How two swing states changed American voting

Today on the show, the balance of Congressional power is up for grabs in this midterm election. It could be determined by a small number of voters in a few battleground states. Blueprints from the past could be the guide for big wins. The GOP has embraced a block-the-vote strategy set in motion in Arizona in the 1960s. And the Democrats are embracing a grassroots power base set up in Michigan in the 1970s. Guests: John A. Jenkins, author of The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist Tova Wang, Director of Research Projects in Democratic Practice at the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans' Right to Vote. Ismael Ahmed, co-founder of the Arab American Center for Economic and Social Services. Sally Howell, Professor of History with a focus on Arab American studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. Correction: An earlier version of this episode incorrectly said that Michigan voters could send the first Arab American to the Senate. South Dakotan James Abourezk became the first Arab American U. S. senator in 1973. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Do you think that I really would be here in front of the Judiciary Committee of the United States to testify on the qualifications of the Chief Justice after 27 years of trying lawsuits? If I wasn't absolutely sure that I interviewed Bill Rehnquist because voters pointed him out?

• 0:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the summer of 1986, the Senate held hearings to confirm William Rehnquist as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. And some of the most dramatic moments of the hearings didn't have anything to do with his previous 14 years as an Associate Justice on the bench. Instead, it was about something that happened years before he was even a judge, when he was living in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1960s.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  We saw Mr. Rehnquist drive up.

• 1:16Speaker 04

  There was a group of young Republicans. I saw him there and I saw him approach at least one voter, if my memory is correct, two.

• 1:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  Witnesses say they saw William Rehnquist, who was a well-known attorney at the time, at polling places in the early 1960s. The witnesses said Rehnquist was there to challenge the eligibility of some voters.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  He approached the line on the outside of the polling place.

• 1:44Speaker 04

  He said, pardon me, are you a qualified voter? To this black gentleman, and the man said, yes. And he said, do you have any credentials to indicate that you are? The man said, no. And he said, well, then perhaps there's a question whether or not you're qualified.

• 1:58Speaker 05

  Was he harassing voters?

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, he harassed one right in front of me.

• 2:03Speaker 05

  What did he do?

• 2:05Speaker 04

  Asked him to read a card. Read something from the Constitution. I kept looking at him. I thought he was going to stick it in my face. And I was going to stick my fist in his mouth.

• 2:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  During the hearing, William Rehnquist denied any claims that he harassed or intimidated any voters.

• 2:20Speaker 06

  Yes, I do deny that. I deny that. Yes, I do deny that.

• 2:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  But he did acknowledge that he gave legal advice to Republicans who were at the polls, challenging voter eligibility, and that in some cases, he showed up at the polling places himself. He called it an election day program. Others called it a ballot security program.

• 2:46Speaker 07

  Rehnquist was sworn in as Chief Justice, and the nation moved on. But that so-called election day program had taken on a life of its own, becoming a national strategy whose legacy still reverberates today in the bigger fight over controlling the vote.

• 3:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 2026, that fight to control the vote is as big as ever. President Trump has pushed all year to change voting rules for the upcoming elections.

• 3:13Speaker 08

  We want voter ID. We want proof of citizenship. We want honesty in our elections. We want honesty in our country.

• 3:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  A strategy which is upending the midterms. It's important to note that there is very little evidence to support his claims of widespread voter fraud.

• 3:30Speaker 09

  This effort by the United States Postal Service and the federal government right now is a naked attempt to inject chaos and doubt into our election system right before voting starts.

• 3:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  States have jumped into the act, too. 10 states have changed or adopted new congressional maps ahead of the 2026 elections in an attempt to flip or secure seats.

• 3:55Speaker 10

  Those conditions are fueling a congressional gerrymandering fight that President Trump started last year.

• 3:59Speaker 11

  2026 midterm elections will feature six Republican-leaning districts and one Democratic-leaning seat.

• 4:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  All these tactics have resulted in a flurry of election-related lawsuits.

• 4:12Speaker 12

  The U.S. Supreme Court has again stopped a newly drawn congressional map. It's the second time.

• 4:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  And that has shown a sense of uncertainty.

• 4:21Speaker 12

  The state court has blocked the new map, which favors Republican candidates.

• 4:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  At stake, the Democrats believe they have a real chance to flip the House and the Senate. In the end, this election will come down to who votes. On this episode of Throughline from NPR, we're going to tell you some stories from two states, Arizona and Michigan, to show you how some of today's political dynamics were seeded. First, the story of how a future Supreme Court Justice helped launch a program to challenge voters at the local polls in Arizona, in a county that's become a hotbed for election conspiracies about voter fraud. Then, how a 1973 labor strike led by Arab Americans in a Michigan factory town sparked

• 5:08Rund Abdelfatah?

  a political movement that could play a major role in the election this November. Coming up, those two stories of building power from the top down and the bottom up that have both changed American elections.

• 5:26Speaker 13

  Hi, this is Carol Daly from Phoenix, Arizona, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 5:37Speaker 14

  This message comes from BetterHelp. BetterHelp is in-network with more than 125 health plans, with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Don't have eligible insurance? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/NPR to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash NPR.

• 6:00Speaker 15

  This week on Consider This, an investigation into widespread complaints about sales tactics at mall skincare kiosks led NPR to a company in California.

• 6:09Speaker 16

  Am I being recorded? Yeah. Okay, delete that, and we're not interviewing. If you need anything, you can contact our legal department.

