Racism in America did not emerge from ignorance or accident; it emerged from economics. Long before the republic had a name, the colonies had a business model. That model required a permanent labor force that could be exploited without limit, compensated without cost, and controlled without negotiation. Race was the technology that made that model possible. When European settlers arrived in the Americas, they encountered a problem familiar to every empire: how to extract maximum wealth from land they did not own and labor they did not want to perform.

Indigenous people resisted enslavement, fled, fought back, or died from disease. European indentured servants could only be bound for a term, and once free, they demanded land, wages, and political rights. The plantation economy needed a labor force that could be worked indefinitely, denied rights permanently, and replaced cheaply. African slavery solved that economic problem, and racism provided the ideological justification. By defining Africans as a separate, inferior “race,” colonial elites created a permanent underclass whose exploitation could be framed not as theft but as natural order. Racism was not a side effect of slavery; it was the operating system that made slavery profitable.

Once racial hierarchy became profitable, it became law. Virginia’s slave codes of the late 1600s did not simply regulate labor. They created a caste system. They declared that African enslavement was inheritable, that Blackness itself was a legal condition, and that whiteness conferred privileges unavailable to anyone else. These laws did not reflect existing prejudice; they manufactured it. They turned economic exploitation into a racial identity, and then turned that identity into a political structure. This is what made America different from the Europeans who invented racism.

Poor whites, who had previously rebelled alongside Black laborers during events like Bacon’s Rebellion, were given small but meaningful advantages: land access, militia membership, legal protections, and the psychological wage of superiority. This was the birth of systemic racism: a structure in which racial hierarchy served the economic interests of elites while convincing non‑elite whites that their loyalty belonged upward rather than sideways.

By the time the United States declared independence, racism was already institutionalized. The Constitution protected slavery without naming it, embedding racial hierarchy into the nation’s founding document. The Three‑Fifths Compromise inflated the political power of slaveholding states, giving the planter class disproportionate influence over national policy. The Fugitive Slave Clause ensured that enslaved people could not escape the economic system that bound them. Racism was not merely tolerated; it was engineered into the machinery of governance. Every institution- the courts, legislatures, militias, and churches- helped maintain the racial order because that order protected wealth. The plantation economy generated enormous profits for a small elite, and those elites used their political power to keep the system intact.

After the Civil War, the economic logic of racism did not disappear; it adapted. Slavery ended, but the need for cheap labor did not. Southern states replaced slavery with Black Codes, convict leasing, and sharecropping — systems that kept Black laborers tied to land they did not own and debt they could not escape. Convict leasing, in particular, was slavery by another name: Black men were arrested for trivial or fabricated offenses, leased to private companies, and worked to death under conditions worse than slavery because the state could always arrest more. Racism remained profitable, and profitability ensured its survival. The institutions that enforced racial hierarchy — courts, police, legislatures — were not malfunctioning; they were performing exactly as designed.

As the country industrialized, racism expanded beyond the South. Northern factories relied on segregated labor markets that paid Black workers less and excluded them from unions. Federal housing policy in the 20th century, especially redlining, locked Black families out of homeownership, the primary engine of middle‑class wealth. The GI Bill, celebrated as a triumph of American opportunity, was administered locally in ways that excluded Black veterans from mortgages, education, and job training. These policies were not isolated acts of discrimination; they were systemic mechanisms that transferred wealth upward and outward — toward white families and away from Black ones. Racism became a national economic strategy, not a regional one.

The Housing Policies That Established the American Middle-Class | by William Spivey | Curated Newsletters | Medium

Institutional racism hardened further through criminal justice policy. The War on Drugs created a pipeline from Black neighborhoods to prisons, stripping communities of workers, voters, and fathers while generating billions for private prisons, police departments, and contractors. Mandatory minimums, stop‑and‑frisk, and broken‑windows policing were framed as public safety measures. Still, they functioned as economic extraction: fines, fees, court costs, and labor performed inside prisons all flowed upward. Mass incarceration is not simply a social tragedy; it is an economic system that benefits a small percentage of people — contractors, corporations, and political actors who profit from punishment.

Systemic racism also shapes labor markets. Occupational segregation funnels Black workers into lower‑paying jobs with fewer benefits and less stability. Wage gaps persist even when education and experience are equal. Hiring discrimination remains widespread. These patterns are not accidents; they are the predictable outcomes of centuries of policy designed to protect white wealth. When Black workers are paid less, white employers save more. When Black neighborhoods are denied investment, white neighborhoods receive it. When Black families are excluded from homeownership, white families accumulate generational wealth.Racism is not merely a belief system; it is an economic distribution system.

The benefits of systemic racism accrue to a small percentage of people, but they shape the entire economy. The wealthiest Americans — those who own corporations, land, and financial assets — profit from low wages, high incarceration rates, and segregated housing markets. Racism keeps labor cheap, neighborhoods divided, and political coalitions fractured. It prevents multiracial solidarity that could challenge concentrated wealth. In this way, racism is not simply a tool of prejudice; it is a tool of power. It keeps the economic elite secure while the working class remains divided.

Today, systemic racism persists not because individuals hold racist beliefs but because institutions continue to operate according to rules written centuries ago. Schools funded by property taxes reproduce housing segregation. Policing strategies target communities already burdened by economic inequality. Health disparities reflect environmental racism, food deserts, and unequal access to care. These systems do not require racist intent to produce racist outcomes; they only require inertia. The structure does the work even when individuals do not.

Racism in America began as an economic strategy, became a legal structure, evolved into a national system, and now functions as a self‑perpetuating engine that protects wealth for a small percentage of people. It is not accidental, and it is not merely cultural. It is structural, profitable, and deeply embedded. To understand racism in America is to understand how power protects itself — and how the nation’s economic foundations were built on a hierarchy that still shapes who benefits, who struggles, and who is allowed to belong.

Racism continues in America because the economic structure that created it has never been dismantled; it has only been updated, repackaged, and made more subtle. From the beginning, race was not simply prejudice but a financial strategy—a way to extract labor, accumulate wealth, and protect power for a small elite. That logic still shapes the country’s institutions. Slavery built the early American economy, but more importantly, it built the habits of thought that made exploitation seem normal. Enslaved people generated enormous wealth for plantation owners, banks, insurers, shipping companies, and northern manufacturers. When slavery ended, those institutions did not lose their appetite for profit; they found new ways to maintain the racial hierarchy that kept labor cheap and political coalitions divided. Sharecropping, convict leasing, and Jim Crow were not just social systems — they were economic engines designed to keep Black Americans poor, immobile, and available for exploitation. Racism persisted because it kept paying dividends.

