Former Houston mayor Sylvester Turner has won the Democratic nomination to replace the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), making Turner her likely successor next year in the heavily Democratic district that she represented for nearly three decades.

Democratic precinct chairs in the 18th Congressional District on Tuesday night picked Turner to take Jackson Lee’s place on the November ballot after she died last month. Turner faced five opponents in the first round of voting before advancing to a runoff against Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member who ran against Jackson Lee in the March primary. Turner defeated Edwards 41 to 37 percent in an unusual runoff.

The election was conducted by the local Democratic Party, which gathered the precinct chairs who make up the 18th District. There was an initial round of voting where each precinct chair publicly announced their choice to the room. No candidate received a majority of the vote, triggering a unique runoff in which precinct chairs physically sorted themselves to indicate whether they supported Turner or Edwards.

There is also a Nov. 5 special election to finish Jackson Lee’s unexpired term, which goes until January. Her daughter, Erica Lee Carter, who did not vie for the replacement nomination Tuesday, announced Monday she would run in the special election; Turner is not expected to do so.

Jackson Lee, 74, died July 19 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Vice President Kamala Harris eulogized Jackson Lee at a funeral in Houston earlier this month, calling her a “force of nature.”

Turner was seen as the front-runner for the replacement nomination. He had the support of Jackson Lee’s two children, including Lee Carter, as well as at least 30 precinct chairs who publicly backed him ahead of Tuesday’s vote. The first round of voting was nonetheless close, with Turner taking 35 votes to 34 for Edwards.

Turner is a veteran Houston politician and reliable supporter of Democratic policies. His No. 1 platform plank was to “keep federal resources flowing” after Jackson Lee’s death to address issues in the district such as rising prices and reproductive rights.

“This is a critical moment, and it demands relationships and experience right now,” Turner told precinct chairs.

Edwards pitched herself as part of a new generation of leadership that would “build upon the strength of the congresswoman’s office and legacy but move us forward.”

“We just saw our very own president, President Joe Biden, step aside and make room for Vice President Kamala Harris to emerge as our new presidential nominee,” Edwards said in her final speech of the night. “Let us make this moment … count.”

Turner was Houston mayor from 2016 until January of this year, when he left office due to term limits. He previously served for 27 years in the Texas House of Representatives.

Jackson Lee ran to succeed Turner as mayor last year, but lost to a fellow Democrat, state Sen. John Whitmire, in a runoff. Turner endorsed Jackson Lee in the runoff.

The Nov. 5 special election to complete Jackson Lee’s term will coincide with the general election in Texas. The winner of the special election will probably serve for a short time, especially if no candidate receives more than a majority of the vote and a runoff is needed. The candidate filing deadline for the special election is Aug. 22.

Vice President Kamala Harris aims to share the campaign trail vibes with the public in Chicago next week with free manicures, friendship bracelet making and campaign training at the city’s convention center.

The daytime programing, dubbed “DemPalooza” by party bosses, will take place at the McCormick Place convention center, about 5 miles from the United Center where more than 4,000 credentialed delegates will gather Monday through Thursday for nightly televised celebrations of their presidential ticket. No credential is required to pass through the security perimeter at the convention center, party officials said.

“It’s a party and everyone is invited,” said Roger Lau, deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee.

The giveaways and celebratory atmosphere are a tactic Democrats and independent groups supporting them have been using this year to recruit volunteers and interest disaffected voters in the coming elections. Outside organizations have been experimenting with dance parties, concerts, free beer and birth control giveaways to engage voters, while the Biden-Harris campaign has used bracelet making and bingo nights to engage voters.

“DemPalooza” will take place alongside the regularly scheduled meetings of 33 Democratic Party caucuses and councils, events that are expected to draw elected speakers. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) are scheduled to address different groups at the convention center, along with the governors of Maryland, New Mexico and Massachusetts. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the youngest member of Congress, will stop by, along with Maryland Democratic Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks, among others.

Unlike the arena events, which are open only to those with credentials, the off-site events are free, and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. There will be a space for live podcast tapings, and other performances, the DNC announced.

The site will also be a location for Harris campaign officials to offer training and briefings to the public. Briefing titles include “Cultivating a Unified Vision: Embedding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Progressive Politics,” “Investing in Communities: Biden-Harris Infrastructure Success Stories,” and “Everything You Need to Know About Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda,” even though Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a policy planning effort by the Heritage Foundation.