• 6:15Speaker 15

  We investigate a group that supplies mall skincare stores that left customers with thousands of dollars in bills. And listen now on Consider This from NPR.

• 6:24Speaker 17

  American journalist Austin Tice vanished in Syria over a decade ago. For years, we've been searching for him, and now we finally have some answers.

• 6:36Speaker 18

  This is the prison that Austin was in.

• 6:37Speaker 14

  Oh, my God. We found Austin's file.

• 6:41Speaker 17

  Listen to Where Is Austin Tice from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Part one, a flurry of fists.

• 7:01Speaker 19

  Rehnquist agreed to the interview with The New York Times. He told me, under duress.

• 7:10Speaker 19

  We told him, we're going to do a profile of you, whether you cooperate or not.

• 7:14Speaker 07

  Nearly two years before William Rehnquist became Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John A. Jenkins was trying to get an interview with him.

• 7:23Speaker 19

  I am a journalist based in Washington, D.C.

• 7:27Speaker 07

  And he wrote a book called The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist.

• 7:32Speaker 19

  He replied with a letter, Mr. Jenkins, I'd like to meet you. And why don't you come in? And we'll decide when you get there, whether or not this is an interview we can do.

• 7:46Speaker 07

  This was a big deal because William Rehnquist didn't really do a lot of interviews, and he had a reputation for being a bit of a loner on the court.

• 7:55Speaker 19

  He frequently was the only person in dissent on a case.

• 8:01Speaker 07

  So John goes into the interview thinking that this might be his only shot.

• 8:07Speaker 19

  I took my tape recorder. I had my notes prepared. I had my questions. I went in, and I just set the recorder up. We just started talking.

• 8:16Speaker 07

  John wanted to know why Rehnquist was often the only judge dissenting on a case. But when the conversation started flowing, he says they jumped from one idea to the next. And when their time was up.

• 8:28Speaker 19

  He said, okay, you can schedule another interview, but try to be more organized next time.

• 8:34Speaker 07

  After the interview, John met with his editor to game plan what they were going to actually do with the story. And she told him.

• 8:41Speaker 19

  What you need to do is you need to understand the origins of his conservatism.

• 8:46Speaker 07

  And digging into these origins, it started revealing why Rehnquist was so sure of what was right and wrong, so unflinching in his values, and believed so strongly in what the Constitution said that he was willing to go to great lengths to protect it.

• 9:13Speaker 19

  William Rehnquist is born in 1924. He lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin.

• 9:17Speaker 07

  A suburb of Milwaukee.

• 9:19Speaker 19

  Shorewood, Wisconsin is all white.

• 9:24Speaker 19

  And Shorewood High School is all white.

• 9:27Speaker 07

  And it's here, inside Rehnquist's high school, that John can see from the beginning.

• 9:34Speaker 19

  He is deeply ideological.

• 9:54Speaker 06

  Yesterday, December 7, 1941,

• 10:02Speaker 06

  a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

• 10:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  William Rehnquist was a senior in high school when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. And he got involved. He helped organize a school assembly called Wake Up America and was active in a patriotic group called United States of Young Americans.

• 10:41Speaker 19

  And he signs up during high school to be a block captain to report subversive activity to the FBI in case it exists.

• 10:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  After he graduates, Rehnquist simlists in the Army and serves until the war ends. Then he comes back, gets his law degree from Stanford.

• 11:00Speaker 19

  First in his class.

• 11:02Rund Abdelfatah?

  And then he lands a clerkship with US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who was a strong advocate for First Amendment rights and civil liberties.

• 11:11Speaker 19

  So he just had a supreme self-confidence.

• 11:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  And it was during his clerkship with Jackson, five months in, where Rehnquist would show what kind of conservative he was.

• 11:29Speaker 19

  1952. He's 28 years old. Brown versus Board of Education is now in front of the court.

• 11:38Speaker 19

  And Rehnquist, he writes a memo to Jackson in which he is telling Jackson, "You don't have to vote for this. You don't have to vote with the majority. There is a more principled stand."

• 11:52Speaker 20

  Just got a couple of questions for you, and I hope we can get to them pretty quickly. Do you mind if I tape a court order?

• 11:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  We got ahold of John's last conversation with William Rehnquist before his article in the New York Times Magazine was published in 1985. In the phone call, John asked him about a similar memo he'd written around the same time regarding a voting rights case.

• 12:12Speaker 20

  May I read it to you? You said, "It is about time the court faced the fact that the white people on the South, in the South, you men, don't like the colored people. The Constitution restrains them from effecting this dislike through state action, but it most assuredly did not appoint the court as a sociological watchdog to rear up every time private discrimination raises its admittedly ugly head."

• 12:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  John reads some more, and then he asks.

• 12:37Speaker 20

  Would you subscribe to that today?

• 12:40Speaker 21

  I just can't answer a question that kind of picks a paragraph over the phone. And asks me to yes or no.

• 12:50Speaker 20

  Well, I would be happy to stop by and show you the entire memo. It's just a one-page memo with three paragraphs. If that would help.

• 12:58Speaker 21

  We're in oral arguments. I'm going to have to go in about two or three minutes.

• 13:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  Later, in his confirmation hearing, Rehnquist would try to deflect answering any questions directly about his views on integration, including the memo about Brown v. Board, which he said reflected Jackson's views, not his.