As the country industrialized, racism adapted. Redlining locked Black families out of homeownership, ensuring that white families accumulated generational wealth while Black families were confined to neighborhoods starved of investment. The GI Bill, administered locally, gave white veterans access to mortgages and education while excluding Black veterans. These policies created the modern racial wealth gap, a structural imbalance that still shapes opportunity today. Racism became systemic not because individuals held hateful beliefs but because institutions — banks, schools, courts, police departments — operated according to rules written during eras when racial hierarchy was openly embraced. Those rules still produce unequal outcomes even when no one intends them.

The criminal justice system is one of the clearest examples of racism’s economic function. Mass incarceration removes millions of people from the workforce, extracts labor inside prisons, and generates billions for private companies, contractors, and local governments. Fines, fees, and court costs operate as a regressive tax on poor communities, disproportionately Black ones. Policing strategies concentrate surveillance and punishment in neighborhoods already burdened by economic inequality, creating a cycle in which poverty produces policing and policing produces poverty. These systems do not require racist individuals to function; they only require institutions to continue operating as they always have.

Racism also persists because it protects the interests of a small percentage of people who benefit from concentrated wealth. When racial divisions keep workers distrustful of one another, multiracial coalitions capable of challenging economic inequality never fully form. Racism fractures the working class, ensuring that political energy is spent fighting sideways rather than upward. This dynamic is not accidental — it is the same logic elites used in the 17th century when they gave poor whites small privileges to prevent alliances with enslaved Africans. Today, racial resentment is still used to redirect anger away from economic power and toward scapegoats. As long as racial hierarchy keeps people divided, the wealthiest Americans remain secure.

Racism continues because it is profitable. After all, institutions still operate on foundations built during slavery and segregation, and because division protects the interests of those who benefit most from the current economic order. It is not simply a social problem or a moral failing; it is a structural feature of American capitalism. Until the economic incentives that sustain racial inequality are confronted directly,racism will remain embedded in the nation’s systems, quietly doing the work it was designed to do — protecting wealth, preserving power, and ensuring that a small percentage of people continue to benefit at the expense of everyone else.

The assumption that Black people aren’t competent enough to manage their money has clouded discussions about closing the racial wealth gap.Rather than addressing the root causes of widespread poverty within the black community- the nation’s legacy of racial segregation and discrimination- many offer financial literacy classes, a surface-level solution that fails to account for factors out of their control.We shouldn’t miss the irony that “Black households tend to have lower levels of total spending than their white counterparts, and that these disparities tend to persist across income levels.”

Financial literacy classes teach individuals how to manage their money, with an emphasis on responsible spending and saving. But this strategy overlooks the fact that White families have a much higher estimated median net worth of $384,310, which overshadows the estimated median net worth for Black households, $44,100. Put another way, this means that for every dollar the average White household has to spend, a Black household has “roughly 15 cents,” a gap that has remained fairly consistent over time.Black poverty in America isn’t a skills issue; it’s the side effect of centuries of racist laws, policies, and practices.

On the surface, financial literacy classes seem like an appropriate way to help people make the most of the money they’ve earned.It’s presumably why figures like Jay Z, a Black businessman, partnered with Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square, a credit card processing company that sells point-of-sale hardware, to offer a free Bitcoin education program for residents of Marcy Houses, the Brooklyn public housing complex where he once lived. In another instance, Black actress Tiffany Haddish, who struggled in poverty for much of her life, has advocated for financial education through the She Ready Foundation. “For a long time, I think I was financially illiterate… I was doing what was around me,” she shared.

But when we take a closer look, we can see that promoting financial literacy classes feeds into the myth that we can close the racial wealth gap through skill acquisition. Jay-Z didn’t become wealthy solely through the sweat of his own brow. It’s well known that during the 1980s, he sold crack cocaine in New York, later expanding operations to New Jersey and Maryland. Using this street cred, he became a successful rapper who partnered with Damon Dash and Kareem Burke to co-found Roc-A-Fella Records. Jay-Z would later negotiate deals with luxury brands such as Barneys New York, Balenciaga, and Balmain, as well as liquor distributors like Bacardi and Moët Hennessy.

In another example, Tiffany Haddish grew up in the foster care system and, as a result of this shaky foundation and the lack of strong familial support, struggled with homelessness as an adult. Her life changed because of a key connection she made while performing at the Laugh Factory, a Los Angeles comedy club. Kevin Hart, a successful comedian, gave her $300 to pay for a weekly motel. In addition to this short-term financial boost, he offered to mentor her, an invaluable opportunity in an industry where personal connections can open doors that would otherwise remain under lock and key. Despite her work in Hollywood, Tiffany continued to live frugally for years, renting an apartment for $500 a month. It wasn’t until her breakout role in Girls Trip (2017), a movie in which she co-starred with Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, and Jada Pinkett, that she broke the cycle of poverty. Because of her past struggles, Tiffany spent her entire paycheck, $80,000, to pay off the mortgage for a home rather than spending it on jewelry and clothes that depreciate in value.

While rags-to-riches stories, particularly within the black community, are inspiring because they give working-class people hope that their efforts can pay off, it’s misleading to suggest most wealthy people in this country are self-made. Where would Jay Z be today if he hadn’t partnered with other Black men in the music industry or White men in the liquor industry, and where would Tiffany Haddish be if not for the life raft extended to her during her time of need, the $300 from Kevin Hart and his offer for mentorship? It’s unlikely either would have reached the same level of success without collaborating with other, more established individuals. But their emphasis on financial literacy classes as a solution to Black poverty falsely frames wealth acquisition as solely the result of individual effort.

In another example, consider that Bill Cosby, a popular comedian and actor prior to the scandals surrounding sexual assault allegations, was known for his Pound Cake speeches, where he suggested Black Americans were to blame for their social and economic conditions. While he positioned traditional family values and a strong work ethic as the only ingredients needed to uplift the Black community, his success came from connections with others. Prominent figures in the entertainment industry, such as Carl Reiner, an actor and writer best known for producing The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Johnny Carson of The Tonight Show. Sheldon Leonard advocated for him to co-star in the series I Spy, where he landed his first Emmy. We wouldn’t have Fat Albert and later The Cosby Show without this initial support.

