Hart is a columnist for the Tennessee Lookout and the chief communications officer for Haywood County Schools. Opdycke is the president of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization.
Modern voter suppression is typically understood as Jim Crow-adjacent laws designed to surgically limit the ability of people of color to cast a ballot in November: voter registration purges, restrictions on drop-off sites and early voting, voter ID laws, etc. Civil rights organizations have – properly – devoted huge time and resources to defeating these practices.
But what about the non-surgical forms of voter suppression, efforts so broad as to be almost invisible?
One example of “broad but invisible” voter suppression just took place in Tennessee.
Tennessee is an open primary state with nonpartisan voter registration. On primary day, any voter can go to the polls and request a Democratic or Republican ballot. And primary day is a big deal because 90 percent of races in November are not competitive.
In much of Tennessee, the Republican primary is the only election that matters.
Madison County, where Gabe lives, is heavily conservative. The local Republican Party is powerful, while the Democratic Party is the exact opposite. Conservatives control most decision-making responsibilities and nearly every major public service that a county provides its citizens. This year’s mayoral election was a common example. The group of candidates consisted of three Republicans and one token Democrat with no chance of winning the election.
Tennessee election law requires voters to “affiliate” with a party to vote in the primary. However, since Tennessee does not register voters by party, there is no mechanism to do so. There are no Republican or Democratic voters as far as the state of Tennessee is concerned, only voters.
This year, on the first day of early voting, a voter was “challenged” at the polls because she was not affiliated with either party. Remember, Tennessee has nonpartisan voter registration; everyone is not affiliated with a party. Later that day, the Madison County GOP issued a statement asserting that it was illegal to vote in the primary unless you were a party member.
Gabe then wrote a column in the local paper about why he, a progressive, voted in the Republican primary to have a say in his representation. He was threatened by the chairman of the County Commission that he “may see his day in court” for breaking the law. The Madison County and state GOP chairmae f ollowed up with an op-ed misstating that a person could be prosecuted in Tennessee for cross-voting in a primary election.
But this was not just misinformed party leaders spreading false and intimidating information.
The following week, the Tennessee secretary of state came to Madison County and, speaking at a local Rotary Club, declared that non-Republicans voting in the Republican primary could “possibly” be prosecuted. The gentleman elected by the people of Tennessee to oversee the election process was publicly affirming false information about voter’s right to participate in a publicly funded election that the law states is open to all registered voters!
By the time primary day rolled around, the local election commission had posted a signature sheet that every voter had to sign that stated: “A person commits a criminal offense if the person knowingly votes in a primary election or participates in a convention of another party during the same voting year.”
This was not surgical voter suppression. It was a broad intimidation campaign to keep everyone at home except partisan activists.
This is the voter suppression no one talks about – partisan politicians using intimidating tactics to lie to voters and keep them from exercising their rights to choose their leaders.
By the end of primary voting in Madison County, 11,768 registered voters cast votes out of a possible 61,757. Eighty percent of the citizens of Madison County who were eligible to vote, didn’t. How much of the 80 percent who chose not to vote did so because they were afraid of going to jail if they chose to vote for the candidate of their choice?
Much of the tension about voting in Madison County has evaporated since the May 3 primary. But the damage done by the strong-arm scare tactics of the local Republican Party and the secretary of state will have lasting effects on future elections. We may never know how much damage, because no one is standing up for these voters. Is anybody listening?
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.