• 13:20Speaker 22

  Doesn't the memo that was written, that you wrote, doesn't it have language indicating that you were indicating your views, not Justice Jackson's views?

• 13:32Speaker 19

  Yeah, I suppose one could read it either way. The eyes, and it certainly could have been mine, rather just looking at it as a text rather than Justice Jackson's.

• 13:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the end, Brown v. Board was unanimous in its decision to end school segregation. Jackson had voted with the rest of the court. And to many, Rehnquist had shown his cards.

• 13:54Speaker 19

  Rehnquist believed that integration was a matter of personal choice, and it should not be forced on anyone. And he also believed it was a matter for the states to decide, not the federal government. Was your classic conservative position.

• 14:12Rund Abdelfatah?

  A position that would help Rehnquist establish himself as an ideological purist among a new group of rising Republican stars.

• 14:25Speaker 07

  How the hell does he end up in Arizona?

• 14:28Speaker 19

  He has almost one criterion of where he wants to relocate.

• 14:35Speaker 07

  It has to be warm.

• 14:37Speaker 19

  Milwaukee and Shorewood, Wisconsin are very, very cold. He doesn't like it.

• 14:43Speaker 07

  And that lands him in Phoenix, Arizona, as he described in a graduation ceremony in 1999.

• 14:51Speaker 06

  "I put my worldly goods in my 1941 Studebaker Champion coupe and drove to Phoenix by way of my hometown in Milwaukee."

• 15:00Speaker 19

  Phoenix is something of a frontier town.

• 15:03Speaker 06

  "As I came out of the mountains to the northeast and descended to the Salt River Valley, I saw a thermometer on a bank which registered 110 degrees."

• 15:12Speaker 19

  The streets emanating out of the main part of town are still unpaved.

• 15:20Speaker 07

  Rehnquist joined a small, private practice.

• 15:24Speaker 19

  He's already coming to Phoenix with his conservative philosophy fully baked.

• 15:30Speaker 07

  Like many other cities across the country at that time, Phoenix was reckoning with Jim Crow laws and an emerging civil rights movement. And Rehnquist was part of a new conservative voice that pushed back. When the Phoenix City Council passed an anti-discrimination ordinance, he wrote a letter to the editor and spoke at the meeting.

• 15:51Speaker 19

  He got noticed, and he was effective.

• 15:57Speaker 07

  Rehnquist was encouraged to get involved with politics, and that meant extra scrutiny of voters in precincts that leaned Democrat. Republicans believed that many of them were voting illegally.

• 16:11Speaker 23

  "We in the Republican Party think that it is un-American for persons to attempt to vote in violation of the law. We are surprised that your party does not desire to manifest the same interest in correcting illegal voting procedures."

• 16:28Speaker 24

  "I charged the Republicans with using Mississippi tactics in Arizona to try to thwart the minority vote in the state."

• 16:35Speaker 07

  Republicans said some people used vacant lots to register their addresses, or they hadn't lived in Arizona long enough to vote. So to challenge these voters.

• 16:45Speaker 24

  "They would target mailings, they would say, from Democratic precincts, but they were very predominantly communities of color. And if the mail came back as undeliverable, they would send challengers to the polls to challenge their eligibility."

• 16:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  Which brings us to November 6, 1962, Election Day.

• 17:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  Voters lined up at an elementary school named after civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. The precinct was predominantly Hispanic and Black.

• 17:19Speaker 24

  "Two white Republican voter challengers, one of whom was allegedly Rehnquist, I'm quoting now, confronted Black and minority voters at the Bethune School Voting Precinct on November 6, 1962."

• 17:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Tova Wang.

• 17:32Speaker 24

  "I am the Director of Research Projects in Democratic Practice at the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School. And I've written a book called The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans' Rights to Vote."

• 17:46Rund Abdelfatah?

  We asked Tova to read excerpts from an FBI background investigation that was requested for Rehnquist's confirmation onto the US Supreme Court.

• 17:55Speaker 24

  "They displayed a card with an excerpt from the Constitution and asked Blacks and minorities to prove they were literate by reading the excerpt aloud."

• 18:04Speaker 19

  The allegation was that he was showing up himself at polling places and challenging voters.

• 18:13Speaker 19

  Asking them to read.

• 18:18Speaker 24

  "The activity discouraged the Black voters, who then did not vote."

• 18:23Speaker 24

  "As the day progressed, Democratic poll watchers became incensed and telephone party officials and law enforcement personnel, many of whom arrived at the scene and attempted to dissuade the Republican challengers. Finally, a scuffle ensued, and the Republicans departed."

• 18:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Arizona Republic called it "a flurry of fiss."

• 18:45Speaker 07

  William Rehnquist doesn't seem to have been involved in this scuffle. He would later deny it, but said he would sometimes show up at precincts and provide counsel as an attorney. Under Arizona law, the different political parties were allowed to send delegates to the polls to challenge voters who they suspected were voting illegally. But election officials were the sole judges of a voter's qualification. So the question was, were Arizona Republicans going too far to challenge voters?

• 19:18Speaker 24

  Voter intimidation and interfering with someone's right to vote, if it crossed the line into that, then it was a problem.

• 19:24Speaker 07

  And according to one FBI interview, the plan was to clog polls in heavily minority Democratic precincts.

• 19:31Speaker 24

  "By sending an army of challengers to the polling place at peak voting periods and thereby intimidate some voters and scare them away from voting, or frustrate voters by causing such a time delay that they would give up early without voting."

