In March 2020, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives posted a video message addressed to two Democratic political candidates that issued a threatening challenge if they passed laws he did not like. Standing in his Capitol Hill office, Ken Buck of Colorado’s Fourth District gestured toward a rifle mounted on the wall.

“I have a message for Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke. If you want to take everyone’s AR-15 in America, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C., and start with this one.” At this point, Buck reached for a stars-and-stripes-decorated rifle mounted on the wall. He brandished the weapon, smiled what he must have imagined was a tough-guy smile, and said, “Come and take it.”

At the time the video was released, Biden was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Normally, the Secret Service takes an interest in threats of violence against potential presidents. I could find no indication that it did so in this case. It probably understood—as most of us would understand—that Buck would never make good on his threat to assassinate political opponents if they enacted gun-control legislation. He was only performing a threat, in a way that has become dully familiar in American politics.

[David Frum: It’s the guns]

Missouri Governor Eric Greitens resigned in disgrace in 2018 after facing allegations that he had used explicit photographs to blackmail a former lover. He tried to revive his career with a Senate run in 2020. Guns became a major theme of that campaign, culminating in a video ad that pictured him carrying a gun as he broke open the door of a house. Accompanied by two armed goons, he urged: “Get a RINO-hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Facebook removed the ad. Greitens said his threat against “Republicans in Name Only” was intended humorously.

And it’s not only marginal Republican backbenchers and embittered ex-officeholders who threaten violence.

In his campaign to become Georgia’s governor in 2018, Brian Kemp released an ad in which he pointed a hunting rifle at a seemingly frightened young man who wanted to date Kemp’s daughter.

Dan Crenshaw—one of the most intelligent Republicans in the House, someone who ought to be a next-generation party leader—in January released a deliberately absurd ad that cast him as a movie superhero. All in good fun, until the final scene that showed him apparently smashing a car windshield to reach and destroy two lurking political adversaries.

I could list many similar examples over dozens more paragraphs. But here’s the point: There’s nothing partisan about political violence in America. It has struck Republicans such as Steve Scalise, who was shot along with four others and nearly killed, as he played baseball in suburban Virginia. The gunman was a Bernie Sanders supporter who had traveled from Illinois with a legally purchased weapon and a target list of Republican members of Congress. It has threatened conservatives such as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, stalked by a would-be assassin angry about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And it has struck citizens of very different persuasions as they took part in street protests—as when Kyle Rittenhouse, acting as an armed vigilante, gunned down two demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020, and when Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-described anti-fascist, hunted and killed a political enemy in Seattle in September.

But if both Republicans and Democrats, left and right, suffer political violence, the same cannot be said of those who celebrate political violence. That’s not a “both sides” affair in 2020s America.

[Juliette Kayyem: The bad and good news about Trump’s violent supporters]

You don’t see Democratic House members wielding weapons in videos and threatening to shoot candidates who want to cut capital-gains taxes or slow the growth of Medicare. Democratic candidates for Senate do not post video fantasies of hunting and executing political rivals, or of using a firearm to discipline their children’s romantic partners. It’s not because of Democratic members that Speaker Nancy Pelosi installed metal detectors to bar firearms from the floor of the House. No Democratic equivalent exists of Donald Trump, who regularly praises and encourages violence as a normal tool of politics, most recently against his own party’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell. As the formerly Trump-leaning Wall Street Journal editorialized on October 2: “It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell. Many supporters took Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Pence all too seriously on Jan. 6.”

The January 6 insurrection is the overhanging fact above all this rhetoric of political violence. That was the day when Trump’s ally Rudy Giuliani urged, “Let’s have trial by combat”—and thousands heeded and complied. That terrible day, incited by President Trump and organized by Trump supporters, should have chastened American politics for a generation. It did not. Armed and masked vigilantes are intimidating voters right now in Arizona and other states, inspired by Trump’s continued election lies, as amplified by his supporters to this very day.

Paul Pelosi is the latest to pay a blood price for the cult of violence. Thankfully, he is expected to make a full recovery, but he won’t be the last victim of the cult. It won’t stop, but it must stop. As Abraham Lincoln wrote to a friend in 1863: “Among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and … they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.”

More than four months after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health overturned Roe v. Wade, undoing nearly five decades of federally-guaranteed legal abortion access, Americans across the country are still wrestling with the consequences of the decision.

