratic House seats. The civil rights framing of the operation is that this is about Black political representation. The structural reality is that it is about Democratic seat counts in the House of Representatives. Those are not the same thing. They are aligned in this case because Black voters in those states are reliably Democratic, but the alignment is the byproduct of a partisan turnout pattern that the Democratic Party has cultivated for sixty years, not a natural state of affairs in Black American political identity. In 2024, twenty-one percent of Black men voted for Donald Trump, the highest GOP share of the Black male vote in 48 years. The Democratic Party hold on Black political identity is weakening from the inside. The NAACP’s response is to escalate the racial frame, because the racial frame is the only thing keeping the coalition activated.

Now the Sowell point from two weeks ago, because it is still the right read. “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” The Callais ruling reduced a preferential structural mechanism that gave one racial group a guarantee no other racial group ever had. The political reaction has been to call the reduction the death of voting rights. This week the political reaction added an economic dimension. Boycott the universities. Deny the schools the labor. Force the legislatures to back off. The operation is now demanding that 18-year-old Black athletes pay the price for the political class’s loss of a structural advantage. That is not justice. That is the political class outsourcing its own fundraising problem to the kids who can least afford to absorb it.

And one more thing the rest of the media is not going to say. The Republican legislatures that are doing the redistricting are doing it for partisan power reasons, and TBR has prosecuted them on those grounds for three straight weeks. HB 369 in Georgia. SB 121 in Louisiana. The Florida special session. South Carolina opening redistricting work this week. Every one of those moves is a partisan power consolidation play dressed up in the language of good governance. TBR has named them all. But the response from the NAACP and the Democratic Party leadership is not to expose the partisan mechanism. The response is to escalate the racial framing because the partisan mechanism does not generate the kind of activated coalition energy the racial framing does. Both sides are running operations. The Republicans are running theirs through procedural cover. The NAACP and the CBC are running theirs through Black athletic labor. The kids being asked to absorb the cost did not consent to either operation.

Now this newsletter is going to say something about the NAACP itself, and we are not going to dress it up. The NAACP is no longer a shell of its former self. It is barely an organization with a measurable civic mission anymore. Its name is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The honest question is what exactly has this institution advanced in the last sixty years? Brown v. Board was 1954. The Civil Rights Act was 1964. The Voting Rights Act was 1965. Every one of those wins predates the modern Black middle class, the modern Black political class, and the cultural ascendancy of Black Americans in entertainment, technology, business, sports, media, and entrepreneurship that has unfolded across the last two generations. What has the NAACP measurably advanced since 1965? Name the policy. Name the structural change. Name the institutional intervention that improved measurable Black outcomes at scale and would not have happened without the NAACP. The list is short. The defenders of the organization will reach for vague references to legal advocacy and voter registration drives. The actual receipts on either are thin compared to the scale of what the organization claims as its mandate.

And TBR is not the first to say this. The mainstream press has been openly asking whether the NAACP is still relevant for nearly two decades. NPR ran the question explicitly in 2009. NPR Code Switch ran a piece in 2015 about how the BlackLivesMatter generation viewed the NAACP as outdated and irrelevant to the actual organizing work happening in Black communities. The Washington Post called the NAACP “the embodiment of an outdated brand of suit-and-tie activism.” Even the organization’s own backers describe it with words like “sleepy,” “senior,” and “venerable.” Those are not compliments. Those are the words you use about a museum exhibit, not an active civil rights vanguard. And as far back as 2004, the NPR coverage of George W. Bush declining to speak at the NAACP convention reported that Republicans openly characterized the NAACP as “a veritable wing of the Democratic Party.” That charge has been in the public conversation for over twenty years and the institution has done nothing to refute it because it cannot. The institution is what its critics have said it is.

What has the NAACP advanced in the last sixty years? Outdated ideologies that no longer match the lived reality of Black Americans who are thriving in industries the NAACP’s framing would never predict. Inferiority complexes that get marketed to the next generation of Black youth as solidarity when they are actually internalized limits. Sustained loyalty to one political party that has used Black voters as a turnout block while failing to deliver measurable improvements in Black material outcomes for two generations. That is the actual record. The entire organization should have become a relic twenty years ago and closed its doors with dignity and a celebration of what it did achieve in its early decades. Instead it is still here, drawing salaries, holding press conferences, asking Black 18-year-olds to forfeit scholarships, and still calling itself the leading voice of Black civil rights in America. The leading voice of Black civil rights in America in 2026 is not the NAACP. It is whatever Black families, Black entrepreneurs, Black church communities, Black educators, and Black local activists are building in their own neighborhoods without waiting for a national organization to give them permission. The Killer Mike housing initiative in Atlanta that closes this newsletter is one example among many. The NAACP’s Out of Bounds campaign is the dying gasp of an institution that should have been retired in 2005 and refuses to admit it has nothing left to advance.

Now picture the actual kid this campaign is aimed at. Four-star running back. Senior year of high school. Full ride to LSU on the table. Six-figure NIL deal attached. Coaching staff that has put four running backs in the first round of the NFL Draft in the last decade. Academic support, free medical care, free housing, free tuition, exposure to professional scouts every single Saturday afternoon on national television. Parents who worked two jobs each for eighteen years so their son would have this exact moment in front of him. Grandparents who lived through actual Jim Crow and would tell that kid in two seconds to take the scholarship and never look back. Now picture the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Democratic Party leadership telling that kid he should forfeit all of it. Walk away from the offer. Pick a different school. Do it for the race. Do it to apply political pressure on a Republican state legislature in Baton Rouge over a congressional map he does not vote in, in a district he does not live in, on behalf of an institution that has not done anything measurable for his family or his community in his entire lifetime. Imagine telling that kid to do what is best for “the race” when the race will not do anything for him, when the race as a political constituency is poorly informed about the actual mechanics of the redistricting fight he is being asked to subsidize, and when the only political action the race reliably produces is showing up to vote every four years for a party that has cultivated his dependency rather than his ascent.

And then imagine telling that same kid he should choose an HBCU instead. Not because the HBCU is the better academic fit, the better athletic program for his specific career trajectory, the better NIL opportunity, the better path to the league, or the better coaching staff for his position. Not for any merit-based reason at all. Tell him he should choose the school whose football program produces fewer first-round picks, whose NIL ceiling is a fraction of the SEC offer in his hand, whose television exposure is a fraction of what he would get on a Saturday in Tiger Stadium, and whose draft pipeline is documented and measurable as the lower-percentile option for the specific outcome he is trying to achieve. Tell him to make that decision purely because of skin color. That is the actual content of the directive once the civil rights rhetoric is stripped off. The NAACP is asking a Black family to choose a college not on merit, not on fit, not on outcome, but on the basis of race. That is the exact framework the Civil Rights Movement supposedly fought against. That is a Black civil rights institution telling Black families in 2026 to apply the same race-first decision-making logic that the same institution spent the 1950s and 1960s fighting white institutions for applying. The hypocrisy is not subtle. The damage is not abstract. There is an actual kid with an actual offer in his hand who is being told the right choice is the lesser one for him personally because the political class he does not vote for needs him to subsidize a fight he did not start. It is sickening.

And we are going to be honest about the HBCU question, because honesty is the standing brand commitment of this newsletter. HBCUs at the elite tier are real institutional successes. Spelman graduates 77 percent of its students within six years, which is among the highest graduation rates of any liberal arts college in America. Howard sits at 61 percent. Hampton, Morehouse, and Fisk all graduate more than half their students within six years. Those are competitive institutional numbers and the HBCU ecosystem has produced extraordinary Black professionals, scholars, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and leaders for over a century. That is a documented record this newsletter is not going to diminish. But the overall HBCU graduation rate, according to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund which represents 47 public HBCUs, is 35 percent. The national average for all four-year institutions is 62 percent. That is a 27-point gap. And the bottom of the distribution is worse. Alabama State graduates 31 percent of its students. The University of the District of Columbia graduates 28 percent. Shaw University graduates 27 percent. Langston graduates 23 percent. Shorter College in Arkansas graduates 8 percent. Those are documented numbers from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard. They are also numbers the NAACP is not disclosing to the Black families it is asking to redirect their kids toward HBCUs as a political pressure tactic.

That is what makes the boycott directive even more cynical. The NAACP is not just asking Black families to make a college decision on the basis of race rather than career fit. The NAACP is asking Black families to redirect their kids toward an institutional ecosystem with documented graduation rate problems at the median, and the organization is doing it without disclosing the data. A four-star running back has the cognitive bandwidth and the family support structure to make an informed decision if the data is in front of him. The NAACP is choosing not to put the data in front of him. That is not advocacy. That is institutional malpractice dressed up as solidarity. The elite HBCUs that compete on merit, like Spelman and Howard and Morehouse, deserve to be considered on their actual academic and outcome metrics, not slotted in as a politically convenient relocation destination. The underperforming HBCUs deserve scrutiny and reform, not protection by an advocacy organization that uses them as inventory. The Black families being targeted by this campaign deserve the full data so they can make the decision themselves. None of those constituencies is being served by the operation the NAACP is running.

WHAT TO DO: If you are a Black college athlete or the parent of one, the decision belongs to you and your family, not to any political organization. Evaluate the offer in front of you on its merits. Tuition, NIL value, coaching staff, academic fit, draft pipeline, geographic preference, family proximity, AND graduation rate at the specific school being considered. Pull the College Scorecard at collegescorecard.ed.gov for any school on your shortlist. Those are real considerations. “Which political party benefits from where I sign” is not on the list. If the NAACP and the CBC want to lead a serious civil rights conversation about Black athletic labor, they can demand revenue sharing, health insurance after eligibility, and full collective bargaining rights for NCAA athletes. Until they do, the boycott is asking you to subsidize their political fight without asking the political class to subsidize anything for you. And if you are a Black American who has been donating to the NAACP out of habit, ask yourself what the donation has actually advanced in the last twenty years. If the honest answer is nothing measurable, that is information worth acting on.

⚖️ CIVIC WATCH: LOUISIANA PASSED THE MAP. VIRGINIA’S MAP GOT STRUCK DOWN. THE BIPARTISAN SYMMETRY KEEPS WRITING ITSELF.

Three States, One Week, Two Parties, Same Mechanism. The Both-Parties-Gerrymander Frame Has Never Had Cleaner Evidence Than This Week.

Last week’s newsletter walked through SB 121, the Louisiana Senate committee’s 4-3 vote to advance a congressional map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. This week, the bill moved. On Thursday, May 14, the full Louisiana Senate passed SB 121 27 to 10 along party lines. The bill then moved to the House. On Thursday, May 21, the House and Governmental Affairs Committee passed an amended version of SB 121 with boundary adjustments in Pointe Coupee, Calcasieu, and Grant parishes. The map now goes to the full House. Louisiana’s 2026 legislative session ends June 1. The final map is expected before recess. The map produces a 5-1 Republican advantage in Louisiana’s six-district congressional delegation. The single remaining Democratic-leaning seat will be the New Orleans-based district currently held by U.S. Representative Troy Carter. U.S. Representative Cleo Fields, who would have been pitted against Carter under last week’s version of the map, has announced he will not run against Carter regardless of the final boundaries.

At the same time, in Virginia, the state Supreme Court struck down the Democratic-drawn legislative map that had been passed earlier this year. The court ruled that Virginia Democrats overreached in their attempt to use the post-2020 redistricting cycle to maximize Democratic seats. The ruling came down the same week as the Louisiana SB 121 Senate vote. Virginia is now in the same position Louisiana was in three weeks ago. The map has been thrown out by a court. The legislature has to redraw. The political stakes are large. The cycle compresses. The next map will be litigated again.

And in South Carolina, Republican House Majority Leader Davey Hiott announced this week that the state will begin its own redistricting work, also under the Callais framework. South Carolina’s current map has one majority-Black congressional district, held by U.S. Representative James Clyburn. Under the Callais standard, that district is now legally vulnerable. If South Carolina Republicans move aggressively, the map could become a 7-0 Republican delegation.

Three states. One week. Two parties. Same mechanism. NPR reported this week that the Callais ruling could affect at least 17 state and local governments beyond just Congress, including county commissions, school boards, and judicial districts across the country. The ruling is rippling downward through every layer of American government that uses geographically defined electoral districts. Every legislative body that ever drew a district map under the old Gingles framework is now legally exposed. The map redrawing cycle that began with Louisiana on April 29 has, in less than four weeks, expanded into a national restructuring of how political power is allocated below the federal level.

The Virginia ruling is the part the political left will struggle to acknowledge. When the Louisiana legislature does this to a majority-Black district, the framing is racism. When Virginia Democrats did the exact same thing to maximize Democratic seats in a state where they had the power to do so, the framing was good governance, fair representation, and democratic majority rule. The Virginia Supreme Court did not buy the framing. The court struck the map down. The mechanism is the same in both states. The political color of the operatives is different. The framing is also different, because the framing is always different depending on whose ox is being gored. That is the operation TBR has been naming for three weeks. The Virginia ruling is the cleanest example of bipartisan symmetry in redistricting this country has seen in years, and it landed in the same news cycle as the Louisiana vote and the NAACP boycott. The political class would prefer that you do not see them as the same operation. They are.

WHAT TO DO: If you live in Georgia, watch the Georgia General Assembly’s 2027 session calendar for any signal of a pre-2030 redistricting move. The political and legal incentive to do so is now fully available. If you live in Louisiana, South Carolina, or Virginia, your congressional or legislative map is actively in motion. Pull your current district at ballotpedia.org or your state’s legislative tracking site. Compare it to the map you voted under in 2024. Verify your registration at mvp.sos.ga.gov or your state’s equivalent. The maps are changing faster than most voters can keep up with, which is by design.

🏘️ GEORGIA WATCH: KEMP EXTENDED. TBR CALLED IT. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW HE DID IT.

The Gas Tax Got Extended. Georgia Is Fourth-Lowest in the Nation. The Mechanism Used to Extend It Deserves Its Own Conversation.

On Friday, May 15, Governor Brian Kemp signed an executive order extending the state gas tax suspension for an additional two weeks. The new suspension took effect at 12:01 a.m. on May 20 and runs through 11:59 p.m. on June 2. The 33.3 cents per gallon state motor fuel tax remains suspended through Memorial Day weekend and the first week after. Georgia’s average regular gas price is currently $4.02 per gallon, which is roughly 50 cents below the national average of $4.56 and the fourth-lowest price in the country. Georgia is one of only two states currently suspending its motor fuel tax. Last week’s newsletter said this was the most time-sensitive Georgia story of the week and called the question of whether Kemp would extend the credit-where-credit-is-earned test. The credit is earned. Georgia drivers are not paying the 33.3 cents that would have hit Monday morning.

But credit where it is earned does not mean we skip the structural analysis. The mechanism Kemp used to extend the suspension is worth naming clearly, because it sets a precedent. House Bill 1199, the original legislative gas tax suspension passed in March, was a temporary measure with a hard sunset on May 19. The legislature did not vote to extend it. The legislative session is over. Kemp did not call a special session. Instead, he declared a state of emergency under his executive authority, citing “acute consumer price shock” caused by global market volatility, and used that emergency declaration to suspend the tax for two more weeks. That is a real exercise of executive power. The Governor of Georgia, acting alone, overrode a sunset clause set by the legislature, on a specific tax, by declaring an emergency that exists because of a federal foreign policy decision the state has zero control over.

To be clear, the outcome is good. Georgia drivers benefit. The structural mechanism is also worth thinking about. Imagine a future Governor of Georgia, of either party, who declares an emergency to suspend a different tax, or to extend a different policy, or to override a different legislative sunset, citing similar economic conditions. The same executive authority that Kemp used responsibly this week is the executive authority a less restrained Governor uses to consolidate power tomorrow. Emergency declarations during real emergencies are appropriate. Emergency declarations becoming the standard tool to govern through legislative sunsets create a precedent that does not require a future bad actor to invent it. The precedent will be sitting there, ready to use, the next time a Governor decides he needs it.

Two more pieces of Georgia gas tax context worth knowing. First, the new emergency suspension ends June 2. There is no current commitment from the Governor’s office to extend it further. If the Iran war continues and oil prices stay high, Kemp will face this same decision again in 12 days. Whether he extends again, and how he frames the next extension, will tell you whether this is a Memorial Day political move or a structural commitment to keeping Georgia drivers below the national average through the summer. Second, the Georgia Department of Transportation budget continues to absorb the revenue loss. Dr. Raymond Hill, an economist at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, told CBS Atlanta that Georgia’s fiscal position is strong enough that the short-term suspension impact is minimal. That is true today. It is also a flag for what happens if the suspension runs longer or recurs frequently across multiple budget cycles. Road maintenance, bridge inspections, and capital projects all rely on motor fuel revenue. The trade-off is real even when it is currently affordable.

WHAT TO DO: Watch for the next Kemp decision around June 2. If the war is still on, prices are still high, and Kemp extends again, that signals a longer-term commitment. If he lets it expire June 2 with prices still high, that tells you the Memorial Day framing was the operative one. Either answer is information. You can sign up for executive order notifications at gov.georgia.gov. If you want to weigh in on the GDOT funding side, the agency holds public comment windows on capital projects throughout the year at dot.ga.gov.

💰 ECONOMIC DESK: WARSH IS IN. THE FED MINUTES SAID THE QUIET PART.

Powell Out. Warsh Sworn In Friday. The April Fed Minutes Show a Majority of Fed Officials Would Vote to Raise Rates if Inflation Stays High. That Is the Opposite of What Warsh Was Hired to Do.

On Friday, May 15, Kevin Warsh was sworn in as the 17th Chair of the Federal Reserve. Jerome Powell’s term as chair ended the same day. Powell remains on the Board of Governors through January 2028. Three days before the transition, on Tuesday, May 20, the Fed released the minutes from the April 28-29 policy meeting. The minutes contained one sentence that matters more than any other piece of monetary policy news this week. Quote: “A majority of participants highlighted that some policy firming would likely become appropriate if inflation were to continue to run persistently above 2 percent.” Translation: most of the Fed officials who actually vote on interest rate decisions would prefer to raise rates if inflation does not come down. Not cut. Raise.

That sentence directly contradicts the political mandate Warsh was hired to deliver. Trump nominated Warsh, and the Senate confirmed him 54-45 on a near party-line vote, on the explicit expectation that Warsh would deliver interest rate cuts. Warsh’s public record supports the framework of supply-side optimism that would justify cuts. The April Fed minutes show that most of the other Fed officials who Warsh now leads do not agree with that framework. They are looking at the same April CPI data, the same Iran-driven energy spike, the same labor market readings, and concluding that the appropriate next move is to tighten, not ease. Warsh now has to manage a Federal Reserve Open Market Committee where the majority view is the opposite of what got him the job.

The macro picture confirms why the Fed majority is positioned where it is. April inflation came in at 3.8 percent. The Fed’s target remains 2 percent. The Iran war is now in its third month with no signed agreement. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. All 50 states now have average gas prices above $4 per gallon. The national average is $4.56. Seven states are above $5. California is the highest at $6.15. The average price of gas is up 53 percent since the war started. GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan said this week that the national average could hit an all-time record above $5.03 per gallon if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed through mid-summer. None of those conditions argue for rate cuts. All of them argue for either continued holds or for hikes.

Meanwhile, the second front of Warsh’s agenda is also running into structural limits. Warsh has signaled an intention to shrink the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet from its current $6.7 trillion. The institutional pushback is already running. Fed Governor Michael Barr said publicly last week that shrinking the balance sheet is “the wrong objective” and would “undermine bank resilience, impede money market functioning, and ultimately, threaten financial stability.” That is a Fed governor, on the record, opposing the chair’s stated agenda within a week of the transition. Warsh’s capacity to deliver on the political expectations Trump set for him is structurally constrained on both rate cuts and balance sheet reduction. The institutional Fed is the institutional Fed regardless of who sits in the chair, and the institutional Fed right now is not where Trump wants it to be.

This is the moment last week’s newsletter and the April 30 broadcast both predicted. The institutional Federal Reserve does not respond to election cycles. The institutional Federal Reserve responds to data. The data right now says hold or hike, not cut. Warsh can give the press conferences. Warsh can publish the speeches. Warsh can advocate for the agenda he was hired to advance. But every rate decision is a vote of the Federal Open Market Committee, and the votes are not currently with Warsh. The next FOMC meeting is in mid-June. Watch the dissents. If Warsh tries to push a cut against the institutional majority, the dissents tell you who is actually running monetary policy in this country. It probably is not the Fed Chair.

WHAT TO DO: If you are carrying high-interest debt, particularly credit card debt, attack it now. Do not wait for rate cuts that are not coming this year and may not come next year either. If you are house-hunting, recalibrate your mortgage expectations to the high 6 percent range and assume that is the floor. If you are running a small business, lock in your borrowing costs where you can. If you have cash that is not earning at least the rate of inflation, you are losing purchasing power every month you sit on it. The institutional Fed is not coming to rescue your variable-rate exposure. The math is the math.

📡 WATCH LIST: WHAT TO TRACK NEXT WEEK

These are the developments TBR will be monitoring as the new week opens.

Louisiana SB 121 final House vote. The amended House version of SB 121 needs full House passage before the June 1 session end. Whatever passes goes to the Governor for signature, and from there into immediate federal court litigation. Watch the final boundary changes and whether the House strips any of the Senate version’s protections.

Willis-Boston HB 369 lawsuit filing. Promised within days of the May 12 signing. Not yet filed in the Northern District of Georgia as of publication. The Fani Willis and Sherry Boston joint federal challenge is the legal vehicle that will determine whether HB 369 takes effect in 2028 or gets blocked. Track filings at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

NCAA, SEC, and ACC response to the NAACP boycott. As of publication, no public response from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, or NCAA President Charlie Baker. Silence past Memorial Day weekend will be interpreted as the public position. Any formal statement will signal whether the conferences are willing to be pulled into the redistricting fight.

Trump intra-party 2028 purge expanding. After Massie’s primary loss and Cassidy’s defeat, Trump is targeting Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) for primary challenges. The pattern is consolidation within the GOP, the same operation pattern the Democratic Party runs within its own coalition, just executed differently.

Iran-US one-page MOU signing status. Last week’s report had the deal at 48 hours from signing. As of publication, no signed agreement. Trump’s G7 attendance in France June 15-17 likely sets the next decision window. If a deal lands before G7, oil prices fall slowly. If it falls apart, expect renewed military operations and gas prices above $5 by July.

NAACP boycott national rollout. The Out of Bounds campaign launched Tuesday in Washington but the state-by-state rollout is expected to expand through May and June. Watch for university student government responses, athlete public statements, and any high-profile recruiting decisions that publicly cite the boycott as a factor.

Kennedy fires HHS preventive services task force chairs. May 11 dismissals of John Wong and Esa Davis as co-chairs of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The panel determines which preventive health services insurers must cover at no cost under the ACA. New appointments expected in June. The political composition of the new task force will determine whether ACA preventive coverage changes substantively in 2027.

Federal gas tax holiday vote count. Trump’s proposed federal gas tax pause has stalled in both chambers. Sen. Hawley’s 90-day suspension bill remains in committee. Trucking and construction industry lobbying continues to run against. Watch whether any version reaches a floor vote before July 4.

🧠 FINAL WORD: KILLER MIKE JUST PROVED THE POINT BY DOING THE OPPOSITE

While the NAACP was in Washington this week telling Black 18-year-olds to forfeit scholarships to fight a partisan redistricting battle, a different operation was launching in Atlanta. Michael Render, known as Killer Mike, announced a partnership with Bridge Tower and Blackmon Real Estate to launch a Build-to-Ownership program designed to convert Atlanta renters into homeowners. The program is targeted at Black Atlanta families in neighborhoods where housing costs are rising and rental markets are pricing out long-term residents. It is privately financed, locally led, and does not depend on a federal program, a Supreme Court ruling, or a political party doing anything for anyone.

That is the contrast worth holding in mind as you read this issue. One operation is asking Black families to surrender economic opportunity to subsidize a political fight. The other operation is building economic opportunity for Black families regardless of who is in office, what the Court rules, or what the maps look like. One is racial mobilization. The other is community building. TBR has been arguing for years that the second model is the one that actually changes Black material outcomes. The Killer Mike initiative is a small piece of that model. The NAACP boycott is a large piece of the first model. The contrast is not subtle. The question is which model the audience that needs both wants to invest in.

There is a citizenship cost in all of this. Reading a newsletter like this one is necessary but not sufficient. Showing up for your local school board, your county commission, your state legislative committee hearings, and your federal representative’s town halls is how you keep institutions accountable. Building the businesses, families, and community infrastructure that do not depend on political deliverance is how you build durable Black prosperity. Neither one of those is the work the NAACP is asking athletes to do this week. Both of them are the work TBR will keep arguing for.

If this newsletter gave you something you did not have before you read it, share it with one person today. That is how this grows. Not through algorithms. Not through advertising. Through trust.

✏️ A NOTE FROM BARRINGTON

No broadcast today. The news did not pause for that, either.

Two weeks ago this newsletter ran a piece arguing that redistricting in America has never really been about race. It is about power, and the race argument is the cover story both parties use to keep you from looking at the actual mechanism. The piece centered on the Supreme Court’s Callais decision. I told you the next chapters would land in Louisiana and Georgia.

They both did. This week.

On Tuesday, Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 369 into law. It makes most local elections in exactly five Georgia counties nonpartisan. Those five counties are the only ones in the state that voted majority Democratic in the 2024 presidential election. All five of their elected district attorneys are Black women. The bill leaves the partisan election system untouched in the other 154 counties. The same Tuesday, Louisiana’s state Senate committee voted to advance a new congressional map that eliminates one of its two majority-Black districts under the new Callais framework. Same week. Same mechanism. Different rooms.

We also have the federal gas tax holiday Trump proposed on Monday, the Federal Reserve transition with Kevin Warsh confirmed 54-45 to replace Powell, April inflation at 3.8 percent, and a Texas school enrollment collapse that should be on every Georgia parent’s radar. Plus the watch list. And one closing reminder about why so much of this lands the way it does.

🔥 LEAD STORY: KEMP JUST PROVED THE POINT

Five Counties. One Hundred Fifty-Four Untouched. All Five Have Black Women DAs. The Race Versus Power Argument Stopped Being Theoretical on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, May 12, Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 369 into law. The bill shifts elections for district attorneys, county commissioners, tax commissioners, superior court clerks, solicitors general, and other local offices in five metro Atlanta counties to nonpartisan races beginning in 2028. The five counties are Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton. Georgia has 159 counties total. The bill applies to five of them and leaves the other 154 alone.

Here are the things you need to know about those five counties to understand what this bill does. In the 2024 presidential election, Fulton County voted 71 percent Democratic. DeKalb voted 82 percent Democratic. Clayton voted 84 percent Democratic. Cobb and Gwinnett both leaned Democratic for the first time in recent cycles and have continued in that direction. All five elected district attorneys in those counties are Black women, and all five are Democrats. Fulton County’s DA is Fani Willis. DeKalb’s is Sherry Boston. The same Tuesday Kemp signed the bill, Willis and Boston issued a joint statement vowing to challenge the law in federal court.

Within hours of the signing, Georgia Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II released a statement: “Republicans just couldn’t beat 5 tough-on-crime Democratic Black women at the ballot box.” That is the framing the Democratic Party is going to run on this bill for the next two years. It is also a lazy framing, and the audience deserves better. The phrase “tough on crime” is a campaign talking point. The phrase “Black women” is a constituency. Strung together as a single sentence in a senator’s statement, what Jones is really saying is that Republicans targeted these elections because of who is currently winning them, and that the identity of the incumbents is the operative reason. The first half of that argument is correct. The second half is the cover story the Democratic Party always reaches for when these bills land, because identity grievance is easier to fundraise off than structural argument.

The structural argument is more damning than the identity argument and the Democratic Party knows it. Here is what HB 369 actually does. It targets the partisan label on the ballot in the only five Georgia counties where Republicans consistently lose. It removes the D and R from the ballot in those counties starting 2028. Voters who do not closely follow local politics will not know which party a county commissioner candidate belongs to. The candidates with name recognition, incumbency, or media spending will benefit. Most of the elected officials those advantages will erode happen to be Democrats. Some of them happen to be Black women. The race of those incumbents is real and relevant. The race of those incumbents is not the operating mechanism. If those five DAs were all white men Democrats, this bill still gets written, because the problem the Georgia GOP wanted to solve was not their race. The problem was that they kept winning.

Here is the procedural piece that should make every Georgia voter pay attention. HB 369 was originally a food truck regulation bill. It passed an earlier version of the Senate, was stripped down, and the elections overhaul language was added at the end of the session. The House passed the final version 93 to 64. The Senate followed shortly after. Kemp signed it on the final signing day of the last regular legislative session of his administration. The bill never got a full debate as an elections bill. It moved through the General Assembly under cover, on the last business day available, signed on the last day available, by a Governor in the last year of his term. That is not how legislation that affects voting in the state’s five largest counties is supposed to move. That is how legislation moves when the people advancing it know it cannot survive sunlight.

DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston gave the most direct quote of the week to WABE: “It does feel targeted when the commonalities that we share is that we are Black, that we are women, and that we are Democrats.” Boston has also said that changing the rules for district attorney elections likely requires a constitutional amendment under Georgia law, which means the courts will be the next stop and the law may be unconstitutional on its face. The lawsuit Willis and Boston have promised will be the test.