• 19:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  What was happening in Phoenix, Arizona, was a field test for something much bigger, an operation that would be launched two years later during a presidential election.

• 20:02Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, the strategy to challenge voters goes national.

• 20:19Speaker 25

  Hey, this is Douglas from Arizona, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 20:30Speaker 26

  In a midterm election, it's hard to keep track of all those small down ballot races. So some voters are using AI chatbots to figure out who to support. Sometimes if you push back to hallucinations, the chatbot will confess that it made something up. But in other cases, you know, it will double down. What you should know about using AI for election research. Listen now on the NPR Politics Podcast.

• 20:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  Midlife brings a lot of changes. Your Turn with Alison Aubrey is a new podcast to help you navigate the twists and turns. From health and relationships to creativity and purpose, we can help steer your next chapter with Your Turn with Alison Aubrey. Find it on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current, so you can win more deals. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 21:35Speaker 27

  From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together, dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man.

• 21:49Speaker 28

  Part two, Operation Eagle Eye.

• 21:53Speaker 27

  Together, we will win.

• 22:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  While William Rehnquist was making a name for himself in Republican circles in Phoenix, another Arizona man had been rising through the ranks.

• 22:10Speaker 27

  I accept your nomination for humbleness with pride. And you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land. Thank you.

• 22:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona before it was even a state. He had run his family's department store before running for the Senate in the 1950s and had become a popular voice advocating individual freedoms, limiting the federal government's power. And he launched the modern conservative movement.

• 22:46Speaker 29

  They say Barry Goldwater is against civil rights.

• 22:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  He opposed social welfare programs and believes school integration should be left to the states.

• 22:54Speaker 30

  Laws are not the whole answer. The real answer is in the hearts of men.

• 22:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 1964, when he was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, he became the foil to the Democrats' Lyndon Baines Johnson.

• 23:09Speaker 29

  A strong voice, a clear choice, Goldwater.

• 23:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  Goldwater and Rehnquist were part of the so-called Arizona Mafia, a small political powerhouse that had made a name for itself within the Republican Party. And there was a lot at stake. LBJ was promoting the Great Society, which was a radical government plan to end poverty and racial injustice. Earlier in 1964, the 24th Amendment was ratified, outlawing taxes as a condition for voting in federal elections. And the Civil Rights Act would be passed that summer.

• 23:47Speaker 19

  Rehnquist convinces Goldwater that he should oppose the Civil Rights Act that is going to become law. And he should vote against it in the United States Senate.

• 24:01Speaker 29

  Now, in this summer of 1964, the Civil Rights Bill is the law of the land. In the words of the president, "It restricts no one's freedom so long as he respects the rights of others."

• 24:17Speaker 07

  The momentum was in the Democrats' favor heading into the election. But the National Republican Party had a plan. It would become known as Operation Eagle Eye.

• 24:29Speaker 24

  The director of Eagle Eye, Charles Barr, told the media, including The New York Times, that he expected to challenge or deter from voting 1.25 million voters all across the country.

• 24:40Speaker 07

  Republicans had already claimed that the 1960 election, four years earlier, was stolen. Operation Eagle Eye was the response. It was the same blueprint Rehnquist and his Republican colleagues were accused of using in Phoenix, dating back to at least 1958. Send mailers to Democratic precincts. If the mail got kicked back, challenge those potential voters at the polls.

• 25:04Speaker 24

  The Republican Party was not at all hiding what they were trying to do at the time.

• 25:08Speaker 07

  So on the day of the 1964 presidential election, The New York Times reported Republican officials saying 100,000 trained Republican workers were in 35 key cities across the country. Operation Eagle Eye was underway.

• 25:23Speaker 31

  Voters by the hundreds perplexed and downright scared were snarled yesterday in partisan poll watching. Miami Herald.

• 25:30Speaker 32

  You may have heard of something called Operation Eagle Eye.

• 25:34Speaker 07

  This is a campaign ad that Democrats released before the 1964 election.

• 25:39Speaker 32

  Well, a better name for it would be Operation Evil Eye.

• 25:44Speaker 31

  Mexicans and Negroes complained to elections officials that they had received anonymous phone calls, warning them of challenges at the polls. The New York Times.

• 25:53Speaker 32

  It has been launched in nearly every state in the Union.

• 25:56Speaker 31

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation was asked to investigate handbills distributed today in Negro precincts.

• 26:01Speaker 32

  To create delays, confusion, and fear.

• 26:05Speaker 31

  Well-dressed persons will not be challenged.

• 26:07Speaker 32

  Warning, you may be voting illegally.

• 26:10Speaker 31

  Only the kind of guy you can buy for a buck or a bottle of booze. Washington Post.

• 26:15Speaker 32

  I hope you will not be one of its victims.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  By this time, Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act at William Rehnquist's urging had become a symbol of just how far right his conservative values were. Even within his own party, Goldwater was seen by some as too extreme, and Republicans started abandoning him. But not Rehnquist.

• 26:40Speaker 19

  Now, he's basically screwed up because of the instructions and tutoring that he's been getting from this great constitutional expert, William Rehnquist. And so by the time of the election, there's only a few people that are helping address stamps and raise money and so forth. And Rehnquist is the guy.

• 26:58Speaker 07

  Just to be clear, Operation Eagle Eye did not deliver Goldwater to the presidency.

