It was bound to infuriate Black Americans and particularly those community leaders already uneasy with the shift in power in Washington.

“I think they really feel, the vulnerable people, doubly vulnerable because they don’t have the Congress, and because of all these decisions the Supreme Court made,” Clinton told me.

In Mississippi, the short-lived effort to draw longtime Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Democratic lawmaker, out of his seat drew blowback.

“It didn’t get much national attention, but it did in Mississippi,” Colom told me. “People were like, ‘Holy moly, why are y’all saying he can’t be our congressman? Why don’t you just beat him? Why you gotta draw the lines up to say that we don’t get to pick our person?’”

Walking into a rally outside Atlanta featuring former President Barack Obama, Andre Dickens, the city’s mayor, said the combination of higher prices and seemingly punitive policies had “really made people distrust the Republicans in office — distrust is high.”

As dozens of people, many of them Black, were turned away from an event that was at capacity over an hour before it began, Dickens said: “Black folks are fed up.”