Behind every wealthy Black person is a group of people who supported them. Family and friends offered a compassionate ear and sound advice, and programs designed to provide aid, such as the one that benefited Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative who benefited from a race-based affirmative action policy when applying to Yale Law School, but later voted to ban this program. His actions demonstrate that while some wealthy and conservative-leaning Black people try to convince othersthat they are self-made, only those who know nothing about their path to success would believe such mythos.

Telling Black poor people, who’ve endured the multigenerational effects of systemic racism, to work harder, be frugal, and save more as if these were the solution to racial inequality is cruel. According to researchers Addo, Darity, and Meyers (2024), “contemporary racial wealth differences reflect historical racial differences in wealth.” They argued that “the primary cause of the Black-White wealth gap is the gap in the capacity of Black and White households to transmit resources across generations.” In other words, poverty is pervasive within the black community today because of the racial injustices from the past. Those peddling financial literacy classes to poor Black people in America might as well be selling snake oil, because the results are not going to alleviate the suffering of those in need.

While it may feel empowering to suggest that Black people can easily solve the problem of racialized poverty by taking financial literacy classes, it’s misleading. As long as many Americans buy into the notion that society is mostly fair, and that poverty in Black and otherwise marginalized communities is the result of laziness and ignorance rather than systemic racism, they will advocate for financial literacy classes to be more widely available, while leaving the system that perpetuates racial economic inequality intact. Rather than supporting restorative justice, which could address the multigenerational effects of slavery, segregation, and discrimination, their strategy places all responsibility, and thus all blame, on those enduring poverty.

Telling someone they have all the tools they need to fix a problem when they’re literally deprived of equal access to resources and opportunities is cruelty dressed in a cloak of kindness and compassion. Financial literacy classes may sound helpful, but in reality, they will never close the racial wealth gap or break the cycle of poverty so many Black Americans find themselves in. Black people are not any more likely to be frivolous spenders. But those who see poverty as a self-inflicted wound assume that if they simply attended these classes and learned how to make more savvy financial decisions, all of the problems associated with the Black race would fade away.Advising people to “save money” and warning them against “taking out loans with high interest rates” overlooks racial inequalities baked into the system, factors out of their control.

A woman in a Byron Donalds ad wipes down a table. She’s not real to him. She’s a prop, borrowed for thirty seconds to sell a lie his own campaign couldn’t back up when reporters asked for the receipts. This is just one example of the tactics used in Byron Donalds political ads.

The ad says David Jolly wants to tax her tips. Tax her overtime. Tax the Social Security check she’s counting on when her knees give out from years of restaurant floors. PolitiFact checked every word of it and rated it False. Jolly wasn’t in Congress when the tax bill Donalds is talking about got a vote, and he’s said flat out he doesn’t support taxing Social Security. Here’s the part Donalds hopes you skip past: Florida has no state income tax. Whoever sits in Tallahassee has no power to tax your tips, your overtime, or your Social Security, because those go to Washington, not the state capitol. The one man in this race who actually voted for that federal tax bill is Byron Donalds. He’s betting you won’t check.

Hurricane Tax

Then there’s the hurricane tax. Donalds says Jolly’s insurance plan will cost every Florida family a thousand dollars a year. He put it in a TV spot. He put it in his own mouth on social media. Here’s what he never put anywhere: a source for that number. When reporters asked him to show the study, he had nothing. Not a citation. Not a name. What his campaign eventually pointed to was a Florida State University study of a different bill, one that never touched Jolly’s plan, and an opinion column from a former state senator.

Fear

Give Donalds this much: the fear he’s playing on is real. Florida homeowners have paid hurricane assessments before. After the 2004 and 2005 storm seasons, Citizens Property Insurance levied more than 1.5 billion dollars in assessments on policyholders statewide, charged on nearly every property and casualty policy they held, and the surcharges ran for years. So the question was never whether a storm can end up on your bill. It’s whose plan sends it there. Jolly’s plan pulls hurricane and wind risk off private policies and pays for it by closing tax breaks insurers already enjoy, not by billing homeowners. He says that could cut premiums 60 to 70 percent, which is his projection to defend. Donalds owes you the same and can’t produce it. He put a thousand-dollar figure on live television and still can’t show you where it came from.

Friends of Byron

Ask who’s paying for the invention. Friends of Byron Donalds has poured twenty million dollars into ads this cycle, the biggest single buy in the race, and the money behind it tells its own story. Insurance companies. Insurance executives. The trade association that lobbies for the insurance industry nationally. These are the donors funding the attack on a plan that would cut into their profit margin. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the business model.

And behind all of it stands the only endorsement that matters to Byron Donalds: Donald Trump’s. Trump backed him before he’d given his first speech. Trump calls him a superstar. The campaign’s own chairman describes him as the man “trusted by President Trump.” Donalds didn’t build a Florida campaign. He rented a national brand, and the brand is MAGA, full stop.

MAGA Brand

That brand has a record. Start with the piece PolitiFact could measure. Donalds said the 1965 Voting Rights Act existed to stop Democrats from gerrymandering. It didn’t, and PolitiFact rated the claim False. The law existed because Black Americans across the South were being beaten, poll-taxed, and terrorized out of the ballot box. Donalds got the history of his own state’s civil rights struggle backward, on camera, and never walked it back. That isn’t a policy disagreement you can split with him. It’s a man who either doesn’t know the history or is willing to rewrite it, and neither belongs behind the governor’s desk.

https://byron-donalds-isnt-selli-8wvszxh.gamma.site

The votes fit the same pattern. A vote against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. A rejection of Florida’s own Moore Voting Rights Act, named for two Black Floridians murdered for registering Black voters. An NRA A-plus rating earned by opposing the gun law Florida passed after seventeen people died at Parkland, and a pledge to repeal the red-flag law that lets courts take guns from people in crisis. Any one of those is a position a candidate can defend. Together they point one direction.

Now put that record next to what immigration enforcement actually looks like in Florida when DeSantis runs it at full speed, because Donalds has promised to keep running it. Operation Tidal Wave has produced roughly 25,000 arrests statewide and jails stretched past capacity. Even some law enforcement officials have told the New York Times they’re uneasy about tactics this aggressive heading into a midterm year.

Push enforcement that hard and the damage doesn’t stay inside the courtroom. In February, high school students across Palm Beach County walked out of class to protest ICE. One of them, outside Palm Beach Lakes High School in West Palm Beach, was struck by a car and taken to the hospital. In July, a 28-year-old man fled an ICE encounter at a gas station near St. Augustine, ran into traffic, and was hit by a semi. He was one of at least ten deaths tied to immigration sweeps nationwide that single week. Neither was killed by an agent’s hand. Both are what enforcement at this scale produces: a kid in a hospital bed for walking out of class, a man in a morgue for running.