Then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito told Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy in late 2005 that he respected Roe v. Wade and that he believed a right to privacy was "settled" law, according to entries in the late senator's diary included in a new biography and published in The New York Times.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

The races in the midterm are tightening up, but everyone who cares about democracy should resist the urge to turn the election into a referendum on inflation.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Michael Flynn’s desecration of the Christian faith The wreckage of neoliberalism Why Biden’s block on chips to China is a big deal More Than the Price of Gas

Last summer, it seemed like the Republicans were going to face a reversal of political gravity, and the Democrats would keep their majority during a first midterm election under a Democratic president. Historically, this is hard to do: Voters, for many reasons, usually trim congressional seats from a first-term president’s party. But the Democrats have benefited from the Republican plunge into extremism. The GOP still refuses to abandon Donald Trump and his violent insurrectionist movement; it is running ghastly candidates; and like a dog chasing a car, it smashed its snout into the bumper of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade, angering millions.

But autumn is here, and Democratic candidates are now struggling against this parade of election deniers, religious bigots, and conspiracy theorists who once would have been beyond the pale of modern American politics. The revelations of January 6, as I wrote earlier this month, seem irrelevant to many voters, some of whom still refuse to believe that anything bad happened on that horrible day. (If the police officer Michael Fanone had a heart attack during the riot, one Pennsylvania voter told MSNBC, he “shouldn’t have been a cop.”)

Some of this is the result of Democratic miscalculations. Abortion rights and Donald Trump were never going to win this election on their own, and though foreign policy is a Democratic bright spot, it does not usually play much as an issue in midterm elections. (That didn’t stop 30 House Democrats from issuing and then retracting a clumsy and pointless letter to Joe Biden this week about seeking negotiations with Russia.) Yes, inflation is high, and Americans always blame the party in power for such indicators. But there is another reason the Democrats could lose to this bizarre parade of otherwise unelectable candidates: The coalition to protect American democracy has failed to present a narrative of what life would look like—politically and economically—if this Republican Party returns to power.

This is a daunting challenge, but it is much harder now that the Republicans have convinced their opponents (especially among the Democrats) to internalize a Republican narrative: that the economy is the only thing voters care about, and that only a change of party can fix it. Ironically, even Republicans aren’t bothering to run on that same narrative, other than to say that Democrats are responsible for all bad things, including inflation. Republicans know their base, and have not bothered to put forward anything like an economic plan. The GOP response to everything is a Gish Gallop of fearful messages about crime and immigration and gun rights and trans people, and for their voters, it works.

Recall, for example, that in Ohio, J. D. Vance early on was trying to run something like a moderate primary campaign—including putting distance between himself and Trump—and found himself losing to an extremist. Vance learned his lesson. He started talking about “degenerate liberals” and accepted Trump’s humiliating embrace. Likewise, it’s not because of gas prices that in Arizona, Kari Lake is running an ad featuring a homophobic and Islamophobic pastor. Doug Mastriano is not running as a Christian nationalist in Pennsylvania because milk is more expensive.

And Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock are not in a tight race because Georgia voters think that Walker understands the problems of the common folk (unless the problem is men not acknowledging the children they’ve fathered). It is risible to believe that GOP voters are hoping Walker is going to take a seat, say, on the Finance Committee and start proposing solutions for inflation.

But the economy and democratic freedom are related—and the voters are capable of understanding this, if anyone would bother to make the case. Instead of preemptively apologizing for inflation or trying to undermine Biden’s foreign policy, perhaps the Democrats and others supporting a prodemocracy coalition should ask Americans if they’d like their votes nullified and to see the U.S. eventually transformed into a democratically challenged country like Turkey, where an autocratic president cracks down on his opponents and presides over an 83 percent inflation rate. Perhaps they’d like to be Hungary—a country now loved by many on the American right—where democracy is floundering, inflation is 20 percent, and teachers are marching in the streets.

Perhaps those of us who believe democracy is on the ballot could take a page from Ronald Reagan, who in 1980 pummeled Jimmy Carter both on the economy and foreign policy and won. And yet, by 1982, his victory seemed to be in ashes and predictions of a single term were common. The Cold War was frozen solid, people were scared, and the economy was in a brutal recession. Reagan’s answer was not “I feel your pain,” or “It’s the economy, stupid,” but rather: “Stay the course.” He asked the public to stand by him rather than return to the situation they had just left behind.

The need to stay the course is even more important now. Voters concerned about democracy should remind their fellow citizens that a GOP majority will not fix the economy or face down the Russians. Instead, state-level Republicans will issue partisan challenges to our constitutional process while cowardly national Republicans nod their approval. By 2025, Republicans at the state and national level might be able to simply ignore any election result they happen not to like.

To believe that voters can only think of one thing at a time is a remarkably elitist position, especially when Americans have repeatedly proved that they can vote on multiple issues. To reduce everything in 2022 to inflation and gasoline is to demean and infantilize the voters, to treat them as if they are cattle whose only concern is the price of feed. But all of us need to make the case for democracy and prosperity—and to remind ourselves that these blessings cannot exist without each other.