Now, here is the part the rest of the country is not going to give you straight. Two weeks ago, this newsletter ran a piece on the Supreme Court’s Callais decision making the argument that redistricting in America is not a race issue. It is a power issue. The race argument is the cover story both parties run to keep you from looking at the actual mechanism. The argument went further: both parties do this when they have power. The Republicans are doing it now in red states across the South. The Democrats did it last year in California and last week in Virginia. The mechanism is the same. Centralize power. Hide the mechanism in a procedural change. Defend it as good government. Wait out the lawsuit.

HB 369 proves that argument in a way no editorial column could. If this bill were really about good governance, as supporters claim, it would apply to all 159 Georgia counties. It does not. It applies to five. If it were really about getting party labels out of local races, as House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration said in March, it would apply to all 159 counties. It does not. It applies to five. The five counties happen to be the only five counties in Georgia where Republicans consistently lose. The five DAs whose elections are most directly affected happen to be Black women Democrats. The procedural cover is good governance. The actual mechanism is power consolidation. The argument was never theoretical. Tuesday made it concrete.

And here is the position TBR has held from day one and will not back away from now. The race framing both sides are about to run is the part of the operation that keeps it running. Democrats will frame HB 369 as racist voter suppression aimed at Black women. Republicans will frame it as Democrats playing the race card to protect their political incumbents. Both framings are true on the surface and both are missing the deeper story. The deeper story is that Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly decided their political problem was that Democrats kept winning in five counties, and they used procedural cover to weaken the incumbents who were beating them. The mechanism is power. Both parties want you mad about race because if you are mad about race, you are not mad about the mechanism. The mechanism is the same one both parties use when they have power. The Court ruled on it two weeks ago. Louisiana enacted it this week. Georgia just enacted it too.

Now we are going to say something this newsletter has been working toward for a long time, and this is the week to say it. The Democratic Party’s reliance on race as the catalyst to mobilize Black voters is getting old, it is outdated, and it is insulting to any Black voter who is actually paying attention to the politics of their state. For sixty years, the Democratic Party has used the racism narrative as the primary tool to generate political action from its most loyal voting bloc, and in those sixty years the material outcomes for Black Americans, particularly in the inner cities the party has governed without interruption for generations, have not meaningfully improved. The reading proficiency numbers have not improved. The single-parent home rates have not improved. The incarceration rates have not improved. The overall culture of the “community” has not bettered to produce the results the “community” has demanded that politics deliver for them. What has improved is the Democratic Party’s ability to fundraise off the next outrage, which is conveniently scheduled to arrive every election cycle. HB 369 is on schedule.

And the pander has a target. The Democratic Party panders specifically and consistently to Black women, who are by every measure the most loyal voting bloc the party has. In the 2024 election, 90 percent of Black women voted for Kamala Harris. The framing of Black women as “the backbone of the party” is repeated every cycle. The targeted outreach is built around them. The policy talking points reference them by name. Black men get none of this. Men in general get none of this. The same Democratic Party that built its modern brand on fighting racism and championing the so-called Black plight is structurally organized to serve the Black woman while leaving her counterpart out of the conversation entirely. The 2024 data shows the consequence. Trump won 21 percent of Black men in 2024, up from 13 percent in 2020 and 8 percent in 2016. That is the highest share of the Black male vote any Republican candidate has received in 48 years. The shift was not driven by Black men suddenly discovering an affinity for Trump. It was driven by Black men finally noticing that the party they had voted for at 86 percent in 2020 was not actually building anything for them.

For Black men to keep voting for a party that actively ignores them and treats their lived experience as expendable is, by any honest analysis, political self-harm. And the damage runs deeper than electoral math. The same Democratic Party has spent decades contributing to the institutional design that destabilized the Black family unit. The welfare structures built in the 1960s incentivized fathers out of the home by making government support contingent on the father not being present. Housing policy decisions, often well-intentioned but with documented unintended consequences, concentrated poverty in zip codes where social mobility became more difficult. And through all of that, the party that supported those policies has continued to position itself as the protector of Black America. The math has never matched the marketing. In 1965, when the Moynihan Report first warned about the breakdown of the Black family unit, 8 percent of all American children were born to unwed mothers. Today, that number is over 40 percent overall. Among Black Americans, it is over 70 percent. The party that has governed the Black community most consistently is the party that watched that number climb.

A note on the 1994 Crime Bill, because this newsletter is not going to dodge it. The Crime Bill is frequently cited by critics on the left as evidence of the Democratic Party’s betrayal of Black America. That criticism gets the history wrong. The Crime Bill was needed at the time. Many Black Americans supported it. Black pastors, Black mayors, and Black community leaders called for it because their neighborhoods were being destroyed by drug trafficking and violence. The bill did not incarcerate “men” or “Black men” as a category. The bill incarcerated people who committed crimes. The men who went to prison under the Crime Bill were the men who dealt drugs, the men who carried out violence, the men who made the choice that placed them on the wrong side of the law. And the cultural conversation that has tried to relitigate that fact for thirty years, by pointing to the crack versus powder cocaine sentencing disparity as if it changes the underlying truth, is exactly the kind of arrested development that supports the previous point. Both substances were illegal. Possessing either was a crime. Punishment followed because the law was broken. The disparity in sentence length is a fair policy critique. It is not a defense of the men who committed the crimes. Treating it as one, the way the conversation often does, is the cultural pattern that excuses behavior instead of confronting it. The Democratic Party has plenty to answer for on welfare structure, family policy, and the rhetorical use of Black America. The Crime Bill is not on that list, because the Crime Bill did what laws are supposed to do.

And then there is the part that should land hardest. The Democratic Party has, for two generations, propped up Black women socially, politically, and institutionally while simultaneously contributing to the conditions that undermined Black men. Black women now graduate college at higher rates than Black men. Black women now out-earn Black men in many urban markets at the entry-college-educated level. Those outcomes are not, in themselves, the problem. The problem is that they were generated in part by a party that built policy around the Black woman as the unit of political utility and the Black man as the unit of political liability. The result is an entire community in which the natural complementary partnership between the man and the woman has been replaced by a state-mediated relationship in which government programs do what fathers used to do, and the political party that built those programs takes credit every November for keeping the lights on. That arrangement is not Black liberation. That arrangement is Black dependency dressed up as Black solidarity. And the dressing has worn through.

The Democratic Party justifies all of this with one line: “at least we are not the party of racism.” That line has held the coalition together for sixty years. This newsletter is not an ad for the Republican Party. This newsletter is asking informed Black voters to face an unfortunate truth. The Democratic Party has done more measurable political damage to Black America in the last sixty years than any other institution in modern American politics, because the Democratic Party has been the institution Black Americans actually trusted to deliver. The trust was misplaced. The receipts are sixty years long. And the informed Black voter, the one who is paying attention to the math instead of the marketing, has been quietly noticing this for a long time. The 2024 numbers are the first time the noticing showed up in the exit polls. There will be more.

TBR is not the party of “pro-Black,” and this show is not asking any political party to provide for Black men, including the host. The host handles that himself. TBR is calling what it sees and stating what is obvious. The Democratic Party uses race as a turnout tool, panders to Black women as a constituency, ignores Black men as voters, and undermines the family structure that would actually fix the material conditions Black voters keep being told to be outraged about. The Republican Party uses procedural cover to entrench its own power and writes bills like HB 369 to weaken Democratic incumbents while pretending it is about good governance. Both parties are running operations. Neither one is on your side. Informed Black voters in particular deserve to be addressed as adults capable of seeing both operations for what they are, and capable of holding both parties accountable on the structural arguments, not the identity script.

WHAT TO DO: If you live in Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, or Clayton County, watch the joint lawsuit Fani Willis and Sherry Boston have promised to file. Federal court ruling will determine whether HB 369 takes effect in 2028 or gets blocked. If you have voted in those counties before, register for ballot tracking updates at mvp.sos.ga.gov and pay attention to local DA, county commission, and tax commissioner races in 2026 and 2028. The fact that the bill does not take effect until 2028 means there are two election cycles between now and implementation where the political and legal landscape can change. Call your state representative and state senator at legis.ga.gov and ask one question: did they vote for HB 369, and if so, why. Get the answer in writing.

⚖️ CIVIC WATCH: LOUISIANA JUST DREW THE MAP

SB 121 Removes One of Two Special Majority-Black Districts. The Reaction Tells You Everything About How Far Equal Treatment Has Drifted From the Original Civil Rights Goal.

Last week’s newsletter listed the Florida redistricting special session and the Louisiana map redraw as the top two things to watch. Louisiana moved first. Early Wednesday morning, the state Senate committee voted 4 to 3 to advance Senate Bill 121, a new congressional map proposed by Senator Jay Morris, a Republican from West Monroe. The map eliminates one of Louisiana’s two majority-Black congressional districts. Under the proposed map, Louisiana would have one majority-Black district stretching from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and the other five would be majority-white. The committee meeting ran 10 hours and ended around 4:30 a.m. The full Senate is expected to vote on the bill Thursday before sending it to a House committee next week.

The collateral consequence is pointed. The new map pits two sitting Democratic congressmen, U.S. Representative Troy Carter and U.S. Representative Cleo Fields, against each other for the same seat. Both are Black. Both are incumbents in districts that currently elect Black members of Congress. Under SB 121, only one of them survives. The map killed a competing proposal from Senator Ed Price, a Democrat from Gonzales, which would have kept two opportunity districts where Black voters could elect candidates of their choice. The Price map was the one widely supported by residents at the hearing. It did not get the committee votes.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended all U.S. House elections in Louisiana on April 30, citing the need for a new map after the Callais ruling. The legislative session ends June 1. Lawmakers are racing to approve the new map before the session closes. Civil rights groups have already signaled they will challenge SB 121 in federal court. The legal framework they have to fight under is now Callais, which requires plaintiffs to satisfy the rewritten Gingles test that this newsletter walked through two weeks ago. That is the legal terrain. It is the terrain produced by the Supreme Court ruling that the structural requirement to draw additional majority-Black districts in states with sufficient Black populations is no longer constitutionally automatic.

Now here is where this newsletter is going to depart from what every other outlet is going to tell you about the Louisiana map this week. The Voting Rights Act is not dead. The Voting Rights Act still prohibits voting discrimination on the basis of race. Nobody in Louisiana is going to be stopped from voting because they are Black. Nobody in Georgia is going to be stopped from voting because they are Black. The equal-treatment protections that the Civil Rights Movement actually fought for, the right to register and cast a ballot without poll taxes or literacy tests or state-level suppression, are intact. What changed under Callais is not the equal-treatment law. What changed is a layered structural mechanism, the Gingles test, that required states to draw additional majority-minority districts on top of neutral redistricting. That was preferential treatment in the structural sense. A specific racial group received a guarantee that no other racial group received: the legal entitlement to a minimum number of legislative districts engineered to favor their preferred candidates. Removing that preferential layer is not the death of the Voting Rights Act. It is the minimization of a distinct advantage that no other group ever had.

Thomas Sowell said it best, and the line carries the whole argument: “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” That is what is happening in the legal commentary this week. The reaction to losing the special structural advantage is being framed as the death of a civil rights law. It is not. The 1965 Civil Rights Movement did not march for the right to additional majority-Black congressional districts in perpetuity. The movement marched for the right to vote on equal terms with every other American. That right has been secured for sixty years. The structural advantage layered on top of it was a separate construction, built decades after the foundational law, and now legally minimized. And the reaction from political leadership, from advocacy groups, from a substantial portion of legal commentary, is to call the minimization of preferential treatment a civil rights catastrophe. The honest read is the opposite. Equal treatment was always the stated goal. Equal treatment is what was just enforced.

There is a deeper irony in the political reaction that should not get past us. The Democratic Party and its allied advocacy groups have spent sixty years framing themselves as the party of civil rights and equality. The Callais ruling moved the country closer to the equal-treatment standard the Civil Rights Movement actually fought for, by removing a structural preference granted to one racial group and not others. The political response from the party that built its modern identity on equality is to call this ruling racist, to call it the death of voting rights, to fundraise off it. That response is not internally consistent with the equality framework the party claims to defend. It is, however, internally consistent with the operation this newsletter has been naming for the last three weeks. Use race as the mobilization tool. Frame any move that reduces the structural preference as racial harm. Keep the coalition activated through grievance. Repeat.

The Georgia connection is direct. Under the old framework, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones ruled in 2023 that Georgia’s congressional map violated Section 2. The legislature was forced to redraw. A majority-Black district was added west of Atlanta. Under the new equal-treatment framework, that ruling does not happen and the map that exists today is open to legal challenge. Georgia’s next redraw cycle, whether driven by litigation or by the 2030 census, will operate under Callais. The 9-to-5 Republican delegation split that the 2023 redraw preserved is now legally vulnerable in either direction. What Georgia voters need to understand is that the framework that produced the current map was the same preferential structural framework that just got minimized in Louisiana. Whether the Georgia map gets challenged this decade or after the 2030 census, it will be litigated under a standard that no longer treats one racial group as legally entitled to engineered districts.

WHAT TO DO: Track the Louisiana lawsuits that follow SB 121 through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Fifth Circuit is the federal appellate court that hears Louisiana cases. Whatever that court decides will set the precedent that applies to Georgia cases as well, because Georgia is also in the Eleventh Circuit but the legal reasoning will travel. For Georgia voters specifically, watch for any signals from the Georgia General Assembly about whether they intend to revisit the current congressional map before the 2030 census. The political incentive to do so is now legally available in a way it was not three weeks ago.

And this is the part that needs to be named plainly. The people running the “this is a blow to the Voting Rights Act” framing know it is not a blow to the Voting Rights Act. The people running the “this is racism toward Black Americans” framing know it is not racism toward Black Americans. The legal scholars, party operatives, advocacy directors, and elected officials shaping this conversation are not misreading the ruling. They are deliberately misrepresenting it. Because the truth of what is actually happening, two political parties jostling for partisan advantage by drawing maps that favor their own incumbents and dilute their opponents, does not move voters. The racial framing does. The constitutional framing does not generate small-dollar donations. The civil rights framing does. The technical legal framing of what the Gingles test actually required and how Callais altered it puts an audience to sleep. The framing that Black voters are about to lose representation makes them call their congressman. So the operatives running this conversation made a choice. They chose the framing that produces political action, even though the framing that produces political action is not the framing that is true. This is what the Lead of this newsletter is also about. The mechanism is power. The race framing is the cover story. The Voting Rights Act story this week is not an exception to that pattern. It is the cleanest example of it the country has seen in a decade.

🏘️ GEORGIA WATCH: TWO GAS TAXES, FIVE DAYS, AND A FEDERAL CIRCUS

Your State Suspension Expires Monday. Trump Proposed a Federal Holiday on Monday. The Two Numbers Do Not Add Up to Relief.

Five days from the date this newsletter lands in your inbox, the Georgia state gas tax suspension expires. On May 19, the 33.3 cents per gallon state motor fuel tax that has been suspended since March 20 will come back unless Governor Kemp acts. Last week’s newsletter walked through what that means and why it matters. This week the federal angle changed the calculus. On Monday, May 11, President Trump proposed pausing the federal gas tax. That tax is 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel. Republican lawmakers introduced legislation within hours. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri proposed a 90-day suspension. The Senate Majority Leader signaled openness to hearing the President out.

Here is the math Georgia drivers should walk into next week with. The state gas tax suspension currently saves you 33.3 cents per gallon. The federal gas tax suspension, if Congress passes it, would save you another 18.4 cents per gallon. Combined maximum theoretical savings: 51.7 cents per gallon. The actual price increase since the Iran war began on February 28 has been about $1.50 per gallon. So the absolute best case scenario, with both tax suspensions in place, recovers about a third of the war’s pump price impact. That is the best case.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, told CNBC that the actual consumer-facing savings from a federal gas tax pause is closer to 10 to 12 cents per gallon after retailers and distributors take their margins. “Americans would take it, but it’s really on the margin,” Zandi said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put it sharper: “Eighteen cents of gas tax relief a gallon doesn’t even come close to the $1.50 gas price increase from this war, and Republicans need to stop pretending that it does.” That is the political opposition position. It is also mathematically correct. A gas tax holiday at the federal level is a political talking point that returns less to consumers than the political class is claiming, and the trucking and construction industries are already lobbying against it because of the hit to the Highway Trust Fund.

A five-month federal suspension would reduce the Highway Trust Fund revenue by $17 billion, about 46 percent of its annual total. That is the same Highway Trust Fund that pays for federal road construction, maintenance, public transit, and the interstate system Georgia drivers use every day. The state-level version of this argument is the same. Georgia’s 33.3 cent state gas tax funds GDOT. Every month the state suspension continues, GDOT loses revenue. Every month the federal suspension would continue, the Highway Trust Fund loses revenue. The trade-off is real. Cheaper gas at the pump this summer in exchange for slower road and infrastructure work for the rest of the decade.

On the Georgia state expiration on May 19, Governor Kemp has still not announced publicly whether he will extend the state suspension. His office, when asked, has declined to comment on a specific plan. Georgia’s average price for regular unleaded sits at $4.18 per gallon as of this morning, up from $4.05 when last week’s newsletter ran. The national average has climbed to $4.54. Diesel is over $5 in most Georgia metros. The 33.3 cents per gallon is the only reason Georgia is below the national average. If Kemp lets it expire Monday, Georgia drivers will see roughly a 25 to 30 cent jump at the pump within the first week, depending on how quickly stations pass through the tax. That is not a forecast. That is arithmetic.

WHAT TO DO: Two calls this week. Call your federal representative at house.gov and ask whether they support the federal gas tax holiday Trump proposed and what they plan to vote on if it comes to the floor. Get the answer in writing. Call your state representative and state senator at legis.ga.gov and ask whether they support extending HB 1199, the state gas tax suspension, past May 19. Get that answer in writing too. If both answers are yes, the maximum pump relief Georgia drivers can expect this summer is in the 35 to 50 cent range, depending on how distributors pass it through. If either or both are no, the math gets worse fast.

💰 ECONOMIC DESK: POWELL OUT, WARSH IN, INFLATION UP, AND THE PRESIDENT SAID THE QUIET PART

Three Economic Data Points That Landed in the Same 72 Hours. One Quote That Ties Them Together.

Wednesday afternoon, the Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as the 17th chair of the Federal Reserve by a vote of 54 to 45. Every Republican voted yes. Only one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, crossed over to support him. That is the least bipartisan confirmation vote in the history of the Federal Reserve. Jerome Powell’s term as chair ends Friday, May 15. Powell is staying on the Board of Governors through January 2028, the first time a Fed chair has not resigned from the board upon transition since Marriner Eccles in 1948. Last week’s newsletter walked through why that matters. This week it became official.

Warsh inherits an institution and an economy in trouble. April inflation came in at 3.8 percent, up from 3.3 percent in March. Energy costs accounted for the bulk of the increase, with energy prices up 18 percent year over year. The Federal Reserve target is 2 percent. The gap is widening, not closing. Markets are pricing zero rate cuts for the rest of 2026. Warsh has historically been a critic of the Fed for moving too slowly to fight inflation. The position he inherits is one where the political pressure on him from Trump is to cut rates, the economic pressure from the data is to hold or raise, and the institutional pressure from the other Fed governors is also to hold. He may have to do the opposite of what got him the job. Whether he can pull that off determines whether the dollar holds value through the midterms.

And then there was the moment that made the rest of the week make sense. Tuesday morning, before boarding Air Force One for Beijing, the President was asked by reporters whether Americans’ financial struggles were motivating his push for a deal with Iran. His answer, on the record, on tape: “Not even a little bit.” He continued: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” That is the quote. That is what he said. A new CNN poll from Tuesday shows 70 percent of Americans disapprove of the President’s handling of the economy, the highest of his political career. 77 percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say his policies have driven up the cost of living in their own communities. Tuesday’s inflation report showed prices outpacing wages for the first time in three years. Consumer borrowing posted its biggest monthly jump in March since late 2022. The personal savings rate fell to 3.6 percent in March, the lowest since 2022. Consumer sentiment is at recessionary levels even as GDP growth remains positive on paper.

The President’s answer was that none of that was on his mind. The follow-up the press did not press hard enough on is the obvious one: if not American financial pain, then what exactly is the political class focused on this week? The President was in Beijing meeting with President Xi. Senate Republicans were debating $220 million in security upgrades for the new White House ballroom. House Republicans were holding the line on full ICE funding while the DHS shutdown enters its third month. The Senate Finance Committee was advancing healthcare reconciliation. The Federal Reserve was changing leadership for the first time in nearly a decade. None of that is about the cost of gas, the cost of groceries, the cost of credit card debt, or the cost of becoming a doctor. None of it.

TBR has been making this argument for months in different language. The argument is that both political parties are increasingly disconnected from the financial pain of the people they govern. The Trump quote is the cleanest articulation of that disconnection that has come out of any administration in recent memory. Whether you support the President or not, the words he chose mean exactly what they say. The financial situation of Americans is not a priority. The financial situation of Americans was always the campaign promise that got him reelected. The financial situation of Americans is what is currently collapsing. And the President has now said publicly, on tape, that it is not what he is thinking about. That is the quote that will be in every Democratic ad through November.

WHAT TO DO: Track three things this week. First, the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling on whether the $220 million ballroom security provision survives the reconciliation vote-a-rama. Second, Warsh’s first public remarks as Fed chair, expected within days of his Friday transition, to see whether he signals any independence from Trump on rate policy. Third, the next Iran round, with Trump in Beijing and his team reportedly discussing military escalation. If Operation Project Freedom resumes in the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices spike. If a deal lands, oil prices drop slowly. The economy you live in over the next 60 days runs through that decision.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: The President said the quiet part out loud. The Fed transition is happening. Inflation is climbing. The polling is collapsing. The midterms are six months away. Either the administration corrects course on prices in the next 90 days or the political bill comes due in November. The math is the math. The politics is the politics. The American household is in the middle of both.

🏫 EDUCATION DESK: TEXAS JUST LOST 76,000 STUDENTS

First Non-Pandemic Enrollment Drop in Nearly Four Decades. The Demographic Story Is Direct. Georgia Should Be Paying Attention.

Texas public schools enrolled about 76,000 fewer students this academic year compared to the year prior. That is the first non-pandemic enrollment decline in Texas in nearly four decades. The policy research group Texas 2036 analyzed the state’s enrollment data and projected that about 100,000 fewer students will enroll over the next few years if the trend continues. The story is buried in education trade publications and has barely made national coverage. It should be the headline.

The demographic composition of the loss is the part that matters. Hispanic students accounted for the overwhelming majority of the decline. The trend has multiple drivers: declining birth rates, families leaving Texas due to political and economic conditions, families moving children to private school or homeschool through state-funded voucher programs, and immigration enforcement pressure that has chilled school enrollment in mixed-status families. The mechanisms are different but the outcome is the same: a smaller public school system serving fewer of the children who needed it most.

The Georgia parallel is not a hypothetical. Atlanta Public Schools has been losing enrollment for years. DeKalb County has been losing enrollment. The state has been expanding the Georgia Promise Scholarship voucher program, which pulls students out of public schools and into private alternatives funded with public money. Georgia’s Hispanic student population in metro Atlanta has grown significantly in the last decade and is now subject to the same federal immigration enforcement pressure that has chilled enrollment in Texas. The trend that just hit Texas is structurally available in Georgia within two cycles. Whether it actually lands depends on policy choices that are still being made in the legislature and at the local school board level.

Here is what nobody in the education debate is asking out loud. When a public school district loses 5 percent of its student body in one year, the per-pupil funding formula does not adjust fast enough to protect the schools that remain. Buildings stay open. Teachers stay employed. Bus routes still run. But the funding shrinks, and the budget pressure falls hardest on the schools serving the kids who could not leave: special education students, English language learners, kids without family resources to move districts or pay for alternatives. The departures look voluntary from the outside. The consequences for the kids who stay are not voluntary at all. They are absorbing the cost of a system being hollowed out one family at a time. That is the slow-motion version of the state takeover stories TBR has covered from Memphis to Indianapolis. It looks like opportunity. It functions like extraction.

WHAT TO DO: Pull the most recent enrollment data for your Georgia school district from the Georgia Department of Education at gadoe.org. Compare it to the enrollment from three years ago. If the number has dropped by more than 3 percent, ask your local school board at the next public meeting what the financial impact has been and what the plan is. If your child attends one of those schools, find out whether class sizes have grown, whether teachers have been cut, and whether any programs have been eliminated. Vouchers, charter expansions, and immigration enforcement are all national stories. The version that hits your child’s classroom is local.

📡 WATCH LIST: WHAT TO TRACK NEXT WEEK

These are the developments TBR will be monitoring as the new week opens.

Georgia gas tax expiration on May 19. Five days out. Kemp has not announced. If he extends, your wallet gets four to six more weeks of relief. If he lets it expire, you pay 33.3 cents more per gallon starting Tuesday. This is the most time-sensitive Georgia story of the week.

Federal gas tax holiday vote count. Sen. Hawley’s 90-day suspension bill is in the Senate. House Speaker Mike Johnson has not signaled support. Trucking and construction industry lobbying is already running against it. Watch whether any version reaches a floor vote before Memorial Day weekend.

Iran escalation after the Beijing trip. Trump’s advisers are reportedly discussing military options to break the negotiation deadlock with Tehran. Israeli officials are on high alert this weekend. If Operation Project Freedom resumes or a new bombing campaign launches, oil prices spike fast.

Willis-Boston HB 369 lawsuit filing. Joint federal lawsuit promised within days of the Tuesday signing. The constitutional argument is whether changing district attorney election rules in five specific counties requires a state constitutional amendment. Northern District of Georgia is the likely venue.

White House ballroom funding vote-a-rama. Sen. Jacky Rosen is offering amendments to strip the $220 million in security upgrades from the reconciliation package. Watch whether vulnerable Republicans break ranks under pressure from the affordability message Democrats are running.

Florida redistricting special session. Opened this week. Watch the map. If Florida draws three or more new GOP-favored seats under the Callais framework, the ruling has produced its first two downstream consequences in three weeks.

Warsh’s first public remarks as Fed chair. Friday transition. Expect a statement on monetary policy posture within days. Whether he signals independence from the White House on rates determines whether the dollar holds value through November.

🧠 FINAL WORD

There is a quiet pattern in this issue that I want to name before I close.

Every major story this week, when you strip the politics out, is about the same thing: institutional consolidation. Kemp consolidated election authority in five Georgia counties by removing the partisan labels that previously gave voters information about who they were electing. Louisiana consolidated congressional district authority by drawing a map that eliminates Black political representation while protecting Republican incumbents. The Senate consolidated Federal Reserve authority by confirming a chair on a near party-line vote in a country where Fed independence has been a 75-year bipartisan norm. The President consolidated his own political bandwidth by stating publicly that the financial situation of Americans is not what he thinks about. Each move was procedural. Each move was defended on technical grounds. Each move centralized power and weakened the people on the other end of it.

The reason TBR keeps making the race-versus-power argument is not because race does not matter. Race matters. The five DAs in those five Georgia counties are Black women, and the bill targeting their elections is racially loaded by every honest measure. But race is the weapon. Power is the target. If you fight the weapon and ignore the target, you spend the next 20 years arguing about whether HB 369 is racist while the same mechanism gets used in different counties, different states, different elections, under different cover stories. The mechanism keeps working because the audience never looks past the weapon. That is the operation.

There is a citizenship cost in this. Reading a newsletter like this one is necessary but not sufficient. Calling your representative, attending your local meetings, asking your county officials questions on the record, getting answers in writing about HB 369 and the gas tax and the school enrollment numbers in your district, these are the mechanisms by which institutions stay accountable to the people they are supposed to serve. Without that pressure, nothing corrects on its own. The people doing the consolidating do not have an incentive to stop.

If this newsletter gave you something you did not have before you read it, share it with one person today. That is how this grows. Not through algorithms. Not through advertising. Through trust.

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Podcast: Apple Podcasts and Spotify, search The Barrington Report

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio, atltalks.com, Apple, Google, Alexa, Apple CarPlay

The Pain of Truth

✏️ A NOTE FROM BARRINGTON

I took the broadcast off last week. The news did not.

Two months ago, this newsletter launched with a war that had just started. The Iran war is now in its eleventh week. The Strait of Hormuz is still blockaded. National gas average sits at $4.52 today. Georgia is at $4.05 because the state gas tax suspension is still in effect, and that suspension expires in 8 days on May 19. Governor Kemp has not said publicly whether he will extend it. We get to that story in this newsletter.

But the bigger story this week is the one most people are not yet tracking. Starting July 1, the federal government is rewriting how Americans pay for medical school, dental school, pharmacy school, and a dozen other professional degrees. The numbers do not work. The math creates a 30 percent gap between what the federal government will lend and what the average medical degree actually costs. The students who will not be able to fill that gap will overwhelmingly be the students who already had the hardest time getting in. And the doctors who will not exist in 2032 because of a vote that happened in 2025 will not be coming back to neighborhoods like the ones I teach in. That is the lead.

We also cover what just happened with Fulton County and the Department of Justice, which is the direct continuation of the Voting Rights Act story we ran last week. State takeover updates from Indianapolis and Connecticut. Governor Kemp signed nine education bills on May 5, and at least two of them deserve real attention from every Georgia parent. The watch list for next week. And one closing reminder about what a citizen actually owes in a moment like this one.

🔥 LEAD STORY: THE COUNTRY JUST DECIDED NOT TO MAKE ANY MORE DOCTORS

The Federal Loan Caps Hit July 1. The Numbers Do Not Work. The People Who Lose Are the Ones Who Already Had the Hardest Path.