The Keep Minorities Down and His Kids in Private School

This is the machine Donalds has praised for two years straight and pledged to keep feeding, and the state’s own numbers show who it is built to take. By the time the arrest count passed 10,000, DeSantis’s office published the breakdown itself: nearly eight in ten came from three countries, Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras, and better than eight in ten from five Latin American countries in all. This is enforcement pointed at Latino Florida, at the immigrant families who cut the sugarcane and clean the hotel rooms. The fear it runs on doesn’t check papers; it reached the citizen teenager who walked out of class too. Donalds has never had to answer for any of it, because the people it frightens most are not the people he’s counting on to vote for him.

This is the pattern with Byron Donalds. Invent a tax that doesn’t exist to scare workers who tip out on minimum wage. Invent a number to protect the insurance companies bankrolling him. Get the Voting Rights Act backward on live television and let it stand. Stand behind a Florida enforcement machine that has left a St. Augustine man dead in traffic and a West Palm Beach teenager in a hospital bed, and call the whole bundle “the Free State of Florida.”

Florida deserves a governor who can tell the truth about a tax code without needing a fact-checker to do it for him. It does not need four more years of a Tallahassee playbook that treats Black voters, gun-violence survivors, and immigrant families as line items to be managed rather than neighbors to be served. Byron Donalds isn’t selling Florida. He’s selling fear, on the insurance industry’s dime, with Donald Trump’s name doing the heavy lifting his own record can’t do.

I sprinted through the rain to Publix and got there breathless, shirt stuck to my back. The run was the easy part. The hard part came at the register, when I handed the cashier the last cash in my wallet for one thin bag, and only after I put two items back on the belt. I wasn’t embarrassed. I carried the bag out to the truck. It weighed almost nothing, and that was the part that stayed with me.

That is who last Wednesday was really about. A new Federal Reserve Chairman and a new rate hike.

Donald Trump wanted a Federal Reserve chairman. What he expected was a subordinate. He did not get one.

The Federal Open Market Committee voted 12 to 0 to raise its benchmark rate by a quarter point, from a range of 3.5% to 3.75% up to 3.75% to 4%. It was the first increase since 2023. Kevin Warsh, the chairman Trump picked, voted with all eleven of his colleagues to approve it.

Then the president did what he does when reality refuses to salute. He went after the people carrying the bad news.

Trump demanded rates of “1%, or less,” called the committee hostile, and accused it of moving against him politically. He offered no serious case for why a supposedly booming economy needs borrowing costs you normally see in much weaker conditions. He offered grievance, volume, and an order: cut the rates, “AND FAST!”

That is not economic policy. It is a loyalty test with a percentage sign attached. Loyalty for me is when you “lock in,” complemented by trust, but when you “check out,” so do I, because my clock keeps ticking, and I keep time with those who stand with me.

Warsh stood at the lectern and described an economy with resilient spending, strong productivity, heavy business investment, and a labor market near full employment. Then he named the thing Trump keeps trying to shout out of the room. “Inflation is too high and has been for too long,” he said. The Fed’s own projections put headline PCE inflation at 3.7% for 2026, well above the 2% target. Again, this is what it means. Prices keep climbing because labor markets have changed, global connections have shrunk, and the lasting impact of expansionary fiscal moves is still pushing prices up, even as monetary policy tightens.

I studied basic economics as an undergraduate and am glad I did.

It cracks me up when MAGA pump fists in the air about America first and support the foreign isolation policy. It’s like they damage themselves and love it. Or the capitalists making money love their ignorance.

It is like trying to cool a boiling pot while the burner is still cranked to high. Wayne. I.

Think about how much help the Trump administration has given Saudi Arabia above what the country maintained previously, the unwanted war in Iran, manufactured expansionism in Venezuela and Argentina. America first, really?

That is the part Trump cannot bully out of the arithmetic.

A president can do a great deal by force. She or He can intimidate lawmakers. They can threaten trading partners. When a court obstructs the renovation he or she wants, he can purge officials, punish dissenters, and even threaten to bulldoze the Kennedy Center.

That last one is not a figure of speech. This month, the Trump administration said it might demolish the building if the court blocks his plans. People formed a human chain around it to stop him. If an institution will not bend, he threatens to break it.

But none of that moves a price tag. He cannot sign an executive order that drags four-dollar groceries back to three. He cannot post gasoline into submission. And he cannot make imported goods cheaper while using tariffs to raise the cost of bringing them in.

The Federal Reserve is not blameless. It is not sacred, and it should not be spared hard questions. Higher rates hurt people who did not create the inflation the Fed is trying to contain. They reach the family carrying a credit-card balance after an emergency, the worker whose car died before payday, the first-time buyer watching a house move farther out of reach.

Most credit-card rates are variable, and they track the prime rate within a few billing cycles. Auto loans and adjustable-rate mortgages get more expensive too. Fixed mortgage rates are a different animal. They follow longer-term Treasury yields more than the federal-funds rate, so they don’t move in lockstep, but persistent inflation pushes them up all the same.

So no, Wednesday’s decision is not painless.

But pain does not become illegitimate just because Trump finds it inconvenient. The real question is who created the conditions that made the hike necessary, and who is now being ordered to carry the blame.

People need to rewind to “easy money” when the Fed inserted an emergency fix for a horrible Trump handling of COVID, or, as some put it, his inaction. Around 2022, the Fed provided “easy money” out of necessity but maintained the emergency fix longer than it should have.

So, what happened? More cash flowing around led to demand outstripping supply, causing core inflation to break away from the Fed’s goal since money was circulating faster than the economy could keep up.

Inflation has more than one father. Global energy shocks matter. Wars matter. Private investment also plays a significant role. Supply chains, wages, consumer demand, and the Fed’s previous decisions all play a significant role. No honest argument pins every price increase on one man behind one desk.

But no honest argument erases presidential policy either. The Fed’s own report names the forces keeping prices hot: Trump’s tariffs, the energy shock from the war with Iran, and the artificial-intelligence (AI) build out. Fed officials raised their year-end inflation projection and do not expect inflation back to 2% until 2029.

But here is where I keep it real with you. It’s not just MAGA, but Trump and his capitalist comrades know that throwing percentages and formulas confuse many, if not most, workers, especially on the lower wage end.

Remember, Trump is not a friend of education. Now ask yourself again, why is that? Read my Economy Newsletter here.