• 27:08Speaker 29

  The voice of the people was heard in the land. 68 million citizens of the United States go to the polls to exercise their cherished franchise, and an overwhelming mandate is handed to Lyndon Baines Johnson, who becomes 36th President of the United States. The man who was thrust into office through the hand of tragedy.

• 27:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  Goldwater loses big time. Rehnquist writes his concession speech.

• 27:32Speaker 27

  Congratulations on your victory. I will help you in any way that I can toward achieving a growing and better America and a secure and dignified peace. The role of the Republican Party will remain in that temper.

• 27:46Rund Abdelfatah?

  Goldwater went back to the Senate and was reelected until he retired in 1987. The run for president marked the height of his national fame. But William Rehnquist was nowhere near the pinnacle of his.

• 28:03Speaker 19

  Here's the thing that I think is important to know.

• 28:08Speaker 19

  William Rehnquist was a very complex human being.

• 28:14Speaker 19

  He does not care what anyone else thinks of him.

• 28:20Speaker 19

  He is willing to be defeated on an issue

• 28:28Speaker 19

  rather than compromise

• 28:31Speaker 19

  in a belief that later he will be able to prevail.

• 28:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  Rehnquist was playing the long game. He was nominated to the US Supreme Court in 1971 at just 47 years old. During his confirmation hearings, the allegations of voter suppression came up, but there wasn't enough evidence to support them. Then, in 1986, when he was being confirmed for chief justice, new witnesses stepped forward, including a former assistant US attorney named James Brosnahan, who, along with an FBI agent, was called to the Arizona precinct.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I saw William Rehnquist, who was known to me as an attorney practicing in the city of Phoenix. He was serving on that day as a challenger of voters. That is to say, the conduct and the complaints had to do with his conduct.

• 29:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  Even with the new eyewitness accounts, it was their word against Rehnquist.

• 29:32Speaker 19

  As to harassing or intimidating, I certainly do categorically deny any time, any place.

• 29:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  William Rehnquist served on the US Supreme Court for 33 years, until his death in 2005. When he was chief justice, more federal laws were struck down than any previous court. He was considered one of the most successful chief justices ever, all while staying true to his conservative values. In 2000, he was part of the majority that voted to end the Florida election recount, handing a presidential victory to Republican George W. Bush.

• 30:14Speaker 07

  Today, Phoenix, Arizona, where William Rehnquist rose through the ranks of conservative politics, has changed a lot. Maricopa County has been one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, and its diversity helped flip the state for Joe Biden in 2020. Since then, Maricopa County has been at the center of election fraud conspiracies.

• 30:36Speaker 33

  Arizona is refusing to remove illegals from voter rolls?

• 30:40Speaker 34

  A cauldron for conspiracies and misinformation. They think that this election is being stolen from the.

• 30:46Speaker 07

  And the story about Rehnquist challenging voters in Phoenix that went national with Operation Eagle Eye has become like many stories about mass voter challenges across the country.

• 30:57Speaker 34

  700,000 challenges to voters across the country so far.

• 31:02Speaker 19

  A mass voter challenge lawsuit in Georgia was dismissed.

• 31:05Speaker 35

  Will there be voter fraud?

• 31:07Speaker 08

  All of a sudden, in certain states, they found all these votes.

• 31:10Speaker 35

  The Pigpen Project that's filing all of these mass challenges in the state of.

• 31:14Speaker 34

  Thousands of voter registrations in Denton County.

• 31:17Speaker 36

  Eagle AI, or as its founder calls it, Eagle Eye, is software developed by a Columbia County, Georgia, doctor named John W. Rick Richards Jr. Eagle Eye promises to streamline and speed up the process, creating challenges at volume.

• 31:34Speaker 07

  There has been no evidence to support claims by Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen, or that Democrats stuffed the ballot box with illegal votes.

• 31:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  And still, throughout 2026, President Trump continues to push claims of fraud, along with new voting rules like restricting mail-in ballots.

• 31:54Speaker 37

  80 to 90% of Arizonans vote by mail.

• 31:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  Something Arizona's Attorney General fought hard to stop.

• 32:02Speaker 37

  Dates run our elections, period. And that's why we sued the federal government.

• 32:11Speaker 12

  The US Supreme Court has rejected President Trump's push for new restrictions on mail-in ballots.

• 32:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  The court's decision, 50 days before Election Day, didn't rule the strategy unconstitutional and left the door open for future attempts at restrictions, say, in 2028.

• 32:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, we go to Michigan to see how people in one immigrant community built power in another way.

• 32:46Speaker 38

  I'm Audrey Sparsu from Detroit, Michigan, and you're listening to Throughline. I love your show. Thank you for helping us to make sure we don't forget about things that have happened in the past.

• 32:57Speaker 07

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 33:01Speaker 39

  This week on NPR'S Newsmakers, Hassan Piker. He's a leading voice of what he calls the insurgent left, although he denies being a leader at all.

• 33:10Speaker 40

  I've never said I'm a kingmaker. The media keep saying this, but I don't think there can be a real kingmaker in socialist politics. This is mass politics.

• 33:18Speaker 39

  Hassan Piker talks with Leila Fadl this week on NPR'S Newsmakers. You can watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:26Speaker 41

  Midlife brings a lot of changes. Your Turn with Alison Aubrey is a new podcast to help you navigate the twists and turns. From health and relationships to creativity and purpose, we can help steer your next chapter with Your Turn with Alison Aubrey. Find it on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  Support comes from NPR sponsor AARP.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So, marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 34:14Rund Abdelfatah?