On July 1, 2026, two changes to the federal student loan system take effect under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in 2025. The Grad PLUS loan program, which allowed graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance, gets eliminated for new borrowers. And federal lending for everyone else gets capped: $20,500 per year and $100,000 lifetime for graduate students, $50,000 per year and $200,000 lifetime for students in 11 designated professional programs including medicine, law, dentistry, and pharmacy. Per the Association of American Medical Colleges, median tuition at a four-year public medical school is $298,000. At a private medical school it is $408,000. Those numbers are tuition only. They do not include living expenses, fees, books, board exam costs, or any of the other actual costs of becoming a doctor.

The math does not work and was not designed to. The median medical program now costs $72,948 per year. The federal cap is $50,000 per year. The gap is $29,180 per year, every year, for four years. That gap has to come from somewhere. The somewhere it used to come from, Grad PLUS, gets eliminated. The somewhere it has to come from now is the private student loan market.

Here is the part the headlines are not saying out loud. According to research cited by Axios from the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, roughly 40 percent of Americans, including nearly two-thirds of Pell Grant recipients, are not eligible for private student loans at all. Pell Grant recipients are historically people of color and lower-income students. Peter Granville of The Century Foundation put it plainly: the disproportionate exclusion is not a coincidence. It is baked into unequal access to financial resources. And the downstream consequence is exactly what you would expect. The kids who would have gone to medical school, gone home, and become doctors in the communities they came from, will not be doing that. Not because they were not smart enough. Because they could not get a loan.

Georgia gets hit harder than most states. Morehouse School of Medicine, founded in 1975 with the explicit mission of training physicians who would return to underserved communities and the only historically Black medical school in the Southeast, is a Pell-heavy institution by design. Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, designed to produce primary care doctors for rural Georgia, is similarly structured. The Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University is the state’s largest medical school by enrollment. Every one of these institutions exists, in part, to address the physician shortage in Georgia, which is one of the worst in the country and concentrated in rural counties and majority-minority neighborhoods. The students who go to those schools, and graduate from those schools, and come home to practice medicine in the communities those schools were built to serve, are the students this rule change will price out first.

The American Hospital Association told Axios the rule will discourage students from entering health care professions because they cannot afford it. The American Association of Nurse Practitioners said it will stifle the pipeline. Jennifer Zhang at Protect Borrowers called the rules “disastrous” long term. The Education Department spokesperson said schools charge “virtually unlimited tuition” because of federal loan availability. Even if that argument were true, and the data does not support it, the people paying the price for the policy correction are not the universities. The people paying the price are the kids who would have become doctors and now will not, and the patients those doctors would have treated and now will not.

This is what TBR has been writing about for years under a different frame. Family structure. Community continuity. The doctors and nurses who come back to their neighborhoods are the same people who anchor those neighborhoods. They serve on school boards. They run for office. They mentor the next generation. When you remove the financial path for a generation of kids to become professionals, you do not just lose the doctors. You lose the community infrastructure those doctors would have built. That is not a side effect. That is the system functioning as designed.

WHAT TO DO: If you have a child currently in medical school, dental school, pharmacy school, or any graduate professional program, the 3-year transition exception protects existing borrowers. They can continue under the old Grad PLUS terms for three more academic years or to degree completion, whichever comes first. If you have a child planning to start in fall 2026, the new caps apply. Talk to the school’s financial aid office about scholarship options and private lender qualification before committing. If you are a Georgia voter, call your federal representative at house.gov and ask one question on the record: will they support a legislative fix that exempts shortage-area healthcare programs from the cap?

⚖️ CIVIC WATCH: FULTON COUNTY SAID NO TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THIS WEEK

The DOJ Wants the Names of Nearly 3,000 Georgia Election Workers. Fulton County Said No. Here Is Why This Is the Voting Rights Act Story Continued.

On April 20, the Department of Justice issued a federal grand jury subpoena to the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections demanding the names, addresses, and phone numbers of nearly 3,000 Georgians who served as election workers and volunteers during the 2020 presidential election. On May 5, Fulton County filed a motion to quash that subpoena in federal court. On May 6, the deadline to comply, the county did not hand over the records.

Fulton County’s filing called the subpoena “the latest effort to target and harass [President Donald Trump]’s perceived political enemies.” The board’s lawyers argued the demand threatens the First Amendment rights of election workers and will chill their participation in elections, and that it unreasonably interferes with Georgia’s sovereign authority to administer elections. Gowri Ramachandran of the Brennan Center for Justice told the Georgia Recorder that the subpoena appears to be “a fishing expedition or even an attempt to intimidate or harass these workers.” She added that it is part of a broader push by the administration to nationalize elections, which the Constitution assigns to the states.

This subpoena is the continuation of a longer pattern. In January, the FBI raided Fulton County’s election hub and seized roughly 700 boxes of 2020 election documents. That raid was based on a warrant application that, per CNN reporting, leaned on previously debunked theories of election fraud. Fulton County sued to get the documents back. That lawsuit is still pending in federal court. The April subpoena, which lands six years after the 2020 election was certified, the recounts were completed, and Joe Biden’s Georgia victory was confirmed by multiple audits, is the next chapter in the same operation.

Last week, this newsletter walked through the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and removed the legal floor that has protected minority voting power for forty years. The Fulton subpoena is what comes downstream of that ruling. When the constitutional protections at the top of the legal architecture get weakened, the pressure on local election administrators at the bottom gets heavier. Election workers in Fulton County, the majority of whom are Black women, are now being told that their personal information is being demanded by the Department of Justice as part of a federal investigation into an election that ended six years ago. That is not legal accountability. That is intimidation by paperwork. And it works exactly the way it is supposed to work, because the next time those workers are asked to volunteer for an election, some of them will decide it is not worth it.

Now, the position TBR holds and the rest of the country will not. This is not a Trump problem and it is not a Republican problem. It is a power problem. When a Democratic administration weaponized the Department of Justice against political opponents, this newsletter would call that out the same way. The institutions of federal law enforcement are not supposed to be tools for either party to settle scores from a previous election. They are supposed to enforce the law without fear or favor. When they stop doing that, regardless of who is in office, the country loses something that takes a generation to rebuild. The people defending the subpoena now will be furious when the next administration uses the same tools against their side. They always are. They never learn.

WHAT TO DO: Track Fulton County’s motion to quash in federal court. The case is in the Northern District of Georgia. The DOJ has been given time to respond. The ruling will set the precedent for whether federal grand jury subpoenas can be used as fishing expeditions against state and local election workers in future cycles. If you are a Georgia voter, call your county election office and ask whether your county has received any similar subpoenas. If you have ever served as a poll worker in Georgia, the Georgia Secretary of State maintains information on your rights when interacting with federal investigators.

🏘️ GEORGIA WATCH: YOUR GAS TAX SUSPENSION EXPIRES IN 8 DAYS

Kemp Has Not Said Whether He Will Extend It. Gas Is Already at $4.05. The Math Is Going to Get Worse.

On March 20, Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 1199 into law, suspending Georgia’s 33.3-cent state motor fuel tax through May 19. That suspension expires in 8 days. Governor Kemp has not announced publicly whether he plans to extend it. His office, when asked by Channel 2 Action News last week, declined to comment on a specific plan.

Here is where things stand this morning. Georgia’s average price for regular unleaded sits at $4.05 per gallon per AAA, up from $3.71 when this newsletter covered the original suspension on April 16, and up 34 cents in just the last week. The most expensive metro markets in the state are Athens at $4.15, Atlanta at $4.14, and Gainesville at $4.12. Diesel is at $5.16. The national average is $4.52. Georgia is still cheaper than the national average for one reason and one reason only: the gas tax suspension. Without it, Georgia would be at or above the national average right now. On May 20, that 33.3 cents comes back unless Kemp acts. That is a $5 to $6 increase on every fill-up. Multiplied across every working family in this state.

This is the moment when state-level political accountability stops being theoretical. Kemp had the political cover to suspend the tax originally because Iran was launching attacks and the political pressure was overwhelming. The Iran war is now in its eleventh week. Pump prices have continued to climb, not fall. JPMorgan analysts and GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan now project that gas will not return to pre-war prices until early or mid 2027 even if a peace deal closes the Strait of Hormuz tomorrow. The structural recovery takes that long because of how oil markets, shipping schedules, and retail inventory work. So the question facing Kemp on May 19 is not whether the original temporary suspension expired on its scheduled date. The question is whether he is going to let a 33.3 cent per gallon tax snap back on every Georgian during a price spike that the federal government cannot stop and the state government has zero ability to influence.

There is also a separate Georgia angle to this story that has not been covered well. The state gas tax funds the Georgia Department of Transportation budget. Every month the tax is suspended, GDOT loses revenue, which means deferred road maintenance, deferred bridge inspections, and deferred capital projects. That is the trade-off. Cheaper gas at the pump in exchange for slower work on infrastructure your tax dollars normally fund. It is a real trade-off and any honest analysis has to acknowledge it. But the question for May 19 is not whether the trade-off is worth it in theory. The question is whether the legislature is going to face Georgia voters at the gas pump in June with the answer “we let it expire and your gas just went up 33 cents because we needed to make sure the road salt budget was funded.”

WHAT TO DO: Call your state representative and state senator at legis.ga.gov. Ask them one specific question on the record: do they support extending the HB 1199 gas tax suspension past May 19, and if so, by how long? Get the answer in writing. Then watch what they actually vote on. The Governor’s office can be reached at 404-656-1776 or at gov.georgia.gov/contact-us. If you cannot afford another 33 cents per gallon, the people making this decision need to hear from you before May 19, not after.

🏫 EDUCATION DESK: WHAT’S HAPPENING IN GEORGIA’S CLASSROOMS

The State-Level Takeover Blueprint Is on the Move. Indianapolis Just Created a New Pro-Charter Board. Connecticut Just Regulated Homeschooling.

Different States. Different Parties. Same Mechanism.

Two weeks ago this newsletter walked through Tennessee Senate Bill 714 and the state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. The argument was that the Tennessee model is a blueprint that travels. This week, two additional data points confirm that the blueprint is in motion.

In Indianapolis, the Indiana state legislature this spring created the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, a new and controversial body that will help pay for charter and district school buildings, create a busing system that includes charter students, and assume oversight functions that previously belonged to the elected Indianapolis Public Schools board. Indianapolis already had one of the most charter-friendly school environments in the country. The new board pushes that further by consolidating budget and infrastructure authority into a state-created entity that sits above the locally elected board. Same mechanism as Memphis. Different political flavor. The board is pro-charter rather than pro-state-school, but the underlying move is identical: take authority away from locally elected school officials and concentrate it in an appointed or state-created body.

In Connecticut, the state Senate this week passed House Bill 5468 on a 22-14 party-line vote, imposing Connecticut’s first regulations on homeschooling. Republicans opposed the bill at every stage. Homeschooling families backed by a large and vocal coalition pushed back throughout the legislative process. The state passed it anyway. The bill imposes registration requirements, curriculum reporting, and oversight mechanisms on homeschooling families that did not previously exist in Connecticut law. Again, the mechanism is the same. State authority moving into a domain that was previously controlled at a lower level, in this case the family.

Now the position TBR holds. Both of these moves can be defended on policy grounds. Indianapolis can argue that the new board solves real problems around school funding equity. Connecticut can argue that homeschool regulation prevents documented cases of child neglect. Those arguments have merit. But the consistent pattern across Memphis, Indianapolis, and Connecticut is not about whether the specific policy is good or bad. The pattern is about who decides. Every one of these moves takes authority away from a more local level and concentrates it at the state. And every one of these moves makes it harder for families and communities to push back if they disagree with the decisions the state makes once it has the authority.

Kemp Just Signed Nine Education Bills. The Two That Matter Most Are Already Reshaping Your Child’s Classroom.

Georgia Got One Right. Now Georgia Parents Have to Make Sure the Implementation Lands.

On May 5, Governor Brian Kemp signed nine education bills into law in a single ceremony alongside Speaker Jon Burns. The bills cover literacy, math instruction, classroom technology, teacher pathways, and graduation requirements. Two of them deserve attention from every Georgia parent, and the rest are worth knowing about.

HB 1009: Cell phones banned in Georgia high schools. Last week this newsletter walked through the Illinois bill restricting classroom phone use and made the prediction that the Georgia version was already drafted somewhere. The prediction was wrong about one thing: the Georgia version was not drafted somewhere. It was already passed and waiting on the Governor’s desk. HB 1009, sponsored by Representative Scott Hilton, extends the existing K-8 personal electronic device ban from HB 340 signed in 2025 to cover grades 9 through 12. By next school year, every public K-12 classroom in Georgia will operate under a personal device restriction. Georgia is now ahead of Illinois, ahead of New York, ahead of most of the country on this. The research has been clear for years and Georgia just acted on it. As an American Government teacher who has watched the daily classroom impact of those devices for the last decade, this one is overdue and correct.

HB 1193: The Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026. Sponsored by Representative Chris Erwin and championed by Speaker Burns and First Lady Marty Kemp. The bill creates a grant program to hire a literacy coach in every elementary school in the state, expands kindergarten offerings, creates a statewide literacy task force, and empowers the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement to produce a state literacy plan. Georgia’s reading proficiency numbers have been a slow-moving catastrophe for years, particularly in third and fourth grade where the data shows whether a child is reading to learn or still learning to read. The structural fix has always been instructional capacity. Literacy coaches in every elementary school is the right structural answer. The question is execution, funding sustainability, and whether the coaches end up in the schools that need them most or the schools that already have the most resources to attract them. That distinction will determine whether this bill closes the gap or widens it.

The rest of the package, briefly. HB 1030, the Math Matters Act, requires at least 60 minutes of core math instruction per day in grades four and five, adopts content standards for advanced math in grades eight through ten, and automatically enrolls high-achieving math students in advanced courses in grades six through ten. HB 907 and HB 1107 tighten transparency requirements for completion schools and create performance measures for teacher preparation programs respectively. HB 1123 requires schools with after-school programs to extend those programs to pre-K students. HB 1284 requires school boards to issue diplomas to high school students who receive a terminal diagnosis and are in end-of-life care. SB 148 authorizes local boards to offer hunting safety instruction, expands sick-to-personal-leave conversions for teachers, and creates a pilot program on outdoor learning spaces. SB 150 extends through 2030 the existing Return-to-Work program that eases pathways for Georgia teachers to come back to the profession, particularly in high-need areas.

Here is the TBR analysis on the package as a whole. The Georgia General Assembly and the Governor moved on substance this session in a way that most state legislatures did not. Phones out of classrooms. Literacy coaches funded. Daily math instruction protected. Teacher return pathways extended. These are not flashy bills. None of them generated cable news segments. All of them will affect more Georgia children’s classroom days starting in August than any of the federal stories in this newsletter combined. Credit where it is earned. The package is good policy.

The complication is the same complication that runs through every state-level education move TBR covers: the bills only matter if the implementation reaches the schools that need them most. The literacy coach grant program will be administered through the Department of Education and the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. Which districts apply, which districts get funded, which districts can recruit and retain qualified coaches, all of those decisions get made downstream of the signing ceremony. The K-8 phone ban from 2025 has already been implemented unevenly across districts depending on whether the district leadership backs the policy and whether enforcement falls equally across schools. The high school ban will face the same implementation gap. Atlanta Public Schools and DeKalb County will implement differently. Fulton and Gwinnett will implement differently than rural districts that have less administrative capacity to enforce.

The system is functioning as designed. The design produced good legislation this session. The implementation is where Georgia parents have to stay engaged. Otherwise the bill that fixes the classroom of the child whose family shows up at the school board meeting does not fix the classroom of the child whose family cannot.

WHAT TO DO: Pull the Georgia Department of Education’s implementation guidance for HB 1009 (high school phone ban) and HB 1193 (literacy act) as it gets released over the next 60 days. Ask your local principal at the next open house or PTA meeting how their school plans to implement both bills starting in August. If you have an elementary school child, find out whether your school is applying for a literacy coach grant under HB 1193, and if not, ask the principal why. The grant program exists to be used.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: Nine bills, three real wins, and a package that does not get the credit it deserves because it does not fit the cable news template. Georgia got this one right. Now Georgia parents have to make sure the implementation lands in every classroom, not just the classrooms whose parents are already paying attention.

📡 WATCH LIST: WHAT TO TRACK NEXT WEEK

These are the developments TBR will be monitoring as the new week opens.

Georgia gas tax expiration on May 19. The single most important Georgia story of the week. Watch whether Kemp announces an extension before the deadline, on the deadline, or after. The timing tells you the politics.

Iran-US one-page MOU. Per Axios reporting, the White House expects Iranian responses on a 14-point framework within 48 hours of the original report. As of this morning, nothing has been signed. A senior Iranian lawmaker dismissed the framework as unrealistic. If a deal closes this week, oil prices fall fast but pump prices fall slow. If it falls apart, expect Hormuz operations to escalate again.

ICE deportation study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Last week’s Chloe East and Elizabeth Cox paper found that ICE activity is associated with a negative and significant impact on employment of U.S.-born working men with at most a high school education, particularly in construction. Watch whether this paper gets cited in legal challenges to ongoing ICE operations, and whether any Republican lawmakers acknowledge the findings publicly.

$1 billion White House ballroom security funding. Senate Democrats are forcing a vote on the $1 billion in Secret Service security upgrades tucked into the reconciliation bill for the new White House ballroom. Watch the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling on whether the provision survives the vote-a-rama, and watch whether any vulnerable Republicans break ranks.

Trump Jesus post fallout. A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll shows 80 percent of 2024 Trump voters reacted negatively to the President’s social media post depicting himself as Jesus. That kind of cross-partisan rejection is rare in modern polling. Watch whether his political team adjusts the public-religious-imagery strategy or doubles down.

KFF poll on MAHA voters and healthcare costs. A new KFF poll shows that healthcare costs, not vaccines or food additives, are the top concern among voters who identify with the MAHA movement. That gap between movement rhetoric and movement-voter priorities is going to matter in the 2026 midterms.

🧠 FINAL WORD

A few weeks ago this newsletter ran a piece on the Voting Rights Act and the position that the entire conversation in America is structured to keep you mad about race so you do not get mad about power. This week’s stories are all variations on the same theme. The student loan caps will hurt working-class students of every race who wanted to become doctors. The Fulton subpoena will intimidate election workers of every race who served their communities. The gas tax expiration will hit every Georgia driver of every race who has to fill up to get to work. The state takeovers from Memphis to Indianapolis to Connecticut will reduce the power of every local community of every color. The Kemp education package, the one bright spot in this week’s newsletter, will only matter if Georgia parents make sure it reaches every classroom.

The pattern is not partisan. The pattern is power. And the only people who benefit from you fighting about race instead of power are the people doing the taking.

There is a citizenship cost in all of this that I want to name clearly. Reading a newsletter like this one, while necessary, is not the same as showing up. Calling your representative, attending the school board meeting, asking your county election office a question on the record, getting an answer in writing from your state senator about the gas tax, these are the actual mechanisms by which institutions stay accountable to the people they are supposed to serve. Without that pressure, none of these institutions will correct course on their own. They have no incentive to.

If this newsletter gave you something you did not have before you read it, share it with one person today. That is how this grows. Not through algorithms, but through trust.

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Podcast: Apple Podcasts and Spotify, search The Barrington Report

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio, atltalks.com, Apple, Google, Alexa, Apple CarPlay

The Pain of Truth

✏️ A NOTE FROM BARRINGTON

This week the country watched three institutions fail in three different rooms on the same Wednesday, and most of the press is still arguing about which team won.

The Supreme Court rewrote the Voting Rights Act without ever voting to repeal it. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady against the loudest internal dissent in 34 years, and the chair told the President of the United States he was staying past his term. The Department of Homeland Security entered the second month of the longest partial shutdown in American history while the White House publicly told House Republicans to give up and they refused. All on Wednesday, April 29. All in the same news cycle. All landing on you.

If you only watch cable news, you got three separate tribal arguments. If you read this newsletter, you get the pattern. The pattern is not partisan. The pattern is institutional. Every level of American government is now functioning exactly as designed, and the only question worth asking is whether the design is still designed for you.

That is what we work through this week. Three rulings. One Wednesday. One question. Plus the Georgia stories that did not make national headlines but absolutely will affect your household before hurricane season hits in 32 days.

🔥 LEAD STORY: THE COURT JUST STOPPED PRETENDING

Both Parties Want You Mad About Race. Power Is Why.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down Louisiana v. Callais on a 6-3 vote split clean along ideological lines. Justice Alito wrote the majority. Justices Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined him. Justice Kagan dissented and was joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. The two stories you have been told about this ruling are both wrong, and both are doing political work for somebody.

Here is what actually happened. After the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a congressional map with one majority-Black district. Black residents are about a third of Louisiana’s population. A federal court ruled that map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana redrew it with two majority-Black districts. A different group of plaintiffs, who described themselves in court filings as “non-African American voters,” sued the state, calling the new map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Court agreed. The second majority-Black district has to go.

The Court did not strike down Section 2. It did not have to. What it did was rewrite the Gingles test, the 40-year-old framework courts have used to apply Section 2. Plaintiffs now have to draw alternative maps that satisfy every legitimate state goal including partisan goals. Evidence of racial bloc voting has to control for partisan preference. Historical discrimination receives much less weight, with courts told to focus on present-day intentional discrimination instead. Justice Kagan’s dissent says the majority renders Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” That is not advocacy framing. That is the dissent from the bench.

The estimate from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter: up to 19 majority-minority House seats currently held by Democrats could flip to Republicans before 2028.

For Georgia, the implications are immediate. In October 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones ruled that Georgia’s congressional map violated Section 2. The legislature was forced to redraw it. The new map added one majority-Black district west of Atlanta and collapsed Lucy McBath’s coalition district in the process. The 9-to-5 Republican split of Georgia’s delegation stayed exactly the same. Under the Callais framework that came down Wednesday, Judge Jones’ ruling does not happen. The Georgia map you are voting under right now would not exist. And the next time anybody tries to challenge a Georgia map under Section 2, for the rest of this decade and certainly after the 2030 census, the legal floor is gone.

Now the position the rest of the country will not give you. Redistricting is not a race issue. It is a power issue. It has always been a power issue. The only reason it gets framed as a race issue is because both political parties have a vested interest in framing it that way. Democrats are upset about Callais because the GOP redistricting that is about to happen across the South minimizes the impact of the Black voting bloc. That is the whole reason. They will talk about civil rights and Reconstruction and the legacy of John Lewis, but the grief is about a reliably Democratic voting bloc getting diluted in states where Republicans control the maps.

When Democrats have power, they do exactly the same thing. California redrew its maps last cycle to flip five Republican seats. Virginia just passed a constitutional amendment last week authorizing four more. New York tried it the cycle before. Illinois has been doing it for decades. Both parties gerrymander. Both parties call the practice democracy when they win and rigging when they lose. They are competing factions of the same operation, and neither one of them is your friend.

The Voting Rights Act did not die Wednesday. It died 40 years ago when both parties figured out how to game it. The Court just stopped pretending.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: Both parties want you mad about race because if you are mad about race, you are not mad about power. And power is what they are protecting. The maps decide more than the votes do. The party gatekeepers decide more than the voters do. The institution of voting is not as powerful as people have been told.

⚖️ CIVIC WATCH: POWELL STAYED. YOUR MORTGAGE DIDN’T CARE.

The Federal Reserve Just Locked Your Debt in Place. Here’s What That Costs You Every Month.

Same Wednesday. Different room. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in a range between 3.5 and 3.75 percent for the third consecutive meeting. Four officials dissented, the most at a Fed policy meeting since October 1992. Markets have now priced in zero rate cuts for the rest of 2026. Polymarket shows the no-cut outcome at over 55 percent. CME FedWatch shows essentially no probability of any rate movement before December.

Translation. Whatever interest rate you are paying right now on a mortgage, on a car loan, on a credit card, on a home equity line, on a small business loan, that rate is staying right where it is for at least the rest of the year. Probably longer. March inflation came in at 3.3 percent. The April forecast is 3.9 percent. The Fed’s target is 2 percent. We are not getting closer. We are getting further away.

The reason in one word is Iran. Powell said it himself in the press conference. The Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed. The International Energy Agency is now calling this the largest oil supply shock on record. Gas Wednesday hit $4.23 per gallon nationally, up about $1.25 since the war started on February 28. That energy spike is feeding straight back into inflation, and the Fed cannot cut rates while inflation is moving in the wrong direction.

Then Powell did something unprecedented in modern Federal Reserve history. His term as chair ends May 15. Kevin Warsh, the President’s nominee to replace him, advanced through the Senate Banking Committee on a 13-to-11 party-line vote Wednesday morning, the first fully partisan committee vote on a Fed chair in the panel’s history per Senator Elizabeth Warren. Almost every Fed chair in the modern era resigns from the Board of Governors entirely when their term as chair ends. Powell announced he is not doing that. He is staying on as a Fed governor through January 2028. The last time a Fed chair did this was Marriner Eccles in 1948, when President Truman was pressuring the Fed to keep rates artificially low to make government borrowing cheaper. The Eccles standoff led directly to the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord that formalized Federal Reserve independence as we have known it for the last 75 years. That is the historical company Powell just placed himself in.

President Trump responded on Truth Social: “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell wants to stay at the Fed because he can’t get a job anywhere else. Nobody wants him.” Treasury Secretary Bessent said the decision “flies in the face of tradition.”

Now the part that lands on you in Atlanta, Decatur, East Point, Stone Mountain, and Marietta. The average credit card APR right now is over 20 percent. That is not coming down this year. If you are carrying a balance, that interest is compounding at 20-plus percent while wages are not keeping up with 3.3 percent inflation. The math does not work in your favor. The math is not designed to work in your favor. Mortgage rates on a 30-year fixed are sitting in the high 6 percent range. If you bought your house pre-2022, you are sitting on a rate three or four points lower than what a buyer today is offered. That gap is locking the housing market in place. People who would normally move are not moving. People who would normally buy are not buying. Supply stays low. Prices stay high. Rents stay high. And every Atlanta family trying to find a starter home in this metro is paying for that distortion.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: Powell stayed. The dollar held. Your wallet did not get a vote in any of it. The Fed is functioning as designed, and the design is protecting the institution before it protects you. While the political class fights over who runs the Federal Reserve, your mortgage payment, your credit card bill, and your car loan do not care who wins.

🌪️ GEORGIA WATCH: A SHUTDOWN, A HURRICANE, AND A SPEAKER WHO CAN’T COUNT

The DHS Shutdown Just Became the Longest in American History. Hurricane Season Is 32 Days Out.

The Department of Homeland Security partial shutdown is now in its second month. The longest in American history. 260,000 federal employees affected. Over 100,000 of them still working without pay. On the April 2 broadcast, I told you it was already the longest in history. That was four weeks ago. We are still here.

This week, the standoff broke open in a way that should make every Georgia listener pay attention. Wednesday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to combine FISA Section 702, the farm bill, and the Senate-passed reconciliation package that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection into a single procedural rule vote. The rule failed. A small group of House Republicans voted no. Other conservatives withheld their votes. Johnson can only afford to lose a handful on a party-line measure. The chamber stalled. The leadership team could not move any of the three priorities they planned to advance this week.

Tuesday evening, the Trump White House budget office sent a memo to House Republicans urging them to cave. Drop the demand for full ICE and Border Patrol funding. Pass the Senate version that just reopens the rest of DHS. The White House is now publicly siding with Senate Republicans against House Republicans, and warning that the funds the administration has been using to cover law enforcement paychecks are about to run out. The President’s own budget office is telling the House to give up. The House is saying no.

Meanwhile in Georgia. Transportation Security Administration agents at Hartsfield-Jackson are working without paychecks. Coast Guard members along the Georgia coastline are still on duty unpaid. Federal Emergency Management Agency staff are working with a contracting backlog that sources inside the agency say will take months to clear even after the shutdown ends. FEMA leadership is still in transition. And hurricane season starts June 1. That is 32 days from this newsletter landing in your inbox.

Hurricane Helene came ashore in Florida in September 2024 and tore north through Georgia. Augusta. Valdosta. The southeastern Georgia coast. Hundreds of thousands of homes lost power. Whole communities lost roads. The Highway 82 and Pineland Road wildfires that destroyed more than 120 Georgia homes earlier this month were fueled in part by leftover storm debris from Helene that the federal recovery system never finished clearing. That is the FEMA we have on a normal day. Now imagine the next storm hitting a coast where the agency is one month into a record-long shutdown, with a contracting backlog and a leadership transition in progress.

Equal accountability, because both parties earned the receipt. House Republicans, including the Georgia delegation, are holding the line on full ICE funding even as their own White House tells them to fold. They have decided that the politics of immigration enforcement matter more than getting TSA agents paid, more than getting FEMA functional before hurricane season, more than getting Coast Guard pay restored. House Democrats filed a discharge petition that would fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard while leaving ICE and CBP unfunded as leverage. The petition needs 218 signatures and 4 Republican crossovers. Zero have crossed. One of Hakeem Jeffries’ own members admitted on the record: “It’s good politics but it’s not going to actually get DHS open and help the officers get their paychecks.” His own party. His own words.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: A record-long shutdown. A White House that gave up. A House that won’t. A FEMA that won’t be ready. A hurricane season that does not negotiate. The receipt is coming. The only question is whose name ends up on it.