Related:

Why politics has become so stressful How far would a Republican majority go? Today’s News Rishi Sunak officially became Britain’s prime minister and began appointing members to his cabinet. A Russian appeals court upheld the WNBA player Brittney Griner’s sentence on drug-smuggling charges. Adidas ended its partnership with Ye (formerly Kanye West), citing the artist’s recent anti-Semitic comments. Dispatches Brooklyn, Everywhere: “While living amid biblical levels of joylessness … our friendships can provide us with individual sources of joy and meaning,” writes Xochitl Gonzalez. Work in Progress: Derek Thompson explains how the U.K. became one of the poorest countries in Western Europe. Evening Read (Getty / The Atlantic)

Adoption Is Not a Fairy-Tale Ending

By Erika Hayasaki

In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Poor mothers who were predestined to give their children away for a “better life”; unwanted kids turned into chosen ones; made-for-television reunions years later. Since childhood, these story lines about the industry of infant adoptions had gradually seeped into my subconscious from movies, books, and the news.

Then, following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the tropes proliferated. Photos of smiling white couples holding signs that read “We will adopt your baby” went viral this summer, quickly inspiring online mockery. Many U.S. adoption agencies prepared for a potential increase in adoption in states that have made abortion illegal, despite limited evidence that a need for these services will increase.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

The media are still making the same mistake on Trump. Why did Cotopaxi leave San Francisco? Images of Diwali: the festival of lights Culture Break Steve Carell in The Patient. (FX; The Atlantic)

Read. If I Survive You, Jonathan Escoffery’s debut collection of linked stories, is a biting tale of sibling rivalry and a moving family saga.

Or try another pick from our list of books that show no one can hurt you like a sibling.

Watch. The series finale of The Patient, the latest in a recent group of TV shows to explore the dramatic potential of confinement.

Play our daily crossword.

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

The president's party typically loses ground in midterm elections. In two weeks, we'll find out if this year will be an exception. Propelled by widespread dissatisfaction over Roe v. Wade's reversal and concern about some Republicans' efforts to erode democracy, Democrats appeared to have momentum a few weeks ago. The latest polling may suggest otherwise.

If ever there was a time and place for a thoughtful, patriotic conservatives to vote third party or perhaps even vote for a reasonable Democrat, it’s the 2022 election in Georgia. Herschel Walker’s past is, if possible, even more checkered than Donald Trump’s. After all, no one ever claimed that Trump threatened one of his ex-wives with a gun.

Recent evidence that Walker paid for an abortion is just one more revelation about his thoroughly debauched past. Yet personal scandal is hardly the only problem with Walker. He has a long record of election denial and false claims of mass election fraud. Every voter should presume that Walker, if he wins, will do exactly what Trump demands.

[David A. Graham: Herschel Walker is demonstrating the new law of politics]

Moreover, Walker’s personal failings aside, there is an overwhelming case that these are not ordinary times, and that the 2022 election is not an ordinary election. So thoughtful, patriotic conservatives should swallow hard, forsake the policy victories they hope for with a Republican Congress, and either stay home or vote Democratic, right?

If that’s the argument, someone needs to tell the Democratic Party what’s at stake. Because right now, it’s making an unsustainable demand of Republican voters: You sacrifice the policies that you believe are best for our nation and its people; we sacrifice nothing.

There’s no better example of this approach than Raphael Warnock’s stance on abortion rights. He was one of 49 Democratic senators who voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act. This bill doesn’t just “codify Roe.” It would preempt hundreds of state laws that existed before the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs, including, for example, waiting periods, 20-week abortion bans, and ultrasound requirements.

It would permit pre-viability abortion for any reason. It would allow for even post-viability abortion to protect the life or health of the mother, where health isn’t limited to physical health. That leaves the health exception broad enough to include permitting late-term abortion if just one health-care provider concurs with the mother that her emotional or psychological health is at stake.

If that law were to pass, America would immediately become an outlier nation on abortion rights, more permissive than the overwhelming majority of its peer countries in the developed world. And Warnock voted to stop a Republican filibuster against this bill even though Georgia—one of the nation’s more religious states—is so anti-abortion that it enacted a heartbeat bill before the Supreme Court decided Dobbs.

Think of the dilemma for thoughtful conservatives, particularly those who are deeply anti-abortion. Vote for the spouse-abusing election denier? Vote for the man who’s diametrically opposed to you on a life-and-death issue that is more important to you than any other? Or vote for someone else, knowing that you’re costing the GOP your normally reliable vote?

Versions of this dilemma are being put before GOP voters in different races across the country. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania recently and explicitly reaffirmed that he doesn’t support any limits on abortion rights. In his view, the decision should be between a woman and her doctor at every stage of pregnancy.

