A failure of accountability
Looking at a historic NYC mayoral primary—and pets!
Welcome back to the This Day newsletter. Each week, a member of our team gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Below, a fascinating list of historical moments that took place this week — but first a rundown of some historical thoughts from a member of our team. Today, host Nicole Hemmer…
One thing I’m reminded of this week:
I’m immersed in the archives this week, researching a new book on political impunity. It has me thinking a lot about abuse of power and accountability. And as it happens, this is also the week that former New York governor Andrew Cuomo decisively lost his bid for the Democratic nomination in the New York City mayoral race. The two are related: Cuomo resigned as governor in the midst of an impeachment investigation into claims of sexual harassment brought by a dozen different women. These accusations were enough to end his governorship, but not his political ambitions. Though defeated in the primary, he still has his eyes on office as he contemplates running as an independent.
The day after Cuomo conceded, I happened to be digging through archival records related to Clarence Thomas’s nomination hearings. For months, various groups wrote to senators on the Judiciary Committee, asking them to reject Thomas because of his deeply conservative approach to the law. But when Anita Hill came forward to disclose her experience of harassment while working for Thomas, the tenor of the letters changed. They insisted that Thomas was not fit for the Court, but they also went further. Women shared their own experiences of workplace harassment—the lost opportunities, the sting of shame and humiliation, the overwhelming pressure to keep quiet. They used their stories to explain to the Judiciary Committee why a woman might not come forward for months or years after experiencing harassment.
Thomas, of course, was still confirmed to the Court, where he has served for nearly 35 years. Seven years ago, Brett Kavanaugh faced credible assault accusations; he too made it onto the Court. Likewise, Bill Clinton won re-election despite abuse accusations, and Donald Trump won election and re-election despite a score of accusers and a civil verdict in which he was found guilty of sexual abuse.
All of which is to say, our mechanisms of accountability, especially when it comes to powerful men harassing and abusing women, still does not work particularly well. Though women in the U.S. have repeatedly narrated their experiences of abuse—most recently as part of the MeToo movement—there has yet to be a fundamental change on the accountability front. No wonder Cuomo keeps trying. He has every reason to believe his record of abusing power won’t be held against him for long.
One thing I learned this week:
A Brooklyn judge recently ruled that pets can be considered family members when adjudicating damages after a pet is killed. Traditionally, the law has treated pets as property. So if someone kills your dog, you’re entitled to the cost of the animal—in the case of shelter pets, usually not much more than adoption fees and vaccination costs. But as a sign of how the cultural understanding of pets has changed, the judge held that that was insufficient for a woman whose beloved family dog was hit by a car and killed while they were out on a walk.
It’s a heartbreaking story, but for historians, it signals the next step in a changing relationship between people and pets stretching back to the 19th century (we had the pleasure of discussing this with Anne Helen Petersen a few years ago).
Starting in the late 19th century, people could be fined or jailed for abusing pets, and in recent decades, they’ve moved to a more central place in family life: fed finer foods, feted for birthdays and gotcha days, surrounded by fancy beds and plentiful toys. Though the Brooklyn ruling doesn’t change pet laws across the country, it could signal that the law is catching up to the culture.
One other thing I want to say this week:
The NYC mayoral race has triggered a whole new round of “the future of the Democratic Party” discourse. It’s a fascinating topic and one that can be helpful to engage historically, since so many of the factions and fractures have been vying for control of the party for decades. In the coming weeks, we’ll tackle some of those big questions about the Democrats and what’s next for the party. If you have questions you’d like us to tackle, or historical moments you think are particularly useful to consider, send them our way!
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American political history…
June 26
1917: The first U.S. troops arrive in France, at the port of St. Nazaire, during World War I
1929 : Congress passes the “Permanent Reapportionment Act,” which capped the number of representatives in the house
1945: The United Nations Charter is signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations
1948: The US begins the Berlin Airlift to provide supplies to West Berlin
1963: President John F. Kennedy delivers his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in West Berlin
1993: President Bill Clinton punishes Iraq for a plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush
June 27
1950: President Harry Truman orders U.S. forces to Korea
1953: The United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korean Communist forces sign an armistice ending three years of fighting in Korea
1980: President Jimmy Carter signs legislation reviving draft registration, a decision with political and social implications during the Cold War era
2011: Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is convicted of corruption, leading to his 14-year prison sentence.
June 28
1919: The Treaty of Versailles is signed in France, ending World War I
1941: Lyndon Johnson suffers his only loss in a political race, a 1941 Senate special election, to Wilbert Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, who came to prominence by hosting a popular radio program.
1969: The Stonewall Riots begin
2004: The U.S.-led coalition transfers sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government
June 29
1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed after an 83-day filibuster in the US Senate
1966: US planes bomb the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong for the first time, escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
1994: The U.S. reopens Guantanamo Naval Base to process refugees
1995: A U.S. space shuttle docks with a Russian space station
1972: The Supreme Court strikes down the death penalty
June 30
1909 : The Wright Brothers are at Fort Meyer in Virginia, to demonstrate their latest airplane technology
1918: Prominent U.S. Socialist and Pacifist Eugene Debs is arrested on charges of denouncing the government, a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917
1945: NYC newspaper delivery workers go on strike.
1971: The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, frees The New York Times and The Washington Post to resume immediate publication of articles based on the secret Pentagon Papers
July 1
1944: The Bretton Woods Conference begins when 44 nations meet at the secluded Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, leading to the establishment of the IMF and the World Bank
1966: Medicare goes into effect
1971: North Carolina votes to ratify the 26th amendment, which lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18.
1992 : Two abortion rights activists traveled to the United States carrying abortion pills in order to get arrested and spark a legal case around the legality of the pill.
2020: The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement replaces NAFTA.
July 2
1776 : John Dickinson, who attended the Continental Congress, witnesses the drafting of the Declaration of Independence but abstains from voting for or signing the document.
1881: U.S. President James Garfield is shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., leading to his death 79 days later
1890: Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices
1947: An object that was later said to be a weather balloon crashes near Roswell, N.M., sparking alien spacecraft speculation
2007: President George W. Bush commutes the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, sparing him from a two-and-half-year prison term in a CIA leak case.
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