None of this should surprise anyone, because he already told us. In May, a reporter asked whether voters’ worries about their own bills might push him toward a deal with Iran. His answer, reported by the Washington Post: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing.” The one thing was Iran’s nuclear program. “That’s the only thing that motivates me,” he said.

Not your rent. Not the balance on your card. Not the bag I carried out of Publix. He said it out loud, and most people let it slide.

A president is allowed to have priorities. He is not allowed to pretend the cost of them lands on somebody else.

Now the numbers he cannot bully are catching up with him. His approval has fallen to the low end of his second term, as low as 33% in some national polls. His own party sees the wave coming. Senator Rand Paul told Fox News the midterms could be “disastrous” for Republicans, and the strategists who count votes for a living are bracing for a bad November. So he flails. Trump goes after the Fed. He threatens a concert hall. He picks a fight with anyone paid to tell him the truth.

Trump wants you to believe those policies live in one universe and the Fed’s response lives in another. Tariffs are strength. War is resolved. Spending is an investment. Higher rates, though, are sabotage. That is why I included my sources so you can look them up too.

That trick only works if nobody keeps the ledger. Ignorance is his friend and knowledge is the enemy. Think carefully and vote in the 2026 midterms.

Sources

Fed rate decision, September 2026: rates rise to 3.75%-4% (CNBC).

Fed hikes in 12–0 vote, commits to inflation fight (Charles Schwab).

Fed review: the hike was expected, the message was more hawkish (Saxo).

Trump demands 1% or lower interest rate after first Fed hike under Warsh (Yahoo Finance).

Fed report cites stepped-up inflation from tariffs, Iran war, AI buildout (The Daily Record).

Senate confirms Kevin Warsh as next chair of the Federal Reserve (NPR).

Trump threatens to tear down the Kennedy Center; administration says it might demolish it if a court blocks renovations (NPR; NBC News).

Trump approval slips as low as 33% across major national polls; record low as Democrats extend House lead (Foreign Policy Journal; Focaldata).

Rand Paul says the 2026 midterms could be “disastrous” for the GOP (Yahoo News); GOP midterm prospects darken as Trump approval falls (Brookings).

Trump: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” (Washington Post; corroborated by CBS, NBC, ABC, Time).

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, researchers have determined that Thomas Jefferson fathered the two sons of Sally Hemings, whose DNA was tested. A new wave of DNA research, published September 22, 2026, has delivered the most conclusive scientific evidence yet that Thomas Jefferson likely fathered six children with Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman he owned. Using cutting‑edge genomic techniques, Smithsonian researchers extracted Jefferson’s DNA from multiple rootless hair samples preserved since he died in 1826. They compared it with genetic material from living descendants of Hemings’s sons Madison and Eston. The results were striking: scientists found a less than 0.001% chance Jefferson was not the father of both sons, and companion analyses reported a 99.9% probability of paternity.

These findings go far beyond the landmark 1998 Y‑chromosome study, which could only confirm a Jefferson male; by sequencing Jefferson’s own genome, researchers eliminated the possibility that a brother, nephew, or cousin was responsible. The new evidence reinforces generations of Hemings family testimony and aligns with historical records placing Jefferson and Hemings together during conception windows. After more than two centuries of denial, speculation, and political distortion, the scientific record now overwhelmingly supports what Hemings’s descendants have long asserted: Jefferson fathered her children.

The Jefferson family and many disbelievers refused to accept that Jefferson slept with Hemings for over a century. Almost everyone has grudgingly accepted the relationship as a fact. The argument has changed from whether it happened to how to frame it. Was it a consensual relationship in which the pair fell in love, or was the power and age differential so great, along with the fact that Jefferson owned Hemings and her entire extended family, to the point where she could not say no, and it was rape?

When Sally Hemings accompanied Jefferson’s daughter, Polly, to Paris in 1787, she was 14. Thomas Jefferson was 44. When Jefferson’s 9‑year‑old daughter Polly and 14‑year‑old Sally Hemings arrived in London on June 26, 1787, they stayed at the Adams residence in Grosvenor Square — but Abigail Adams was the only one home. John Adams had already been appointed U.S. minister to the Netherlands (a post he’d held since 1782), and in late June 1787 he was in The Hague, not London. Abigail Adams wrote to Jefferson about Sally’s immaturity.

“The girl who is with her is quite a child, and Captain Ramsey is of opinion will be of so little Service that he had better carry her back with him. But of this, you will be a judge. She seems fond of the child and appears good naturd.” — Abigail Adams

Sally was not originally supposed to accompany Polly to Paris after her older sister Lucy died (her mother died two years earlier). Polly’s nurse, who would have accompanied Polly, was pregnant and unable to make the trip. Sally was selected instead, as the children got along well as playmates, and Polly pushed for her selection.

Once the combination of oral histories and DNA evidence led to the conclusion that Jefferson had indeed been sleeping with Hemings. America seemingly conspired to make the best of things and absolve one of its beloved presidents of rape, claiming either Sally was a seductress or the couple was in love. Several books made their cases, most presenting Jefferson as innocent and helpless. Jefferson’s home at Monticello acknowledges a relationship and calls it “complicated.” Rape is never suggested as a possibility. American filmmakers have done the most to legitimize the relationship as justifiable, everyonewith casting much older Black actresses as Sally Hemings than the 14-year-old whowho went to Paris,, where the relationship began.

In 1995, we see Jefferson in Paris,, where 21-year-old Thandiwe Newton pretends to be the 14-year-old Hemings. The movie showed Jefferson pursuing a married Italian aristocrat, Maria Cosway, living in Paris at the time. Cosway left to return to London with her husband, leaving Jefferson sad and lonely. Jefferson was never much of a player, possibly due to his stutter. His attention soon turned to the teenage Hemings.

Newton’s casting has been criticized because she was required to lighten her skin to get the part. Hemings has been described as “very light-skinned,” no doubt because Jefferson’s first wife’s father raped her mother, and her grandmother was raped by a white sailor before that. She was also panned in the Black community for portraying a much younger Hemings.

“Any number of African-Americans take a shot at me for that one.” — Thandiwe Newton.

Jefferson in Paris wasn’t the first time we saw an older actress play Sally. The 1985 stage production, The Mistress of Monticello, featured Tina Andrews as Sally. Andrews was 35 at the time. She later wrote the screenplay for Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, in which the 26-year-old Carmen Ejogo played Sally Hemings. In a 2013 episode of Saturday Night Live, the 41-year-old Maya Rudolph played Hemings in a comedy skit, “Thomas Jefferson Meets Sally Hemings,” which has no basis in history or truth. The point is that what you have never seen is an actress other than a grown woman playing the child Jefferson slept with as a teenager.

