In 1994, I visited the home of Donald Trump. He was a Democrat then, of sorts, and I was the party's nominee for governor of Connecticut. He'd taken an interest in our state owing to his keen desire to lodge a casino in Bridgeport, an idea I found economically and morally dubious. I had scant hope of enlisting him, but made the trip anyway, thinking that if I convinced him I might win, he'd be less apt to bankroll my opponent.

I arrived at Trump Tower in early evening, accompanied by my finance chair and an old friend and colleague. Stepping off the elevator into his apartment, we were met by a display of sterile, vulgar ostentation: all gold, silver, brass, marble; nothing soft, welcoming or warm. Trump soon appeared and we began to converse, but not really. In campaigns, we candidates do most of the talking; because we like to, and because people ask us lots of questions. Not this time. Not by a long shot.

Trump talked very rapidly and virtually nonstop for nearly an hour; not of my campaign or even of politics, but only of himself, and almost always in the third person. He'd given himself a nickname: "the Trumpster," as in "everybody wants to know what the Trumpster's gonna do," a claim he made more than once.

He mostly told stories. Some were about his business deals; others about trips he'd taken or things he owned. All were unrelated to the alleged point of our meeting, and to one another. That he seldom even attempted segues made each tale seem more disconnected from reality than the last. It was funny at first, then pathetic, and finally deeply unsettling.

On the drive home, we all burst out laughing, then grew quiet. What the hell just happened? My first theory, that Trump was high on cocaine, didn't feel quite right, but he was clearly emotionally impaired: in constant need of approbation; lacking impulse control, self-awareness or awareness of others. We'd heard tales of his monumental vanity, but were still shocked by the sad spectacle of him.

That visit colored all my later impressions of Trump. Over time, his mental health seemed to decline. He threw more and bigger public tantrums; lied more often and less artfully. The media, also in decline and knowing a ratings magnet when it saw one, turned a blind eye. Sensing impunity, Trump revived the racist 'birther' lie. In 2011, he told the "Today" show's Meredith Vieira he had unearthed some dark secrets:

Vieira: You have people now down there searching, I mean in Hawaii?

Trump: Absolutely. And they cannot believe what they're finding.

By 2016, the private Trump was on permanent public display, raging over mere slights, seeing plots in every ill turn of events and, as always, stunningly self-absorbed. He was called a racist, a sexist and a bully. But his mental health issues were euphemized as problems of "temperament." He lied ceaselessly, reflexively and clumsily, but his lies were called merely "unproven" or, later, "false." The New York Times called the birther story a lie only after Trump grudgingly retracted it. Not till he was safe in office claiming that millions of phantom immigrants cast votes for Clinton did the paper of record use the word "lie" in reference to a tale Trump was still telling.

In 2016, the precariousness of Trump's mental health was clear to all with eyes to see, but like extras in a remake of "The Emperor's New Clothes," reporters averted their glances. The day after the election, they were all in a state of shock, like staff at an asylum who woke one morning to find that the patient who thought he was Napoleon had just been named emperor of France. Once he took office, many publications began keeping running tallies of his lies. But all take a more cautious approach to questions of their origins in his deeply troubled psyche. To date, no major network, newspaper or magazine has run an in-depth analysis of Trump's mental health.

The pathologies of American journalism are by now cliches: aversion to policy analysis; addiction to horse-race politics; smashing of walls that once separated news, opinion and advertising; an ideology that mistakes evenhandedness for objectivity. Yet we hear scant talk of reform. The press excels at public rituals of soul-searching but has little taste for the real thing. That said, its reluctance to discuss mental health reflects its virtues as well as its vices. Of major outlets, Fox News does by far the most psychological profiling. (It turns out all liberals are crazy.)

Like the language of politics, the language of psychology is imprecise; the term "sociopath" is as hard to nail down as "liberal" or "conservative." What separates a serial liar from a pathological liar? Mere suspicion from paranoia? Righteous anger from uncontrolled rage? How do we ever tell mental illness from ill character? Our view of any antisocial behavior hinges on whether we view it through a moral, legal or therapeutic lens; to take a human life other than in self-defense is insane, and also criminal and, to many, sinful. Do we treat, punish or forgive? It's so hard to say.