🏫 EDUCATION DESK: THE TENNESSEE BLUEPRINT IS COMING TO GEORGIA

Last Week We Covered the Memphis Takeover. This Week the Local Community Is Already Out of Options.

Last week’s broadcast walked through Tennessee Senate Bill 714, which created a nine-member politically appointed board with sweeping authority over Memphis-Shelby County Schools. A district serving more than 100,000 students. A $1.7 billion budget. The state’s largest majority-Black county. Five board members appointed by Governor Bill Lee. Two by the House Speaker. Two by the Senate Speaker. The board can hire and fire the superintendent, hire and fire teachers, open and close schools, and set curriculum for four years with an option to renew for two more. On the same day, Governor Lee signed a separate bill barring Tennessee school districts from using public funds to sue over state accountability measures.

This week, Chalkbeat reported that the Memphis-Shelby community is essentially out of legal options. The board had already voted to hire a lawyer to challenge the takeover. The companion bill made sure they could not pay one with the district’s own money. The path forward is a federal civil rights challenge, which takes years, while a politically appointed board sits in control of every major decision the district makes for the next four to six years.

The Georgia connection is not theoretical. Atlanta Public Schools has been threatened with state intervention before. DeKalb County went through a full accreditation crisis. The Georgia General Assembly has explored similar oversight mechanisms in past sessions. The Tennessee model is not staying in Tennessee. It is a blueprint. And when it arrives in Georgia, the question will not be whether the test scores are bad enough to justify it. The question will be whether the community was paying attention before the vote happened. Because once the bill passes, the lawsuit is already barred and the appointed board is already sitting.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: When the state takes over a school district, it is not saving the children. It is replacing the adults the community chose with the adults the capital prefers. Two different problems. Two different solutions. Don’t let them convince you they are the same thing.

Last Week We Covered the Memphis Takeover. This Week the Local Community Is Already Out of Options.

Last week’s broadcast walked through Tennessee Senate Bill 714, which created a nine-member politically appointed board with sweeping authority over Memphis-Shelby County Schools. A district serving more than 100,000 students. A $1.7 billion budget. The state’s largest majority-Black county. Five board members appointed by Governor Bill Lee. Two by the House Speaker. Two by the Senate Speaker. The board can hire and fire the superintendent, hire and fire teachers, open and close schools, and set curriculum for four years with an option to renew for two more. On the same day, Governor Lee signed a separate bill barring Tennessee school districts from using public funds to sue over state accountability measures.

This week, Chalkbeat reported that the Memphis-Shelby community is essentially out of legal options. The board had already voted to hire a lawyer to challenge the takeover. The companion bill made sure they could not pay one with the district’s own money. The path forward is a federal civil rights challenge, which takes years, while a politically appointed board sits in control of every major decision the district makes for the next four to six years.

The Georgia connection is not theoretical. Atlanta Public Schools has been threatened with state intervention before. DeKalb County went through a full accreditation crisis. The Georgia General Assembly has explored similar oversight mechanisms in past sessions. The Tennessee model is not staying in Tennessee. It is a blueprint. And when it arrives in Georgia, the question will not be whether the test scores are bad enough to justify it. The question will be whether the community was paying attention before the vote happened. Because once the bill passes, the lawsuit is already barred and the appointed board is already sitting.

WHAT TO DO: Find your local school board meeting schedule and attend one this month. Pull up your district’s last budget. Check who is running for school board this cycle. This is not an electoral fix at the state level. This is a show-up fix at the local level. Track education committee activity at legis.ga.gov.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: When the state takes over a school district, it is not saving the children. It is replacing the adults the community chose with the adults the capital prefers. Two different problems. Two different solutions. Don’t let them convince you they are the same thing.

Illinois Just Moved to Ban Phones in Classrooms. The Bill Coming to Georgia Is Already Drafted Somewhere.

Illinois lawmakers this week advanced a bill backed by Governor JB Pritzker that would restrict cell phone use in K-12 classrooms across the state. The legislation has bipartisan momentum, which in 2026 is itself worth flagging. It joins a growing list of states moving in the same direction. Florida passed restrictions in 2023. South Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, and Virginia followed. Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest district in the country, just became the first major school system to restrict classroom screen time on its own initiative. Georgia is not in this conversation yet. It will be soon.

Here is the part of the conversation nobody is comfortable having. The research on phones in classrooms is not actually contested. Multiple studies have shown attention fragmentation, declining reading proficiency, increased anxiety, and worsening peer dynamics in environments where phones are constantly accessible. Pew Research found that nearly three-quarters of high school teachers say cell phones are a major distraction in the classroom. Teachers have been saying this for a decade. Parents have been saying this for a decade. Students themselves, in surveys, increasingly say it. Yet the policy lag has been substantial because phones are not just a school issue. They are a parenting issue, a tech industry issue, and a civil liberties issue all bundled into one piece of glass that fits in a pocket.

The Georgia angle is direct and personal. As an American Government teacher, I see this every day. Children come into a classroom with a device in their pocket that is engineered by some of the most sophisticated behavioral scientists on the planet to capture and hold their attention. Then we ask them to focus on a textbook. We are asking them to compete in a contest the system was designed to make them lose. And then we wonder why test scores are dropping, attention spans are shrinking, and a generation of kids is reporting record levels of anxiety and isolation. The Georgia General Assembly has not seriously taken this up. The Tennessee model on school takeovers will not be the only blueprint coming to Atlanta this cycle. The Illinois model on classroom phones is right behind it. The question is whether Georgia parents push for it before it gets watered down by industry lobbying and individual exemption carve-outs the way it has in some other states.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: The phones in your child’s classroom were not designed by educators. They were designed by engineers paid to make children unable to look away. Calling that an attention problem is like calling drowning a breathing problem. Address the cause, not the symptom.

📡 WATCH LIST: WHAT TO TRACK NEXT WEEK

These are the developments TBR will be monitoring as the new week opens.

Florida redistricting special session — opens April 28. Watch the map that comes out and how aggressive the Republican majority gets with the Callais ruling now backing them up. If Florida draws five new GOP-favored seats, the Court’s ruling has produced its first downstream consequence in under two weeks.

Powell’s actual May 15 transition — Kevin Warsh becomes Fed chair. Powell stays on the Board of Governors. Watch the first FOMC meeting in mid-June for whether Warsh has the votes to deliver a rate cut against four standing dissents. Smart money says no.

DHS shutdown resolution — money to pay law enforcement is running out per the White House budget office. Either the House caves, the Senate takes a different vote, or actual TSA and FEMA paychecks start bouncing. One of the three is happening within seven days.

Georgia wildfire risk — the Highway 82 and Pineland Road fires are partially under control but the National Interagency Fire Center has Georgia and the Southeast Atlantic coast in the above-normal wildfire risk zone for May. With FEMA in shutdown, watch how state and local resources hold up.

Cory Mills expulsion vote — Rep. Nancy Mace’s resolution to expel Mills is still pending. Speaker Johnson signaled he won’t push for it. Watch whether anyone in either party calls the vote anyway.

Mississippi state Supreme Court redistricting — Mississippi lawmakers reconvene in 21 days to redraw districts under the new Callais framework. This is the first state-level test of how aggressively legislatures use the ruling. What happens in Jackson tells you what is coming to Atlanta.

🧠 FINAL WORD

Three rulings. Three institutions. Three different rooms in Washington. All on the same Wednesday.

A Court that rewrote a civil rights law without ever voting to repeal it. A Federal Reserve that held the line against political pressure but held it on terms that cost your household every single month. A House of Representatives that cannot count its own votes 32 days before hurricane season. The pattern is not partisan. The pattern is institutional. Every level of American government is now functioning exactly as designed. The question for you is whether the design is still designed for you.

You should only be loyal to the truth. You should never be loyal to these political parties because they do not care about you. They care about power, and you are the route to which they receive their power. The pain of truth is the work, and once you can tolerate the pain, you will be able to see things as they are and not what you want them to be.

If this newsletter gave you something you did not have before you read it, share it with one person today. That is how this grows. Not through algorithms, but through trust.

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Podcast: Apple Podcasts and Spotify — search The Barrington Report
Follow: TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio — atltalks.com

The Pain of Truth

This week on The Barrington Report, Barrington threads three rulings that landed on a single Wednesday — and shows the country what institutional collapse looks like in real time. The Supreme Court rewrote the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais without ever voting to repeal it, and Justice Kagan’s own dissent calls Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady for the third meeting in a row with the most internal dissents in 34 years, and Jerome Powell announced he is staying on the Board of Governors through January 2028 — denying President Trump a key vacancy. The longest DHS shutdown in American history rolled into its second month, with the White House publicly siding with Senate Republicans against House Republicans while hurricane season sits 32 days away and Georgia is in the zone. The thesis: the pattern is not partisan — the pattern is institutional. Every level of American government is now functioning exactly as designed. The only question that matters is whether the design is still designed for you.

🎹 Key Highlights

⚖️ When Both Sides Scream Race, Nobody Has to Answer for Power Tuesday’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais didn’t strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — it rewrote the 40-year-old Gingles test that gave Section 2 its teeth. Plaintiffs now have to draw alternative maps that protect every legitimate state goal including partisan goals, racial bloc voting now has to control for partisan preference, and historical discrimination receives much less weight than before. Kagan’s dissent calls the law “all but a dead letter.” Estimates from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter project up to 19 majority-minority House seats currently held by Democrats could flip before 2028. Under the Callais framework, Judge Steve Jones’ 2023 ruling that forced Georgia’s redraw doesn’t happen — the Georgia map you’re voting under right now would not exist. But Barrington refuses both the left’s “Reconstruction redux” framing and the right’s “common sense restored” framing. The signature line: “Both parties want you mad about race because if you’re mad about race, you’re not mad about power. And power is what they’re protecting.” Democrats are upset because a reliably Democratic voting bloc is about to get diluted in states where Republicans control the maps. When Democrats had power, they did the same thing — California last year, Virginia last week, New York the cycle before, Illinois for decades. The institution of voting is not as powerful as people have been told. The maps decide more than the votes do. The party gatekeepers decide more than the voters do.

💰 Powell Stayed. Your Mortgage Didn’t Care. Same Wednesday, different room. The Fed held rates in a range between 3.5% and 3.75% — third meeting in a row, no movement. Four officials dissented, the most at a Fed policy meeting since October 1992. CME FedWatch now prices in zero rate cuts for the rest of 2026. Polymarket has the no-cut outcome at over 55%. March inflation 3.3%, April forecast 3.9%, against a Fed target of 2% — moving in the wrong direction. The reason in one word: Iran. Powell said it himself. The Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed and the IEA is calling this the largest oil supply shock on record. Gas Wednesday was $4.23 per gallon nationally, up about $1.25 since the war started February 28. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but he announced he’s staying on as a Fed governor through January 2028 — the first time since Marriner Eccles in 1948. Trump on Truth Social: “Jerome Too Late Powell wants to stay at the Fed because he can’t get a job anywhere else.” Treasury Secretary Bessent said the decision “flies in the face of tradition.” Now the Atlanta translation: every month rates don’t move, your variable-rate debt costs the same as last month. Credit card APRs over 20%. Mortgages locked in the high 6% range. The housing market frozen. Auto loans up. Personal loans up. Small business credit up. The signature line: “While the political class fights over who runs the Federal Reserve, your mortgage payment, your credit card bill, and your car loan do not care who wins.” The Fed is functioning as designed — and the design is protecting the institution before it protects you.

🌪️ A Shutdown, A Hurricane, and a Speaker Who Can’t Count The DHS partial shutdown is now in its second month — the longest in American history. 260,000 federal employees affected. Over 100,000 working without pay. Wednesday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to combine FISA Section 702, the farm bill, and the Senate-passed ICE/CBP reconciliation package into a single procedural rule vote. The rule failed. House Republicans tanked their own leadership. Tuesday evening, the Trump White House budget office sent a memo telling House Republicans to cave and pass the Senate version — the President’s own budget office is publicly siding against the House GOP. They said no anyway. TSA agents at Hartsfield-Jackson are working without paychecks. Coast Guard members along the Georgia coastline are on duty unpaid. FEMA staff face a contracting backlog sources inside the agency say will take months to clear after the shutdown ends — and FEMA leadership is still in transition. Hurricane season starts June 1. The Highway 82 and Pineland Road wildfires that destroyed more than 120 Georgia homes earlier this month were fueled in part by leftover Helene debris the federal recovery system never finished clearing. That’s FEMA on a normal day. House Democrats filed a discharge petition that needs 218 signatures and 4 Republican crossovers. Zero have crossed. Even one of Hakeem Jeffries’ own members admitted on the record: “It’s good politics but it’s not going to actually get DHS open and help the officers get their paychecks.” Both sides chose the position. The signature line: “There is no political argument — right or left — that makes a compromised FEMA acceptable 32 days before hurricane season.”

⚖️ Reality Check

• Louisiana v. Callais decided 6-3 on April 29. Alito majority. Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson dissenting.

• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act now “all but a dead letter” per Kagan’s own dissent.

• Three changes to the Gingles test: alternative maps must satisfy state partisan goals, bloc voting must control for partisanship, historical discrimination weighted less.

• 19 majority-minority House seats potentially flipped before 2028 per Fair Fight Action / Black Voters Matter.

• Under Callais, Judge Jones’ 2023 Georgia ruling does not happen. Current Georgia map does not exist.

• Federal Reserve held rates 3.5–3.75%. Third consecutive hold.

• 4 dissents — most since October 1992 (34 years).

• Markets pricing zero rate cuts for the rest of 2026.

• March inflation 3.3%. April forecast 3.9%. Fed target 2%.

• Gas $4.23/gal nationally Wednesday. Up ~$1.25 since Iran war began February 28.

• Powell staying on Board of Governors through January 2028 — first since Marriner Eccles in 1948.

• Kevin Warsh advanced through Senate Banking Committee 13-11 — first fully partisan committee vote on a Fed chair in panel history per Sen. Warren.

• Credit card APRs over 20%. Mortgage rates in the high 6% range. Both staying put.

• DHS shutdown longest in U.S. history. 260,000 federal employees affected. 100,000+ unpaid.

• House Wednesday rule vote on FISA + farm bill + ICE reconciliation failed.

• White House budget office Tuesday told House GOP to cave. House GOP refused.

• Discharge petition needs 218 signatures, 4 Republican crossovers. Zero have crossed.

• Hurricane season starts June 1. 32 days from broadcast.

• Highway 82 and Pineland Road fires destroyed 120+ Georgia homes — fueled in part by uncleared Helene debris.

• The pattern is not partisan. The pattern is institutional.

  ---

🧠 Barrington’s Message

“Three rulings. Three institutions. Three different rooms in Washington. All on the same Wednesday. A court that rewrote a civil rights law without ever voting to repeal it. A Federal Reserve that held the line against political pressure but held it on terms that cost your household every single month. A House of Representatives that cannot count its own votes 32 days before hurricane season. The pattern is not partisan. The pattern is institutional. Every level of American government is now functioning exactly as designed. The question for you is whether the design is still designed for you. You should only be loyal to the truth. You should never be loyal to these political parties because they do not care about you. They care about power, and you are the route to which they receive their power. The pain of truth is the work — and once you can tolerate it, you’ll be able to see things as they are and not what you want them to be. In order for you to love others, you must first learn to love yourself.”

— Barrington Martin II

📬 Stay Connected

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Podcast: Apple Podcasts and Spotify: search “The Barrington Report”

Follow: TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio — atltalks.com

🧩 Why You Should Listen

If you’re tired of cable news telling you which team to cheer for while three branches of government quietly stop working for you on the same Wednesday, this episode is your receipt. Barrington Martin II takes three rulings most outlets covered in tribal isolation and shows you the single pattern they share — institutional design that protects itself before it protects you. No party gets a pass. No narrative gets a free ride. The Pain of Truth means exactly what it says — and this week, the truth is that the pattern is not partisan. The pattern is institutional. And the only question that matters is whether the design is still designed for you.

I ran against Representative John Lewis in the Georgia 5th Congressional District Democratic primary on June 9, 2020. Lewis had announced his stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis six months earlier, in December 2019. The primary was not a secret. His condition was not a secret. The prognosis was not a secret. I received thirteen percent of the vote. Lewis received eighty-seven. Five weeks later, Lewis was dead.

Representative David Scott died in office yesterday, April 22, 2026, at eighty years old. Scott had represented Georgia’s 13th Congressional District for twenty-three years. He was running for a thirteenth term. He had been using a wheelchair for years. His own party had stripped him of his ranking position on the House Agriculture Committee in 2024 over age and health concerns. He was mostly absent from the campaign trail in 2024 and 2026. Reporters asked him in March of this year whether he would step aside. He dodged the question. His wife told the press in 2024 that the congressman would not be pushed out, he would bow out. He did not bow out. He died in office.

Six years apart. Same state. Same party. Same pattern. Two dying Black congressmen, two sets of voters who refused to ask whether either man was still fit to serve, two funerals and two eulogies about trailblazing legacies. A political machine quietly positioned itself to benefit from the vacancy before the casket closed, both times.

This is the part of Black political culture that nobody in Black political culture is allowed to say out loud. I am going to say it.

Let me start with the harder truth, because this is the one nobody wants to touch. John Lewis was not a great congressman. Let me say it again so nobody has to read it twice. John Lewis was not a great congressman. He was a great civil rights activist in the 1960s who then spent thirty-three years in the House of Representatives producing a legislative record so thin that his own official biography on the House Archives website has to stretch to fill the page.

The receipts are public. Lewis served in Congress from 1987 to 2020. Thirty-three years. He missed 1,491 of 20,777 roll call votes during that tenure, a 7.2 percent miss rate. The median miss rate for his peers was 2.3 percent. Lewis missed votes at more than triple the rate of his colleagues, and that was the lifetime record, not just his final years of illness. His signature legislative achievement, the bill to create a national African American museum in Washington, took fifteen years to pass. Lewis introduced it every session from 1988 to 2003. It failed every single time. It only passed after Senator Jesse Helms retired from the Senate and stopped personally blocking it. That is not political skill. That is attrition.

Lewis chaired one subcommittee in his entire congressional career, the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, and he held that chair for exactly four years, from 2007 to 2011. Four years out of thirty-three. Ranking members and subcommittee chairs with half his seniority accumulated more procedural power than he ever did. The famous 2016 House sit-in over gun legislation following the Orlando shooting produced no legislation. It was a photograph. It was a moment. It was not a law.

Oh yeah, that Voting Rights Act that bears his name? He did not author it. He did not pass it in his lifetime. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was renamed in his honor one week after his death. State Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama carried the legislation. The bill passed the House in August 2021 and was blocked in the Senate by a filibuster. The bill has not become law. It still has not become law as of today, April 24, 2026. The voting rights infrastructure he is publicly credited with defending has been eroded by the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013, and no successor legislation has passed Congress in the thirteen years since. Read that again. Thirteen years. The man who was called the conscience of Congress could not get the signature issue of his entire public life protected in law while he was alive.

This is not a smear. This is the public record. Anyone who doubts it can look up his roll call attendance on GovTrack, his sponsored bills on Congress dot gov, and his chairmanship history on the House Archives site. The data does not lie. Lewis was a hero on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, and he coasted on that heroism for the next fifty-five years while producing a congressional record that any honest observer would call, at best, unremarkable.

Nowhere is this coasting more visible than in the annual pilgrimage itself. Lewis returned to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama every year for the rest of his life to commemorate the March 7, 1965 state trooper beating that left him with a fractured skull. He invited congressional colleagues from both parties to join him. Presidents showed up. Cameras followed. The pilgrimage became its own American ritual. I want you to sit with what that actually means. A man who was beaten bloody by state troopers as a young activist returned to the exact spot of his trauma, every single year, for fifty-five years, with a growing cast of dignitaries, so that the country could commemorate the beating. Not the victory. Not a law. Not an accomplishment that moved the ball forward. The beating itself.

And what did Selma get in return? Nothing. That is what. Selma, Alabama is one of the poorest cities in the United States today. The 2023 U.S. Census American Community Survey puts the city’s poverty rate at 28.3 percent. The median household income is $32,184, which is thirty percent below the Alabama state average. Alabama is already the seventh poorest state in the nation. One in three Selma residents live below the poverty line. The population is roughly eighty percent Black. The city has been bleeding residents for decades. Boarded-up houses line streets on nearly every block. Dignitaries fly in every year for the bridge photograph. Dignitaries fly out the same day. The people who actually live in Selma are left with the same poverty they had before the cameras arrived, and they will be left with that same poverty after the cameras leave next year, and the year after that. Hundreds of thousands of people make the trip to this city every year to commemorate a beating as if it were some holy pilgrimage of victimhood. Disgusting. That is the word. Disgusting.

That annual pilgrimage is the perfect metaphor for the Black political class he represented. Black leadership in America has spent the last sixty years reenacting 1965 instead of producing in this present day. Every speech references Selma. Every award ceremony references Selma. Every Voting Rights Act fight references Selma. Every Congressional Black Caucus photograph taken on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the annual pilgrimage references Selma. The problem is that none of it is Selma. Selma was a battle that produced legislation, signed by a president, five months later. Selma was a win. What followed Selma was sixty years of standing on the bridge, taking the picture, and calling the photograph a movement.

The Black political class has no major breakthroughs to point to since 1965 because the Black political class has not been trying to produce major breakthroughs since 1965. It has been trying to preserve and celebrate the one it already has. Lewis is the clearest example. He introduced a Voting Rights Act restoration bill for years and could not get it passed. He introduced a museum bill for fifteen years and only got it passed after the opposition died of old age. His most iconic act as a sitting congressman was the 2016 sit-in, which produced no law, no bill, no policy change, but did produce a widely shared photograph. A photograph is not a breakthrough. A pilgrimage is not a breakthrough. Naming a building after a dead civil rights leader is not a breakthrough. And yet, these are the activities that have consumed the Black political establishment for two full generations.

This is the part that should make every Black voter in America uncomfortable. You have already forgotten him. Ask a Black person under thirty what John Lewis did in Congress. They cannot tell you. Ask them what civil rights legislation he sponsored that is currently protecting their voting rights. They cannot tell you, because there is no such legislation. Ask them the last time they thought about John Lewis outside of February during Black History Month or during a Selma anniversary photo op. You are going to get silence. The man whose name was invoked as untouchable for three decades has been reduced, in his own community, to a bridge crossing and a posthumous bill that has not passed.

That is what racial loyalty in politics actually produces. A civil rights legacy frozen in a photograph. A congressional record nobody can cite. A movement that cannot even get his own voting rights bill passed six years after his death.

Now let me walk you through what the machine did when he died, because this is where the story goes from tragedy to scandal. Lewis died on July 17, 2020. Georgia law required the Democratic Party to name a replacement for the November ballot within hours. The Democratic Party of Georgia convened an Executive Committee to handle the selection. The Chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia at the time was State Senator Nikema Williams. She had held that position since January 2019.

Williams was one of 131 applicants for the seat. A seven-person panel that included former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Stacey Abrams narrowed the pool to five finalists. Williams was one of those five finalists. The other four were State Representative Park Cannon, former Atlanta City Councilman (present Mayor) Andre Dickens, former Morehouse College President Robert Franklin, and former Georgia NAACP President Reverend James Major Woodall. The Executive Committee then voted. Williams won with 37 of 41 votes.

The official explanation was that Williams recused herself from the process once she decided to seek the nomination. The Democratic Party of Georgia General Counsel said it in the statement the day of the vote. I am here to tell you, having been in the 2020 primary race, that recusal is the thinnest legal fig leaf the machine has. You do not stop being the Chair of a party just because you raised your hand to be the next congresswoman from that party. The organizational apparatus that selected the panelists, set the timeline, wrote the rules, and communicated with applicants was the apparatus she had built. The people voting on the finalists were people who knew who signed their appointment letters. Recusal is a procedural word. It is not a power transfer. The room still belonged to her.

Here is the detail that should end the conversation. I was one of those 131 applicants. I had just run against Lewis and received roughly 20,000 votes. I was on the record, documented, and publicly vetted in a competitive primary. I had demonstrated the political courage to challenge a sitting congressman when nobody else in Black Atlanta would. The machine did not put my name among the five finalists. They went with the party chair herself, a state representative, a city councilman, a college president, and the head of the state NAACP. Every one of them was an insider. Every one of them had standing within the party apparatus. Every one of them had declined, refused, or chosen not to primary Lewis themselves. The message was loud and clear. Challenge the incumbent and you are punished. Wait your turn and kiss the ring and you get considered. The 2020 primary process in the 5th District was a loyalty test. I failed it the moment I qualified to run.

Williams won the November 2020 general election by over 300,000 votes in one of the safest Democratic districts in the country. She has been reelected twice since. She remained Chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia while also serving in Congress, until March 2025, when Senator Jon Ossoff and others pressured her to step down from the party chairmanship after Georgia Democrats lost the 2024 presidential cycle. Five years she held both positions. Five years she represented a congressional district she had never won in a contested Democratic primary. Voters in the 5th District have still never been given the chance to approve or reject her in a truly competitive primary. She was installed, then reelected on the strength of the install. That is not democracy. That is succession planning with a uniform.

Now fast forward to this week. David Scott, eighty years old, in declining health, using a wheelchair, stripped of his committee ranking by his own party, running for a thirteenth term. He faced a primary challenger. He dodged questions about stepping aside. He died in office on April 22, 2026. Governor Kemp is required by Georgia law to call a special election within ten days. The 13th District, which covers parts of metro Atlanta, will have no functioning representative for months. Somewhere in Georgia right now, the exact same Democratic Party apparatus that engineered the Lewis succession is quietly figuring out how to engineer the Scott succession. The only question is which insider gets the tap.

If you are Black and you live in Georgia, you are expected to see this cycle as an honor. Proof that your community produces great men who serve until the very end. I want you to consider, for a moment, that this is not an honor. It is the opposite of an honor. It is the predictable result of a political culture that has taught Black voters to mistake seniority for representation, skin color for ideology, and biography for policy. We have been taught, for sixty years, that the measure of political success is getting a Black person into the building. We have not been taught to ask what the Black person did once they got there, how long they stayed, whether they trained a successor, or whether their health was still allowing them to do the job.

Ask yourself honestly. What did John Lewis do for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District in his last decade in office that a younger, healthier, more engaged representative could not have done better? What did David Scott deliver to Georgia’s 13th District in his last five years that required him specifically, at eighty years old, in a wheelchair, absent from the campaign trail? If the answer you come up with is some version of “he was a symbol,” congratulations. You have just identified the exact problem. Symbols do not fix roads. Symbols do not answer constituent calls. Symbols do not read bills or attend committee hearings or show up for votes. Symbols give you moral victories. Moral victories are what Black Americans have been collecting for six decades while the material conditions of their communities have, in many measurable respects, gotten worse.

This is where the prosecution turns on the voters themselves.

The machine did not keep John Lewis and David Scott in office. You did. The machine does not vote. You vote. The machine only works because ninety percent of you show up every two years and pull the lever for the name your mother told you to pull the lever for. When I ran against Lewis, I met Black voters in that district who could not articulate a single policy position the congressman had taken in the previous five years. They could; however, tell me what he did on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. They could not tell me what he had done for their actual neighborhood in 2019. That is not representation. That is ancestor worship with a ballot.

Ancestor worship has a price tag. The price tag is a 5th District that has been held by the machine’s pick, and not by any candidate ever actually vetted in a competitive Democratic primary, for six years running. The price tag is a 13th District that will now go months without a functioning representative because the incumbent refused to step down when it was clear he could not do the job. The price tag is a Congressional Black Caucus whose average age rivals the Senate’s, whose legislative output on matters that specifically affect working-class Black Americans has been thin for decades, whose internal politics protects seniority over capacity every single cycle. The price tag is a generation of younger, healthier, ideologically diverse Black candidates who are told by their own communities to wait their turn, to show deference, to not challenge the elders. The price tag is silence in Black churches, silence in Black media, silence in Black political clubs, whenever anyone dares say what I am saying to you right now.

Let me make one thing explicit, because I already know what comes next. I am not arguing that David Scott or John Lewis were bad men. They were men. They were fallible men. They lived long public lives in a system that does not demand accountability from Black elected officials once they have ascended, and they both reached the end of those lives having benefited from that lack of accountability. Lewis’s work in the civil rights movement in the 1960s was real. Scott’s work securing eighty million dollars for 1890s Land-Grant HBCUs in the 2018 Farm Bill was real. Those contributions stand. Contributions to the past do not excuse failure to prepare the future. Staying in office past the point where you can meaningfully do the work is a failure. It is a failure the men themselves committed. It is a failure the machine enabled. It is a failure the voters paid for with their own representation.

The lesson Black voters should be drawing from David Scott’s death this week, and from John Lewis’s death six years ago, is not that great men have fallen. Great men fall. That is not a lesson. The lesson is that a political culture which treats Black elected officials as untouchable simply because they are Black has produced exactly the outcomes you would expect from any system where accountability is forbidden. Officials stay too long. Their health declines on the job. Their staffs cover for them. Their parties stand by until the obituary is ready. The same voters who refused to ask hard questions line up to pay their respects at the memorial service, as if the problem was that the man died and not that the machine rode him until he did.