What makes these stands all the more extraordinary is that they’re actually unpopular. For example, a recent Harvard/Harris poll indicated that 37 percent of Americans would support banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest; another 12 percent supported bans beyond six weeks. That left only 28 percent of Americans who supported abortion rights beyond 15 weeks. Gallup polling has long demonstrated strong opposition to legal abortion in the third trimester and solid majorities against legal abortion in the second trimester (at the same time, large majorities support legal abortion in the first three months of pregnancy).

Right now the message to conservative anti-abortion voters is that they should risk a potential policy loss on what is for many of them their single most important issue, because the republic could be at risk. Yet, key Democrats—sensing opportunity in the weakness of Walker, or of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania—are refusing to compromise on that same issue.

They’re even using the moment to push an unpopular position on the most contentious issue in the culture wars. They see the Republican crisis as more of an opportunity than a risk to our national union.

[Jemele Hill: Herschel Walker’s candidacy is just insulting ]

There is no moral standing to scorn Republicans for refusing to risk their preferred policies for the sake of democracy if prominent Democrats are doing the exact same thing. Compounding the challenge is the knowledge that Democrats poured millions of dollars into ad campaigns to try to persuade Republicans to vote for extremists in GOP primaries. Is democracy at stake, or not?

I happen to believe that it is. I watched the events of January 6 and knew that they represented the most dangerous moment in modern American political history. Revelations since the attack on the Capitol have only reaffirmed that danger. If Mike Pence had said yes to Trump’s scheme, our nation would have been plunged into the worst constitutional crisis since 1861.

Defenders of democracy are in need of allies. And though I understand that millions of Republicans will vote for a Trump loyalist no matter the character of the man or woman on the ballot, a substantial number of conservative voters are deeply troubled by the party’s dark turn. They understand all too well the vital importance of character in American politics. And yet they are left with no good choices.

Opposition to Trump or concerns about election conspiracies don’t make them any less anti-abortion, and the unwillingness of Democrats to compromise tears conscientious conservatives in two. So don’t be surprised if some voters still bite the bullet and vote for policy over character. In my view, that’s a potentially catastrophic mistake (character should never be optional), but it’s a mistake made all the more likely and understandable when the opposing party wants to take your vote—and give you nothing in return.

When the Greek Revolution began in 1821, Thanassis Petsalis was only 19 years old. He studied law, became one of the best defense lawyers in postrevolutionary Greece, and in his late 60s served as the country’s minister of justice. His description of the political aspirations of the Greeks was written in 1841, 20 years after the revolution began but in a time when the Greek revolutionaries groaned under the absolutist monarchy of the Bavarian King Otto:

At the time of the outbreak of our revolution we were lacking in political ideas, but everyone was inspired by the Americans. When the Greek revolutionaries had to explain what the political principles behind their struggle against the Ottomans were, they always referred to the U.S. as their model. Of course, Greeks at the time had a superficial knowledge of the American Constitution. But all of them could understand the nature of the political society that the U.S. Constitution envisioned, and most Greeks shared that vision. They were hoping that their future would be based on similar political foundations.

Petsalis’s translation and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, where I found this excerpt, was not the first Greek translation of the document. During the Greek War of Independence (1821–29), another translation was published by the 22-year-old Anastassios Polyzoides in Missolonghi. Two years before, Polyzoides had written the first draft of the Greek Declaration of Independence, under the influence of the American original. “It is a nobler document than that of the Americans,” Richard Robert Madden, the Irish abolitionist, wrote 40 years later. Polyzoides (“one of the most enlightened men in Greece” according to Cornelius Conway Felton, a scholar who later became the president of Harvard University) became a symbol of the independent judiciary when, five years after the end of the revolution, he refused to convict two of his political opponents despite the enormous pressure by the Bavarian regency.

The Greek revolutionaries were not the only ones who identified the United States of America as the “city upon a hill.” The country was, for more than a century, the political and institutional model for liberals and republicans around the world; it was the beacon of political and individual liberty for struggling democracies and oppressed peoples, even when Americans had to face their own demons of slavery, authoritarianism, racism, and political and social inequality. But these demons were always overpowered by the sturdy legacy of the American Revolution and its founding documents, which an independent judiciary had gradually reconstructed as defenders of freedom.

[From the April 2017 issue: Making Athens great again]

But this legacy diminished and in Greece it totally evaporated, even while Greece was a reliable U.S. ally. When I was a law student in the mid-1980s in Thessaloniki, I could not find a copy of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in the university library. The books on American legal and constitutional theory made up a tiny percentage of the collection. This was not so much the result of the crude anti-Americanism after the fall of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship in 1974 as of the fact that most leading Greek law professors had studied at German and French universities.