  This November, Michigan voters will decide a key Senate race, a must-win for both sides.

• 34:20Speaker 18

  Talk to me, what do you see? Democrats need to net four seats to win back the Senate. We know this. Can they get a 51-seat majority without Michigan?

• 34:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  The outcome could sway the balance of power in Washington.

• 34:32Speaker 42

  For the math and for the morale, if you will, and for the moment, Michigan's critically important.

• 34:37Rund Abdelfatah?

  Michigan flipped for Trump in 2016. It flipped to Biden in 2020, and then back to Trump in 2024. This midterm election, the state is living up to its battleground reputation. Arab-Americans aren't the biggest voting bloc in Michigan. Around 400,000 residents identify as having Middle Eastern and North African ancestry. But these are numbers that can decide the state. Democrats lost 22,000 Arab-American votes in 2024, and that impacted the results of the race. Now, that voting bloc could swing back, and notably, on the ballot, one of their own. The work the state's Arab-Americans have done to build political power began decades ago in the neighborhoods and factories

• 35:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  that helped make the state reliably democratic for years, where labor organizing laid the groundwork for political organizing.

• 35:37Speaker 43

  Part three, the strike.

• 35:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  Ismail Ahmed arrived in the US at 10 years old aboard a massive overseas freighter that he was working on. The ship had come from Egypt, and when it docked in New York City...

• 36:02Speaker 44

  He walked off that ship. Nobody asked him a question.

• 36:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is his son speaking, also named Ismail Ahmed. By the 1950s, Ismail's father had moved the family to Detroit because what they had found in Michigan was community.

• 36:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  When the Ahmed family arrived, thousands of Arab-Americans already lived in the Detroit area. Many of them landed in Dearborn, which is 20 minutes outside of Detroit in a neighborhood called the South End. And as this small community grew in numbers, it would also grow its political power.

• 36:44Speaker 37

  The South End neighborhood is this little sliver of land sandwiched between the Ford Rouge factory and the city of Detroit.

• 36:54Speaker 45

  ...in what is now the city of Dearborn to build the crown jewel of American industry, the Ford Rouge plant.

• 37:05Speaker 44

  It was the largest industrial complex in the world.

• 37:09Speaker 37

  You can see it from miles away.

• 37:11Speaker 44

  At its height, it had 90,000 workers.

• 37:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  Ismail Ahmed is a longtime activist in Dearborn and the co-founder of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services.

• 37:25Speaker 44

  You would put glass and steel at one side, and out would come cars, full-blown cars.

• 37:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  The factory was the whole reason a community had blossomed in Dearborn. In the 1920s, when it opened, it drew people from across the country.

• 37:43Speaker 37

  And if you were newly arrived to America and you were told that you could make $5 a day, you would get on a train and you would go to Detroit.

• 37:52Speaker 07

  This is Sally Howell. She's a professor of history with a focus on Arab-American studies at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.

• 38:00Speaker 37

  It was the auto industry that pulled these Arab-Americans, just like it pulled so many other immigrants to Detroit.

• 38:11Speaker 07

  Dearborn was a city of immigrants. Ismail's neighbors, a blend of Lebanese, Yemeni, Polish, Italian, Irish, and German people. Ismail was part of a thriving community that was both Arab and American. But during his childhood in the 1960s, this idyllic little slice of American life between the Rouge factory and Detroit came under threat.

• 38:42Speaker 37

  There was another company that was located just right there, on the other side of the neighborhood.

• 38:47Speaker 07

  The Edward C. Levy Company would take the byproducts from the Ford factory and use it to make asphalt and other materials for building roads.

• 38:56Speaker 37

  And so, this was a very successful relationship between Levy and Ford.

• 39:01Speaker 07

  These two companies weren't always the best neighbors to Dearborn residents. They would drive these big trucks through the South End between the factories.

• 39:10Speaker 37

  Open-bed trucks, just with this industrial waste just spewing from the top of it.

• 39:16Speaker 07

  People started protesting.

• 39:18Speaker 37

  Saying you can't drive your big trucks through here. So, the mayor of Dearborn, his administration, they were tired of the complaints of the people in this neighborhood.

• 39:27Speaker 07

  So, City Hall thought, hey, we could kill two birds with one stone here.

• 39:32Speaker 37

  The city decided to rezone the neighborhood for heavy industry.

• 39:36Speaker 07

  Expand industry, make Ford and Levy happy, and push all the people who live there, who had been complaining, out of the South End.

• 39:47Speaker 07

  And so, Dearborn's Arab-Americans knew they had to fight back.

• 39:54Speaker 37

  The city would send a bulldozer to tear down a house, and you would have a human chain of women and their children blocking the street, not allowing the bulldozer to go by. They were really trying to defend the neighborhood one block at a time or one house at a time.

• 40:09Rund Abdelfatah?

  At the same time that the South End was rallying to save their neighborhood, Dearborn's Arab auto workers were getting active in the factories, too.

• 40:18Speaker 45

  But it's a sunny day in Dearborn. I started working in the Rouge plant. A brand-new car eager to go is on the way to its new owners. Built to order, built to order, built to order.

• 40:36Speaker 44

  I started out on the assembly line.

• 40:39Speaker 46

  Now, at the time that you were working, what do you remember about general working conditions? Horrible.

