Outright racism has long been a major plank of the Republican Party. But it appears that the Supreme Courts decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away a constitutional right of millions of Americansa move that will disproportionately affect Black and brown womenhas emboldened GOP officials to drop whatever lingering apprehension they had about going full white supremacist and just go for it.

At a Saturday rally held by Donald Trumpi.e., a guy who kicked off his first bid for the White House by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals and whose entire brand is racismRep. Mary Miller said into the microphone: President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday. Then she clapped her hands as the audience cheered.

After an onslaught of condemnation, Millers spokesman insisted to the Associated Press that the congresswoman from Illinois had misread her remarks and meant to say the ruling was a victory for the right to life. Yet that explanation would be a lot more believable if Miller didnt have a history of embracing the views of people who are famously about white life. At a Moms for America event last year, the lawmaker told the crowd that Hitler was right on one thing. He said, Whoever has the youth has the future. (She later issued a statement claiming she was sincerely sorry for any harm her words caused.) So youll have to forgive us if we find it hard to believe this was simply a slip of the tongue.

Whats more, Miller undoubtedly knew she was speaking before a group of people who would be receptive to such a point of view, given that Trump was headlining the event. While examples of the ex-president being an unabashed racist could fill several books (or Twitter timelines), a small representative sampling includes starting an entire movement around the lie that the countrys first Black presidentwasnt born here; calling for theexecutionof five Black and Latino teenagers; telling four congresswomen of color to go back to the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came, despite the fact that three quarters of those women came from the U.S.; banningtravelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the U.S.; pardoning a guy who the Justice Department saidoversaw theworst pattern of racial profilingby a law enforcement agency in U.S. history; throwing atotal shit fitover the removal of a statue of a Confederate general who thought Black people should be white peoples property; and reportedly calling white supremacists my people. As Ahmed Baba, a columnist for The Independent, tweeted on Saturday, Whether it was a slip or not, the audience heard white life and didnt flinch. They applauded.

Meanwhile, Miller wasnt the only Republican lawmaker to put racism on full display this weekend. Also on Saturday, Republican Texas senator John Cornynin the view of manycalled for the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling deeming racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. After Barack Obama tweeted that the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologuesattacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans, Cornyn quote-tweeted him and wrote: Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education. (Cornyn has since suggested he was merely noting the importance of long-standing precedent being overturned.)

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Republican Officials Spent the Weekend Going Full White Supremacist - Vanity Fair