VERDICT: Racial loyalty in American politics has given Black voters, for sixty years, a conveyor belt of moral victories and a deficit of actual results. You have gotten representation without power, presence without policy, and legacy without transfer. Lewis spent thirty-three years in Congress and left behind a voting rights bill that bears his name but is still not law. Scott spent twenty-three years in Congress and left behind a vacant seat the machine will fill without your input. Lewis in 2020 and Scott in 2026 are not two separate tragedies. They are the same tragedy running on repeat. The machine that selected Nikema Williams as its own chairwoman in 2020 is already rehearsing its selection for the 13th District this week. The cycle will continue until Black voters decide that skin color is not a platform, seniority is not a substitute for capacity, and a primary challenge is not a betrayal. The first step in breaking the cycle is admitting it exists. I am asking you, in the wake of Congressman Scott’s death, to admit it exists. Then we can talk about what comes next.

The Pain of Truth.

THE BARRINGTON REPORT 24/7

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Follow: @TBR24_7

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio. Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

This week on The Barrington Report, Barrington threads three stories that share one spine: power, at every level, rewriting the rules to protect itself. Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday by a 2% margin to let the state legislature redraw congressional districts mid-decade — a move that could flip up to four seats — and a Republican-appointed judge blocked the result less than 12 hours later. Tennessee Republicans voted to seize control of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, stripping authority from a locally elected school board governing a $1.7 billion district serving 100,000 students in the state’s largest majority-Black county — and on the same day, the governor signed a companion bill preventing that district from using its own money to sue. And in Washington, four House members faced ethics reckonings this month. Three resigned. One is daring his colleagues to call the vote. The thesis: the pattern is not partisan. The pattern is power. And the only question that matters is whether you’re paying close enough attention to notice when the rules change — because they always change before the vote, and they always change in favor of the people changing them.

🎹 Key Highlights

🗺️ The Gerrymander Con — Both Parties, Named and Numbered Tuesday, April 21st, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment 50.7 to 49.3 — 2.5 million ballots cast, a 2% margin, essentially a coin flip. The new map could shift Virginia’s congressional delegation from 6-5 Republican to 10-1 Democratic. Four seats potentially flipped, not because voters changed their minds, but because the lines on the map got redrawn around them. Less than 12 hours later, a Republican-appointed Virginia circuit court judge in Tazewell County blocked the certification. Before anyone on the right cheers that judge, walk it back. Last summer, President Trump pressured Texas Republicans to redraw their map mid-decade to pick up as many as five seats before the 2026 midterms. Missouri followed. Ohio followed. North Carolina followed. Florida’s special session starts April 28th. California Democrats responded with their own initiative to flip five seats. Utah drew another Democratic seat.

Virginia just authorized four more. Axios analysis using 2024 election data shows Kamala Harris would have carried six more seats under the new lines than she did under the old ones. Even House Republicans are admitting it on the record — California Rep. Kevin Kiley told Axios “I wish none of this had happened.” Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon called it a mistake in hindsight. The signature line: “Politicians drawing their own districts is politicians picking their own voters. That is not democracy. That is a rigged game where the scoreboard gets painted after the play.”

🏫 Memphis Taken, Philly Cut — How the System Sorts Children Wednesday night, April 22nd, Tennessee passed Senate Bill 714. Senate 27-6, House 73-19, both down party lines. The bill creates a nine-member politically appointed board — not elected, appointed — with sweeping authority over Memphis-Shelby County Schools, a district serving over 100,000 students with a $1.7 billion budget at the heart of the state’s largest majority-Black county. Five members appointed by Governor Bill Lee, two by the House Speaker, two by the Senate Speaker. One board member, by design, gets picked from anywhere else in Tennessee. The board can hire and fire the superintendent, hire and fire teachers, open and close schools, and set curriculum for four years with an option to renew for two more.

On the same day, Governor Lee signed a separate bill preventing Tennessee school districts from using public funds to sue over state accountability measures — the school board had already voted to hire a lawyer, and the governor made sure they couldn’t pay one with the district’s own money. Yes, 75% of Memphis students failed reading and math proficiency last year. That’s a real failure. But that same district earned the state’s highest possible academic growth score for the fourth year running, and 80% of Tennessee schools already meet two of the six criteria the new law uses to justify a takeover. Meanwhile in Philadelphia, students are walking out as the district moves forward with closures gutting sports, AP classes, math coverage, and the arts. The Tennessee model is not staying in Tennessee. It is a blueprint. And when it arrives in Georgia — and it will — the question won’t be whether the test scores are bad enough. The question will be whether the community was paying attention before the vote happened.

⚖️ Four Members, One Standard — Equal Weights, Equal Measures Run the roll. Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California — sexual misconduct allegations — resigned. Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas — sexual misconduct allegations — resigned. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, Democrat of Florida — found guilty by the House Ethics Committee on 25 of 27 counts including funneling $5 million in misallocated COVID relief funds to her own congressional campaign, under federal criminal indictment — resigned Tuesday afternoon minutes before the Ethics Committee was set to recommend her expulsion. Cory Mills, Republican of Florida — under Ethics Committee investigation since August 2024, accused of stolen valor regarding his Bronze Star (five soldiers who served with him disputed his account to NOTUS), accused of domestic violence with a Florida judge issuing a restraining order, and tied through OCC reporting to nearly $1 million in federal weapons contracts secured during his time in Congress — has denied all wrongdoing.

On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to expel him. His response on X was to dare her to call the vote and post attacks on her drinking habits. Three out of four did the right thing. One won’t. Speaker Johnson said Monday he would not encourage Republicans to pursue expulsion against each other. Hakeem Jeffries’ caucus is not united on Mills either. Everyone in leadership seems to be hoping the Ethics investigation quietly runs out the clock. Now the Georgia hook: Rep. Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, is on the record this week with Axios saying he regrets his vote to expel George Santos in 2023. Honorable man, and the consistency is respectable. But when the accused is a Congressional Black Caucus member, several CBC members suddenly discovered a deep concern for due process that was nowhere to be found when Santos was on the chopping block. The CBC chair issued a statement praising Cherfilus-McCormick — for funneling $5 million of disaster relief to her own campaign. The signature line: “Accountability is not a partisan weapon. It is a standard. If it only applies to the other side, it is not a standard — it is a grudge with a gavel.”

⚖️ Reality Check

• Virginia 50.7 to 49.3, blocked the next morning. Could flip 4 seats. 10-1 Democratic from 6-5 Republican.

• Texas, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina already redrew. Florida special session starts April 28th. California, Utah, Virginia drew counter-maps.

• Harris would have carried 6 more seats under the new maps using 2024 data.

• Tennessee SB 714: Senate 27-6, House 73-19. Same-day companion bill bars countersuits.

• Memphis-Shelby County: 100,000+ students, $1.7B budget, majority-Black county. 75% failed reading/math, highest growth score 4 years running.

• 80% of Tennessee schools already meet 2 of 6 takeover criteria. Seven other districts meet 3 of 6. Two of those run by the state itself.

• Cherfilus-McCormick: 25 of 27 Ethics counts, $5M COVID funds, under federal indictment.

• Mills: Ethics open since August 2024, Bronze Star disputed by 5 fellow soldiers, restraining order, ~$1M in federal weapons contracts.

• Three resignations, one holdout. Two Democrats, one Republican stepped down. One Republican refused.

• Hank Johnson on the record regretting the Santos expulsion vote.

• Georgia map: Oct 2023 VRA ruling (Judge Jones); House passed redraw 98-71, Senate 32-22, Kemp signed Dec 8, 2023. Lucy McBath’s coalition district collapsed. 9-5 Republican split preserved.

🧠 Barrington’s Message

“Every story this week is the same story. Power, at every level, rewriting the rules to protect itself. A mid-decade gerrymander in Virginia because the voters got inconvenient. A state takeover of Memphis schools because the local school board got inconvenient. A companion bill preventing that board from suing because the courts might get inconvenient. A Speaker who won’t push his own party’s accountability because the math might get inconvenient. The pattern is not partisan. The pattern is power. And the only question that matters is whether you’re paying close enough attention to notice when the rules change — because they always change before the vote, and they always change in favor of the people changing them.”

📬 Stay Connected

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com Follow: @TBR24_7 on X Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio – Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

🧩 Why You Should Listen

If you’re tired of cable news training you to root for one team’s gerrymander while crying foul at the other’s, this is your show. The Barrington Report cuts through the partisan theater to deliver the civic intelligence that actually moves your vote, your child’s classroom, and your representative’s seat — with no sponsors, no agenda, and no tribal loyalty. Every Thursday, the pain of truth. The truth is the only loyalty. Pay attention. Show up.

This week on The Barrington Report, Barrington follows up on three threads from two weeks ago — and shows what the gap between Washington’s words and your wallet looks like 14 days later. Georgia did the right thing on the gas tax, suspending 33.3 cents per gallon through May 19th, but the Strait of Hormuz is now under full U.S. naval blockade and JP Morgan is projecting $5 gas by month’s end. Texas just voted to mandate Bible-based reading lists in every public school while the federal Department of Education packs up its Washington headquarters — and most parents can’t name a single member of their state board of education. And in New York and Philadelphia, two mayors are running the same playbook: announce a crisis, propose a new tax, never audit where the last round of money went. The thesis: knowing and doing nothing is worse than not knowing at all — and trusting somebody else to do it for you is worse than both.

🎹 Key Highlights

⛽ Georgia Got It Right — For 33 More Days On March 20th, Governor Kemp signed HB 1199, suspending Georgia’s 33.3-cent state motor fuel tax through May 19th. Bipartisan vote, both chambers. Projected savings to drivers and truckers: roughly $400 million over 60 days. Today, Georgia gas sits at $3.71 a gallon — 42 cents below the $4.13 national average. Credit where it’s due. But credit is cheap, and accountability is the product. Maryland called the same move a budget-buster. New York’s governor called gas tax holidays “ineffective.” DeSantis in Florida — who ran on affordability — said the suspension “may get offset by further price increases,” meaning his plan is to do nothing while prices climb. Most states have the unilateral authority to do exactly what Georgia did. They’re choosing not to. And on April 13th, the U.S. Navy announced a full blockade of Iranian ports. Ship transits through the Strait dropped from 130 a day in February to 6 a day in March. JP Morgan now projects $5 gas by late April. The signature line: “A 60-day suspension during a war with no ceasefire in sight isn’t a solution. It’s an intermission.” So what happens on May 20th when the curtain goes back up?

📚 The Federal Government Is Walking Away. Who Walks In? Three stories broke in 72 hours that tell the same story from three angles. Texas State Board of Education voted 9-5 along party lines to give preliminary approval to mandatory statewide reading lists that include Bible-based material — every public school in Texas required to teach from this list starting in 2030. Federal Education Secretary Linda McMahon stood up last month and celebrated the administration’s “unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint” — the Department of Education is literally moving out of its Washington headquarters. And in Philadelphia, parents trying to review their children’s new social studies curriculum had to get the materials secondhand from a teacher willing to leak them — the district refused to share. The pattern: federal oversight pulling back, state legislatures moving in, parents locked out of the room. The system isn’t broken — it’s functioning exactly as designed, for the people who designed it. Children are sorted by zip code. Curriculum is decided by whatever faction controls the state Board of Education in that zip code. The Texas Bible vote is a useful story because it’s easy to have an opinion about — but the real story is that your state’s board of education has the same exact authority. The only firewall between that authority and your child’s classroom is you. Can you name a single member of the Georgia State Board of Education? If you can’t, that’s the segment.

💰 Two Mayors, Two New Taxes, One Question Both Parties Don’t Want You to Ask New York’s Mayor Mamdani is celebrating a proposed $500 million luxury second-home tax, framed as “taxing the rich.” Philadelphia’s Mayor Cherelle Parker held a press conference Wednesday announcing a rideshare tax — the “Uber tax” — framed as the only way to “save all school-based jobs on the chopping block.” Same playbook in different uniforms. Before the tribal instincts kick in, this segment isn’t about whether taxes are good or bad. It’s not a defense of luxury homeowners or an attack on teachers. It’s the question both parties have spent two generations training you not to ask: where did the money already go? New York and Philadelphia didn’t run out of money last week. They’ve been collecting taxes for decades. Both have multi-billion-dollar budgets. Both have had teachers, schools, and social services as line items every single year. The pull quote: “The tax debate is downstream of the audit debate, and the audit debate almost never happens because both parties benefit from you arguing about the rate and not the receipt.” Republicans get to campaign on cutting. Democrats get to campaign on funding. Neither has to answer for where the last round of money went. And Atlanta is not exempt — MARTA debates, APS budget cycles, city revenue mechanisms that appear right before election cycles. Same script. The verdict: no new revenue should be approved anywhere — red city, blue city, purple state — until the previous revenue is accounted for. Full stop.

⚖️ Reality Check

• Georgia HB 1199 saves drivers ~$400M over 60 days. Suspension expires May 19th.

• Georgia gas: $3.71/gal. National average: $4.13. Gap: 42 cents.

• U.S. Navy announced full blockade of Iranian ports April 13th. Ship transits through Hormuz: 130/day in February → 6/day in March.

• JP Morgan projecting $5 gas by late April. Diesel in Georgia already at $5.25.

• President said last weekend gas prices may be “the same or maybe a little bit higher” by midterms.

• Texas State Board of Education voted 9-5 to mandate statewide reading lists with Bible-based content. Effective 2030.

• Federal Department of Education physically vacating its Washington headquarters.

• Philadelphia parents had to get district curriculum secondhand through a leaking teacher.

• New York proposed $500M luxury second-home tax. Philadelphia proposed rideshare (”Uber”) tax to fund teacher jobs.

• Neither city has produced an audit of prior education spending.

• Atlanta will run the same playbook within 12 months. MARTA, APS, city budget hearings — watch the calendar.

🧠 Barrington’s Message

“Two weeks ago I told you that knowing and doing nothing is worse than not knowing at all. I stand by that. Tonight I’m adding to it. Knowing and trusting somebody else will do it for you — that’s worse than both. The gas tax will snap back on May 20th if you don’t call your legislator. The curriculum vote will happen whether you show up to the board meeting or not. The new tax will pass whether you audit the old one or not. No one is coming to save you. That’s not a complaint. That’s a job description. The pain of truth is the work — and the work is yours. It always was. It always will be.”

📬 Stay Connected

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com Follow: @TBR24_7 on X Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio – Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

🧩 Why You Should Listen

If you’re tired of cable news training you to argue about the rate while nobody asks for the receipt, this is your show. The Barrington Report cuts through the partisan theater to deliver civic intelligence that actually moves your gas tank, your child’s classroom, and your city’s budget — with no sponsors, no agenda, and no tribal loyalty. Pay the price of citizenship every Thursday — or somebody else will spend it for you.

This week on The Barrington Report, Barrington rips the mask off the gap between what Washington is telling you and what your bank account already knows. Oil is marching toward $200 a barrel while Congress takes a two-week recess and gets escorted to the front of the TSA line. Immigration raids are pulling hundreds of students from schools overnight and gutting district budgets no one in the enforcement debate is talking about. Nearly half of college students are reconsidering their majors because of AI while 42% of colleges are actively discouraging them from using it. The Department of Homeland Security is in the longest partial shutdown in American history — 260,000 employees on the hook, over 100,000 working unpaid — while Speaker Johnson flipped his position in five days and the President flipped his in less than a week. And the Supreme Court just reminded the administration that the 14th Amendment doesn’t bend for executive orders. The thesis: every receipt has a timestamp, and the whole operation runs on fraud the voters are being asked not to notice.

🎹 Key Highlights

⛽ $200 Oil and Your Empty Wallet Analysts project oil could hit $200 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed — a waterway that carries 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas. Gas is already $3.70 in Georgia, $4.08 nationally, up 35% since the war started. Every $10 increase in oil adds about 25 cents to a gallon at the pump, which puts the summer at $6 or $7 gas, possibly higher. The signature line: “If oil hits $200, you’re not choosing between premium and regular. You’re choosing between driving to work and feeding your family.” Washington burned through 850 Tomahawk missiles and a billion dollars a day in operational costs, and the strait is still closed. That’s not strategy — that’s a receipt for failure with your name on it.

🚸 700 Students Disappear Overnight — Who Pays? The immigration debate is framed as a tribal argument, but nobody is asking the budget question. In Franklin, Massachusetts, 700 students gone. Lynn, Massachusetts, 600 gone. Miami-Dade lost $70 million. Chelsea is cutting 70 positions. Houston shut down an entire newcomer school when enrollment dropped from 111 to 21. School funding is tied to enrollment — when students leave, money leaves, and your child’s reading coach, counselor, and special ed support leaves with them. In Metro Atlanta, Gwinnett County has 19,000 English language learners. DeKalb County is already looking to close 27 schools with 20,000 empty seats across the district. The feds do the raid. The district eats the cut. Nobody in Washington answers for the gap.

🎓 Colleges Charging Today’s Prices for Yesterday’s Education In 2024, 12% of students said employers asked about AI competency in interviews. By 2025, that number hit 30% — nearly tripled in one year. Meanwhile, 42% of colleges discourage AI use in coursework, and 11% flat-out prohibit it. Students are paying $40,000 a year in tuition to be told not to learn a skill a third of employers are now screening for. The question every parent writing those checks needs to ask: is the institution preparing my child for the economy they’re actually entering, or the economy that existed five years ago? Because that gap is the difference between a career and a credential that’s already obsolete. AI isn’t coming. It’s here. And the job market is not going to wait for the school to catch up.

🏛️ The DHS Shutdown Nobody’s Covering Like They Should Six weeks in, the longest DHS partial shutdown in American history. 260,000 employees affected, over 100,000 working without pay. Speaker Johnson called the Senate’s funding approach a “joke” on Friday. By Wednesday — five days later — he announced a plan to do exactly what the Senate proposed. President Trump trashed the Senate approach on Truth Social, then posted Wednesday telling Congress to adopt it. TSA agents are quitting. Coast Guard members are patrolling unpaid. FEMA employees are working for free. And while the uniformed ICE and Border Patrol agents got paid from diverted reconciliation funds, the 9,000 CBP civilians working alongside them? Same agency, zero paychecks, zero explanation. Congress is on vacation. TMZ is literally trailing them through Ireland while Americans at home miss their flights. “It seems like we have politicians that serve political parties and political interests, not the interests of the voting public.”

📜 The Constitution Doesn’t Care Who’s President The President signed an executive order on his first day back trying to restrict birthright citizenship — a 14th Amendment right the Supreme Court affirmed over 125 years ago. The whole case turns on five words: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” At oral arguments this week, Chief Justice Roberts called the government’s reasoning “quirky.” When the solicitor general compared the U.S. to other countries, Justice Kavanaugh shut him down: we interpret American law with American precedent. Not a single judge at any level has ruled in the administration’s favor. Not one. The President sat in on the oral arguments and watched his own appointees push back on his position. The civic intelligence angle: if a President can redefine who counts as an American citizen by pen stroke, what else can be redefined the same way? The 14th Amendment wasn’t written for one group. It was ratified after the Civil War to guarantee no government could strip anyone of equal protection. The Constitution doesn’t give you rights — it tells the government what it’s not allowed to do to you.

⚖️ Reality Check

• Gas: $3.70 Georgia, $4.08 national. $200/barrel oil projected if Hormuz stays closed. $6–$7 gas by summer, possibly higher.

• 850 Tomahawks spent. $1 billion/day in operational costs. Strait still closed.

• School districts nationwide losing tens of thousands of students to ICE enforcement. Reading coaches, counselors, and special ed staff on the chopping block.

• DeKalb County: 27 schools on the closure list. 20,000 empty seats. Cedar Grove High — Barrington’s alma mater — among them.

• 47% of college students considering a major change because of AI. 30% of employers now ask about AI competency in interviews. 42% of colleges still discourage AI use.

• DHS shutdown: 6 weeks, 260,000 employees, 100,000+ unpaid. Longest in history.

• Speaker Johnson: Friday “joke.” Wednesday “plan.” Five-day flip.

• ICE and Border Patrol uniformed agents paid through reconciliation diversion. 9,000 CBP civilians in the same agency: zero.

• Zero judges at any level have ruled in favor of the birthright citizenship executive order.

• Supreme Court, including Trump’s own appointees, expressed clear skepticism at oral arguments.

🧠 Barrington’s Message

“They’re spending a billion dollars a day on a war that’s raising your gas prices, shutting down the department that protects your airports to score political points, and trying to rewrite the Constitution with a pen. And the whole time, they’re telling you everything is fine. Everything is not fine. But you already knew that — that’s why you’re here. The question is: what are you going to do with what you know? Because knowing and doing nothing is worse than not knowing at all. Pain can either make a coward out of you, or pain can teach you to rise. The choice is yours.”

📬 Stay Connected

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com Follow: @TBR24_7 on X Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio – Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

🧩 Why You Should Listen

If you’re tired of cable news telling you which team to cheer for while your wallet gets lighter every week, this is your show. The Barrington Report cuts through the partisan noise and delivers the civic intelligence that actually affects your rent, your commute, your kid’s classroom, and your rights under the Constitution — with no sponsors, no agenda, and no tribal loyalty. Every Thursday, the pain of truth. Don’t fall like a coward. Rise like a phoenix.

On November 19, 2025, the Fulton County Reparations Task Force adopted a 636-page Harm Report. The document represents years of work, a team of credentialed researchers, and a Board of Commissioners vote that made national news. It is being positioned as a model for other jurisdictions to follow.

I read it.

The history is real. The math is not. The gap between those two things is one of the most important civic lessons available to us in 2026.

This piece is going to do two things at once. First, it is going to walk you through exactly what the report claims, how it got there, and why the numbers collapse under any serious scrutiny. Second, and more importantly, it is going to use that walkthrough to teach something that almost nobody is teaching in American schools right now: how to read a quantitative claim without getting rolled.

Most Americans, regardless of political tribe, cannot distinguish between a number that came from rigorous analysis and a number that came from a pre-determined conclusion dressed up in a spreadsheet. That is not a partisan failure. That is a civic failure. It is happening across every major policy debate we have, from housing to climate to reparations to immigration to AI.

The Fulton County report just happens to be an unusually clean specimen.

The Category Error At The Heart Of The Report

Before examining the report’s methodology, a deeper problem has to be named, because it is the problem that makes the methodology problem possible. The Fulton County Harm Report does not just make bad math. It makes a category error about what kind of claim it is making.

Historical narratives and quantitative calculations are different types of claims. A historical narrative is an interpretation, built from primary sources and arranged into a framework that makes meaning out of events. Narratives are contested by definition, because different historians reading the same sources can arrange them into different frameworks. This is not a weakness of historical work. It is the nature of the enterprise. History is argument about meaning, conducted under the discipline of evidence.

A quantitative calculation is something different. A calculation takes measured inputs, applies defined operations, and produces a numerical output. The output is supposed to be reproducible. Any competent analyst working from the same inputs and using the same operations should arrive at the same result. That reproducibility is what gives numbers their authority. It is why a dollar figure in a report feels more solid than a paragraph of historical interpretation, even when the dollar figure is built on shakier ground.

The Fulton County report fuses these two types of claims in a way that lets the interpretive weight of the historical narrative borrow the apparent solidity of the quantitative output, without earning it. The narrative underneath the math is presented as settled fact. The math on top of the narrative is presented as objective calculation. Neither presentation is honest.

Consider what the report actually does. It takes a historical interpretation, specifically, that American chattel slavery is the dominant causal explanation for the present-day economic condition of Black Americans in Fulton County, and it treats that interpretation as a settled input rather than as a contested argument. It then applies quantitative operations, including compound interest, wage extrapolation, and inflation adjustment, to generate an output figure. The output looks like a measurement. It is actually a narrative multiplied by a spreadsheet.

The number does not prove the narrative. The narrative is smuggled in as an assumption, the number is calculated from the assumption, and then the number is presented as if it vindicates the assumption it was built from.

This matters regardless of what you think about the underlying historical questions. A reader can hold any number of positions on American history, on the causes of the Civil War, on the trajectory of Reconstruction, on the relative weight of slavery versus Jim Crow versus redlining versus contemporary policy, and still recognize that building a $902 billion damages figure on top of any contested historical interpretation is the same category error. That is circular reasoning dressed up in the clothes of quantitative analysis.

The appropriate intellectual move, whenever you encounter a report like this, is to separate the two claims and evaluate them independently. What is the historical narrative being asserted? What is the evidence for it? Is that evidence contested, and if so, by whom? Separately, what are the quantitative operations being performed? Are those operations mathematically valid? Do the assumptions they rely on survive scrutiny? Only after both questions have been answered independently can you assess whether the final number means anything at all.

The Fulton County report fails on both levels. The historical narrative it assumes is one interpretation among several that credentialed historians hold about the relationship between slavery and present-day outcomes. It is not a settled matter. It is an active debate within the discipline. Orlando Patterson, Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed, Edward Baptist, and many others have published serious scholarly work reaching different conclusions about the causal chain from 1865 to the present. Treating one position in that debate as a settled input, without argument, is a failure of intellectual honesty.

The quantitative operations performed on top of that unsettled narrative then fail on their own terms, independently. The wage assumptions are unrealistic. The compound interest rates are fantastical. The counterfactual paths are double-counted. The sensitivity ranges span three orders of magnitude. We will walk through those failures in detail in the next sections.

The point worth holding onto, before we get into the math, is this: adopting a historical narrative as the foundation of a claim that cannot truly be quantified, and then presenting the quantitative output as if it proves the narrative, is one of the most common and most corrosive patterns in contemporary policy analysis. It happens across every political direction. It happens in climate reports that assume specific emissions trajectories, in drug war analyses that assume specific behavioral responses, in immigration studies that assume specific integration patterns, in reparations calculations that assume specific causal chains. Every time it happens, the narrative is doing the argumentative work while the math is doing the credibility work, and the reader is being asked to accept the combination as if it were a single, solid thing.

It is not a single, solid thing. It is two separate claims, stacked on top of each other, each propping up the other. Pull either one out and the whole structure falls.

That is what we are going to do with the Fulton County report now. First we will examine what the rhetorical device actually produced. Then we will stress-test the math on its own terms. Then we will ask what an honest version of this analysis would look like if the narrative and the quantification were kept properly separated.

What the Report Actually Claims

The headline claim of Chapter 1, the opening substantive chapter, written by the Task Force Chair herself, is that Fulton County, Georgia owes somewhere in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars for ten years of slavery-era labor extraction. The specific figure, calculated at a 7% annual compounding rate over 171 years, is $902,466,751,559.

Nine hundred and two billion dollars. For one county. For one decade, 1854 to 1864.

The report’s other quantified damages, scattered across twenty-one chapters, follow the same pattern. The Gartrell inheritance case, involving thirty named enslaved people, is valued at $4.5 billion in foreclosed wealth. Chattahoochee Brick Company’s convict labor exploitation is valued at $13.6 billion. Ad valorem tax revenue collected on enslaved people as property compounds to $4.7 billion at the county level and $8.2 billion at the state level. The chain gang labor across Fulton County over a century tallies to $1.78 billion. The report does not provide a grand total, however summing the high-end estimates across chapters yields a figure that exceeds a trillion dollars owed by one Georgia county.

For context: Fulton County’s entire annual budget is roughly $1.4 billion. The claim is that one county owes more than seven hundred years of its total spending. The state of Georgia’s entire annual GDP is around $800 billion. The claim is that one decade of enslaved labor in one county generated a compounded debt exceeding the state’s entire annual economic output today.

If your instinct is that something has gone wrong in the arithmetic, that instinct is correct. The specific nature of what went wrong is worth understanding, because the same technique is being used in reparations reports across the country, including California’s 2023 task force, San Francisco’s committee recommendations, and Evanston’s housing program, and across unrelated policy domains as well.

The Math Trick, Explained

Here is how the $902 billion number is constructed. Pay attention, because this is the key move.

The researchers start with a reasonable-sounding question: what would enslaved people have earned if they had been paid white manual laborers’ wages? They cite legitimate economic historians, including Stanley Lebergott, Robert Margo, and the Historical Statistics of the United States, to establish a wage baseline. So far, so good.

Next they multiply that wage by an assumed work schedule: fourteen hours per day, 365 days per year. Every day. No Sundays. No Christmas. No illness. No childbirth. No weather disruption. No seasonal slowdown in agricultural labor. Just 5,110 hours per year of continuous extraction, applied uniformly to every adult and even to children counted on tax rolls.

For comparison, the report acknowledges in the same table that white manual laborers worked 3,432 hours per year, sixty-six hours per week, fifty-two weeks. The model therefore assumes enslaved people worked nearly fifty percent more hours than the free laborers whose wages are being used as the comparison benchmark.

This is historically false. Every serious historian of American slavery, from Fogel and Engerman to Eugene Genovese to Herbert Gutman, documents that enslaved people generally had Sundays off, reduced Saturday labor, and seasonal variation in agricultural work. The 14-hour, 365-day assumption is not conservative. It is not even realistic. It is the theoretical physical maximum, chosen because it produces the largest possible base number.

That gets you to $8.96 million in aggregate unpaid wages for 1854-1864.

Then comes the real trick.

The report takes each year’s labor figure and compounds it forward at 7% annually to 2025. Compound 1854’s $432,487 at 7% for 171 years and you get $45.7 billion. Compound 1855’s figure and you get $46.7 billion. Compound 1856’s and you get $45.6 billion. Stack up all eleven years and you arrive at the headline number: $902 billion.

A 7% annual return for 171 years is a roughly 114,000% increase, a 1,140x multiplier. Every 1854 dollar becomes $1,140 in 2025.

No losses. No interruptions. No taxes. No transaction costs. No market crashes. No wars. No depressions.

For this to be a realistic counterfactual, the following would all have to be true simultaneously.

