Skip to main content
Tag

Law

Donald Trump

Trump Is the Real National Emergency

By Editors' Choice

The president is using his executive power not to address a legitimate crisis, but to satisfy a political goal. By Matt Ford, The New Republic — President Donald Trump has announced that he will sign the compromise spending bill struck between Democrats and Republicans this week, which will avert another government shutdown and provide $1.375 billion for new barriers along the southern border. Unhappy with that amount—he had requested $5.7 billion from…

Read More

Criminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot

By Commentaries/Opinions

Andrew Gillum wants to fix his state’s broken carceral system. He’s not alone among Democratic nominees for governor. By Matt Ford, The New Republic — Andrew Gillum wasn’t expected to win Tuesday night’s Democratic primary for the Florida governor’s race, even after he won Senator Bernie Sanders’s endorsement weeks ago. The 39-year-old Tallahassee mayor was outspent five-to-one by the frontrunner, and even more so by the two billionaires in the race, but…

Read More
Bill Otis, a Trump nominee to the U.S. Sentencing Commission

The Man Who Hates Criminal Justice Reform

By Commentaries/Opinions

Bill Otis believes America must maintain draconian policies to be tough on crime. No wonder Trump picked him for a key administration post. By Matt Ford — Bill Otis doesn’t think too highly of the criminal justice reform movement in America today. Last year, the Georgetown University law professor told NPR that mandatory-minimum sentences were a “big success,” citing the drop-off in crime since the 1980s. In blog posts, he’s even more blunt: “Q:…

Read More
Black people simply do not see the same response to our complaints as we do when the victims of injustice include white people.

Make Change by Hitting the National Wallet: Reparations for Racial Injustice

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

There’s reckoning around our toxic culture of sexual abuse. But Black Americans are left waiting for remedies for white supremacy past and present. It’s time to #PayUp. By Bertha Lewis — #MeToo and #TimesUp are more than hashtags. They are movements to hold sexual harassers accountable and to deliver justice to victims and survivors of sexual abuse and harassment. While the call for justice for women who have been sexually…

Read More