They can’t erase us
Say It Louder
Roger Doughty is a lawyer and President of the Horizons Foundations. This essay is in response to the removal of the word “transgender” from government websites, including the webpage for the Stonewall Memorial.
It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming. What fewer of us foresaw was the blind and reckless speed of the onslaught. We hadn’t gotten through the first hour of “T-2” before the president declared that only two genders exist. Then there was the dropping of “LGBTQ” from the Centers for Disease Control’s website; the instant termination of support for scores of LGBTQI organizations … and on and on.
But this month’s dishonoring of the Stonewall Memorial in New York rises to a whole different kind of both hubris and assault. Compelling the removal of “T” and “Q” from the physical memorial makes very clear that their aims go well beyond reactionary policy changes. They want to take away our history.
The justice system is meaningless when government lawyers fail to defend the rule of law
More Of This
On her first day in office this month, Attorney General Pam Bondi launched a “Weaponization Working Group” to investigate prosecutions against President Donald Trump, including his 34-count felony conviction by a jury in Manhattan and the $486 million civil fraud judgment against him in New York.
Bondi’s move is not surprising. For years, Trump and his followers have been threatening the prosecutors courageous enough to hold him accountable. Even so, it is the height of hypocrisy as we witness Trump himself politicize the justice system at a scale never before seen in modern U.S. history.
In a month, we’ve seen Trump pardon more than 1,500 people charged in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021; his Justice Department investigate thousands of career federal prosecutors and FBI employees; and most recently, his DOJ direct federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
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Demand is surging for the little red card that can save immigrant lives
Speaking Of...
It is the size of a credit card, comes in 19 languages and is in the pockets and purses of millions of immigrants.
The red card, as it is known by its bearers, lists a collection of practical tips and legal rights for immigrants who might find themselves targeted by federal agents.
Though the card has been around for almost two decades, interest in it has exploded over the last month amid a wave of anti-immigrant edicts from President Trump during his first days back in the White House. The nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center has received orders from across the country for several million cards, a demand its printing contractor has rushed to meet.
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Justice Sotomayor deals a major blow to dishonest prosecutors and the death penalty
Even More Of This
After rubber-stamping a relentless wave of unjust executions, the Supreme Court finally set an outer limit to the death penalty on Tuesday, tossing out Richard Glossip’s capital conviction because of egregious prosecutorial misconduct. By a 5–3 vote, the court found that Oklahoma prosecutors violated Glossip’s due process rights when they failed to correct a star witness’s false testimony—which, evidence suggests, they knew to be a lie. In her majority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor ordered Oklahoma to give Glossip a new trial free of constitutional defects, reinforcing constitutional protections against perjured testimony in the process.
This Glossip v. Oklahoma decision is a big deal: The court rarely sides with death row inmates, so this rebuke to dishonest prosecutors is a remarkable victory in the fight against unconstitutional executions. But the case has several unusual features that make it more of an outlier than the turn of a new leaf.
Read on Slate >