That formerly enslaved people, legally barred from owning property, banking wealth, or inheriting under state law, would have achieved top-quartile-of-the-S&P-500 returns uninterrupted from 1854 through 2025.

That their descendants would have maintained those returns through Reconstruction, the Panic of 1873, the Panic of 1893, the collapse of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, which wiped out actual documented Black savings, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, two World Wars, 1970s stagflation, the dot-com crash, and the 2008 financial crisis.

That none of the wealth would have been spent. Not on food. Not on housing. Not on education for children. Not on medical care. For 171 years.

That the tax code, which has averaged roughly 25-40% effective drag on investment returns across the period, simply did not exist.

That is not a damages calculation. That is a fantasy.

The report labels this the conservative range because it also shows a 3% and 5% version. However 3% produces $1.3 billion, 5% produces $34 billion, and 7% produces $902 billion. When your model’s output spans three orders of magnitude based purely on which interest rate you pick, the interest rate is not a conservative assumption. It is the lever that determines the conclusion.

The Double-Count Nobody Mentions

There is a second problem that makes the bad math worse. The report calculates multiple counterfactuals in parallel and treats them as if they are additive.

Chapter 1 compounds the ad valorem taxes collected on enslaved people as property and gets $4.7 billion at the county level. Next it separately compounds the unpaid labor of those same enslaved people and gets $902 billion. The same human beings, appearing on the same tax rolls, generate two separate streams of damages, the taxes paid on their bodies as property, and the wages not paid for their work, and both are carried forward to 2025 without any reconciliation between them.

Chapter 4, on the Gartrell case, does the same thing at the individual level. For the thirty people named in Francis Gideon’s will, the report separately compounds:

• The unpaid inheritance ($4.5 billion at 7%)

• The unpaid railroad dividends from the same estate ($16.7 billion at 7%)

• The unpaid wages of those same enslaved people ($93 billion at 7%)

• The foreclosed land investment those inheritances could have funded ($96 million)

These are not independent damages. The inheritance was partly constituted by the extracted labor. The railroad shares were part of the inheritance. The land they could have bought would have been purchased with 10% of the same inheritance that is also separately compounding. The report sums them as if they are parallel harms, however in any real counterfactual history the thirty enslaved people would have lived one life and accumulated wealth along one path. You cannot collect maximum damages for every theoretical path they could have taken. The universe does not branch that way.

The Chattahoochee Brick chapter adds a third layer of error: it applies CPI inflation adjustment (factor of 33.9) AND compound interest at 2.5% to the same base figure. That is charging twice for the time value of money, once through inflation and once through interest, when standard damages math picks one or the other. That is not a theoretical quibble. It is a textbook error that any undergraduate economics student should catch in a first-semester course.

The Part That’s Actually Good

Here is where I have to be honest, because scorched-earth criticism without acknowledgment of what works is just tribalism.

The archival research in this report is real. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, the Task Force Chair and principal researcher, has done legitimate primary-source historical work. Fulton County wills. Tax digests from 1854 through 1864. The actual case record of American Colonization Society v. Gartrell (1857). Census rolls. Microfilm collections from Lincoln County, Clarke County, and Fulton County. She names specific enslavers, specific enslaved people, specific estates, and specific court rulings.

The story of Francis Gideon’s 1853 will, which attempted to free thirty enslaved people and bequeath them substantial inheritances contingent on their relocation to Liberia, and the subsequent legal battle in which Gideon’s son-in-law Lucius Gartrell used Georgia’s anti-manumission statutes to overturn the will and keep the people enslaved, that is a genuinely important piece of Fulton County legal history. It deserves to be documented. It deserves to be taught.

The chain gang camp inventories, the convict lease holder records, the county-by-county mapping of where enslaved labor was extracted and where its profits accumulated, all of that is useful historical record-keeping.

If you stripped out the quantification chapters and published the remaining historical scholarship as a county history monograph, it would be a credible contribution to the literature. The problem is not the history. The problem is what happens when advocacy-driven damages math gets welded to real archival work, because the result is a document that looks rigorous from a distance and falls apart on inspection.

That is the civic education problem in a nutshell.

How to Read a Quantitative Claim Without Getting Rolled

This is the part that matters beyond Fulton County. The technique used in this report is used everywhere, in every political direction, on every major issue. Here is a checklist I would give to any ninth-grade civics student, or any adult who reads the news, before they accept a big scary number as real.

Question one: What is the base figure, and how was it measured?

Before anything else, find the raw number the calculation starts from. In the Fulton County report, the base is $8.96 million in stolen wages for 1854-1864. Everything else is that number multiplied by assumptions. If the base is built on absurd inputs, like 14-hour workdays for 365 days a year, the rest does not matter. Bad inputs produce bad outputs no matter how sophisticated the math downstream looks.

This applies to every claim. When someone tells you a program will save $X billion over ten years, or cost $X billion, or create $X billion in economic activity, the first question is always what the year-one base is and how it was measured. Almost every inflated policy claim is built on a quietly inflated base.

Question two: What is the compounding or extrapolation rate, and who chose it?

Long time horizons hide large lies. When somebody projects a number over 20, 50, or 171 years, the annual growth rate becomes the entire ballgame. A 3% rate over 171 years produces a 165x multiplier. A 7% rate produces a 1,140x multiplier. Same starting number, result differs by almost 7x.

When you see a long-range projection, ask two things: what rate are they using, and why that rate? In the Fulton County report, 7% is the S&P 500’s historical nominal return with reinvested dividends, before taxes, before fees, before any life event. That is a theoretical ceiling, not a realistic assumption for anyone’s actual wealth trajectory, and certainly not for people who were legally barred from owning property.

You will see the same pattern in climate cost projections, Social Security solvency models, education ROI arguments, and infrastructure benefit-cost analyses. The assumed rate of growth, or decay, almost always determines the conclusion. Almost nobody reports the sensitivity of their result to that assumption.

Question three: Is the same thing being counted more than once?

When a report lists multiple damages, ask whether they are truly independent or whether they share underlying quantities. In the Fulton County report, the ad valorem tax compounding and the stolen labor compounding are partially double-counting because they both derive from the same tax digest records. The Gartrell case chapter compounds inheritance, dividends, wages, and land appreciation as four separate damages when they are all variations on the same underlying wealth stream.

This pattern is everywhere in policy analysis. Stimulus multiplier effects get added to direct spending benefits. Health care savings get claimed by four different programs simultaneously. Infrastructure projects get credited with every indirect benefit their consultants can think of, with no adjustment for overlap.

The test is simple: if you could somehow go back and experience only one of the counterfactual paths, would you still be entitled to all the damages? If not, it is a double-count.

Question four: Are the downside scenarios modeled at all?

The Fulton County report models only upward growth. No market crashes. No bank failures. No wealth dilution across generations. The thirty original Gideon beneficiaries have thousands of descendants today, and the report never addresses who the rightful recipient would be. No taxes. No transaction costs. No spending. The counterfactual is a straight line up for 171 years.

Any honest damages calculation has to model what would realistically have happened, including the failures. The Freedmen’s Savings Bank collapse of 1874 alone wiped out approximately $3 million in Black depositor savings, which in today’s dollars is somewhere between $80 million and $1 billion depending on whose compounding you use. That is a documented loss to actual formerly enslaved people that the report’s counterfactual simply pretends did not happen.

Whenever you see a projection that only goes one direction, the analyst has already decided what they want the answer to be.

Question five: What is the sensitivity range?

A good analysis shows you how the answer changes when you vary the inputs. The Fulton County report technically does this, showing 3%, 5%, and 7%, however it then quotes the 7% number in the summary paragraph, which is the advocacy move. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the answer ranges from $1.3 billion to $902 billion depending on which rate you pick. A serious analyst would say: our confidence interval spans three orders of magnitude, therefore we cannot credibly claim a point estimate. An advocate says: the headline number is $902 billion.

When you see a confidence interval that spans orders of magnitude, the point estimate is not reliable. Full stop.

It does not matter how credentialed the authors are or how many citations are in the footnotes.

Question six: Who benefits from the number being large, and what editorial discipline did the authors impose on themselves?

This is the integrity question. Every analyst has incentives. The question is whether they have acknowledged those incentives and built in discipline against them. A reparations task force has obvious incentives to produce a large number. A Chamber of Commerce has obvious incentives to produce a large economic-benefit-of-policy-X number. A defense contractor has obvious incentives to produce a large cost-of-not-funding-Y number.

The question is not whether bias exists. It always does. The question is whether the analysis shows evidence of self-correction, of stated methodology that constrains the authors’ ability to move the number in their preferred direction. In the Fulton County report, the conservative framing gets applied to assumptions that are anything but conservative. That is a tell.

Why This Matters For Civic Education

We do not teach this in schools. I know because I teach ninth-grade American Government, and I have read the state standards. Students learn the three branches of government, the Bill of Rights, and how a bill becomes a law. They do not learn how to read a budget projection. They do not learn how to spot a double-count. They do not learn that a 7% compounding assumption over 171 years is the difference between a credible claim and a fantasy.

This is the foundational weakness of American civic participation in 2026. The problem is not that citizens are uninformed. Everyone has access to more information than any generation in human history. The weakness is that citizens cannot evaluate the quantitative claims embedded in the information they are flooded with. In a policy environment where almost every argument now comes attached to a dollar figure, the inability to read those figures critically is the inability to participate as an informed citizen at all.

The Fulton County Reparations Harm Report is going to be cited. It already is. It will show up in policy debates in other jurisdictions. It will appear in journalistic coverage. The billion-dollar figures will get quoted without the methodology being examined, because examining methodology is boring and the numbers are dramatic. That is how modern policy laundering works. A credential-weighted document produces a number, the number gets cited, the citation gets treated as evidence, and six news cycles later the number has hardened into a factoid that nobody bothers to verify.

This is why civic education has to evolve. The three branches of government have not changed since 1789. The information environment has changed beyond recognition in the last twenty years. A civics curriculum that does not teach quantitative literacy, not statistics, not advanced math, but the basic skill of asking where did this number come from and what happens if I stress its assumptions, is preparing students for a country that no longer exists.

A Final Word On What This Report Actually Does

I want to close with something that needs to be said plainly, because the scorched-earth methodological critique above only addresses the math. The deeper problem with this report is the pattern it represents, a pattern that shows up across the policy landscape regardless of which political direction is producing the claim.

Slavery happened in Fulton County. The people Francis Gideon tried to free and Lucius Gartrell kept enslaved were real people with names, children, and grandchildren. The chain gang system was real. The convict lease system was real. The racial tax disparities of the post-Reconstruction era were real.

The report’s problem is not the history it documents. The report’s problem is that it smuggles a contested historical interpretation into the foundation of a quantitative calculation, presents the output of that calculation as if it were a measurement, and then uses the apparent solidity of the measurement to retroactively validate the interpretation that was smuggled in. That is a circular structure dressed up as an analytical one, and it would be the same error regardless of whose politics it served.

Imagine a Chamber of Commerce report that assumed as a settled premise that regulation is the dominant causal factor suppressing small business formation, applied a compounding model across decades to project forgone economic output, and arrived at a figure in the hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory damages. The historical narrative underneath would be contested. The math on top would borrow the narrative’s authority while pretending to be independent of it. The final number would appear to validate the narrative it was built from. That is the same error in a different political direction, and it would deserve the same critique.

The discipline this demands is uncomfortable. It requires separating what you believe about history from what can actually be calculated. It requires accepting that some harms are real and consequential but not quantifiable in dollar terms to the precision of nine hundred and two billion. It requires acknowledging that the strength of a historical argument does not transfer to the strength of a numerical estimate built on top of it. A compelling narrative about injustice does not produce a reliable damages calculation. A reliable damages calculation requires inputs, assumptions, and operations that can survive independent scrutiny, and the Fulton County report’s inputs, assumptions, and operations cannot.

The descendants of the enslaved people this report names deserve better than the document produced in their name. They deserve scholarship that treats them as agents rather than as units of economic extraction. They deserve policy analysis that addresses current, measurable barriers with current, measurable interventions. They deserve quantification that could survive economic peer review rather than crumbling under a first-year graduate student’s examination.

They also deserve a civic conversation that refuses to let narratives and numbers masquerade as each other. Producing a $902 billion figure for one county over one decade does not advance the cause of serious reparations discussion. It discredits it. Every time one of these figures gets published and then falls apart under inspection, it becomes harder for the next researcher, possibly a more careful one, to get a hearing. The fantasy math is not just bad scholarship. It is a disservice to the very people the report is supposedly for.

That is the final civic lesson here. Bad quantification does not just mislead readers. It corrodes the credibility of legitimate claims that share the same subject matter. When advocates choose big-scary-number tactics over defensible methodology, they make the work harder for everyone who comes after them. When narrative arguments get laundered through spreadsheets into numerical conclusions, the numerical conclusions will not survive first contact with serious scrutiny, and the original narrative will be weakened along with them.

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio • Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

The Pain of Truth.

Episode Overview

In this episode of The Barrington Report, Barrington Martin II follows every story back to the same place: a tab running up in Washington while working people pay it at the pump, in the classroom, at the ballot box, and in the storm season ahead. Recorded from the Decatur home studio, Barrington moves through five connected arguments — the Iran war erasing the average tax refund, a coordinated network of federally-credentialed activists targeting Georgia’s 2026 election infrastructure, an education system that is not broken but sorted by design, a DHS shutdown leaving FEMA compromised 73 days before hurricane season, and a war that cannot be ended because the allies needed to end it were burned before they were needed. The throughline across all five segments is the same: institutions functioning exactly as designed, by people who designed them for themselves, while the cost lands on everyone else. The show closes with a call not to partisan action but to community, family, and the nationalist obligation every American owes their neighbors.

🎹 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

SEGMENT 1 ⛽

YOUR TAX REFUND IS GONE

Barrington opens cold on a single number: 92 cents. That is how much gas has risen in 30 days. National average: $3.84. A month ago: $2.92. The Iran war, landing in your tank. The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research calculated the average household will spend $740 more on gas this year compared to pre-war projections. The average tax refund from the One Big Beautiful Bill: $748. Barrington lands the arithmetic without editorializing: the one economic win this administration had to show working people has been almost exactly erased at the pump before most of them even cashed the check.

They told you that you were going to get a nice hefty refund. But the war totally erased that refund. Nobody in Washington is going to call it a tax. They will call it a temporary disruption. You paid it. You just did not know who to write the check to.

The Federal Reserve held rates for the second straight meeting. Powell projected inflation at 2.7%, up from 2.4% in December. Rate cuts are conditional on progress Powell himself said is “not as much as we had hoped.” The SPR release — 172 million barrels — will not reach the market for 120 days. Barrington closes the segment with the bridge: the 92-cent jump is the price you can see. What comes next is the price on something you cannot — your vote.

SEGMENT 2 🏳️

GEORGIA ELECTIONS UNDER SIEGE

Barrington delivers the facts sequentially, without telling the audience what to think. February 2026 Washington Election Integrity Summit. In the room: Kurt Olsen (Trump’s director of election security, directed the Fulton FBI raid), Brad Carver (Georgia GOP, one of the 16 fake Trump electors in 2020, called Georgia “the biggest topic”), Clay Parikh (cybersecurity expert whose analysis justified the Fulton warrant), Marci McCarthy (former DeKalb GOP official, now federal position at CISA, posted then deleted LinkedIn photos from the summit), and Michael Flynn. The AJC obtained audio from the follow-up Zoom call.

These are not fringe activists speculating on the internet. These are people with federal credentials, federal authority, and a recorded conversation about what they are planning to do with both — in Georgia — before November. Understand that.

A draft executive order circulating in this network would declare a national emergency based on debunked claims of Chinese interference in 2020 and use it to ban mail-in voting and voting machines. Flynn pitched a version of this to Trump in December 2020. Trump later said he regretted not doing it. On the Zoom call, activist Holly Kesler said she wanted to see Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “taken off in handcuffs.” Barrington delivers the quote flat and moves on without explanation. Georgia’s QR code deadline is July. No legislation has moved. Election officials say it’s already too late. Georgia runs 2026 on the same infrastructure this network has targeted for five years — while that network now holds federal authority.

Barrington breaks the fourth wall: How much of this have you heard on mainstream media? If you live in Georgia, has your news covered this? The answer to that silence is why TBR exists.

SEGMENT 3 🏫

THE SYSTEM IS WORKING FINE

Barrington opens with the uncomfortable provocation: the American education system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. The problem is it was not designed for everybody. The Education Law Center analysis: most states increased total education spending between 2022 and 2023, but more than ten reversed a decade-long trend of directing extra funding to high-poverty districts. Total spending up. Share going to the poorest schools down. Both things true simultaneously. That is not a contradiction. That is a design.

The system did not fail those children. The system sorted them. There is a difference. Failure is an accident. Sorting is a policy. And in Georgia, the sorting has been going on long enough that people have started to call it normal.

Georgia’s $62 million literacy coach proposal: Hollis Innovation Academy saw third-grade reading scores rise 29 points in one year. House passed it nearly unanimously. Speaker Burns called it the number one priority. Still in the budget conference committee. Unsigned. Not guaranteed. Michigan this week mandated science of reading training for every K-5 teacher by law before certification. Georgia has the same evidence. Georgia does not have the political will. Politicians stand in front of cameras and talk about literacy. Then they go into the conference committee and negotiate the funding down while the cameras are off. That is not failure. That is the system functioning as designed.

Barrington extends the frame to parenting: the failures of parenting are why public schools struggle to serve children the way they need to be served. The constituency to change the system cannot be built at the ballot box every two or four years. It has to be built in school board meetings, PTAs, and direct conversations between parents who stopped waiting for someone else to fix it.

SEGMENT 4 🚨

DHS STILL BROKEN

Thirty-plus days into the DHS shutdown. TSA workers missing paychecks. FEMA compromised. ICE detention facilities on expired contracts. Border wall at 36 miles out of nearly 2,000 funded. Barrington holds both parties to the same standard without flinching. Republicans protecting mass deportation funding. Democrats filing a discharge petition to fund TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard — leaving ICE and CBP unfunded as leverage. Needs 218 signatures. Needs four Republicans. Every Republican said no.

One of Jeffries’ own members said it: “It’s good politics but it’s not going to actually get DHS open and help the officers get their paychecks.” His own party’s strategy. His own words. Nobody in that building is losing sleep over it. Which is a damn shame.

Hurricane season: June 1. Seventy-three days out. Georgia in the zone. Every major Gulf storm in the last decade has had downstream consequences for this state. FEMA is a month into a shutdown with a contracting backlog, a leadership transition, and sources saying it could take months to restore operations even after the shutdown ends. Barrington’s verdict is bipartisan and equal: there is no political argument — right or left — that makes a compromised FEMA acceptable going into hurricane season. Both parties chose positioning. The receipt gets paid in storm response times.

SEGMENT 5 🌍

THE WAR NOBODY CAN END

Barrington returns to the beginning. The Iran war is why gas is $3.84. Why the Fed has no room to move. Why the average household is on track to spend $740 more this year. That war is the first line on the tab built across the entire show. The administration asked NATO to join a coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Germany: no. Italy: no. Japan: no. France: functionally no. The EU foreign policy chief: “This is not Europe’s war.” Trump on Truth Social: “foolish mistake.” “We are going to remember.” “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE.” All caps.

You cannot spend years threatening your allies, insulting their leaders, and undermining the foundations of the alliances they depend on — and then call them when you need ships in a strait. That is not how alliances work. That is not how trust works. And the people paying for that lesson are not in Washington.

Barrington pulls every segment into a single frame: the war erased the refund, the election network is being built around the ballot, the education system is sorting children by zip code while the funding stalls, the emergency agency is broken 73 days before hurricane season, and the war that started all of it cannot be ended because the allies needed to end it were burned before they were needed. Every line on the tab is the result of decisions made by people who calculated the cost would land somewhere else.

The close shifts from indictment to obligation. Barrington calls on the audience to abandon partisan allegiance entirely — not toward nihilism but toward a nationalist obligation to neighbor, community, and country. Politics is the only occupation where people make decisions that ruin lives and face no consequence. The only allegiance owed is to self, family, and community. No one else is coming to save us.

⚖️ REALITY CHECK

The blunt receipts. What this episode proved.

• Gas at $3.84 nationally. Up 92 cents in 30 days. $740 more in household gas costs this year.

• Average tax refund from the One Big Beautiful Bill: $748. The refund and the war tax are the same number.

• Fed held rates. Inflation revised up to 2.7%. Powell: progress “not as much as we had hoped.” No cuts coming.

• SPR release: 172 million barrels authorized. Will not reach market for 120 days.

• Washington Election Integrity Summit: Olsen, Carver, Parikh, McCarthy, Flynn. Federally credentialed. Recorded. Georgia their stated target.

• Draft executive order circulating: national emergency declaration to ban mail-in voting and voting machines.

• Holly Kesler on recorded Zoom call: wants to see Republican Secretary of State Raffensperger “taken off in handcuffs.”

• Georgia QR code deadline: July. No legislation moved. Officials say too late to replace system before midterms.

• Education spending up overall. Equity funding reversed in 10-plus states. Georgia’s $62M literacy investment still in Senate negotiations.

• DHS shutdown: 30-plus days. TSA unpaid. FEMA compromised. Discharge petition needs 4 Republican votes. None coming.

• Hurricane season: June 1. 73 days. Georgia in the zone.

• NATO rejected Hormuz coalition. Germany, Italy, Japan out. France noncommittal. Strait stays closed.

• Netanyahu: no “schedule” for the war’s end.

• The system is not broken. It is functioning exactly as designed — by people who designed it for themselves.

🧠 BARRINGTON’S MESSAGE

📬 STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Podcast: Apple Podcasts and Spotify — search The Barrington Report

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio — atotalks.com • Apple • Google • Alexa • Apple CarPlay

🧩 WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN

If you are tired of being handed a bill you did not run up and told to be grateful for it, this episode is your receipt. Barrington Martin II takes five stories that most outlets covered in isolation and shows you the single ledger they all appear on. No party gets a pass. No narrative gets a free ride. The Pain of Truth means exactly what it says — and this week, the truth is that the tab has your name on it. Now you know what is on it.

📝 EDITOR’S NOTE

Every story in this week’s report is a line item on the same tab. The war escalated overnight — Israel struck Iran’s largest gas field, Iran hit Qatar’s LNG infrastructure, and the Pentagon is now asking for another $200 billion on top of what has already been spent. The same war is why your gas is approaching $4 a gallon and your tax refund has been functionally erased at the pump. While that was happening, a network of activists with federal authority held summits about how to reshape Georgia’s 2026 elections, Fulton County went to federal court to get its ballots back, and the Georgia House passed a $60.8 million literacy investment that still has to clear the Senate. The system is not broken. It is producing exactly the results it was built to produce. The question is whether you are paying close enough attention to do something about it.

⛽ LEAD STORY

The Tab Just Got Bigger

The Iran war escalated sharply this week. Israel struck South Pars — Iran’s largest gas field and one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves. Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the Gulf’s principal LNG production hub. QatarEnergy’s CEO told Reuters the strikes knocked out 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity. Repairs will take three to five years. The Pentagon is requesting an additional $200 billion for the war. Defense Secretary Hegseth said the number “could move” and added, “it takes money to kill bad guys.”

At the pump: the national average for regular gas is $3.72, up nearly 80 cents from a month ago, according to AAA. Diesel is now under $5 a gallon — $1.34 higher than last month. Brent crude briefly crossed $100 a barrel again Thursday before settling around $96. Oil prices have risen more than 40% since the war began February 28. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said there is no “schedule” for the war’s end.

The administration said the war would be swift. It is now in week three with no exit strategy, a request for $200 billion more, and energy infrastructure across the Gulf in flames. The bill is not coming. It is already here. You are paying it every time you fill up.

Stanford economists calculated earlier this week that the average household will spend roughly $740 more on gas this year compared to pre-war projections. The average tax refund from the One Big Beautiful Bill is $748. That arithmetic has not changed. What has changed is that this week’s escalation — strikes on gas fields, retaliatory attacks on LNG infrastructure, $5 diesel — means those Stanford projections may now be the floor, not the ceiling.

The administration’s relief efforts have not worked. Trump relaxed sanctions on Russian oil. He waived domestic shipping restrictions. Treasury Secretary Bessent floated easing sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea. As of Friday, none of these moves have brought prices down. The SPR release authorized two weeks ago will not reach the market for 120 days. Trump told reporters the war will end and prices “will come tumbling down.” Netanyahu says there is no schedule.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Check Georgia gas prices at gasprices.aaa.com. If you heat with natural gas, call your provider today about locking in a fixed-rate plan — Georgia’s deregulated gas market gives you options most people do not know exist. Track the SPR release timeline at energy.gov. Go to congress.gov, find your representative, and ask two questions in writing: What is the legal authorization for this war? What is the exit strategy? Neither question has received a public answer.

🏳️ CIVIC ACCOUNTABILITY

Georgia’s Ballots Are in Federal Court

In January, the FBI raided Fulton County’s election warehouse and walked out with every ballot cast in the 2020 election, along with registration rolls and other records. This week, Fulton County filed in federal court to get them back. County Chairman Robb Pitts said plainly: “This case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation.”

The raid was authorized by a warrant referral from Kurt Olsen, Trump’s director of election security and integrity — a man who was sanctioned in federal court for making “false, misleading and unsupported factual assertions” in support of Kari Lake’s failed 2022 Arizona governor’s race challenge. The affidavit used to justify the warrant relied heavily on analysis from election skeptics, including Clay Parikh, whose work was cited as evidence of possible data “manipulation” on tabulator tapes. Multiple independent reviews, audits, and courts have found no evidence of fraud in Fulton County’s 2020 results.

The NAACP, Georgia NAACP, Atlanta NAACP, and the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda filed a motion asking the court to prohibit the government from using the seized data for anything beyond the criminal investigation — specifically blocking its use for voter roll maintenance, election administration, or immigration enforcement. Secretaries of state across the country have raised concerns that the administration is building a database to potentially disenfranchise voters in future elections.

UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said on the record: “This could be a test run for 2026, when control of Congress may be at stake, and Trump could try to seize voting machines or otherwise interfere with state ballot tabulation processes in swing districts around the country.” That is a constitutional law scholar. Speaking publicly. About Georgia.

Meanwhile, the network behind this effort is active and organized. TBR reported last week on the February Washington summit attended by Olsen, Parikh, Michael Flynn, and Georgia Republican Party official Brad Carver, who called Georgia “the biggest topic.” Audio obtained by the AJC captured activist Holly Kesler describing “a multiagency approach” with “a lot of things going on behind the scenes.” On the same call, Kesler said she wanted to see Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “taken off in handcuffs.”

Georgia’s QR code problem remains unresolved. The state’s self-imposed deadline to stop counting votes with QR codes is July. No legislation has moved. Election officials say it is already too late to implement a new system before the midterms. Georgia will run its 2026 elections on the same infrastructure this network has been targeting for five years — while members of that network now hold federal law enforcement authority.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Verify your voter registration right now at mvp.sos.ga.gov. Track Fulton County’s federal court case at courtlistener.com. Contact Senator Warnock’s office (warnock.senate.gov) and Senator Ossoff’s office (ossoff.senate.gov) and ask specifically what oversight action they are taking on the DOJ’s use of seized Fulton voter data. Watch legis.ga.gov for any movement on the QR code replacement legislation before July.

🏫 EDUCATION DESK

The House Did Its Job. Now Watch the Senate.

The Georgia House passed its full $38.5 billion state budget this week with $60.8 million for literacy initiatives — a 159-4 vote. The budget funds House Bill 1193, the Georgia Early Literacy Act of 2026, which already passed the House 170-2 in late February. The bill would place a literacy coach in every elementary school offering kindergarten through third grade, mandate science of reading training, require full-day kindergarten before first grade, and create a statewide literacy infrastructure with coaches, screeners, and oversight committees.

The evidence behind the investment is not in dispute. At Michael R. Hollis Innovation Academy on Atlanta’s Westside, third-grade reading scores rose 29 points in one year under the literacy coach model. Schools statewide with coaches averaged 15% improvement in reading scores. One in three Georgia third-graders still cannot read proficiently. The Annie E. Casey Foundation has documented for twenty years that reading on grade level by third grade is the strongest predictor of whether a child graduates high school.

The House passed it 170-2. The budget passed 159-4. The evidence is unambiguous. The pilot worked. What is still in question is whether the Senate will protect the investment — or negotiate it down in a conference committee while the cameras are off.

The bill now moves to the Senate. Speaker Burns said he has been in conversation with Senate leaders “from day one” and is optimistic. But he acknowledged the work ahead “could be challenging.” Educators and advocates say the most important question is not whether the funding passes once — it is whether it gets built into the permanent QBE formula so it does not have to be fought for every single session. A one-year investment that disappears next budget cycle is not a solution. It is a pilot that gets abandoned.

For context on what the Senate is deciding: fewer than 6% of Georgia educators currently hold a dyslexia endorsement. The bill would require 1,300 new literacy coaches statewide. Those coaches need to be trained, credentialed, and placed in classrooms. That infrastructure takes years to build. It cannot be built on a single-year appropriation. The Senate needs to hear that from Georgia parents loudly and specifically.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Find your Georgia state senator at legis.ga.gov/members/senate. Contact them directly and ask two questions: Will you support the $60.8 million literacy investment in the final budget? Will you support building it into the permanent QBE formula rather than funding it year-to-year? If you do not know who your senator is, look it up today. The session does not last forever.