The campaign will also offer organizing training for volunteers, which uses a smartphone app to encourage people to contact their friends and family. There will be an expo and vendor space, with a display called “All Things Chicago,” highlighting the city’s different neighborhoods. A DNC news release says attendees will be able to get a ‘Kamala Harris’ manicure, but does not describe what a ‘Kamala Harris’ manicure entails.

“We are bringing together thought leaders, advocates, grassroots supporters, and every day Americans who want to get involved in our democratic process ahead of the most consequential election of our lifetime,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “Every day at the McCormick Center, thousands of Democratic leaders from across the country will come together to network, train, share ideas, and activate voters and volunteers.”

Hannibal Lecter is a cannibalistic serial killer, a lover of fava beans and a nice chianti, fictional — and now, a regular feature in Donald Trump’s speeches.

As the Republican presidential nominee riffed on immigration and the border at an Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta, he declared: “They hate when I use Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The late, great Hannibal Lecter,” an apparent reference to the media.

During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last month, he asked: “Has anyone seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs’? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner. That’s insane asylums. They’re emptying out their insane asylums.”

In Wildwood, N.J., on May 11, he told the crowd: “The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. … Remember the last scene?” Trump went on to say: “We have people that are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country.”

Trump’s references to Lecter are at once consistent and nonsensical. He typically mentions the fictional serial killer in the context of immigration, claiming without evidence that migrants are coming in from insane asylums and mental institutions and often using dehumanizing language.

Around 1 percent of those arrested at the southern border have criminal convictions, federal data shows. There is little evidence that undocumented immigrants commit more crime than U.S. citizens do. Many migrants who cross the U.S. border seek political asylum here, but that term has nothing to do with mental illness. Trump has also spoken about Lecter before reading “The Snake,” a poem that he has used to convey an anti-immigrant message at his rallies and public events for years.

Yet the references to Lecter reveal something else about Trump: the era in which he rose to fame and his previous time as a celebrity. A Trump rally is a sort of time capsule, a frozen-in-amber moment from an earlier era — the 1980s — when Trump ruled the New York City clubs and tabloids and first graced the cover of Time magazine.

His self-curated rally playlists include hits like “Y.M.C.A.” (1978) and “Gloria” (1982). The fit of his suits and the length of his ties scream 1980s. He still has a penchant for gilded interior design. Trump Tower was completed in 1983.

Trump is the “crypt keeper for the 1980s,” which was “the high point of his life until he became president,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer who has criticized the former president.

“Every time he opens the door, people spill out from the 1980s, whether it’s Roger Stone or Rudy Giuliani, fashion from the ’80s spills out, whether it’s his monochrome tie or suits that invariably are made in two or three different colors … his office decor is still in the 1980s,” he said. “None of his tastes have been updated in decades.”

Trump’s Hannibal Lecter obsession fits perfectly in this mold. Thomas Harris’s novel “The Silence of the Lambs,” which the film is based on, hit bookstore shelves around the same time as Trump’s 1987 book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” (The New York Times had the two books side by side on its paperback bestseller list in mid-1989.) The movie, which starred Jodie Foster as FBI cadet Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, came out in 1991 and became the first and only horror film to win the Academy Award for best picture.

A decade later, Trump attended the 2001 New York premiere of “Hannibal,” the sequel to “The Silence of the Lambs.” He arrived at the premiere with future wife Melania Trump, then Melania Knauss, according to a USA Today story. The story noted that the movie studio at the time was concerned about how women would react to the gore. Melania said she had “no problems” and didn’t close her eyes. Trump replied: “I did.”

Trump began working “The Silence of the Lambs” into speeches in March 2023. He mentioned the movie in an address at the Conservative Political Action Conference then, according to a Washington Post analysis of his speeches this cycle. Lecter himself did not make an appearance until an October rally in Waterloo, Iowa. In 70 speeches tracked by The Post between his campaign kickoff in November 2022 and Aug. 12, Trump has mentioned Lecter or the film “The Silence of the Lambs” in 20 of them. (Trump appeared to recognize the references to Lecter may be outdated, musing at a rally in Sioux City that “young people” hadn’t heard of him.)