The diagnosis we associate with Trump is "narcissistic personality disorder" (a term that only lately replaced "narcissistic character disorder"). You'll find it in the Diagnostic Survey Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, fifth edition. Back in February, a principal author of the prior edition, Dr. Allen Frances, wrote a letter to the Times rebuking mental health professionals for "diagnosing public figures from a distance" and "amateur diagnosticians" for "mislabeling" Trump with narcissistic personality disorder. Allen says he wrote the criteria defining the disorder and Trump doesn't have it. His reasoning: Trump "does not suffer the disorder and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder."

Frances does what he accuses others of doing. By saying flatly that Trump doesn't suffer a disorder, he diagnoses a public figure we assume - for multiple reasons - he hasn't treated. Nor can he or anyone else tell "from a distance" that Trump doesn't suffer the requisite impairment and disorder. No president ever seemed so impaired or disordered, but we needn't compare him only to other rotten presidents. Trump is the Chuck Yeager of lying, a shatterer of records thought untouchable. That he is frozen in pathological, crotch-grabbing adolescence is well documented; that his judgment is often deranged by rage is self-evident.

This week the world watched two men of obvious, serious emotional impairment in control of ungodly nuclear weapons trade puerile taunts while threatening to incinerate millions of innocent human beings. Donald Trump, having made war on Mitch McConnell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nordstrom, China, Mexico, Australia and the cast of "Hamilton," baiting a man who idolizes Dennis Rodman and just murdered his own brother. This is simply unacceptable. We know how Kim Jong-un got his job. It's time we thought about how Trump got his. One answer is that he got it the way authoritarian leaders do in liberal democracies: by exploiting the weakness and naive politesse of the old order. To contain him, let alone remove him, we must relearn the rules of debate.

We can start by distinguishing name calling (bad) from merely naming (which is not just good but vital). I too recoil from quack therapists diagnosing strangers on cable TV. But you don't need to be a botanist to tell a rose from a dandelion. In 2016 Trump compared Ben Carson to a child molester and pronounced him "incurable," but few raised the far more real question of Trump's own mental health. Do we dare not state the obvious? You needn't be an amateur diagnostician to see that Donald Trump is mentally ill.

Trump embodies that old therapists' saw "perception is projection." You can use this handy tool to locate the truth, exactly opposite from whatever he just said. He has a weight management problem, so women are "fat pigs." He can't stop fibbing, so his primary opponent becomes "Lyin' Ted Cruz." His career is rife with fraud so the former secretary of state becomes "Crooked Hillary." He is terrified of ridicule, so Barack Obama is a "laughingstock." When he says America's a wasteland but he'll make it great again, we know his secret fear.

Late in the presidential campaign Hillary Clinton famously dubbed some large portion of Trump's base a "basket of deplorables." A constant theme and core belief of her campaign was that his campaign was fueled by racism and misogyny, evils against which Democrats stand united. The evils are genuine and enduring, but political corruption and the economic inequality it fosters did at least as much and probably more to fuel Trump's rise.

It's likely that Trump's arrested development also got him white working-class votes, among males especially. The infantilization of the American male is a phenomenon we have been slow to recognize. It is a product of fast-narrowing economic horizons fueled by cultural forces; by beer ads and anti-intellectualism, by addiction and violent video games, and now by Trump, on whom Jon Stewart pinned the fitting moniker "man baby."

Countless surveys say our children are less racist and sexist than our parents. What many may not be is more adult. The issue isn't the bros in the beer ads; we assume they have jobs. It's the tinderbox we create by mixing ignorance and inequality with dashed hopes and an overwrought sense of victimization. They say presidents lead us down the paths we're already on. It's our job to make sure this one doesn't.

One thing Trump has taught us is that the drafters of the 25th Amendment weren't thinking about mental illness. It is unlikely anyone it puts in charge would have the courage to take action. In any case, progressives must put their primary emphasis on crafting a blueprint for political reform and economic justice. While they're at it they could try making better cases on national security and climate change.

They must take another lesson from Trump: to say out loud things they never said before, not as Trump does, but with honesty, decency, reason and specificity. Trump got to be president in part because there were so many things Democrats and the media didn't think or couldn't bring themselves to say. Trump's whole life is a fraud that Robert Mueller may soon expose as a criminal enterprise. His business career was a disaster till a book someone else wrote and a TV show someone else produced made him a celebrity. He then fell into the only line of work he ever prospered in: licensing that celebrity. He does it pretty well, but Zsa Zsa Gabor did it first and Kim Kardashian did it better and neither of them should be president.

