Why I Got Thrown Out of a Jasmine Crockett Rally
28th February 2026
Elaine Godfrey (The Atlantic, a Voice of th Crust).
Right before armed guards escorted me from the rally and left me on the edge of a Texas county road, I was informed that I was no longer welcome at an event that I had already attended. For the past hour, I’d watched as Representative Jasmine Crockett riled up her supporters in deep-red Lubbock, where voters were thrilled to receive a visit from the Democratic Senate candidate. But afterward, as I attempted to join the other reporters interviewing the lawmaker, a woman with a badge approached me.
“Are you Elaine?” she asked. I recognized her from the entrance of the event, where I had identified myself as she’d waved me into the building’s press area. Yes, I answered. “Her team has asked you to leave,” she said. When I asked why, the staffer looked at her phone and read dutifully: “They just said, ‘Elaine from Atlantic, white girl with a hat and notepad. She’s interviewing people in the crowd. She’s a top-notch hater and will spin. She needs to leave.’”
I will, of course, own up to being a white woman wearing a Menards baseball cap. But “top-notch hater” is a distinction that I had never considered for myself. Last year, I wrote a profile of Crockett that displeased the congresswoman. I interviewed her several times for the story, but after she learned that I’d called some of her colleagues in Congress without asking her permission, she told me that she was “shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.” (In retrospect, I suppose this was a helpful signal that Crockett does not have a firm grasp on the First Amendment, or at least does not particularly care for it.)