I had the privilege to continue my studies at the University of Chicago Law School, where in 1993 constitutional law was taught by Geoffrey Stone, Cass Sunstein, David Strauss, Elena Kagan, Larry Lessig, and the then-32-year-old Barack Obama. When I returned to Greece in 2000 with an appointment to teach legal theory at the University of Athens, the number of my colleagues who had been educated at U.S. law schools was less than half a dozen. Even so, my introductory course to legal theory was based on American legal theory and history. My students are taught how the Madisonian republic—with its Constitution and the Bill of Rights—gave the best possible political answer to Thomas Hobbes’s challenge to Aristotle’s idea of a rule of law. The American Founding Fathers, under the influence of Greek classical philosophers and historians, managed to establish a democracy with strong safeguards against the tyranny of majority by also productively using not only the Greek theory of democracy but also the experience of democratic politics in both Athens and Rome.

During my lectures, my students have to watch movies such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and All the President’s Men while we discuss Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade. They are shocked when I present the events at Skokie and the ACLU’s courageous decision to defend the right of the neo-Nazis to parade there. They are fascinated by New York Times Co. v. United States; they are amused by Hustler Magazine v. Falwell; and they are always moved when I read the majority opinion by Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges to them. And all of this strangely resonates with students in today’s Greece, where a wiretapping scandal shattered the nation and same-sex marriage is not yet recognized.

Most Greek constitutional-law scholars and legal theorists are today familiar with American constitutional and legal theory. This year, a landmark of scholarship, Freedom of Speech in the United States, written by my late colleague and friend Stavros Tsakyrakis, was reprinted after 25 years. It remains the best monograph on First Amendment theory and jurisprudence I have ever read.

However, this summer, while I was updating my syllabus and notes for the upcoming semester, I had to finally acknowledge that I need to thoroughly revise my teaching. I am afraid that the U.S. has lost the intellectual hegemony it once had in liberal constitutional theory.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade was just the most recent hit. Supreme Court decisions such as Kelo v. City of New London and Citizens United v. FEC, the politicized conservative majority built during the Trump presidency, the erosion of academic freedom in most American universities by an authoritarian version of political correctness, and many related political phenomena such as the culture wars seem to undermine the legacy of expanding political freedom and safeguarding individual rights. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not effective protections of liberty anymore; checks and balances are considered obstacles to a new version of populist majoritarianism, defended by both the right and the left who see the Constitution as a barrier to their radical politics.

[Mary Ziegler: If the Supreme Court can reverse Roe, it can reverse anything]

This is a loss not just for America, but for the globe. For liberal intellectuals such as Petsalis, Polyzoides, and Adamantios Korais (who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and Jeremy Bentham), the U.S. political system was the only model that could satisfy the political aspirations of the revolutionaries. For Korais, “to choose another political system for Greece is like eating acorn after the invention of bread.” For the foremost politician of the revolution, Alexandros Mavrokordatos (a close friend of Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron’s host in Missolonghi), the two countries were natural allies because “their constitutions … bring them so close together,” as he put it in a letter to John Quincy Adams in June 1823. The epic poem written during the revolution by Dionysios Solomos, the poem on which the Greek national anthem is based, makes a specific reference to “the land of Washington which was wholeheartedly delighted” with the news of the Greek Revolution. But it was not only the liberals and the young intellectuals who admired the American example. Even the traditional middle-aged feudal lord turned revolutionary Georgios Sissinis lamented during a difficult turn of the war: “Alas! Just imagine that we longed to see Greece becoming a new America!”

These young liberals managed to introduce a version of the Madisonian Constitution in 1827, with a unitary executive, a powerful legislative branch, staggered elections, judicial review, presidential veto, freedom of speech and press, and even a “we the people” rationale. According to Edward Blaquiere, an Irish liberal activist and philhellene, Greeks were fully capable of the “rational liberty” that their liberal and democratic constitution guaranteed. Unfortunately, the 1827 constitution was never enforced, and 16 years of authoritarianism darkened the new independent Greece. But its legacy reemerged in Greece’s two major constitutional moments in the 19th century, when two uprisings transformed absolutism into a constitutional monarchy in 1844 and a liberal constitutional democracy in 1864—a democracy with one of the longest parliamentary histories in the world.

The U.S. Constitution is old and partly outdated, no doubt. But the Madisonian republic is not. For more than two centuries it remained the beacon of liberal democracy all over the world, optimally resolving the paradox of the conflict and the symbiotic balance between popular sovereignty and the rule of law. If the radicals of the right and the left succeed in undermining one or the other, liberal democracy will crumble, and the rule of law will be replaced by the rule of the elites or the rule of the mob. American liberals should reclaim the Constitution, not surrender it to passing majorities. This is the only way for the government of the people, by the people, for the people, to not perish from the Earth.

In 2004, my mother accompanied me to Long Beach, California, for the United States Olympic swimming trials. I was going to be covering the Athens Summer Olympics for the Detroit Free Press that year, and I was sent to the trials to write about a young phenom named Michael Phelps, who went on to become the greatest American swimmer in history and one of the most decorated Olympians of all time.