America is incapable of acknowledging its 3rd President raped a teenager.The same is true of the 47th President, which is why we may never see the complete Epstein Files where such a case is described. But that’s a story for another day.

Casting much older actresses as Sally is but one way of changing the narrative about the Jefferson/Hemings relationship to avoid the word rape. My wife was watching Sally Hemings: An American Scandal on television, and I walked in on a scene where Sally's mother, Betty (Diahann Carol), told her she’d be accompanying Polly to Paris.

My first thought was that Sally was fourteen when she undertook the journey, and no way did Carmen Ejogo look as young as the real Sally. As I watched, the story suggested Sally was upset about leaving because she was preparing to “jump the broom” with an enslaved boy named Henry. They turned the immature child (according to Abigail Adams) into someone already considering the equivalent of marriage and presumably thinking of, if not already doing, marriage-like things. It wouldn’t be so bad if Jefferson slept with her; if it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else. Because Jefferson kept such meticulous records, we know there was a Henry at Monticello, but nowhere near Sally’s age. The character in the film was wholly imagined to give us an inkling that Sally was a sexual being before Jefferson literally got his hands on her. The movie, Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, was also marketed on DVD as Sally Hemings: An American Love Story. The subtitle was "Bound by Slavery, Freed by Love." Jefferson never freed Sally, not even in his will. After she walked away and went to Charlottesville to live with her sons, Martha Jefferson Randolph allegedly “given her time” to her.

Watching Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, you’d never know Sally Hemings was his first wife’s half-sister. You’d believe Jefferson’s feelings were pure and romantic and that he would free any of their children when they came of age (it happened only in one case because Jefferson died first). You wouldn’t know that in eight years, Sally never went to the President’s House (White House), though several of Monticello’s slaves worked there. And you wouldn’t even consider the possibility that Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemings.

Other films avoided the issue in different ways.The musical, 1776, doesn’t show Sally or any enslaved people at all. The most influential Jefferson documentary of the 1990s, Thomas Jefferson (1997), mentions Hemings without showing her. The Emmy-winning HBO series John Adams gives us plenty of Jefferson and Monticello, but no Hemings. The Real Thomas Jefferson (2008) leaves out the very real Sally Hemings.

My last hope was for The History Channel. surely they would get it right? They did acknowledge the sexual relationship. Suggest her age wasn’t as much an issue then as it would be now but offered no excuse for the age and power differential. They described how Jefferson attempted to hide the legal status of Sally and her brother in France where slavery wasn’t allowed and they could have petitioned for their freedom. What you never saw was Sally and Thomas in a romantic scene, The History Channel wouldn’t go that far. Jefferson in Paris showed an embrace and implied a consensual relationship. Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, showed a gentle kiss that presumably led to sex. There was no nudity. America wasn’t ready to confont the nature of their sexual relationship, especially when the facts say it could only be rape.

The question of whether a powerful man in his forties had sex with a teenager he legally owned is not an open historical mystery. It has been answered. Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’s children; Hemings was enslaved, a minor, and unable to refuse him under any legal or human framework that recognizes coercion.

And yet, for more than two centuries, American culture has produced a steady stream of reinterpretations — romances, euphemisms, “special relationships,” and scholarly contortions designed to make the dynamic seem mutual. These efforts all collapse under one simple test: if the man were anyone other than Thomas Jefferson, and the girl anyone other than Sally Hemings, we would know exactly what to call it.

The only time this country reliably abandons that clarity is when the man in question is a Founding Father. Or, more recently, when he appears in the Epstein files — where accountability has been so selective that only one woman is in jail.

Jasmine Crockett is an American politician and a Texas representative. I first noticed her because of how often she unapologetically checked white politicians and never backed down when it came to Donald Trump.

Some of the shine wore off as I started to question her motives, but I still hoped her heart was in the right place. We need people like that. However, I admit I’m a little disappointed by her recent actions.

Crockett presented Chris Brown with an official congressional honor.

Chris Brown.

This isn’t a piece about Jasmine Crockett. Her actions just opened the door. I’ve been biting my tongue for a long time.

It is wild how much people still love Chris Brown, isn’t it?

Who is Chris Brown?

Okay, I know most Black people at the very least know Chris Brown, but let me give everyone else a quick rundown just in case.

Chris Brown is a singer who blew up in the mid 2000s. I recall him being anointed as the second coming of Michael Jackson early in his career. He was probably at the peak (or what should have been the peak) of his popularity when he started dating Rihanna, probably one of the hottest musical acts at the time.

The only thing Chris Brown may be known for more than his music is beating her. The image of such a famous and traditionally beautiful woman hit home for a lot of people, and Chris Brown lost some support…for a few months.

A year later, he did a moving tribute to the recently passed Michael Jackson. He grew emotional on stage, singing through the tears.The world forgave, and the world forgot.

This could be a redemption story about a man who grew up. 2009 was a long time ago, but sadly this isn’t the case.

Chris Brown is violence

Chris Brown is violence wrapped in a seductive, talented package. I have to believe people can change, but I’m not seeing this in Brown. Yet the world pretends he is a perfectly redeemed citizen with that one little smudge on his record where a mindless celebrity probably just fell on his fist.

Brown has a long history of violence. Just last year, he was arrested for chasing, kicking, and hitting a man in the head with a tequila bottle twice. This was in a nightclub and was caught on camera. (Of course, he didn’t attack the man alone.)

In 2016, Chris Brown was accused of attacking two women. In one case, he attacked a woman who attempted to take a picture of him. When the police arrived, the woman had minor injuries. In the other case, Brown was mad because a woman admired another man’s necklace. He apparently threatened her with a gun. This led to a 9-hour standoff against the police. Of course, Brown denies both of these stories.

In 2017, an ex-girlfriend was granted a restraining order against Brown. He was accused of punching her in the stomach twice, pushing her down the stairs, and basically stalking her.

He even sent her messages like “Bitch I will beat the shit out of you,” “I’m tired of playing games,” and “I promise you I will make your life hell.”

In the same year, Brown punched an unprepared photographer apparently for taking crowd shots.

In 2021, officers responded to another domestic dispute in which a woman claimed Brown smacked the back of her head so hard her weave came out.

This doesn’t touch on the number of women who have accused him of rape. This isn’t even near a comprehensive list of the accusations against him.

