IRVING, TEXAS — A day after CNN reported that acting Attorney General Mark Whitaker was a supporter of nullification — allowing states to effectively ignore federal law — a conference full of secessionists gathered in a Texas hotel to carry the torch forward.

The conference was organized by the Abbeville Institute, a group founded in 2002 and dedicated to a so-called “Southern tradition.” The Institute has long been associated with white nationalists and neo-Confederacy, not least because its founder, Don Livingston, had previously worked with the white supremacist League of the South. (A recent post on the Abbeville Institute’s website listed “six reasons to love the Confederate Battle Flag.”)

And the tune of Saturday’s conference did little to dissuade those associations: The conference, which billed itself as the “largest secessionist conference in America,” was entitled “The Revival of Secession and State Nullification.”

The day’s festivities took place in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s report that Whitaker, who has replaced former AG Jeff Sessions, was apparently a fan of the notion of nullification — a legal principle allowing a state to effectively ignore federal […]

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