In 2016 Trump's real vulnerabilities were his mental health and personal finances. We can now add his proto-fascism and his possible or intended treason to the list. Trump was lucky in the draw. His defects were so monumental, so toxic, we had no protocol for talking about them. There are effective and responsible ways to talk about all such things, but first our media and political elites must find the courage to name them. They know as well as you or I who he is.
(c) 2017 Bill Curry was White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism.

THE VULTURES are circling. They can see the wounded man on the ground, and are waiting for his end.

So are the human carnivores - the politicians.

They sing his praises, swear to defend him with all their heart - but in their heads they are already calculating who might be his successor. Each of them mutters to themself: Why not me?

Binyamin Netanyahu is facing the greatest crisis in his long career. The police are about to conclude their investigations. The Attorney General is under huge pressure to issue official indictments. The large demonstrations near the Attorney General's home are growing from week to week.

The Attorney General, the Inspector General of the Police and the Minister for Internal Security were all personally picked by Netanyahu (and his wife). Now even this does not help. The pressure is too strong.

The investigations may drag on for another few months, but the end seems certain: State of Israel v. Binyamin Netanyahu will go to court.

WHEN A member of the government is indicted for a felony, they usually resign, or at least take leave of absence. Not Netanyahu. No sir!

If he resigned, who would guard Israel and save it from the numerous dreadful dangers threatening the state from all sides? The Iranians are promising our extinction, the evil Arabs all around want to kill us, the leftists and other traitors threaten the state from within. How can we survive without Bibi? The danger is too awful to contemplate!

Netanyahu seems to believe this himself. He, his wife and his eldest son behave like a royal family. They buy without paying, travel as guests of others, receive expensive gifts as a matter of course.

Popular humor accompanies all these transgressions. The police has entered this spirit and decorated his files with many zeros.

File 1000 concerns the gifts. The Netanyahus are surrounded by a crowd of billionaires, who compete with each other in presenting gifts. Many jokes were made about the expensive cigars and pink champagne given to the family - until it transpired that their value amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. And the donors expect something in return from the donees.

File 2000 concerns a peculiar matter. Yedioth Ahronoth ("Latest News") was Israel's largest daily newspaper, until Israel Hayom ("Israel Today") appeared - a paper distributed for nothing. It was founded by Sheldon Adelson, an admirer of Netanyahu and the owner of huge casinos in Las Vegas and Macao. It is devoted to the single task of glorifying King Bibi.

In a recorded private conversation, Netanyahu offered Noni Moses, the owner of Yedioth, a deal: Israel Today would reduce its size and circulation if Yedioth started to glorify Bibi. Legally, this may amount to bribery.

And then there is File 3000, deep beneath the sea. The German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp (two names well remembered as Hitler's weapons suppliers) builds our submarines. Three, six, nine. The sky - or the sea - is the limit.

What do we need submarines for? Not to sink enemy fleets. Our enemies, such as they are, have no powerful fleets. But they may obtain nuclear missiles. Israel is a very small territory, and a nuclear bomb or two could destroy it. But no one will dream of doing so if they know that out there lurk submarines, which will respond with nuclear missiles within minutes.

The German shipyard, with the support of the German government, sells the submarines to the Israeli navy. No middlemen needed. But there are middlemen who put millions in their pockets. How many pockets? Ah, there we are. Quite a number of pockets, and all these pockets belong to people very close to the Prime Minister.

Perverted minds may imagine that tens of millions have reached the PM himself, perish the thought.

This week, a prestigious TV program aired an investigation, and the picture was shocking. The entire military and civilian environment seems to be infected by corruption, as in a failed African state.

ONE OF the few lessons I have learned in my life is that nobody reaches the top of any profession if they are not devoted to it absolutely, totally.

To get stinking rich, you must love stinking money. Not the things money can buy, but money itself. Like the miser of Moliere, who sits all day and counts his riches. If you also want something else, love or glory, you will not get to be a multi-multi-billionaire.

Don Juan did not care for anything but women. Not love. Just women, more and more of them.