🎧 GEORGIA WATCH

DHS Still Broken. Hurricane Season in 73 Days.

The DHS partial shutdown is in its second month. TSA workers are missing paychecks. FEMA is operating in a compromised state with a contracting backlog that sources inside the department say could take months to resolve. Democrats filed a discharge petition this week to fund TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and every non-immigration DHS agency while leaving ICE and CBP unfunded as leverage. They need four Republican signatures. Every Republican Axios spoke to said no.

One of Jeffries’ own members described the petition plainly: “It’s good politics but it’s not going to actually get DHS open and help the officers get their paychecks.” That is the Democratic strategy assessed by a Democrat. The Republicans are holding out to protect deportation funding. Nobody is moving. Federal workers are still not getting paid.

Hurricane season begins June 1. That is 73 days away. Georgia is in the zone. Every major Gulf storm in the last decade has had downstream effects on this state. The agency that coordinates the federal disaster response is a month into a shutdown with no resolution in sight and a new secretary who has not yet been confirmed. When the storm comes, the receipt for this shutdown will be paid in response times.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Know your FEMA preparedness resources now: gema.georgia.gov. Build a 72-hour emergency kit before June 1. Do not wait on a federal response that may be slower than usual this season. Contact your congressional representative and ask specifically what oversight they are performing on FEMA readiness ahead of hurricane season.

👁️ WATCH LIST

Stories TBR is tracking that have not broken into the main rotation yet.

The War’s Second Bill: $200 Billion More

The Washington Post reported this week that the Pentagon is requesting an additional $200 billion for the Iran war. Hegseth confirmed the number “could move.” The original war has now cost more than 12 lives, disrupted 20% of global oil supply, and is now hitting Gulf LNG infrastructure. The American public was told this would be swift. The Pentagon is now asking for a sum that rivals the entire annual discretionary budget of several federal agencies combined. TBR will track this number as it moves through Congress.

Qatar’s LNG Damage: A 3-5 Year Problem

Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility knocked out 12.8 million tons per year of LNG export capacity. QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi said repairs will take three to five years. Qatar supplies LNG to Europe and Asia. This is not a short-term disruption. If you heat your home with natural gas or pay a utility bill that reflects gas prices, this story has your name on it over the next several years, not just the next several months.

Minneapolis Voter Roll Ransom Note

Senator Warnock disclosed this week that the Trump administration told Minneapolis officials they could have ICE agents removed from their community in exchange for handing over state voter rolls. Warnock’s words: “They literally said, ‘You want ICE out of your community? Hand over your voter rolls.’” If true, this is the federal government using immigration enforcement as leverage to obtain voter data. TBR is tracking whether this pattern surfaces in Georgia.

📊 FINAL WORD

The System Is Working Fine

That is the hardest thing to say this week, and it is the most important. The war did not happen because the system failed. It happened because the system produced the predictable result of an administration that calculated the cost would land on someone else. The gas prices did not spike because of bad luck. They spiked because the Strait of Hormuz is a known chokepoint and the war that closed it was started without a plan to reopen it. The ballots did not end up in federal custody because of a legitimate fraud investigation. They ended up there because the same people who pushed debunked fraud claims for five years now have the federal authority to act on those claims.

The education funding did not stall because Georgia does not care about children. It stalled because caring about children in a press release and caring about children in a conference committee are two different things — and the people who benefit from keeping them separate are very good at keeping them separate.

None of this is malfunction. All of it is design. The design benefits specific people. Those people are not reading this newsletter. The people reading this newsletter are the ones paying the tab.

The question TBR asks every week is not who did this to you. The question is whether you know enough now to stop letting them hand you the bill without reading it. The bill is right here. It has been itemized. What you do with it is on you.

📝 EDITOR’S NOTE

This week, every story TBR covered pointed to the same place. Gas prices spiked because a war started without a congressional vote and without an exit strategy. The agency responsible for your emergency response is walking into hurricane season with a contracting backlog and a leadership transition. A lawmaker got politically punished for voting with the Constitution. And a new poll confirmed what most of us already suspected: the American people are not polarized. The political class is — because polarization is profitable for them, and paralysis protects their position. That gap between what the people want and what power delivers is not an accident. It is a design. TBR exists to make sure you can see it clearly enough to do something about it.

⛽ LEAD STORY

[ TIER 1 — NEWS PEOPLE CAN USE ]

The War Tax Nobody Voted For

Georgia diesel spiked $1.08 in a single week — the third largest jump in the entire country, according to GasBuddy. The national average for regular gasoline hit $3.55 on Tuesday, up 61 cents from a month ago. One month ago, nine states averaged above $3 a gallon. As of this week, that number is 48 states.

The cause is not complicated. The U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran 11 days ago. The Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of the world’s oil supply moves daily — has come to a near standstill. In the first nine days of the war, 20% of global oil supply was disrupted, more than double the previous record set during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Brent crude crossed $100 a barrel this week for the first time since 2022.

Diesel moves your groceries. Diesel moves the parts that build the things you buy. Diesel moves the construction materials that build the houses you can’t already afford. When diesel spikes a dollar in a week, you feel it at the register before you feel it at the pump — it’s just slower and quieter, and nobody puts a sign outside the grocery store.

On Wednesday, the administration responded. Trump authorized the Department of Energy to release 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The International Energy Agency agreed to coordinate a global release of 400 million barrels. The administration is calling this relief.

Here is what relief actually means: the oil from the SPR release will not reach the market for 120 days. Four months. Your tank does not care what was authorized in Washington. It cares what is available at the pump in Atlanta this week. The four-month relief plan is not relief. It is a press conference.

There is also a second problem nobody is leading with. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve already sits near its lowest levels in decades — 415 million barrels as of March 6. Trump just authorized pulling 172 million of those barrels. That is 41% of what is left. Democrats will remind you that Biden drew down the reserve during the Russia-Ukraine oil shock in 2022 and Republicans called it reckless. Both parties have now used the emergency oil reserve as a political pressure valve for a war that bypassed a congressional vote. Neither party put the war to a vote first. That tells you everything about whose interests are actually being protected.

$1.08 a gallon in one week. Four months before the relief arrives. No exit strategy on record. That is the war tax. And you didn’t even know you had to pay it.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Check Georgia gas prices daily at gasprices.aaa.com. If you heat your home with natural gas, call your provider today and ask about locking in a fixed-rate plan — Georgia has a deregulated gas market and you have options most people don’t know exist. Go to congress.gov, find your representative, and ask two questions: What is the legal authorization for this war? What is the exit strategy?

🏫 EDUCATION DESK

[ TIER 2 — PERMANENT WEEKLY PILLAR ]

What Georgia’s Schools Are Telling Us

This week, Georgia gave us three school stories. They don’t belong in separate newscasts. They belong in the same sentence.

The Georgia House proposed $62 million to put literacy coaches in every elementary school in the state. Michael R. Hollis Innovation Academy on Atlanta’s Westside saw third-grade reading scores rise 29 points in a single year. Schools with coaches statewide averaged about 15% improvement in reading scores. House Speaker Jon Burns called literacy the number one priority of this session. The proposal passed nearly unanimously. Budget negotiations are still underway — the key question is whether the funding survives the conference committee.

“Reading is about social justice. We live in a society where you have to be able to read to have access to opportunity.” — Hollis Innovation Academy Principal Adib Shakir

Then there is Jada West. She was 12 years old. A student at Mason Creek Middle School in Douglas County. Last Thursday she got into a fight with another student near the campus. She died from a severe brain injury. The Douglas County School System’s official response was to establish, in writing, that the fight was not related to any on-campus activity. That statement is technically accurate. It is also a masterclass in institutional distance. Two students from the same school, steps from the building, and the district’s first move is to clarify it happened off the property. Jada West’s family doesn’t get to make that distinction.

And then there is The Kindezi School in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward — a public charter school — where an administrator posted a viral video of kindergarteners fighting in the lunchroom without parental consent. The school confirmed the administrator is no longer employed. One mother told reporters her son is now being teased because of the footage. She is pursuing legal action and taking the matter to the Atlanta Board of Education.

These three stories are one story. The Georgia House is investing $62 million to get children reading. That investment is real and necessary. But you cannot coach your way out of a school culture where a 12-year-old is dying from a fight and an administrator thinks kindergarteners brawling is content worth posting online. Reading scores are downstream of school safety. School safety is downstream of school culture. School culture is downstream of the home. One in five Georgia students is chronically absent — still nearly double pre-COVID levels. The Annie E. Casey Foundation research is unambiguous: reading on grade level by third grade is one of the strongest predictors of whether a child graduates high school. But a child who doesn’t feel safe in the building doesn’t stay in the building.

The state of our schools is the state of our future. This week, Georgia showed us both — and we owe it to Jada West and every child behind her to tell the truth about what we saw.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Every parent in Atlanta’s charter school network should ask their school board right now what the written policy is on staff use of student images. FERPA protects educational records; viral social media posts by employees are murkier legal territory. Track the Georgia House budget at legis.ga.gov to see whether the $62M literacy investment survives the conference committee.

⚖️ CIVIC ACCOUNTABILITY

[ TIER 3 — CIVIC ACCOUNTABILITY ]

DHS on Empty

Outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is leaving behind what one federal source described as a mountain of backed-up contracts and invoices. Noem imposed a policy requiring her personal sign-off on every DHS contract over $100,000. DHS has 23 sub-agencies. The volume is enormous. The result: a backlog that stalled vendor payments, delayed operations, and left programs across the agency waiting on a signature that never came.

Vendors eventually figured out the threshold and started submitting invoices at $99,999 to get paid without review. ICE detention facilities holding thousands are operating on expired contracts. The border wall sits at 36 miles built out of nearly 2,000 funded. The family detention facility in Dilley, Texas — the only long-term unit that holds detainees’ children — lapsed in payment in early March.

“We’re not really going to know exactly how bad it is until we have a major hurricane that unfortunately impacts someplace in the United States.” — Federal source on FEMA’s condition inside DHS

Hurricane season begins June 1. That is 81 days away. Georgia is in the zone. The agency responsible for coordinating federal disaster response is walking into that season with a contracting backlog, a leadership transition, and a source inside the department saying it could take months to restore normal operations even after the policy is reversed. The administration that ran on government efficiency has left the agency that handles your emergencies in administrative collapse.

81 days until hurricane season. FEMA backlogged. DHS in transition. Georgia in the zone. The receipts do not match the rhetoric — and this time the consequences are measured in storm response times, not polling points.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Know your FEMA preparedness resources now: gema.georgia.gov. If you are in a flood zone or hurricane-track corridor, build your own 72-hour emergency kit and do not wait on a federal response that may be slower than usual this season. Contact your congressional representative and ask what oversight they are conducting on the DHS transition and FEMA readiness ahead of June 1.

[ TIER 3 — CIVIC ACCOUNTABILITY ]

What Happens When You Vote With the Constitution

The War Powers resolution that came before Congress this week asked a simple constitutional question: should the legislative branch exercise its authority over the executive’s decision to make war? The Senate voted 47-53 to say no. The House voted it down as well. Thomas Massie was one of exactly two House Republicans who voted yes.

Within days, President Trump flew to Massie’s district in Kentucky. He stood in front of Massie’s constituents, brought his primary challenger on stage, and called Massie — in his exact words — “the worst person,” “a nut job,” and “an automatic no, no matter what.” The crowd booed at the mention of Massie’s name.

This is not a personality conflict. That is a deterrence operation. The message being sent to every member of Congress — Republican and Democrat alike — is explicit: if you vote the wrong way on war, we will come to your district and try to end your career.

Speaker Mike Johnson captured the moment without meaning to. Asked whether he would endorse Massie, Johnson said: “If he continues to vote with the Democrats, it makes it very difficult for me.” Voting with the Constitution is now, by the Speaker’s own framing, voting with the Democrats. The people in that Kentucky crowd cheering for Massie’s defeat are the same people paying $3.55 at the pump for a war that Congress never formally authorized. That connection is not a coincidence. When political loyalty becomes the primary operating standard, accountability becomes impossible.

A constitutional check on war power was cast. It was punished in public, on stage, by the person who benefits most from that check not existing. That mechanism does not belong to any party. It belongs to power — and power will use it against anyone who threatens it, regardless of the letter after their name.

WHAT TO DO WITH THIS

Go to congress.gov and find your representative’s voting record on the War Powers resolution. If they voted no, ask them in writing why they believe the executive branch does not require congressional authorization to make war. Keep the receipt. The midterms are eight months away.

📊 FINAL WORD

[ TIER 4 — SYSTEMIC FRAME ]

The Consensus Nobody Acts On

Axios published polling this week synthesizing majority views from American adults across 11 policy areas. The numbers should not be surprising. The fact that they are is the whole problem.

79% of Americans say the government has gone too far in restricting free speech — a view held by 88% of Democrats and 86% of independents. This is not a right-wing grievance. It is a near-unanimous American position. 90% of registered voters are concerned the national debt is driving up their cost of living. 72% support banning members of Congress from trading stocks. Congress is still trading stocks. 61% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats want AI regulated for economic stability. American public satisfaction with K-12 education just hit a 26-year low.

The American public is not polarized. The American public is frustrated. The political class is polarized — because polarization is profitable for them and paralysis protects their position.

The polling says your neighbors largely want what you want: less government overreach on speech, fiscal responsibility, schools that work, politicians who are not getting rich off insider information while you stagnate. The disagreement is not between the people. The disagreement is between the people and the class that governs them. That class has spent 60 years perfecting the art of making you look at the person next to you instead of at them.

Stop letting any media — including the ones you like — tell you your neighbors are your enemies. The polling says otherwise. The gap between what the people want and what power delivers is not an accident. It is a design. Now you know what to look at.

👁️ WATCH LIST

Stories TBR is tracking that have not broken into the main rotation yet.

The Healthcare Delay Economy

A new West Health-Gallup survey of nearly 20,000 adults found that roughly 70 million Americans delayed a surgery or medical treatment over the past four years because of cost. 46 million delayed changing jobs. 40 million scrapped plans to pursue additional education or job training. One in three adults took out a loan in the last 12 months to pay for healthcare. About half of households earning between $48,000 and $180,000 put off at least one major life decision due to healthcare costs. This is not a healthcare story. It is an economic mobility story — and it is being systematically ignored by a Congress that cannot agree on who pays the price for fixing it. TBR will return to this.

Detroit FAFSA Graduation Requirement

Detroit Public Schools Community District is considering making FAFSA completion a graduation requirement to unlock state college-access funding. Policy patterns like this typically reach Southern metro school districts within 12 to 18 months. If you have a high schooler in DeKalb, Fulton, or APS, watch legis.ga.gov for whether Georgia moves in the same direction. FAFSA completion rates in Georgia’s majority-Black school districts are already a documented gap.

THE BARRINGTON REPORT 24/7

The Pain of Truth

Subscribe free: barrington.substack.com

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio

🌟 EPISODE OVERVIEW

This week on The Barrington Report, Barrington Martin II delivers a single interconnected argument across five segments: every headline you consumed this week is the same story — a governing class that has built a system where the cost of inaction falls on the people, and the profits of the status quo flow upward. The episode opens with the war tax nobody voted for, moves through three Georgia school stories that reveal the real crisis underneath the money, exposes the DHS contracting collapse that puts Georgia in FEMA’s path just 81 days before hurricane season, documents what happened to the one Republican who voted with the Constitution on war powers, and closes with polling data that should end every argument about polarization — because the American people are not divided. The people who govern them are. This is The Barrington Report. The pain of truth, every Thursday.

🎹 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

⛽ THE WAR TAX YOU DIDN’T VOTE FOR

Georgia diesel spiked $1.08 in a single week — third largest jump in the nation. Brent crude crossed $100 a barrel. The SPR release won’t reach your pump for 120 days. Barrington names it plainly: “The four-month relief plan is not relief. It’s a press conference.” Both parties have now used the emergency oil reserve as a political pressure valve for a war Congress never formally authorized. The question nobody is answering: what is the exit strategy?

🏫 WHAT GEORGIA’S SCHOOLS ARE TELLING US

Three Georgia school stories in one week — a $62 million literacy coach investment, a 12-year-old dead from a fight near her Douglas County middle school, and a charter school administrator fired for posting kindergarteners fighting online. Barrington refuses to treat them as separate stories. “Reading scores are downstream of school safety. School safety is downstream of school culture. School culture is downstream of the home.” The real argument is about parenting, accountability, and what $62 million cannot fix.

⚙️ DHS ON EMPTY

Outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem required personal sign-off on every contract over $100,000 across 23 sub-agencies. The result: a paralyzed department, unpaid vendors gaming the system with $99,999 invoices, ICE facilities on expired contracts, a border wall at 36 of 2,000 funded miles, and FEMA walking into hurricane season with a backlog. A federal source told Axios: “We’re not going to know how bad it is until a major hurricane hits.” Hurricane season is 81 days away. Georgia is in the zone.

🗳️ WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU VOTE WITH THE CONSTITUTION

Thomas Massie was one of two House Republicans who voted yes on the War Powers resolution. Days later, Trump flew to Massie’s Kentucky district, stood onstage with a primary challenger, and called him “a nut job.” Barrington’s frame: “This is not a personality conflict. That is a deterrence operation.” The people cheering Massie’s defeat are the same people paying $3.55 at the pump for a war Congress never authorized. The connection is not a coincidence.

📊 THE CONSENSUS NOBODY ACTS ON

Axios published polling across 11 policy areas: 79% say government has gone too far on free speech — held by 88% of Democrats and 86% of independents. 90% worry the national debt is driving up cost of living. 72% want Congress banned from stock trading. 61% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats want AI regulated. K-12 satisfaction just hit a 26-year low. Barrington’s verdict: “The American public is not polarized. The political class is — because polarization is profitable for them and paralysis protects their position.”

⚖️ REALITY CHECK

• Georgia diesel up $1.08 in one week. National average up 61 cents in one month. 48 states now averaging above $3/gallon.

• SPR release: 172M barrels authorized. Arrives at the pump in 120 days. SPR already near 40-year lows at 415M barrels.

• Both parties have now used the emergency oil reserve as a political pressure valve for a war that bypassed a congressional vote.

• One in three Georgia third-graders cannot read proficiently. Chronic absenteeism rate 21.3% — still nearly double pre-COVID.

• Jada West, 12 years old, Mason Creek Middle School, Douglas County — died from a fight near campus. District’s first move: clarify it happened off school property.

• Kindezi School administrator posted kindergarteners fighting online without parental consent. Fired. Child now teased. Legal action pending.

• DHS has 23 sub-agencies. Noem required personal sign-off on every contract over $100,000. Vendors submitted $99,999 invoices to bypass review.

• ICE detention facilities on expired contracts. Border wall: 36 miles built of 2,000 funded. Family detention center in Texas lapsed in payment in March.

• Hurricane season: June 1. Days away: 81. FEMA: backlogged. DHS: in transition. Georgia: in the zone.

• Massie voted yes on war powers. Trump flew to his district. Put a primary challenger on stage. Speaker Johnson: voting with the Constitution is “voting with Democrats.”

• 79% say government gone too far on free speech. 90% worried about debt-driven inflation. 72% want stock trading ban on Congress. Nothing changes.

• The gap between what the people want and what power delivers is not an accident. It is a design.

🧠 BARRINGTON’S MESSAGE

“Every story we covered today is the same story. Gas prices spike because a war started without a congressional vote and without an exit strategy. FEMA walks into hurricane season backlogged because a cabinet secretary mismanaged the department. A lawmaker gets punished for voting with the Constitution. And 72% of the country agrees that the people making these decisions shouldn’t be profiting from them while they make them. Nothing changes — not because the people don’t want change, but because the people in charge have built a system where the cost of change falls on them, and the cost of the status quo falls on you. That gap is not an accident. It’s a design. The Barrington Report exists to make sure you can see it clearly enough to do something about it.”

📬 STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio — Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

🧩 WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN

This episode is for anyone exhausted by the noise who wants someone to cut through it without a partisan playbook. Barrington connects gas prices to war powers to school culture to polling data and lands them all at the same address: a governing class that has mistaken your loyalty for your consent. If you’ve been told the country is too divided to fix anything, this episode is the receipt that says otherwise. The people agree. The people in charge just don’t want you to know it.

✏️ A NOTE FROM BARRINGTON

Welcome to the first edition of the TBR Weekly Newsletter.

I built this because the information that actually changes your life is not what’s trending. It’s buried. It’s filtered. It’s packaged to serve someone else’s interest before it ever reaches you. Every week, this newsletter cuts through that and hands you the civic intelligence that affects your neighborhood, your wallet, and your daily decisions, with no sponsor agenda and no tribal loyalty clouding the analysis.

This inaugural edition arrives in the middle of a war. Not a skirmish. Not a military operation. A war. One week old as of today. Over 1,200 people dead in Iran. More than 120 killed in Lebanon. Six American service members gone. And this morning, the President of the United States told the world there are no time limits on how long it continues. The Defense Secretary said it has “only just begun.” Iran’s Foreign Minister said there will be no negotiations. No ceasefire. No off-ramp.

That is the world your gas tank woke up to this Friday morning. AAA puts Georgia at $3.17 a gallon today. Up from $2.79 a week ago. And the administration just told you it will not tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to soften the blow.

We cover that. We also cover what is happening in Georgia’s classrooms and courtrooms, because neither pauses for war. Neither does TBR.

🔥 LEAD STORY: THE WAR YOU’RE ALREADY PAYING FOR

No Time Limit. No Negotiations. No Exit. And Georgia Is Already Paying at the Pump.

As of this morning, the United States is seven days into a war with no declared end, no articulated exit strategy, and no ceasefire on the horizon. Let me tell you exactly where things stand and what it means for you.

The death toll in Iran has passed 1,200. More than 120 people have been killed in Lebanon. Six American service members are dead from a drone strike on a port in Kuwait. Israel’s military chief announced a move to the “next phase” of the war overnight. 2,500 strikes already executed, more coming, and a push deeper into Lebanon beginning today. Defense Secretary Hegseth told Israel to “keep going to the end” in an overnight call with his Israeli counterpart. This morning, he warned: “If you think you’ve seen something, just wait.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi went on NBC News and said plainly: Iran has not asked for a ceasefire. There will be no negotiations. Washington is untrustworthy. Tehran has also warned the U.S. will “bitterly regret” the submarine torpedo attack that sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean last week, killing 87 sailors. That attack marked the first time an American submarine sank an enemy vessel since World War II. The war has now extended from Tehran to Beirut to the Indian Ocean to Azerbaijan, where Iranian drones crossed the border overnight and injured two people near an airport.

Here is what all of that means in Atlanta this Friday morning. Georgia’s gas average sits at $3.17 per gallon according to AAA, up nearly 40 cents from a week ago when metro Atlanta was at $2.79. Nationally, prices are up 20 cents, or 7 percent, in less than seven days. The Strait of Hormuz, which handles one out of every five barrels of oil on the planet, has come to a near-complete standstill. JPMorgan analysts have already noted that Trump’s plan to use the U.S. Development Finance Corporation to ensure oil tankers likely cannot cover the more than 300 tankers currently anchored near the strait unable to move. One expert at Evercore added that it typically takes six to nine months for the DFC to approve new financing. The oil is sitting. The prices are rising. And the administration confirmed this week it will not release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

This is not an abstraction. If you commute to work in Atlanta, you are already paying the war tax. If you heat your home with natural gas, the same LNG supply disruptions hitting Europe are creeping toward your utility bill. If you buy groceries, you are one supply chain shock away from feeling this in the bread aisle. The question is not whether this war costs working Georgians money. It already does. The question is how long and how much.

There is a receipt that needs to be part of this conversation. Before the first bomb fell, the UN’s nuclear watchdog publicly stated that Iran was not days or weeks away from having atomic weapons, directly contradicting one of the administration’s primary justifications for the strikes. That statement was made. It was reported. It largely disappeared from the conversation. You deserve to know it exists. When a government goes to war, the reasons it gives you matter. Especially when independent international bodies contradict those reasons before the ink is dry.

And then there is the accountability gap that no one in Washington wants to own. When the strikes began, 1,500 American citizens were in the Gulf region with no evacuation plan. Secretary Rubio’s explanation: it happened very quickly. The first chartered evacuation flight landed at Dulles Airport on Thursday. Hundreds of Americans on board. Emotional reunions at the gate. All of it preventable with basic contingency planning. All of it absent.

WHAT TO DO: Check Georgia gas prices daily at gasprices.aaa.com. If you heat with natural gas, call your provider today and ask about locking in a fixed rate before prices move further — Georgia is a deregulated gas market and you have options. Find your Congressional representative at congress.gov and demand two answers: what is the legal authorization for this war, and what is the exit strategy.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: No time limit. No negotiations. No SPR release. No evacuation plan. The only open-ended commitment in this war that nobody debated is the one on your gas receipt. Make sure you know who signed it.

⚖️ CIVIC WATCH: BOTH PARTIES FAILED THE WAR POWERS TEST THIS WEEK

The Senate Voted to Stay Out of the Way. The House Did Too. Now Nobody’s Accountable But You.

The war powers resolution to restrict President Trump’s ability to carry out further military action against Iran needed only a simple majority to pass the Senate. It failed 47 to 53. Republicans voted it down as a bloc. The House rejected a similar measure the same day.

What that vote means in plain language: Congress has formally declined to exercise the constitutional authority the founders assigned it over the decision to make war. Not informally. Not passively. They showed up, voted, and said no. The bombs continue. The bill continues. And the branch of government closest to the people, the one that is supposed to hold the executive accountable on exactly these decisions, just handed that accountability back.

But do not make this a one-party story. On the House side, progressive groups, Justice Democrats, MoveOn, and OurRevolution, publicly threatened to primary any Democrat who voted against the war powers resolution. Not on the merits. On party loyalty. They were organized before the vote was cast. The message was explicit: vote the wrong way and we will end your career.

What you watched this week was the full machinery of tribal political loyalty applied to the most consequential vote a legislature can cast. Republicans protected the executive. Progressive enforcers protected the party line. Six Americans came home in flag-draped boxes from Kuwait while both sides performed their assigned roles.

I have written for years about what blind political loyalty costs this country. This week handed us the most expensive exhibit yet.

WHAT TO DO: Look up how your Georgia Congressional representatives voted on war powers this week at congress.gov. That vote is the most honest thing they will do all year. It tells you exactly who they work for.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: Congress had one job this week: apply the constitutional check on executive war power. Both parties — for different reasons — chose not to. The people paying the price are not in either party’s caucus room.

🏫 EDUCATION DESK: WHAT’S HAPPENING IN GEORGIA’S SCHOOLS

Governors Are Moving on School Choice. Georgia Families Need to Know What That Actually Means.

FutureEd analyzed State-of-the-State addresses from 39 governors this year. Three themes dominated: school choice expansion, early childhood access, and higher education affordability. Those three priorities sound complementary. In practice they compete for the same finite pool of public education dollars, and Georgia is not insulated from that tension.

Here is what school choice actually means in a state like Georgia when it is implemented without guardrails. Dollars follow students to private or charter options. The public schools left behind serve the students with the highest needs and the fewest resources. That is not an argument against school choice. It is an argument for honest accounting. If we expand choice without protecting the floor for the students who cannot or do not leave, we have not improved education in Georgia. We have sorted it by zip code and called it reform.

The Georgia General Assembly’s education committee is active right now. The decisions made in the next 60 days will shape what your child’s classroom looks like next fall. Watch legis.ga.gov for committee votes and public hearing schedules.

WHAT TO DO: Find your school district’s board meeting schedule and attend one this month. Public comment periods are underused and consequential. Watch the Georgia General Assembly education committee at legis.ga.gov.

A Georgia Father Was Just Convicted for His Son’s School Shooting. Here Is the Conversation We Need to Have.

Colin Gray, 55, was found guilty this week for his role in the Apalachee High School shooting, a 2024 attack carried out by his teenage son that killed four people in Winder, Georgia. The jury agreed with prosecutors: he could have prevented it and chose not to.

This verdict will generate legal analysis about parental liability precedent. That is a legitimate conversation. But the one TBR is more interested in happens before the courtroom, the conversation about what it means to actually know what is happening in your child’s life. Not their Instagram. Not their grades. Their life.

I have written about the breakdown of the family unit and what it costs this nation. Four families in Winder buried people because of decisions that were made, or not made, inside one home. A Georgia jury just ruled that not knowing is not a defense. They were right. The standard has been set. The only question now is whether we meet it before the next courtroom requires us to.

WHAT TO DO: Georgia parents: if your child is showing signs of distress, isolation, or behavioral change, the Georgia Crisis and Access Line is available 24/7 at 1-800-715-4225. Do not wait for a situation to force your hand.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: A Georgia jury just told every parent in this state that ignorance is not innocence. The verdict is in. The question is what we do with it before the next case.

🏘️ GEORGIA WATCH: THE PROPERTY TAX RELIEF THAT DIED QUIETLY

Your Property Tax Cut Failed. Your Lawmakers Still Got Paid.

The Georgia House killed a significant property tax relief proposal this week. No dramatic floor debate. No headline moment. It simply failed and the legislators who let it fail went home to their own properties in markets that have been running hot for years.

If you are a homeowner in Atlanta, DeKalb, Fulton, or Gwinnett, you live in a market where assessed values have been climbing faster than incomes since the pandemic. Property taxes in Georgia are tied to fair market value. When the market runs hot, the assessment follows. When the assessment rises faster than your paycheck, you get priced out of a home you own outright. That is happening right now to long-term residents and seniors on fixed incomes across this metro.