• 40:46Rund Abdelfatah?

  These are interviews from people who worked inside the auto plants. The state of the assembly lines was often dire.

• 40:53Speaker 29

  10 hours, 7 days a week. Not even saying that it worked. Very severe hand, arm, leg injuries.

• 41:00Speaker 47

  I mean, the safety conditions don't even exist.

• 41:03Speaker 29

  And stays the way it is now, then the workers are going to steadily be losing life and limb, and the company doesn't lose anything.

• 41:12Speaker 44

  And in all the plants, Arabs and African Americans had the very worst jobs.

• 41:19Speaker 37

  They were being discriminated against. They weren't allowed to complain or make trouble.

• 41:22Speaker 44

  In some ways, we always had much in common with the African American community.

• 41:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  During the civil rights movement, when Detroit was a hotbed of black activism, movements started in the factories, organized by black workers. Movements like Drum, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

• 41:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  These movements wanted better working conditions and more rights for black workers, and they folded Arab auto workers into their organizing, too.

• 42:03Speaker 37

  And so this alliance was formed in the factory.

• 42:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  By the 1970s, Dearborn had changed. There were now second and third generation Arab Americans. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act had loosened immigration restrictions, and conflicts in the Middle East had led more Arabs to resettle in Dearborn, including Palestinians. There were more university students from Arab countries, too. And all of these changes were, in turn, changing the resistance in the South End.

• 42:39Speaker 37

  They were all resisting the city of Dearborn. That was sort of the thing that pulled everybody together.

• 42:46Speaker 37

  You know, this was in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, where Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai. So people sort of transposed the conflict into the neighborhood, you know? Okay, so we're being displaced. Israel's occupying the West Bank and taking this territory away from us. And then here in America, the one neighborhood where we have a foothold, people are trying to take things away from us here, too.

• 43:16Speaker 07

  In 1971, the community decided to take their fight to the courts. Two years later, in August 1973, a district judge in Michigan issued his ruling.

• 43:28Speaker 48

  The court finds that the city and its officials have taken plaintiffs' property without due process of law.

• 43:38Speaker 07

  It was a huge win for the community. But just a few months after the court's decision, Arab Americans and Dearborn would be rocked again, this time on a global level.

• 43:50Speaker 49

  It is an all-out war.

• 43:52Speaker 07

  On October 6, 1973, Arab forces from Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack to recapture territories that Israel had taken in the 1967 war.

• 44:04Speaker 49

  President Nixon has instructed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to contact all parties involved in the fighting and try to arrange for a ceasefire.

• 44:12Speaker 50

  While the fighting rages in the Middle East, supporters of both sides in this country are engaging in fundraising efforts.

• 44:18Speaker 07

  Back in Dearborn, the 1973 war was big news.

• 44:22Speaker 44

  It shot through the community like a tidal wave.

• 44:28Speaker 07

  Dearborn knew it had to be heard.

• 44:31Speaker 37

  They started organizing big demonstrations in Dearborn to call attention to what was happening overseas.

• 44:36Speaker 07

  And by this point, they had momentum. Ismail and other activists could build off the organizing infrastructure they created while saving the South End neighborhood.

• 44:46Speaker 44

  We all worked in different auto plants and agreed to put together an Arab Workers Caucus.

• 44:53Rund Abdelfatah?

  The first meeting of the Arab Workers Caucus had about 70 representatives from nearly every auto plant in Detroit. It was during this meeting they decided to focus their attention on one major action: the funding of what Ismail called "the murder of their brothers and sisters back home."

• 45:13Speaker 50

  The Israelis are running out of reserve weaponry, and they must turn toward the United States for assistance.

• 45:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Arab Workers Caucus found out that their local UAW had bought over $300,000 in Israeli bonds, and the National Union owned even more. This meant that Ismail and the UAW's estimated 15,000 Arab members were spending money to support Israel in what they saw as a violent occupation.

• 45:42Speaker 37

  So these are your dues. How is the UAW spending your money?

• 45:49Speaker 44

  And so the divestment was the only right thing to do.

• 45:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  They took out an ad in the Detroit Free Press.

• 45:58Speaker 51

  Purchase of Israeli bonds is regarded by these workers similarly as would a UAW investment in racist South Africa would be regarded by black workers.

• 46:11Rund Abdelfatah?

  The organizers of the Arab Workers Caucus gained support and backing not by just focusing on what was going on in the Middle East, but also how workers in the plants were being treated. In this way, they were able to amplify their organizing power. And how did the UAW respond?

• 46:30Speaker 44

  We petitioned the UAW and got no progress.

• 46:39Speaker 44

  Then we found out that Leonard Woodcock--

• 46:44Rund Abdelfatah?

  The president of the UAW.

• 46:46Speaker 44

  --would be given an award and so decided that we would try to put together a walkout strike and with that, call for a demonstration.

• 47:06Speaker 47

  A call to action. Rank-and-file union members and their supporters are called on to participate in a peaceful assembly to protest this arbitrary purchase by the UAW of Israeli bonds on the occasion of an award ceremony for UAW President Leonard Woodcock.

• 47:26Speaker 37

  So they organized a wildcat strike.

• 47:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  A wildcat strike, basically a strike by unionized workers without the permission of the union. So Ismail, along with other members of the Arab Workers Caucus, began organizing in their respective plants.

• 47:43Speaker 44

  We spent over a month organizing in all of those plants.