David Ben-Gurion wanted power. Not the pleasures of power. Not cigars. Not champagne. Not several villas. Just power. Everything else, like his Bible club and his reading Don Quixote in Spanish, was just pretense. He wanted power and held on to it as long as he could. (In the end, when he surrounded himself with a praetorian guard of youngsters like Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, his colleagues ganged up on him and kicked him out, with some help from me.)

A person who wants political power, but also the amenities of life, several villas and a lot of money will not really reach the very top. Netanyahu is a good example.

He is no exception. His predecessor is in prison, and so are several former ministers. A former President of the State was just released from prison (for sexual offenses).

Netanyahu grew up in the a family which was not affluent. So did Ehud Olmert. So did Ehud Barak. So did Moshe Dayan. They all loved money too much.

Sarah Netanyahu, the Prime Minister's wife, is also about to be indicted. She is accused of paying for her extensive private needs with government funds. She is not widely appreciated. Everybody calls her Sarah'le ("Little Sarah"), but not from love. She also grew up in straitened circumstances and was a low-grade air stewardess when she met Bibi in a duty-free shop.

I was lucky. Until my tenth birthday, my family was quite rich. When we fled to Palestine, we soon became as poor as synagogue-mice, but much happier.) ANOTHER LESSON: no one in power should stay there for more than eight years.

People in power attract flatterers. Every day, year after year, they are told that they are just wonderful. So wise, so clever, so handsome. Slowly they become convinced themselves. After all, so many good people can't be wrong.

Their critical senses become blunted. They get used to being obeyed even by people who know better. They become immune to criticism, and even get angry when criticized.

After the 12 year tenure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a wise and successful president, the American people changed their constitution and limited the terms of the president to two, altogether eight consecutive years. Very sensible.

I speak from experience. I was elected to the Knesset three times. I very much enjoyed the first two terms - eight consecutive years - because I felt that I was doing the right things in the right way. During my third term I felt that I was less keen, less innovative, less original. So I resigned.

Netanyahu is now in his fourth term. High time for him to be thrown out.

THE BIBLE enjoins us: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth" (Proverbs 24, 17). I do not rejoice, but I shall be very glad if he goes.

I do not hate him. Neither do I like him. I don't think that I have spoken with him on more than two or three occasions in my whole life. Once when he introduced me to his second - not last - wife, a nice young American woman, and once when he saw my picture in a photo exhibition, wearing a pilot's cap. He told me that I looked like Errol Flynn.

My attitude towards him is not based on emotion. It is purely political. He is a talented politician, a clever demagogue. But I believe that he is leading Israel slowly but surely towards a historic disaster.

People believe that he is devoid of principles, that he will do anything - just anything - to stay in power. That is true. But underneath everything there hide some ironclad convictions - the weltanschauung of his late father, the history professor, whose special field was the Spanish inquisition. Father Benzion Netanyahu was an embittered man, convinced that his colleagues despised him and blocked his career because of his extreme right-wing views. He was a fanatic, for whom even Vladimir Jabotinsky was far too moderate.

The father admired his elder son, Yoni, an army officer who was killed in the famous Entebbe raid, and did not respect Bibi very much. He once said that Bibi was not fit to be prime minister, but could make a good foreign minister - a very shrewd observation.

If Binyamin Netanyahu falls, which seems possible, who will replace him?

Like every clever (and unsure) leader, Bibi has destroyed every likely rival along the way. Now there is no obvious heir around.

When Rep. Barbara Lee made the House vote for sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea unanimous, she snuffed out the last flicker of any independent worldview among the Black political (misleadership) class. Russiaphobia reigns supreme in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), where "auntie" Maxine Waters, who once blamed the CIA for the crack cocaine epidemic, now fills her rhetorical pipe with war-inducing hallucinogens straight from spook headquarters in Langley. Three summers ago, the Black Caucus joined in a unanimous House resolution in support of Israel, effectively cheering the apartheid state at the very moment it was slaughtering 2,500 Palestinians in Gaza.

A month before the resolution on Israel, 80 percent of the Black Caucus voted to continue the Pentagon's massive transfers of weapons and military gear to local police departments, thus endorsing the militarized police occupation of Black communities. It would require a new social movement, initially outside the reach of the Black Misleadership Class, to make the connection between Gaza and Ferguson, Missouri.