The Lecter mentions are a way for Trump to continue “upping the ante” from his previous descriptions of migrants, said Gwenda Blair, another Trump biographer. It’s “not just criminals, rapists, which Trump has already used starting in 2015 … but let’s get cannibal in the mix.”

Trump “is somebody who understands images and branding, and Hannibal Lecter is a well-established brand of absolutely indescribable horror,” Blair added.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who is running for Senate, thinks there’s a simple explanation. “It was a great movie,” Banks said. “Widely recognized as one of the best movies of all time. And I think he enjoys that liberals get bent out of shape about it.”

Several people close to the Trump campaign said they did not know the backstory for Trump’s fixation on Lecter and had never asked. His speeches also seem to have perplexed Hopkins, the Welsh actor who won an Oscar for playing Lecter. In an interview with Deadline, Hopkins observed: “Hannibal, that’s a long time ago, that movie. God, that was over 30 years ago. I’m shocked and appalled what you’ve told me about Trump.”

In interviews at Trump’s rally in Atlanta, voters offered different interpretations.

“First time I heard it, I was like, ‘What?’ But after I heard it a couple of times, it was like, ‘Oh I get the connection now,’” said Jim Scandle, 72. “He’s trying to make the point that a lot of these people that are coming illegally in this country are from mental institutions, just like Hannibal Lecter. And so you know, it has nothing to do with Hannibal Lecter except the fact that he was in a mental institution.”

Bert Sandler, 66, laughed when asked about “The Silence of the Lambs.” (Sandler hasn’t seen the movie in “probably” six years but exclaimed, “With fava beans!” as he reflected on Trump’s comments.)

He had a more philosophical interpretation.

“I think he’s just speaking about where the world is today,” Sandler said. “I think that’s where we are, the divisiveness, I think he’s just trying to portray a character that’s pretty divisive and needed a lot of help, and I think America needs a lot of help.”

Debbie Courtney offered a shorter take: “I just think evil.” She added: “I don’t think he’s talking about somebody eating somebody for dinner.”

The Trump campaign did not offer further clarification about the former president’s penchant for mentioning Lecter or volunteer his personal positions on fava beans and chianti. Instead, Steven Cheung replied in a statement: “President Trump is an inspiring and gifted storyteller and referencing pop culture is one of many reasons why he can successfully connect with the audience and voters. Whereas, [Vice President Kamala Harris] is as relatable as a worn-out couch.”

Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

In 1908, a White mob incited a race riot in Springfield, Ill., leaving several people dead, hundreds injured and dozens of Black-owned businesses and homes burned and destroyed.

On Friday, President Joe Biden will designate a national monument to commemorate the violent event, the White House confirmed to The Washington Post on Wednesday.

Biden, aiming to bolster his record on racial justice as he prepares to leave office in January, will sign the designation proclamation during an event at the White House with civil rights leaders and Illinois lawmakers. The proclamation, which has not previously been reported, will come during the 116th anniversary of the riot.

It also follows the fatal July 6 shooting of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old unarmed Black woman in south Springfield, by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy. Massey’s death has reignited a reckoning in her hometown and across the country over police brutality against Black Americans — four years after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police sparked global protests over racial inequality.

Four lawmakers from Illinois — Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D) and Dick Durbin (D) and Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D) and Darin LaHood (R) — introduced legislation to create the national monument under the National Park Service. But the measure has stalled amid the gridlock on Capitol Hill in an election year.

Biden will bypass the gridlock by using his executive authority under the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that authorizes the president to protect lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans. He has designated five new national monuments and expanded four others, part of his ambitious plan to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030.

The bipartisan bill “has stalled in the House, unfortunately, but the president’s action will make sure this monument will happen,” Durbin said, adding that the riot demonstrated that “racism was not confined to the Confederate states. And I hope that Springfield, after the tragedy of Sonya Massey, will move forward to reduce and eliminate racism.”

Duckworth agreed that the monument could help spread awareness of the racial violence that occurred outside the Jim Crow-era South. “I don’t think people think of the Midwest, and especially Illinois, as a place where these horrific events in American civil rights history happened,” she said.