It is persistent violence, and let’s be honest. Sometimes…when it is a little smoke, maybe you are seeing the remnants of a fire already quelled. However, this smoke is thick and consistent.

However, sometimes, it feels like I’m the only one who sees it.

The way the world sees Chris Brown

Most of my friends, especially Black women (I love ya’ll, this isn’t a personal shot), are somewhere between loving Chris Brown and being empathetic to him.

I’ve had more than one tell me how he can twist them all up on stage, and they wouldn’t complain one bit. A few months back, I saw a video with a guy talking about getting Chris Brown concert tickets. The number of women (I assume) in the comments talking about being bent over or sending little images of animals with their legs spread was a bit disturbing, but I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum.

Even when my friends gush over him, I keep my mouth shut.

That is, until Jasmine Crockett decided it was a good idea to honor him.Out of all the people in the world, this is who we decide to honor? I think my brain melted a little in that moment.

I decided to reach out to five different Black women to get some updated takes on Chris Brown. Three of them love him; one plans on seeing him in November. One was pretty empathetic, not understanding why people still attack him after he did one thing 20 years ago.

The last one was not as kind, bringing up his history of violence.

It gave me a bit of hope.

Conclusion

People can change. I support celebrating these people when they truly do so. Chris Brown hasn’t. It hasn’t been enough time since his last mishap. The violence has been too consistent, and honestly, the world lets him slide too much.

He hasn’t learned any lessons.

Black people found hanging from Southern trees is not a phenomenon confined to historical narratives. Indeed, at least twenty-two individuals fitting this description died within the past year and a half, according to BLM Georgia, an independent group. In most of these cases, authorities quickly ruled the deaths suicides, even when family and community members expressed concerns about foul play. Since Black Americans are the least likely to die from suffocation, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, frequent reports of Black people found hanging from trees and other fixtures have reopened old wounds.

Consider, for instance, the case of Dennoriss Richardson, a 29-year-old Black man found hanging in an abandoned Alabama apartment in December 2024. Two autopsies, one conducted by state officials and the other by private experts, produced different conclusions. While both agreed the father of five died due to “asphyxia secondary to neck compression,” a finding consistent with hanging, neither could dispel the lingering doubt surrounding the case. Yet while the initial autopsy claimed this was a suicide, Dr. Adel Shaker, the forensic pathologist who handled the private autopsy, noted that “a thorough and meticulous investigation should be carried out to rule out staged suicide.”

Leigh Richardson, the wife of Dennoriss Richardson, does not believe he killed himself and has criticized the sheriff’s department for not conducting a thorough investigation. Part of her suspicion is tied to the harassment her late husband endured. For example, Leigh noted that officers detained him in the Sheffield City jail in 2022, strapped him into a chair so he couldn’t move, beat him, sprayed him with tear gas, tased him, and denied him medical treatment. After this incident, Richardson filed a federal lawsuit against those who violated his rights, and as a result, she suspects he faced retaliation from jaded officers.

News of Richardson’s death is like salt in the wound within the black community. To understand why, you have to know a little of our country’s history. Members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups lynched thousands of Black people, often leaving their mutilated bodies to terrorize survivors. White people, confident they wouldn’t face consequences for widespread violence, circulated photographs of the deceased, using these images for postcards. They kept pieces of clothing, body parts, and threads from the rope as souvenirs. While the public spectacle style of lynching is in the past, hate crimes persist.

In the Crimson Record, a 2025 report published by JULIAN, Jill Collen Jefferson, a civil and human rights attorney and researcher, noted that modern-day lynchings cannot be dismissed as “historical echoes; they are living patterns of impunity that reveal how America’s oldest form of racial violence has adapted to new conditions. They thrive in silence — in the gaps between coroner’s reports and truth, between official explanations and the lived experiences of grieving families. What was once a public ritual of white supremacy has become a quieter machinery of neglect, operating through misclassification, inadequate investigation.”

The sudden death of an individual is a tragedy for their friends, family, and community. But the secondary stress and sorrow many feel after learning about a case in which a Black person was found hanging, especially in the South, stem from systemic racism, which has tainted the well of public trust. The failure of government officials to thoroughly investigate cases in which Black people are victims injects scrutiny into public perception of official reports. And in a nation where Black people are approximately three times as likely to be killed by the police as White people and more likely to endure hate crimes than other groups, doubt is rational and warranted.

Many have scolded members of the black community who suspect foul play in cases where a Black person is found hanging. They argue that we should wait for all the evidence and avoid jumping to conclusions. While this may be true in the abstract, it can come off as dismissive given the role racism plays in fermenting suspicion like a well-made brine. The mistreatment of Black victims within the criminal justice system causes many to doubt the official accounts. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to ask questions and express dissatisfaction when information is withheld from family members or when investigations fail to provide answers in a timely manner.Black people have a right to information about their deceased loved ones. It’s a matter of dignity and public safety.

A thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding a Black person’s death could facilitate healing and closure for their family and community. Of course, this would require them to have access to funding, along with the full cooperation of law enforcement agencies and the coroner’s office, a tall order given that Black people are more likely to be impoverished and thus lack the funds needed to launch a private investigation. Another problem is that officials routinely dismiss these concerns, leaving many feeling silenced or overlooked. Nevertheless, this is a worthy goal, and one that mirrors the strategies adopted by anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells and others who exposed extrajudicial killings.

While someone doesn’t have to be diagnosed with mental illness to commit suicide, and Black people are capable of self-harm, the doubt expressed by the black community following hangings is a natural response to unchecked racism. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to facilitate trust in an environment where racism is systemic, where a group of people faces mistreatment due to the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, where even uttering the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is seen as a radical statement, to be challenged rather than accepted. The deaths of Black people, especially those found hanging from trees in the South, are opening old wounds, triggering a discussion about whether we can ever feel wholly safe in a nation that refuses to acknowledge modern-day racism.

A few months back, a disturbing viral trend escaped China and entered my internet feed. It had become popular to make videos abusing a Black baby doll.

The doll was called Natasha. They would throw it, smash it, and even run it over. All of this was supposedly for stress relief. More interestingly, even though other versions of the doll exist, only the Black version was popular to abuse.

The most optimistic conclusion is that these people relieve stress by smashing objects that look like Black children. This is the best option, but of course, defenders come out trying to gaslight us.

Don’t take it personally.

Don’t be offended.

It isn’t racist.

I’m noticing an unsettling pattern this year. I must’ve missed a memo. It reminds me of when all my coworkers pretended they hated Trump until he won. Suddenly, they were all celebrating, and I was left perplexed.