The War Party began its absorption of the CBC in 2002, when corporate and pro-Israel moneybags funded the primary election defeats of Representatives Cynthia McKinney (GA) and Earl Hilliard (AL), two of the Caucus' most prominent critics of U.S. foreign policy. It was a pivotal year in the devolution of Black electoral politics, as corporate money made its first serious entrance into local Black Democratic races. By 2005 there existed, for the first time ever, a recognizable right wing in the CBC. Once a small faction, these corporatists now dominate the Caucus, where only 8 to 10 members can be considered reliably "progressive" by any rational measure - and only if foreign policy is omitted from the criteria.

" When it comes to U.S. behavior overseas, the Black Misleadership Class is absolutely indistinguishable from the leadership of the Democratic Party. Their core ideology is "representationalism," which holds that the best measure of Black progress is the number of "Black faces in high places" in all sectors of U.S. society. This narrow worldview meshes quite well with corporate notions of "diversity," with its emphasis on managerial and high profile public positions. For Black corporate- and media-oriented climbers, social transformation need go no deeper than skin color. Radical change in fundamental relations of power is viewed, at best, as problematical, since serious socio-economic shakeups might upset the fragile status of those Blacks newly entered into the fringes of ruling circles (or who imagine themselves to have "arrived.")

The Black "representationalist" worldview is, therefore, inherently conservative at its core. On domestic issues, Black elected officials and other "leaders" must at least give the appearance of responding to mass Black demands for some form of wealth redistribution. This is generally accomplished by paying lip service to the mildest economic reforms offered by the Democratic wing of the corporate duopoly. The Black political class, however, assigns its highest priority to its own relationship to Power, which it conflates with the interests of Black people as a group. They are instantly prepared to accept the harshest reversals in social policy -- and then package it as "the best deal we could get." Welfare "as we knew it" was abolished and mass Black incarceration more deeply entrenched, with hardly a "God Damn!" from the Black Misleadership Class.

At this stage of capitalist decay, the rulers are not prepared to offer anything to the masses -- and especially not in any form that could be seen as directly beneficial to Black people. (White backlash avoidance, at all cost.) Accordingly, the Black Misleadership Class asks only for a gentler austerity. Gone are the days of ritual, election season proposals for a "Marshal Plan for Black America." Such a program is more desperately needed than ever, but Black politicos will make no demands that corporate Democrats would reject, for fear of harming their standing in "the party" and with the billionaires that control it.

In foreign relations, including Africa, the Black Misleadership Class identifies fully with the U.S. imperial project, and seeks to embed itself as deeply (and profitably) as possible in the infrastructure of empire. As per their imperative that Black people be "represented" in all U.S. endeavors, African American politicos applaud the posting of Black generals to AFRICOM, but are unconcerned that the U.S. Military Command virtually occupies the continent. This class cares nothing for the sovereignty -- or even survival -- of African peoples and nations, but seeks only to ensure that the hyper-aggressive superpower presents a "rainbow" face as it attempts to dominate the world: diversity in predation -- and in genocide.

No one has been more intimately involved in the ongoing slaughter of Congolese over the past 21 years than Susan Rice, who was serving as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for African affairs in 1996, when the U.S.-backed militaries from Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo. To date, the invaders have caused the deaths of at least 6 million people, the largest genocide since World War Two. Much of Congo's mineral wealth has wound up in Rwanda, on its way to multinational corporations. Under President Obama, Rice became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations where she did everything possible to shield Rwanda and Uganda (and, ultimately, U.S. imperialism) from censure and punishment for the crime of genocide.

These were precisely the credentials that put Rice at the top of the list to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Predictably, Republicans zeroed in on Rice -- not, of course, for her crimes against Congolese humanity, but to make her a foil for the jihadist attack on the U.S. consulate (CIA arms distribution depot) in Benghazi, Libya. The Congressional Black Caucus rallied to Rice's defense, embracing her as a sister in distress. Thanks to Friends of Congo and other activists, all of these Black lawmakers had been made aware of the abominations committed by U.S. allies in Congo, and of the U.S. role in covering up their crimes during Rice's tour at the UN. A handful had served on congressional subcommittees on Africa. But 6 million dead Congolese were of no consequence when weighed against the representational value of yet another Black U.S. secretary of state.