I knew my mother would enjoy the trials because of her deep passion for swimming. She loves the water. She had been a swimmer as a child and had even dreamed of becoming an Olympian herself. She later became a certified lifeguard and worked for the YMCA and the Oakland Community Center. Even when she was struggling with addiction during my childhood, my mother would occasionally splurge on a health-club membership just to have access to a pool.

This article is adapted from Hill’s forthcoming book.

One night in Long Beach, we stayed up late, passionately arguing about whether former President George W. Bush had lied about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction to justify his decision to invade in 2003. She didn’t think so. I was extremely critical of Bush—I would eventually be proved right about how he misled the American public—and neither my mother nor I backed down that night.

Politically, my mother and I are polar opposites. Although my mother doesn’t like being labeled a Christian conservative, she is more than comfortable calling me a liberal. To me, both labels seem appropriate. However, my mother explains that her political views stem from what she calls a “biblical worldview.” My mother is pro-life, despite raising a daughter who had an abortion. She has told me for years that, as a Christian, she would be going against God if she voted for any candidate who supported a woman’s right to an abortion.

[Jemele Hill: Why I’m talking about my abortion]

My mother’s point of view, though not uncommon among Black people, is widely overlooked in American politics today. Black people aren’t necessarily turned off by conservative ideas. But many of us are turned off by a party that seems to willingly embrace blatant racism and anti-Blackness.

However much I disagree with my mother, I admire the way she has stuck to her principles. We all make bargains when voting, because so many politicians have serious flaws. So I wasn’t all that surprised when my mother seemed to be buying some of Trump’s misleading and divisive rhetoric during his 2016 presidential campaign. I was, however, disappointed. Trump’s relationship with Christian evangelicals is one of convenience. He was more than happy to entrench himself in their community in exchange for their loyalty and support. He gave them what they wanted: Supreme Court justices who would undo Roe v. Wade. He facilitated an environment in which religious-liberty protections would allow people to openly discriminate against LGBTQ people. And he created an atmosphere in which evangelicals felt entitled to openly be bigots.

I wouldn’t consider my mother to be part of the far-right, extremist Christian movement. And I can’t ignore what so many Christians in America are willing to tolerate and excuse for their religion. Many didn’t just eagerly overlook Trump’s racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and abject cruelty; they took things a step further and deified Trump. Paula White, an immensely popular but controversial evangelical who served as Trump’s spiritual adviser when he was in the White House, called her work with Trump “an assignment from God.” The pastor Jeremiah Johnson became known as the “Trump prophet” for proclaiming that Trump would be reelected in 2020. The morning after his loss, Johnson sent out a letter to his mailing list claiming that he and a “chorus of mature and tested prophets” had been assured by God that Trump would be victorious. “Either a lying spirit has filled the mouths of numerous trusted prophetic voices in America,” he wrote to his followers, “or Donald J. Trump really has won the Presidency and we are witnessing a diabolical and evil plan unfold to steal the Election. I believe with all my heart that the latter is true.”(Johnson later apologized for his remarks and temporarily shut down his ministry.)

With all of this in mind, I know many people are surprised to learn that a 60-something Black woman would be susceptible to Trump’s message. But I have learned through many conversations with my mother—some of which were not so pleasant—that Trump’s appeal fed off of the disappointment that some people her age feel about younger Americans.

My mother thinks that “this generation”—a broad category that includes my fellow Gen Xers and me—is soft, entitled, irresponsible, and too politically correct. She believes that we have squandered the gains made by the civil-rights generation. My mother was among those who cheered on Bill Cosby as he lectured Black people about personal responsibility before his own fall from grace. During his infamous “pound cake” speech, which he delivered at the NAACP event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Cosby hit every point on the respectability-politics bingo card. He not only suggested that Black women who get pregnant out of wedlock should be ashamed, but he also criticized women for having “five or six different children” from “eight, 10 different husbands, or whatever”: “Pretty soon,” he joked, “you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to.” He also scoffed at Black parents who give their children overly ethnic names and took a swipe at “people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack.”

Cosby had created classic television series, including The Cosby Show and A Different World, that portrayed Black characters in positive ways. Yet his speech showed a simmering hatred for certain Black people, reducing many of us to the worst, lowest-common-denominator stereotypes. My mother is not quite so harsh, but she does gravitate toward respectability politics—she always has, as have many other members of my family. Thus, I’m always amused when white people try to paint the entire Black community as liberal and lecture us on personal responsibility, as if Black people haven’t heard Cosby-like messages on repeat in our homes, churches, and schools for our entire lives.