The relief proposal existed to buffer that effect. It failed. The people who voted it down will be on a ballot again. Their names are on the vote. The vote is on the record at legis.ga.gov.

WHAT TO DO: Find your Georgia House representative’s vote on this property tax measure at legis.ga.gov. Then decide whether their position serves the people they represent or the assessment revenue flowing to the state.

BARRINGTON’S VERDICT: They had a chance to put money back in your pocket. They passed on it. Remember that when they ask for yours at the ballot box.

📡 WATCH LIST: WHAT TO TRACK NEXT WEEK

These are the developments TBR will be monitoring as the new week opens.

• Iran conflict escalation — Israel has announced a “next phase.” Watch whether Kurdish forces enter from northern Iraq. That is the signal that transforms this from an air campaign into something longer, wider, and more expensive for everyone.

• Atlanta gas prices — track daily at gasprices.aaa.com. Georgia is at $3.17 this morning. The threshold that materially hits working-class household budgets is $3.50. Watch how fast we get there.

• Strategic Petroleum Reserve — Trump said no SPR release. Watch whether that position holds as prices climb. A reversal would be the clearest signal yet that the economic pressure from this war is becoming politically unmanageable.

• Georgia General Assembly education committee — school choice legislation is moving. Public hearing schedules are posted at legis.ga.gov. The decisions made in the next 30 days shape next fall’s classrooms.

• Colin Gray sentencing — the sentencing phase sets the actual precedent for parental accountability in Georgia and potentially nationally. The number that comes out of that courtroom matters.

🧠 FINAL WORD

One week ago, most Georgians went to bed not knowing a war was about to start. This morning they are paying for it at the pump, watching a Congress that declined to ask any questions about it, and reading about a Georgia father who went to prison for what his son did with a gun. Meanwhile the legislature that was supposed to give homeowners relief quietly said no and moved on.

None of these stories are isolated. They are all the same story: the gap between what the people in power do and what they tell you they are doing. That gap does not close on its own. It closes when enough people have the right information and decide to use it.

That is what TBR is for. Every Friday, we bring you the information. What you do with it is up to you.

The information that changes your life is not trending. It is buried. We dig it up so you don’t have to.

If this newsletter gave you something you did not have before you read it, share it with one person today. That is how this grows… not through algorithms, but through trust.

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio — Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

The Pain of Truth

Let me tell you what happened Wednesday, and I need you to sit with it before you move on.

Rep. Nancy Mace brought a resolution to the House floor. It was simple. It directed the House Ethics Committee to make public (with victim names redacted) every report it has ever produced on sexual misconduct and harassment allegations against members of Congress and their staff. Sixty days to comply. That’s it. No fines. No criminal referrals. No trial. Just transparency.

The House killed it 357 to 65. Both parties. Together. Unified. The way they never seem to be when it’s time to fix your healthcare, your schools, or your neighborhood.

Let that number sit for a second. Because 357 is not a close vote. That’s a consensus. And what they reached consensus on was this: you don’t get to know.

The Body Count Is Already on Record

People keep saying there’s no pattern. There’s a pattern. The GovTrack congressional misconduct database has been keeping receipts since 1789, and what it shows for just the last two decades should make every staffer on Capitol Hill nervous, and every voter furious.

Here’s what the record shows… just on sexual misconduct, from members who were supposed to be writing the laws you live under:

Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL, 2006) — Resigned after it was revealed he sent sexually explicit messages to underage male congressional pages. The kind of predator parents warn their kids about. He was a sitting Congressman.

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY, 2010) — Resigned amid allegations of groping and harassment of male staffers. Ethics investigation opened. He was gone before it concluded.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY, 2011–2017) — Resigned after sexting multiple women. Returned to public life. Did it again. Eventually sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for sexting a 15-year-old girl. He was a two-time offender who the system recycled back into public life.

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX, 2014–2018) — His former communications director sued him for sexual harassment. The case was settled with $84,000 of taxpayer money through the House Office of Compliance — a process designed specifically to shield members from public accountability. The settlement was secret until journalists dug it out in 2017. He resigned in April 2018. The Ethics Committee closed the investigation because he’d left office.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA, 2017) — Asked a woman he was having an affair with to get an abortion while publicly opposing abortion rights. Resigned.

Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA, 2017–2018) — Used taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment complaint from a staffer he had described as his “soul mate.” Was serving on the House Ethics Committee when he did it. He was subsequently removed from that committee. Resigned in April 2018.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI, 2017) — Settled a complaint from a former staffer who alleged she was fired after rejecting his sexual advances. Settlement paid from his congressional office account — taxpayer money — for $27,000. Resigned.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ, 2017) — Resigned after staffers alleged he asked them to serve as surrogates for his child, creating an uncomfortable and coercive environment.

Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-NV, 2017) — Accused by a former campaign staffer of repeated sexual harassment. Did not seek re-election.

Del. Michael San Nicolas (D-Guam, 2019–2022) — Investigated for an alleged sexual relationship with a staffer. The Ethics Committee found at least some evidence supporting the allegations. The Committee referred the matter to the Department of Justice upon his retirement. No public finding was ever issued on the sexual conduct.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC, 2020–2022) — Twenty witnesses came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. A BuzzFeed News investigation found four women claiming harassment. He lost his primary.

Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA, 2019) — The Ethics Committee investigated allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. She resigned.

And now, in 2026, we have Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) — a married father of six whose own text messages, obtained by NBC News and CBS News, show him requesting “sexy pics” from a female staffer and asking about her sexual preferences after midnight. That staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, 35, was found critically burned near her home in Uvalde, Texas on September 13, 2025. She died the following day. The Bexar County Medical Examiner ruled it a suicide. Her widower told CNN, “You ended a family because of your predatorial instincts.”

The text messages themselves include Santos-Aviles telling Gonzales, “This is going too far boss.” And later: “Please tell me you didn’t just hire me because I was hot.” According to reporting, she received a raise and bonus the same year the alleged affair took place. Gonzales has denied the affair and called the allegations politically motivated.

The House Ethics Committee opened a formal investigation into Gonzales the same day it voted to kill Mace’s transparency resolution. Think about that architecture for a moment. They’ll investigate. Quietly. Behind closed doors. With no obligation to ever release the findings — especially if Gonzales loses his primary runoff or resigns.

Your Tax Dollars. Their Secrets.

The settlements aren’t hypothetical. Between 1997 and 2014, the U.S. Treasury paid out $15.2 million in 235 awards and settlements to Capitol Hill employees for workplace misconduct claims — and that figure covers more than just sexual harassment. PBS News reported that at least $300,000 specifically in sexual harassment settlements were paid out of Treasury since 2003. The names of the lawmakers involved? Confidential. The details of the misconduct? Sealed.

You paid for it. You don’t get to know what you paid for.

It’s a racket.

The Ethics Committee’s Defense Was an Insult

The House Ethics Committee issued a statement opposing Mace’s resolution, claiming it “could chill victim cooperation and witness participation” in ongoing and future investigations.

Let’s be precise about what that argument is.

They are telling you that the solution to protecting victims of sexual misconduct by powerful members of Congress is to make sure that information about that misconduct stays hidden from the public that employs those members. They are claiming that transparency (with victim names already redacted per Mace’s own resolution) is the danger.

We call this a cover up Victims in every other institutional accountability context (schools, corporations, churches) have found that transparency is often the most effective deterrent against future misconduct. The Ethics Committee isn’t protecting victims. It’s protecting the institution that enables the predators.

And 357 members of Congress agreed with them.

The Pattern Is the Point

What does it look like when an institution systematically protects bad actors? It looks like this:

Investigations that close the moment a member resigns or loses re-election. The Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction ends when membership ends. So, the playbook is simple: hang on long enough for the clock to run out, or resign strategically once you’ve negotiated immunity.

Settlements funded by taxpayers with no public disclosure. The accused uses your money to silence the accuser and faces zero professional consequence.

A reporting process designed to exhaust victims, not expose predators. The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 created a mandatory counseling and mediation gauntlet before any complaint can proceed (a system critics have called a deliberate deterrent to coming forward).

A bipartisan vote to kill the only transparency measure on the table. 357 to 65. Democrats and Republicans, together, choosing secrecy over accountability.

If a company treated its employees this way, the Department of Labor would be on its doorstep. If a university handled it this way, it would lose federal funding. Congress wrote itself an exemption from the laws it passes for everyone else. That is not a footnote. That is the story.

The Verdict

Regina Santos-Aviles texted her boss, a married United States Congressman, “This is going too far,” and died by suicide fourteen months later. Her widower is calling him a predator. The texts are public. The Ethics investigation is open (for now). And the same House that opened that investigation voted, 357 to 65, to make sure no investigation like it would ever have to see the light of day.

That vote told you everything you need to know about who Congress is protecting. It isn’t you. It isn’t the staffers. It isn’t the women and men who come to Washington to serve the public and instead get propositioned by their bosses.

The next time a politician stands at a podium and talks about protecting workers, or standing up for women, or fighting for accountability, remember that vote.

Remember the 357.

Remember that when the question was simple, should the public see what their representatives have been accused of?

The answer from both parties was a thunderous, bipartisan no.

The cover-up is the policy. The silence is the statement. And the 65 who voted yes? They’re either heroes or they knew it was going to lose and wanted the receipt.

Figure out which ones are which.

America is bombing Iran at the behest of foreign interests, the Epstein files are quietly disappearing, and you think a ballot fixes this? The house is on fire and they’re handing you a garden hose. Good luck.

No wonder the Epstein files were so easily dismissed.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com | Follow: @TBR24_7 on X | Listen: ATL Talks Radio & iHeart Radio

Barrington returns live after time away and wastes no time dismantling the entire American political apparatus. The episode opens with a provocative interview clip about the futility of voting and the historical reality that systems don’t change through ballots — setting the frame for an episode that challenges every comfortable assumption the audience holds. From there, Barrington tears through the 108-minute State of the Union spectacle, exposes Al Green’s racial grievance performance as the career obituary of a dying politician, confronts the Pentagon’s threat to blacklist the only AI company refusing to surveil American citizens, calls out the bipartisan Epstein silence, challenges the case for war with Iran as Israel’s bidding dressed in American flags, dismantles the tariff-for-income-tax fairy tale with hard math, and connects the housing crisis to the breakdown of the family unit and the equality lie that fractured traditional gender roles. The throughline: the system is working exactly as designed — against you — and voting won’t fix it.

🎹 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🎤 The Interview That Sets the Table — “There Is No Voting Out of This”

Barrington opens by playing an older interview clip in which the interviewee bluntly states that the political system is corrupt, voting has never changed anything in a hundred years, and historically, regime change only happens through force. Barrington frames the interviewee as someone who understands reality versus the interviewer who still believes the fairy tale of American governance. The clip becomes the episode’s thesis anchor: the system is working as intended, and participation through voting makes the citizen complicit in their own servitude. Barrington ties this directly to the Epstein files — arguing that the disclosure is meant to show Americans what their leaders are involved in, and yet they’ll still support them. “You are the modern-day serfs. And I stated this on my article on Substack.”

🎭 108 Minutes of Nothing — The SOTU as Empty Spectacle

Barrington calls the longest State of the Union in history also one of the emptiest. Trump paraded Olympic athletes and war heroes through the chamber to generate applause from a country that increasingly isn’t clapping. His economic claims — $18 trillion in foreign investment, drug cost reductions of 300%, 400%, 500% — went unchallenged in real time. Democrats, told by Jeffries to sit in defiant silence, instead gave Trump exactly what he wanted: viral confrontation clips. Trump challenged Democrats to stand if they supported putting Americans first over illegal immigrants — and the Democrats sat, which Barrington calls “really stupid” because they should have called his bluff. “When the spectacle is the product, the citizen is the customer being sold nothing.” Barrington notes the MAGA crowd got angry at his X post pointing out that nothing in the speech delivered what they voted for — but no one could deny the facts.

💣 Al Green and the Death Rattle of Grievance Politics

Barrington breaks down the Al Green ejection with surgical precision. Trump’s account posted a Lion King-style video depicting public figures as animals; the Obamas were depicted as apes. Barrington’s verdict: immature, distasteful, beneath the presidency — but not racist, because the video depicted everyone as animals. He directly addresses the anticipated pushback: “Please stop. It’s 2026. We haven’t even solved issues of stopping people from murdering, stealing and raping people. And yet we’re still harping on racism because of a video meant to poke fun at politicians.” Green is trailing in his own primary, his district got redistricted to R+5, and he’s politically finished. The sign wasn’t for Black people — it was for Al Green. Barrington delivers the deeper cut: Green’s stunt prevented the conversation he claims to want by making himself the story instead of forcing Trump to answer for the video. “The grievance playbook does not produce accountability. It produces clips, and Black Americans are no better off for it.”

📚 The Real Crisis Nobody Mentions — Black Children Can’t Read

Barrington pivots from the Al Green spectacle to what Black politicians should actually be talking about. He cites DeKalb County school district statistics: 79% graduation rate for Black students, but only 23% proficient in reading and language arts, and only 17% proficient in math. “We are graduating kids that cannot read, that cannot write, and cannot do math. But we are up in odds over a Lion King spoof that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama — some of the most privileged human beings on God’s green earth — as monkeys.” The juxtaposition is devastating: the grievance industry raises hell over a video while Black children are being pushed through a system that leaves them functionally illiterate. “That shows you where the priorities are.”

🚫 The Victimhood Economy Is Bankrupting America

Barrington elevates the Al Green moment into the systemic argument. Every group in America has learned to weaponize grievance as political currency, and the playbook was written by Black political leadership decades ago through the Civil Rights movement. Now everybody is running the same play. Every demographic, every interest group, every political faction has discovered that victimhood pays more than competence. There is a hierarchy of acceptable targets in American public life — you can speak about one particular race on social media without consequence, but if you speak about another, your entire livelihood is ruined. “I don’t even have to mention the names of those groups. You guys can read between the lines there.” In 2026, the only demographic you can be openly derogatory toward without consequence is white Americans — and that’s not opinion, that’s observable reality. “The grievance culture must die, not because victims don’t exist, but because the professional grievance class has turned suffering into a business model that benefits everyone except the people they claim to represent.”

🤖 The Pentagon vs. Anthropic — Your Fourth Amendment Is on the Table

Barrington delivers a stark warning about the Pentagon threatening to blacklist Anthropic’s AI — not because it failed, but because it refuses to allow mass surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons without human oversight. Musk’s xAI signed a deal under exactly the terms Anthropic rejected: full access, no guardrails. Barrington directly addresses the Musk faithful: “This is the guy that you guys said was the king of free speech. This is the guy you look at as a savior. And look at what he’s doing.” He frames it as a First and Fourth Amendment story wearing a tech costume, with neither party talking about it because both benefit from an unchecked surveillance state. Then the larger warning: “There is no reason for the biggest and baddest military on God’s green earth to have almighty control over AI unless it’s to do something dastardly to its own people.” AI is a runaway train without brakes, and there is no way to vote toward a solution.

📂 The Epstein Silence — The Great Disclosure

Barrington frames the Epstein files not as an accountability mechanism but as “the greatest disclosure ever in American history” — designed to let people see what’s happening with the powerful, while simultaneously proving the public’s complicity through continued support. The Clintons sit for depositions this week. Epstein victims attended the SOTU. Trump spoke for 108 minutes and never said the name. “When powerful people from both sides go quiet on the same subject at the same time, that’s not coincidence. That is coordination.” Barrington’s prediction: no one of real consequence will face punishment unless they’re designated as the fall person. The real purpose of the disclosure is to demonstrate that Americans will learn the truth and still participate in the system that produced it. “When you go out and vote, you are voting for the duopoly. You are complicit.”

💥 Iran — Israel’s War in American Clothing

Barrington goes direct on Iran: Trump’s case for military action is Israel’s bidding dressed in American flags. He challenges the audience to name what Iran is actually doing to threaten the United States, then dismisses Trump’s claims about roadside bombs, missiles reaching the homeland, and nuclear weapons with a signature line: “If you really believe this, there is immaculate beachfront property in Idaho going on sale this summer.” The largest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East since Iraq is underway. Democrats are “conflicted” instead of demanding Congress exercise its war authority. Barrington ties it to Palestine: “There is no way in the world a so-called just nation would support a nation that partook in such evil behaviors the way Israel did over the last few years.” He preemptively rejects the anti-Semitism label: “To be honest about what you’re seeing, to just openly state what is, is not anti-Semitism, nor is it anti-Semitic. Your eyes don’t deceive you.”

🏠 The Housing Ban and the Equality Lie

Barrington connects the housing crisis to the deeper fracture in American society. BlackRock and Invitation Homes are extracting generational wealth by turning neighborhoods into rental portfolios. “The free market that prevents families from owning homes isn’t free. It’s rigged.” But he pushes beyond the policy fight into the societal problem underneath: the equality lie. Since the 1950s, society has worked to artificially equalize men and women in the workforce while ignoring substantial differences between them. Combined with offshoring of American manufacturing, everything has become more expensive. Families are broken, the family unit is unstable, and birth rates have collapsed. “We had a blueprint a long time ago with my grandfathers, my grandmothers, and my great-grandparents where specific people did specific things in society.” When a man and wife can’t afford a home or comfortably have a child, the American dream is the American nightmare. The system must be undone — 60 to 70 years of damage that won’t be fixed by policy alone.

💰 Tariffs Will Replace Income Tax — And the MAGA Reckoning

Barrington closes with the tariff math: income taxes generated $2.6 trillion last fiscal year, tariffs brought in $195 billion — 7.5% of what income taxes produce. Trump’s own Treasury Secretary called tariff revenue a “melting ice cube.” The Supreme Court already struck down his IEEPA tariffs. “This isn’t economic policy. It’s a campaign line delivered from the House chamber and treated as serious governance by an audience trained not to check the math.” Then the direct challenge to the MAGA base: nothing occurred at the SOTU that delivered what they voted for, outside of RFK and health policy. ICE hasn’t removed enough illegal immigrants and has been killing innocent civilians instead of doing its job. “It’s time for the MAGA people and the Trump people to realize that nothing occurred today.”

⚖️ REALITY CHECK

— 108-minute SOTU — longest in history — delivered by a president whose base got nothing they voted for outside of RFK’s health appointment.

— The system is working as intended. It’s not broken. It’s designed to extract from citizens and serve corporations, banks, and tech.

— The Lion King video was immature and distasteful. Not racist. The outrage industry needed a reason to perform and Al Green volunteered.

— Green is trailing in his own primary. District is R+5. The sign was a career obituary disguised as activism.

— DeKalb County: 79% Black graduation rate. 23% reading proficiency. 17% math proficiency. That’s the crisis. Not a Lion King video.

— The grievance culture is a trillion-dollar industry. Every group runs the playbook now. The only acceptable target in 2026 is white Americans.

— Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon surveil Americans. Musk’s xAI said yes. The “free speech king” signed a no-guardrails military deal.

— Epstein files are the great disclosure. Nobody of consequence will be punished. Continued participation in the system is complicity.

— Iran military action is Israel’s bidding. Stating this is not anti-Semitism. It’s observable truth.

— BlackRock is buying your neighborhood. The equality lie broke the family unit. Birth rates are collapsing. The American dream is the American nightmare.

— Tariffs: $195 billion. Income taxes: $2.6 trillion. The math is the math. ICE is killing civilians and failing at deportation.

— There is no voting out of this. The fairy tale is over. Support yourself, your family, and your neighbor. That’s all that’s left.

🧠 BARRINGTON’S MESSAGE

“The biggest thing missing from the State of the Union is always the truth. One hundred percent truth. Your side is not meant to help you. Your side is meant to siphon energy from you, control your mind, and give you a false sense of hope so you never wake up to the fraud being perpetuated against you. The only side you should be on is the side of your neighbor. The side of the people in your community. Because you guys face the same issues no matter what personal problems you have in your own lives. The enemy is not the person who wakes up every day, goes to work, puts food on the table, and provides a roof over the heads of the people they care about. The enemy is the people in the suits and pantsuits in D.C. who work for the lobbyists, the corporations, and the tech bros. Things won’t change until your mind changes. And in order for you to love others, you must first learn to love yourself.”

— Barrington Martin II

📬 STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe: barrington.substack.com

Follow: @TBR24_7 on X

Listen Live: ATL Talks Radio — Atlanta’s #1 Streaming Talk Radio

Read: The Trap: Life in the New-Aged Feudalism, Parts 1 & 2

🧩 WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN

This episode is the one your timeline won’t give you. Barrington returns from absence and holds nothing back — dismantling the SOTU theater, burying the grievance industry with its own receipts, exposing the AI surveillance fight nobody else is connecting to your constitutional rights, and naming the forces that both parties serve while pretending to serve you. If you’re exhausted by the binary, tired of being told your vote matters while nothing changes, and ready to hear the truth that hurts before it heals — this is the show. The pain of truth is the only thing that has ever changed anything worth changing.

They gave you a job title and a direct deposit and told you that was freedom. Part 1 exposed the architecture. Part 2 exposes the architects.

If you missed part 1, start below.

If you didn’t — you already know what’s coming.

You Are Not as Free as You Think

I know what some of you are thinking. “Barrington, we have choices. A serf didn’t have choices. We can move, change jobs, start a business. That’s the difference.” And on the surface, you’re right. You do have choices. You can choose which landlord to pay rent to. You can choose which insurance company takes your premium. You can choose which streaming service gets your $15 a month. But choice among dependencies is not freedom. A serf who could choose between two manors was still a serf. The defining characteristic of serfdom was never cruelty. Why? Many lords provided adequate food and shelter and protection. The defining characteristic was that the serf could not opt out of the arrangement entirely. He could not walk away from the system, live on his own terms, and owe nothing to anyone. That option simply did not exist for him.

Does it exist for you? I want you to genuinely ask yourself that question. Try it as an experiment. Stop paying your property taxes and see how long you “own” your home. Stop paying your health insurance and see what happens the first time you need a doctor. Stop paying your car note and see how you get to the job that pays for all your other bills. Stop paying your student loans and watch your credit score (the modern-day social standing, before the social credit score that’s upon us), the number that determines whether you can rent an apartment, buy a car, and in some cases, get a job, collapses beneath you. You cannot opt out.

You are free to choose your subscription package. You are not free to cancel the subscription to the system itself.

The medieval lord did not need chains. He had land, and the serfs needed land to survive. Today’s lords do not need chains either. They have mortgages, insurance policies, licensing agreements, terms of service, and auto-pay. The mechanism has been updated. The relationship has not changed one bit.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Let me be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying. I am not arguing that we should dismantle the economy or that every bill in your mailbox is illegitimate. Infrastructure costs money. Services require labor. Governance has expenses. I understand the mechanics as well as anyone. What I am arguing, and what I need you to sit with, is that we have to stop lying to ourselves about what this arrangement actually is. We are not free people making voluntary choices in a free market. We are participants in a mandatory economic system where the price of existence rises every year while wages do not keep pace, where the entities extracting wealth from working families grow richer while the families themselves grow more desperate, and where the social contract has been quietly rewritten so that the only guaranteed outcome of a lifetime of labor is more bills.

The three richest men in this country own more wealth than the bottom 170 million Americans combined. Wages for lower-income Americans grew just one percent last year while inflation ran at three percent. The gap between high-income and low-income wage growth is the widest it has been since 2016. And here is the part that should make you angry: this is not a system that is failing. This is a system that is working exactly as it was designed to work, for the people it was designed to serve. The rest of us? We are the serfs. The subscription is the tithe. And the illusion of choice is the only thing separating our arrangement from the one our ancestors endured a thousand years ago.

I said it before in these pages and I will say it again: the Pain of Truth is always preferable to the Comfort of a Lie. The lie is that you are free because you have options. The truth is that you are managed because every option comes with a recurring payment. The lie is that hard work leads to financial independence. The truth is that hard work, for the majority of Americans, leads to the privilege of keeping the lights on for another month. The lie is that feudalism died centuries ago. The truth is that it evolved, rebranded, and sends you a notification every month when your payment is due.

If we are going to fix this, and I idiotically believe we can, it starts with being honest about what this is. Stop calling it the American Dream when the math says otherwise. Stop pretending that a system that leaves the majority of its participants one paycheck away from disaster is functioning properly. And stop accepting the arrangement as inevitable, because the moment you accept it is the moment you become what they need you to be: a serf who believes he’s free.

We deserve better. Our children deserve better. But better does not come from the same people who built this system. It comes from us. It comes from the willingness to look at the receipts, call the arrangement what it is, and demand that the nation built on the promise of liberty actually delivers it. Not as a slogan. Not as a subscription. But as a reality.

I sat down last month to do something that most Americans avoid like the plague. I added up every single recurring payment attached to my name. Not just the obvious ones. All of them. By the time I finished, I sat there staring at a number that made something very clear to me: I do not work for myself. I work for a collection of entities that have each staked a claim on my labor before I ever decide how to spend a dime of it.

And then it hit me.

I have been here before. Not me personally, but we, as a civilization, have been in this exact arrangement before. We just called it something different. We called it feudalism.

Now, before you dismiss that comparison, hear me out. Because the numbers do not lie, and the parallels are uncomfortable enough that they deserve your attention. The average American household spends over $6,500 per month on necessities alone. A CNET survey from this year found that the average American spends $90 per month on subscriptions, but that’s only what they remember. When C+R Research actually had consumers itemize every subscription they pay for, the real number was $219 per month. That is more than 2.5 times what people thought they were spending. We are being billed so often and so automatically that we have lost track of who we are paying and for what.

However, subscriptions are just the part you can see. The Bank of America Institute released data showing that nearly one in four American households are spending 95 percent or more of their income on necessities: housing, groceries, gas, utilities, childcare, internet. Ninety-five percent. That means after a lifetime of education, years of work experience, and decades of labor, one quarter of this country has five cents on the dollar left over to actually live. Multiple surveys put the number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck somewhere between 53 and 67 percent depending on the methodology. Let me say that again so it registers: the majority of Americans cannot miss a single paycheck without facing financial catastrophe. And this…THIS is what we call freedom.

The Lords Changed Their Titles, Not Their Methods

In medieval Europe, the economic arrangement was straightforward enough that even the people living under it understood what it was. A serf was bound to the land. He did not own it. He worked it, and in exchange, he was permitted to live on it. He owed his lord a portion of his labor, typically three days per week on the lord’s fields, and he paid a tithe of ten percent of his produce to the Church. Between the labor obligations, the tithe, and the various fees that came with everything from selling goods at market to having his son leave the manor, historians estimate a medieval serf surrendered roughly 25 to 33 percent of his productive output to the lord and clergy combined. The serf could not leave without permission. He could not sell his goods without the lord taking a cut. His entire existence was a subscription to someone else’s wealth. He knew it, his lord knew it, and nobody pretended otherwise.

Now look at us.

The average American worker surrenders approximately 30 percent of gross income to federal and state taxes before they ever see a paycheck. Add property taxes, sales taxes, and the hidden tax of inflation, which has driven grocery costs up nearly 25 percent since 2020, and that figure climbs to 40 percent or higher for many households. Then comes the mandatory subscriptions: housing at roughly $2,200 per month, transportation at $1,100, food at $847, healthcare at $516, insurance and retirement contributions at $818. The median American household earns about $78,000 a year before taxes. You do the math on what’s left. I already did mine, and I can tell you, the number is not what a “free” person should be working with.

Here is what should disturb you: a medieval serf gave roughly a third of his labor to the lord and kept two-thirds for himself. The modern American gives the majority of his earnings to a constellation of entities: government, banks, insurers, landlords, utility companies, tech platforms, lenders, and calls what’s left over “disposable income.” The serf at least had the clarity to know who his lord was. We have so many lords we need budgeting apps just to keep count. Think about that. We need software subscriptions to manage our other subscriptions. If that is not a treadmill, I do not know what is.

Everything Is a Bill

It used to be that subscriptions were reserved for magazines and the morning newspaper. Now? Everything is a subscription. Your music is a subscription. Your movies are a subscription. The software you use at work is a subscription. BMW even tried to charge you $18 a month to use heated seats that were already physically installed in the car you already purchased. The backlash killed it, but the fact that a major automaker thought they could get away with it tells you everything about where this is headed. We have reached a point in American life where the things you have already paid for can be withheld from you unless you agree to keep paying.

Yet, let’s move past the entertainment and the luxury items, because that’s where people like to park this conversation so they don’t have to deal with the harder truth. Water is billed. Electricity is billed. The right to drive on roads your taxes already funded requires registration fees, licensing fees, inspection fees, tolls, and gas taxes. Education, the supposed great equalizer, saddles young Americans with an average of $30,000 in debt before they earn their first real salary. Healthcare, which in any rational arrangement would be a baseline of civilized society, costs the average household over $6,000 a year. You pay to be born. You pay to be educated. You pay to stay alive. And when it’s over, your family pays to bury you. Every single stage of human existence in this country has been monetized, metered, and billed on a recurring cycle.

So here is the question that nobody in power wants you to sit with long enough to actually answer: if the necessities of life, water, shelter, food, basic healthcare, education can be provided, and if the richest nation in the history of human civilization has the resources to provide them at a reasonable cost, then why is every single one of them structured as a recurring extraction from people who have no choice but to pay? The answer is not complicated. The system is not designed for your benefit. It is designed for extraction. You are not the customer. You are the revenue stream.

Part two next week…