To the Editor:

A historic constitutional battle is brewing.

With former President Donald Trump’s most recent indictment — his fourth in five months — comes a slew of familiar names like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but there’s at least one more name included in the list of Trump’s co-defendants that’s well known to Western North Carolina voters.  

To the Editor:

A strange paradox is alive in American politics.

To the Editor:

By reading the final report of January 6 Committee, I noticed this bit of information: As many as 80,000 people responded to Donald Trump’s call for a protest that would be “wild.”

Haywood County Republican and real estate agent Lynda Bennett will be sentenced in federal court on June 20 after accepting a plea agreement for violating campaign finance laws during her failed 2020 congressional bid.

With dozens of debunked allegations surrounding a “rigged” 2020 election still fresh on the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists, Western North Carolina’s election administrators are welcoming unprecedented levels of scrutiny in advance of the 2022 General Election.

Americans may wonder what it felt like to be living in Italy or Germany when they were submitting to tyrants. Now we know. 

As I was re-reading last week’s issue of The Smoky Mountain News and about the Juneteenth celebrations in the mountains, I started thinking about the upcoming July 4 holiday and of the freedoms Americans take for granted. As a white man I won’t presume to know what Juneteenth means to Black Americans, but there’s little doubt that their experience of being an American is much different from mine. 

With President Joe Biden’s disapproval ratings through the roof and a recent spate of setbacks in the Senate, Republicans appear poised to capitalize in the 2022 General Election — if a twice-impeached former president who isn’t even on the ballot doesn’t first tear their party apart.

The recent revelations regarding Mark Meadows and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the events that led up to it are eye-opening. The man who went from Jackson County restauranteur to White House chief of staff has fallen hard, his ethics and patriotism in question due to his blind support for Donald Trump and his stolen-election lies. He may even find himself in court.