[Read: The partisan paradox of Black Republicans]

To be clear, my mother was never a member of the Trump cult. She never wore MAGA apparel. She certainly never rejected Black people or her Blackness. She is proud to be a Black woman. However, she was initially drawn to Trump’s no-nonsense delivery, his alleged business acumen, his “drain the swamp” nonsense, and, most of all, his choice to run as an anti-abortion candidate. Never mind that he had proudly claimed to be “pro-choice in every respect” during a 1999 interview with the legendary NBC anchor Tim Russert on Meet the Press: “I hate the concept of abortion … but I still believe in choice.”

Although I am loath to give Trump credit for anything, he’s always been good at marketing himself. His messages are cringeworthy, but he knows how to deliver them effectively.

Unlike my mother, I recognized Trump as a racist con man from the start. In 2017, about a month after a deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, I criticized him on social media—which got me in trouble with my then-employer, ESPN. Considering our heated debate in Long Beach, my mother can’t have been surprised that, even as my professional life exploded because of my comments, I never backed down. Trump wasn’t the first president about whom history proved me right.

This article is adapted from Hill’s forthcoming book, Uphill: A Memoir.

DURHAM, N.C.—No North Carolina governor has ever wielded the veto like Roy Cooper.

The Democrat has vetoed 75 bills in his nearly six years as governor. That’s more than twice as many as every other governor in the state’s history combined. Since its earliest state constitutions, the Old North State has been skeptical of executive power, and the governor only gained veto power in 1996. Cooper is the first governor to seize its full potential.

Cooper has rejected bills to require sheriffs to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to open skating rinks during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, to loosen gun laws, and to tighten voting laws. He has also vetoed bills to restrict his own office’s powers.

The power is not absolute. As in Washington, a supermajority can override the veto—in North Carolina, three-fifths of both chambers of the legislature. Until 2018, Republicans held more than the 30 Senate and 72 House seats they needed to override the governor, and they did: In his first two years as governor, Cooper vetoed 28 bills, but 23 of them were overridden. Two years later, Democrats cut into Republicans’ margins, and since then, every veto has been sustained.

[Read: The next presidential election is happening right now in the states]

The balance of power in the North Carolina General Assembly is up for grabs in this year’s election. Politicians and experts on both sides of the aisle agree that the real battle is not over whether Republicans can maintain control of the legislature but over whether they can reclaim a supermajority. The GOP needs to win just two seats in the Senate and three in the House to do that. Whether it succeeds will have major implications for the direction of the state, which has often served as an incubator for conservative governance. But the answer could also be pivotal for an even bigger question: how available abortion will be in the region. Most states in the Southeast have abortion laws that are generally more restrictive than North Carolina’s, making the state a magnet for women seeking access—at least for now.

“I’m not personally on the ballot,” Cooper told me. “My ability to stop bad legislation is. The effectiveness of the veto is on the line.”

That is a rare point of agreement for Cooper and Republican leaders. “The Democrats will not get a majority in either the North Carolina House or the North Carolina Senate,” Phil Berger, the president pro tempore of the State Senate, a Republican, told me. “So then the question becomes what’s going to be the level of Republican control within the general assembly … [and] whether or not the governor’s veto is something that will have any real bearing on legislation.”

State legislative elections have long been treated as a parochial backwater, but in this cycle some of them have vaulted to prominence thanks in large part to battles over election administration, as Donald Trump acolytes and election deniers seek to take over the mechanisms of voting. National money and attention have flowed into states such as Michigan, where control of the legislature is up for grabs, and with it the fate of elections in a key swing state, as my colleague Russell Berman recently reported.

For more than a decade, North Carolina has been the site of a series of pitched battles over both voting laws (voter ID, poll hours, and more) and redistricting, often with GOP legislation being struck down by state courts or federal judges, who famously found that a voting law targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.” The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case that originated in North Carolina over the “independent state legislature” theory, and the justices’ decision could render state legislators’ power over elections nearly uncheckable.

Voting is a leading issue in North Carolina this year, too. Cooper has repeatedly vetoed Republican attempts to make voting harder, but the governor doesn’t have the power to veto maps, so whether Republicans have a supermajority does not substantially affect how this will play out. (North Carolina voters will also decide whether to hand control of the Democratic-majority state supreme court, which has rejected previous maps, to Republicans.)

Abortion laws, however, are one area where the veto could make all the difference—and one whose importance could extend beyond state lines. As in many campaigns across the nation, Democrats are seeking to capitalize on backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade to make the election a referendum on abortion.

“We know that North Carolina has been a safe haven for women’s reproductive freedom,” Cooper told me. “When you talk to women’s-reproductive-health providers in North Carolina, they will tell you that the number of out-of-state patients has increased dramatically. We have people coming from Georgia and South Carolina. We even have had people come in from East Texas to get women’s health care. And it is critical to have this safe haven in the Southeast.”

