Nearly 30 years ago, a fierce and pivotal SCOTUS battle took place over the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas. As Alex DiBranco writes in “Before the Alt Right," when law professor Anita Hill alleged that Thomas had egregiously sexually harassed her, her testimony helped launch an early reckoning over gender discrimination in the workplace. That laid the groundwork for the movement misogyny we’re seeing today. Melissa Gira Grant writes in “Beyond Strange Bedfellows" that the unusual collaboration in the “war on trafficking” isn’t a byproduct but the primary point. With a moral narrative shaped by a small group of right-wing activists, the issue offered both ends of the political spectrum “a chance to adopt a new identity: neither preachers nor scolds, but defenders of human rights.” In “Blurring the Border," Austin Kocher reports on how draconian immigration enforcement in Ohio has furthered the sense that the border is no longer defined by geography, but rather wherever vulnerable communities in the U.S. reside. Belt region that delivered overwhelming support to Trump in 2016. Today, Westmoreland County is home to “the Trump House” and a traveling “Trump Mobile.” But within the recent past, it was a Democratic stronghold that received a post-Depression lifeline from the New Deal. In “Trump, the Republican Party, and Westmoreland County,” Margaret Power returns home to try and figure out why this shift occurred.