• 47:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  And in the days leading up to the strike, workers handed out flyers and even placed ads in local newspapers.

• 47:55Speaker 47

  Is the UAW leadership acting in the interest of its members? Michigan Chronicle.

• 48:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  On November 28, 1973, around 2,000 workers at the Dodge main plant walked out.

• 48:10Speaker 44

  Now, I was laid off during that time, so I wasn't in a plant, and I was outside the date of Dodge struck when I watched workers come out, and they weren't only Arab workers.

• 48:23Speaker 07

  There were black workers, too.

• 48:25Speaker 37

  So it was, again, one of those situations of black-brown solidarity.

• 48:32Speaker 07

  Later that evening, protesters gathered outside the building in Detroit, where the award ceremony for UAW President Leonard Woodcock was taking place.

• 48:41Speaker 33

  No more bombs, no more bonds. Outside, about 1,000 Arabs picketed the building entrance, protesting the UAW purchase of some $750,000 in Israeli bonds.

• 48:54Speaker 07

  Woodcock snuck into the building through a back door to avoid the protests. While accepting his award, he announced that the UAW was trying to work with labor unions in Israel and Egypt in the hopes of bringing them together for a peaceful resolution. But later, UAW Secretary Treasurer Imal Mazy said that the Israeli bonds were a good investment and that Arab protesters were aligned with communists.

• 49:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  The workers who protested and walked out of the factory put their jobs on the line, put their livelihoods at risk for this bigger political cause.

• 49:33Speaker 44

  And in many cases, many of the workers still didn't quite understand what was going on, to be frank, because of language issues and other things. But they took the chance anyway. I mean, it's a job-threatening. It was family-threatening for them, and yet they felt strongly enough to do it.

• 49:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  And the wildcat strike left its mark.

• 49:57Speaker 44

  I think for two reasons. One, it was big enough, so it would have meant the mass firing of, you know, critical workers. And also, they didn't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it already was. And so after that, we began to talk more with the UAW. Leadership changed, and I think convinced them that, yes, they should get rid of the bonds.

• 50:30Speaker 37

  The UAW did sell off some of its bonds. It didn't sell them all. And their wildcat strike was so successful that they really did become a threat to the leadership of the UAW in the period.

• 50:43Speaker 44

  In fact, an Arab American became the president of the UAW.

• 50:50Speaker 37

  It was an incredibly empowering moment in the history of Arab American activism.

• 50:58Speaker 44

  It was the Arab community becoming its own and being recognized as a political force.

• 51:08Speaker 37

  They started running for city council. They started running for the school board. They started demanding that the city pay attention to the needs of their newly arriving immigrant community.

• 51:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 2023, Dearborn became the first Arab-majority city in the US. Over a half-century, Ismail Ahmed watched his community become a driving political force, not just in Dearborn, but across the entirety of the state and now the country.

• 51:41Speaker 44

  There's not a ticket in Michigan that doesn't have an Arab-American on it, ever.

• 51:48Speaker 44

  It's just part of the formula.

• 51:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  And in June this year, by a vote of 321 to 287, the UAW passed a resolution to officially divest from Israel, fulfilling a demand first made by Arab-American auto workers almost 60 years ago. A divestment Ismail Ahmed did not live to see. He died in January at the age of 79.

• 52:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  And that's it for this week's show. On our next episode, the DSA is having a political moment, but is it the left wing of the possible that its founder envisioned? The story of the revolutionary socialist-turned-Democratic party loyalist who dreamed up the DSA. Don't miss it.

• 52:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  I'm Randa Fatah, and you've been listening to Throughline from NPR. This episode was produced by me and Ramtin and

• 52:50Speaker 34

  Lawrence Wu.

• 52:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor.

• 52:55Speaker 28

  Christina Kim.

• 52:56Speaker 31

  Devin Katayama.

• 52:56Speaker 28

  Sarah Wyman. Rachel Horowitz. Lina Mohammed. Julia Redpath. Molly Marcello. Leanna Simstrom.

• 53:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  Irene Noguchi. Thank you to Johanna Sturgie, Nina Puchalsky, Punit Motiwal, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

• 53:14Speaker 07

  Thanks also to the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland.

• 53:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  Voiceover work in this episode was done by Devin Katayama, Emily Muir, Kenny Colston, Jonathan Bastian, Sandhya Dirks, Ryan Muzzi, Sarah Wyman, Lawrence Wu, and Anya Steinberg.

• 53:34Speaker 07

  Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. The episode was mixed by Maggie Luthar.

• 53:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes

• 53:46Speaker 34

  Navid Marvi. Cho Fujiwara.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Anya Mizani.

• 53:51Speaker 07

  And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, write us at [email protected].

• 53:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thanks for listening.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Live Right Publishing. Now in paperback, Paul McCartney's New York Times bestseller Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run is the definitive oral history of McCartney's band Wings. Containing interviews with Paul, his family, band members, and close contemporaries, including a new conversation between Paul and Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville, Wings chronicles the triumphant journey of one of the world's greatest musical innovators. Available now from Live Right.

• 54:38Speaker 52

  This week on Sources and Methods, President Trump's diesel deal with Russia. Would it help with shipping costs? And would it even be legal? The United States produces more diesel than it consumes. There's no real need to bring more diesel into this country. Plus, we dig into claims from Ukraine that the US cut access to crucial military satellites. Listen now to Sources and Methods from NPR.