Abortion is currently banned in the state, in most cases, past 20 weeks of pregnancy, and Cooper has vetoed more-restrictive laws. South Carolina last year moved to ban most abortions after six weeks (though the law is currently blocked in court), which is also the law in Georgia. Florida does not allow abortions after 15 weeks, and every other southeastern state has a full ban, with very limited exceptions.

[Read: Why this election is so weird]

Democrats say that without Cooper’s veto standing in the way, a Republican supermajority would quickly follow surrounding states in enacting either a complete abortion ban or something close to it. They note that GOP members have in the past introduced bills to ban abortion completely or once a heartbeat is detected, something the speaker of the state House says he supports. Some Republicans, meanwhile, have followed their national counterparts in mostly trying to downplay the issue.

“You’ve seen Republican candidates and Republican legislators trying to moderate their positions on abortion to gain election,” Cooper told me, adding, “My message is: Don’t believe them.”

Berger scoffed at the idea that his caucus would seek an abortion ban and said Cooper undermines his own credibility by saying it, though he acknowledged that some members have pushed for bans. “I daresay that the people they point to who have introduced a bill are people that generally don’t get bills passed,” he told me.

Republicans, meanwhile, say voters’ central issue will be dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden’s stewardship of the economy and, in particular, inflation. Paul Shumaker, a veteran GOP consultant, warned in a recent memo that abortion threatened to cut into Republican gains, but he still thinks Democrats will struggle to win on that alone. “If the Democrats try to make it a singular issue around abortion, it’s because they’re ignoring the inflation and the anger,” he told me. “Abortion, to me, is not an overriding issue like the economy. Republicans need to not let it become one. The way Republicans lose is if they let it become a referendum on a ban.”

Cooper has put his muscle into the legislative race, holding dozens of fundraisers for legislative candidates and cutting an ad for one Democratic candidate focused on the veto. North Carolina is sharply politically divided between rural and urban voters, who consistently vote Republican and Democratic, respectively. Whether Republicans regain the supermajority in the Senate will be decided in suburban and mixed districts around big cities such as Charlotte and Raleigh. In many of those districts, Democrats are running women, many of them women of color.

[Read: Red state, blue city]

These battleground districts have changed rapidly in recent decades and years, part of a wave of in-migration to North Carolina. About half of all adults in the state were born somewhere else. State Representative Rachel Hunt, who won election by just 68 votes in 2018, is now looking to move up to the Senate. She’s the scion of a venerable political family—her father, Jim Hunt, was governor from 1977 to 1985 and 1993 to 2001, and the first to have veto power—but she told me that many voters she canvasses are barely aware of the state legislature, much less familiar with her family name. State Senator Sydney Batch, who is running in a district outside Raleigh, says her neighbors joke that she’s the only person on the street who’s actually from North Carolina.

Mark Cavaliero, the Republican running against Batch, hopes that economic concerns will lead people to vote GOP. “If you look at inflation, you know, you look at mortgage rates, you look at the value of your 401(k)—those things are all dropping, and it’s causing people a lot of pain,” he told me. (“My voters can fortunately walk and chew gum, and they are concerned about more than just inflation,” said Batch, a former state representative who was appointed to the seat and is now running for election there for the first time. “They’re concerned about the environment; they’re concerned about choice.”)

Many of these contested districts are full of moderate professionals—unaffiliated voters typically represent a plurality—who have traditionally leaned Republican but began to shift toward Democrats during the Donald Trump years. Now Democrats hope that anger about abortion will fire them up the way Trump did.

“I don’t know what could happen between now and November to make things different, but I don’t think women are going to settle down and not vote in November; they really are going to turn out,” Hunt said. “And that is exactly what the Democrats need to be able to hold on to the urban areas and make some inroads in the areas right outside of the urban areas.”

Even though midterm elections are typically difficult for the president’s party, the consensus is that the general-assembly battle will remain close until Election Day. Cooper gave Democrats a 50–50 shot at preventing the supermajority, and Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist close to Cooper, told me, “Six months ago I think [Republicans] would have [won] supermajorities in both chambers. Now I’m optimistic, but I think it’s going to be very close.” On the other side, Berger is optimistic too: “I’d much prefer to be in our position than their position,” he said.

Whatever the outcome of the races this year, the next cycle will likely be just as hard-fought and close, like every election in North Carolina these days. “Bottom line is, this is very much a swing state, and if Republicans have a great night in 2022, no one should read any indicators into that about what 2024 is going to look like,” Shumaker warned. But even if no majority—or supermajority—is permanent, the consequences for voting and abortion laws will be real.

Nikki Farb is an active investor and technology advisor and invests in blockchain companies at their earliest stages. As the blockchain founder’s wing woman, she advises SoFi and is a venture partner at Headline.

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