The riot began on the evening of Aug. 14, 1908, when a mob of roughly 5,000 White people gathered outside the city jail. Tensions rose as the mob called for releasing and lynching two Black male prisoners: George Richardson, who had been accused of raping a White woman, and Joe James, who had been accused of murdering a White man.

The sheriff, fearful of violence, secretly removed the two prisoners through a back door and put them on a train to a jail in Bloomington, Ill. Then he announced that the prisoners were gone, assuming the crowd would disperse.

He was sorely mistaken. Members of the mob, angry that they had been tricked, rampaged through the city’s Black neighborhoods, looting and destroying dozens of Black-owned businesses and homes. At least nine Black residents died, including two who were lynched: Scott Burton, a barber, and William Donnegan, a cobbler and conductor on the Underground Railroad.

The financial losses from the violence totaled $150,000, or more than $5 million in today’s dollars. The Illinois National Guard was eventually called in to restore order.

Two weeks after the riot, Mabel Hallam, the White woman who had accused Richardson of rape, recanted her claims, and the charges against Richardson were dropped. James was sentenced to death and executed, despite little evidence linking him to the murder.

The riot had immediate ripple effects; It led the founding of the NAACP in 1909. But more than a century later, some Black residents of Springfield say the community has literally and metaphorically buried the horrific incident in its past. The site of the riot has been paved over for a parking lot, and the incident is not taught in Springfield public schools.

“When you cover things up, the wound will eventually fester like a raisin in the sun,” said Ken Page, president of the Springfield chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “There is now an opportunity for schoolchildren to visit that site and also to understand it. … I think it’s extremely important for us to know our history so that we do not repeat it.”

Physical traces of the riot recently resurfaced in a surprising way. In 2014, an archaeological dig for a high-speed-rail project uncovered the foundations of five houses that burned down in the riot, along with artifacts from their occupants.

Floyd Mansberger, director of Fever River Research, which conducted the archaeological work, said his team found several artifacts that helped counter racist and inaccurate reporting by early-20th-century newspapers, which described the city’s Black residents as “disreputable” and “living in huts and shanties.”

For example, the firm found three military medals that belonged to a young Black man named Robert Wright, who had enlisted in the 8th Infantry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, the nation’s first all-Black officer corps. The team also uncovered the burned remains of a book, clothing and jewelry — including a 14-carat gold wedding ring — that belonged to a young Black woman named Bessie Black.

“The archaeology really helps us understand the reality of who these people were versus the perception of who these people were,” Mansberger said. “And that goes to great lengths to help us learn who was impacted by this horrific event and how we can move forward.”

An ongoing fight

Springfield, the capital of Illinois and a city of roughly 110,000, is known for its connections to two U.S. presidents who made history on issues of race: Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama. They both launched their political careers in Springfield, and tributes to them are everywhere.

But in recent weeks, the city has made national news for a different, darker reason — Massey’s death. On July 6, Massey called 911 to report a possible intruder in her home in south Springfield. Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell and Deputy Sean Grayson responded to the call after midnight.

According to body-camera footage, Massey lifted a pot of boiling water from the stove, and Grayson said he was stepping back “away from your hot steaming water.”

“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” Massey said in response.

Grayson warned Massey not to rebuke him and threatened to shoot her in the face. Then he drew his gun, ordered her to drop the pot and fired at least two shots at her.

Massey was pronounced dead in the same hospital as Donnegan, the Black cobbler who was lynched during the 1908 race riot. According to her family, Massey was also a direct descendant of Donnegan — a “tragic parallel,” said Cedric Haynes, vice president of policy and legislative affairs for the NAACP.

The day before Massey was shot, her mother called 911 to report that her daughter was having a mental breakdown. The mother implored law enforcement officers not to harm her daughter, 911 recordings show.

Grayson, 30, is charged with first-degree murder and has pleaded not guilty, saying he acted in self-defense. He has since been fired. In the face of public outcry, Campbell has said he will retire by the end of the month.

Austin Randolph, president of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP, said the community is still reeling from Massey’s death. He said the new monument could help bring greater attention to Black Americans’ ongoing struggle for equality and justice in Springfield and nationwide.

“Racism has not gone away — it’s been around for a long, long, long time,” Randolph said. “We must fight against racism, segregation, hatred and violence. And this monument will stand as a testament to fighting that battle.”