Barbara Lee was conspicuous by her presence among Susan Rice's fawning Black Caucus boosters -- conspicuous in the way that a priest would stand out in a satanic ritual. No decent person could support Rice, an unrepentant top operative in a decades-long genocide, for anything except life in prison or an appointment with the gallows. But, the ideology of the Black Misleadership Class -- awesomely self-serving and pitifully servile, at the same time - does not allow for decency, and is wholly unfit to guide politics of 40 million people.

The Black political class has given electoral politics a bad name. But, that doesn't mean the vote is useless in the struggle for justice and self-determination. The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations holds a national conference at Chicago State University this Saturday and Sunday, under the theme, "The Ballot and the Bullet: Elections, War and Peace in the Era of Donald Trump."

Don't look away. Four white neo-Nazis are beating a Black man, crawling on the ground, with
their metal poles and a yellow hunk of lumber. The beating continues - there's blood on the pavement.

Zach got a shot of the gun and gunman, too. Luckily, the gunman didn't shoot back.

One photo has gone viral internationally. These others we bring you here because they must be seen. Including, for the first time, the gunman.

Welcome to Charlottesville, USA. Trump's America, month eight.

The young victim is De'Andre Harris, a special education teacher in Charlottesville.

According to the President, the violence was perpetrated on "many sides." The only sides I see are the beaters and the beaten; De'Andre on the ground with the alt-Right storm troopers with weapons.

Zach D. Roberts is an investigative photojournalist who has been with the Palast Investigations team for eleven years.

Here is Zach's report:

De'Andre Harris, the school teacher, was walking down the street with friends, trading taunts with the white supremacist demonstrators.

Harris' jibes were hardly fighting words. "Go home! Leave town!" Locals like Harris resented the jack-ass invasion.

That's when fists flew and Harris was slammed by one of the white guys straight into a parking lot barrier so hard the yellow wooden arm broke.

De'Andre fell to the ground, alone, surrounded by all these white guys - and they started beating him with the poles that almost all the white supremacists were carrying.

And no, that's not a cop on the left in the photo - that's a neo-Nazi in full riot gear. (Where were the cops? Good question: this parking garage is next to the Charlottesville Police Station.)

De'Andre was saved when some gutsy young Black men - with no weapons - ran into the underground garage, which promted the white posse to scatter.

Except for one. The gunman.

A white militant with a 9mm pistol, then aimed at rescuers.

He pulled out what looks to be a 9mm pistol, maybe a Glock semi-automatic, and positioned himself to fire on the rescue squad. But then he heard the click of Zach's camera, just three feet away, and realized he was getting photographed.

Simultaneously, Zach realized he'd left his bullet-proof vest in his car. (I'll have that discussion with him later.)

In this strange stand-off, the camera proved mightier than the bullet. In his tiny little brain, the would-be shooter figured it would be wiser to quickly conceal the weapon and flee.

De'Andre "ran into the garage's staircase and collapsed bleeding profusely from the face." Zach waited with him and his protectors for half an hour but no ambulance arrived for him or the other people who were injured.

So, that's the news from Trump's USA. Nazis marching in the street, nuclear war with Korea, the "military option" for Venezuela. And it's only Monday.

I was going to write about Korea, then Venezuela, but then the Armed Alt-Righteous exposed themselves to Zach's lens.

The Virginia story is not over. We will be going back to Virginia on September 9, to the capital, Richmond, to fight for the right for Black folk to arm themselves with the one weapon these white punks fear most: the vote.

Between snapping photos of America gone mad, Zach has been working these past four years with me on a story of how Trump's henchman, one Kris Kobach, now head of Trump's so-called, "Election Integrity Commission," conceived of a secretive program to remove hundreds of thousands of Black Americans from the voter rolls.

Virginia removed an astonishing 41,637 voters based on Kobach's accusation they could have voted twice. Not one of the accused was arrested - but, you won't be surprised to hear, the list of the "scrubbed" was filled with African-American names. And Virginia is removing tens of thousands more with this Jim Crow tactic - despite a nominally Democratic Governor, Terry McAuliffe.

Virginia refused us their "scrub" lists. But Zach Roberts, by stellar investigative work, obtained a copy - half a million names in all - much to the state's dismay. And those lists are every bit as obscenely racist and, in the long run, far more wounding, than the iron rods of the neo-Nazis.

So, thank you, Zach, for the photos that bear witness and inside documents that reveal their secret schemes.