Inside one southern Republican's defiant stand against Donald Trump

Pondering our nation’s upcoming Memorial Day, it’s hard not to get emotional. I still get a lump in my throat when we stand for the national anthem at Bears home games. I fidget, look down, or look away so people don’t see my tears and think I’m loopy. But when I hear ‘perilous fight,’ and ‘proof through the night’ I really do see the old yellowed flag: 15 stars and stripes, tattered and frayed, still standing against all odds for a new freedom the world had never heard of.

We were founded on a novel concept of liberty never before articulated: an intangible, deeply profound declaration that all men were created equal, endowed with the same right to pursue happiness. Not because those rights were bestowed by a king, but because people were born with them. They were inalienable.

Five hundred days into this administration, sensing the precarity of those rights, seeing the momentum of attempts to erase them, guts me. Not because we’re exceptional, not because we reached our goals. We never did, and we’ve recently begun marching so determinedly backward it’s easy to feel helpless, despondent, even. Then suddenly, and unexpectedly, I hear the song sung from an unexpected voice, and there’s that tattered flag again, still standing.

A light through the night from the right

On May 12, 2026, South Carolina State Senator Shane Massey made a singularly impassioned argument about why we are, and what we stand for. He is a Republican.

Massey took to the floor to reject Trump’s demand that South Carolina gerrymander itself so that, despite being having a statewide population that is 26% black, no black member of Congress can ever get elected again. South Carolina, a slaveholding state, has sent only one Black Democratic representative to Congress since 1897: James Clyburn.

Massey spoke of the evils of permanently silencing Clyburn, the citizens who elected him, and an entire opposing political party just because an ethically compromised Supreme Court, with a wink to their corporate backers, says you can. In a 45-minute address at the state’s capital, Massey rejected Trump’s redraw of SC’s congressional map and instead embraced American pluralism, now all but forgotten as Republicans do an about face on states rights to serve an unschooled master.

A Republican sees the peril of uni-party rule

First, Massey reminded his colleagues that our system was designed to divide power not only between the three branches of the federal government, but also, crucially, between the federal government and sovereign states.

Massey said Trump should not try to dominate the federal government to the exclusion of the judicial and legislative branches, and should respect the federal/state division of power as well. “The separation of powers may actually be the most important governmental doctrine that has been created in the history of man,” Massey said, astutely. “It is that important. And what the Congress has done to relinquish their authority to the executive is terrible. And we all see the results of that.” He didn’t say “abuse of power,” “despot,” or “corruption,” because he didn’t have to.

Instead, Massey stressed the founders’ “brilliant creation of federalism and the sovereignty of the states,” and said he didn’t want to participate in eroding federalism or diminishing the essential role of states. It’s obvious that Trump is destroying the federal government, but no republican before Massey has publicly acknowledged that he’s also trying to erase state boundaries and state authority, the very basis of federalism.

Healthy opponents make us stronger

Massey also recognized a fundamental human dynamic, a principle self-evident in free markets, commerce, education, scientific achievement, sports, and most realms of human performance: competition makes us stronger. He argued that Republicans should not seek to destroy Democrats just because they can, because the Democratic party makes Republicans stronger. In a truth rarely spoken by any politician, Massey declared, “I will tell my Republican friends: Republicans are stronger when the Democrat Party is vibrant and viable. We are. Competition makes you better, y’all.”

It’s a message for all factions. Healthy political parties make each other better. Without an effective opponent, they turn on each other. They infight. They lose the incentive to address what they were elected to address, to fix what they came to fix, and instead focus on how best to stay in power.

Specifically, Massey said, when facing criticism and accountability from democrats, republicans rise to the challenge because they have to. He boldly suggested that Republicans should stop and assess why they can’t now win a popular election without first rigging it. One-party rule, demanded by a corrupt executive and enabled by a partisan high court serving the same corporate masters, fosters mediocrity instead of competition.

The fading flag still waves in the South

Finally, Massey reminded the SC Senate that our nation — the most powerful in the world — cannot be conquered by an external foe, but it surely will destroy itself if it abandons the very principles and values it was founded on. “Maybe we become convinced that the only way to preserve the Republic is to implement policies that are contrary to the founding ideas of the Republic,” he mused. “Maybe we turn on ourselves. Maybe 250 years in,” (he said, triggering the lump in my own throat again), “we will no longer be able to keep our Republic.”

And then, Massey did something extraordinary: He told Trump and his colleagues ‘No.’ “If we’re going to lose this radical idea of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, a nation that in its Constitution guarantees to each state a republican form of government to ensure the debate of ideas — if that’s going to happen, Mr. President, by God, it’s not going to be because I surrendered it.”

“I’m voting no.”

Massey’s words ultimately did not carry the day, but they declared that the principles of the American Revolution set forth in our Declaration of Independence remain. Trump is doing his best to kill them, and he may succeed for a while as an exhausted public looks away. But Massey’s words proved that somewhere, in the night, even in the darkest and deepest south, we will see the flag again.

Sabrina Haake is an opinion columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.