This year, we’ve seen multiple instances of white people using Black baby dolls to display and support their racism.

Teacher hanging

In May, a Florida Art teacher wrapped a cord around a Black baby doll’s neck and tossed it over the television, effectively hanging it in front of her middle school class.

A 14-year-old recorded it and reported it to the principal.

Of course, some people hoped for a rational explanation. Perhaps she was teaching a lesson… by hanging a doll…as an art teacher.

The teacher, Karen Savage (what an appropriate name), claimed it was a joke. Sadly, she probably did find it funny. She created scars on children that most people will dismiss. Get over it.

Luckily, the 63-year-old teacher was fired for this.

Student dragging

In August, a similar story popped up at Louisiana State University. A student used what looks like a rope or a leash to drag a black baby doll around campus.

Want to guess what the students said when confronted?

It was just a joke.

This was only a couple of months after Karen Savage made her joke.

LSU decided to protect the identity of the students and keep the consequences private. My guess is that there were zero consequences, and they all laughed about it behind closed doors.

Hmm. Laughter? I guess it was a good joke to some people.

Volleyball racism

It only took a month to have another racist Black baby doll incident. This time, it occurred during a volleyball match between Fernandina Beach High School and Andrew Jackson High School.

Many Fernandina Beach High School students held up Black baby dolls to taunt the majority Black Andrew Jackson players. In case there is any confusion, according to witnesses, the Fernandina Beach students shouted racial slurs and racist chants.

At one point, even an injured Black player was specifically mocked. A doll is flipped upside down, and a student shouts, “She’s dead!”

Of course, despite the lack of confusion in this story, it is presented as if there is confusion.

Some people argue the dolls were only at the game because they were part of a parenting assignment. I don’t doubt this possibility, but this doesn’t negate the dolls being used to represent Black players.

We have had multiple incidents in the last few months; I’m tired of giving the benefit of the doubt.

So, what’s going on?

Black dolls have been used to dehumanize Black people for a long time. It is easy to find a dozen stories about Black dolls left hanging symbolically. Racial caricatures like the golliwog were once popular toys.

I want to ask what is going on, but it really is just more of the same, amplified by social media and a new boldness discovered by racists in the last decade.

They can call it a joke, but they are just telling on themselves. We know the truth. Don’t waste time trying to gaslight us. Say it with your full chest, and we will move accordingly.

For the most part, I’ve experienced every microaggression imaginable and had to check well-meaning coworkers for years. I know how to navigate uncomfortable moments, from the minor and annoying to the major and life-altering—from somebody touching my hair to the aftermath of George Floyd.

August was one of those moments.

It was Black Business Month, which meant corporations and consumers spent 31 days talking about how important it is to support Black entrepreneurs.

And then September arrived.

If you participated in Black Business Month, thank you.

If you didn’t, don’t worry. You didn’t miss your only opportunity.

Black-owned businesses are still open.

I bring this up because my company tries to get Black Business Month right. It’s one of the things they do better because... well, I’m here.

In the early days, there was a rather awkward conversation with a committee asking my opinion on how to “celebrate” Black Business Month.

I wanted to say, “I just work here. I don’t own a Black business!”

I was annoyed, but I also saw an opportunity. I did some research and gave them ideas on how to celebrate the month.

That first year, they created swag bags for the office and our clients filled with personalized items from Black-owned businesses. I gave them a detailed spreadsheet with local Black-owned brands—coffee, candles, snacks, and other products people might actually use.

The company spent serious dollars on those items, and it was great visibility for those businesses.

But did any of the recipients switch from their usual coffee, candles, or whatever else they normally bought?

Or was it just a cute gift?

That's the thing about Black Business Month. We can get very good at the visibility part.

This year, I decided to challenge my company to think about what happens after August.

Giving attention to Black-owned businesses is great. Attention can lead to customers. Customers lead to revenue. And, of course, revenue is the ultimate goal.

But instead of building another list of things to purchase for one month, I supplied a list of caterers, marketing agencies, lawyers, designers, accountants, and photographers.

I challenged my company—and now I'm challenging you—to think beyond August.

Companies buy everything. Somebody is getting those contracts.

So why is it so difficult for Black-owned businesses to get more of them?

My company likes to remind me about vendor qualifications.

Nope. Don't want to hear it.

Yes, companies need standards. Vendors need to be qualified. But let's also be honest about how business works.

Relationships matter. Access matters. Being in the room matters. Knowing a contract is even  available matters.

And historically, those rooms haven't exactly been overflowing with Black-owned businesses.

When we say “support Black businesses,” it can sometimes sound charitable, as if entrepreneurs are waiting around for the rest of us to drop spare change into a cup.

That's not what business owners want.

They want customers. They want capital. They want access. They want the opportunity to compete for contracts they may not even know exist.

The best way to support a Black business isn't necessarily to buy something you don't need just because the owner is Black. That's not sustainable for you or the business.

Instead, find Black-owned businesses that provide products and services you already need—and make them part of your regular purchasing decisions.

That's more useful than buying one $14 candle every August and congratulating yourself for doing your part.

Although, to be clear, buy the candle if you like the candle. I'm not trying to put anybody out of the candle business.

Black Business Month shouldn't have an expiration date.

If you discovered a Black-owned business in August, keep buying from them in September.

If your company found a Black-owned vendor it could use, call them again.

And if you completely missed Black Business Month?

It's September.

You can start now.

Imagine every month is Black Business Month.

American rights have never been sturdy things; they’ve often lived on the razor’s edge of a single Supreme Court vote. The Court has come within inches of unraveling core freedoms — from nearly overturning Roe v. Wade in 1992, to hollowing out the Fourteenth Amendment almost before its ink had dried, to brushing up against decisions that could have erased a free press altogether. Across its history, one‑vote margins have repeatedly reshaped the country, sometimes protecting the nation’s democratic spine and other times quietly sawing at it. What follows are twelve cases where a single justice’s decision didn’t just settle a dispute — it altered the trajectory of America itself.

1. Slaughter‑House Cases (1873)

5–4: The Court gutted the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, preventing it from becoming a broad civil‑rights protection. A different vote would have created a radically stronger federal shield for individual rights.

The narrow reading of the 14th Amendment effectively shut the door on using federal power to protect citizens from state‑level discrimination. Had the vote gone the other way, the Privileges or Immunities Clause could have become the backbone of civil‑rights enforcement — preventing Jim Crow, enabling federal protection of voting rights, and reshaping Reconstruction into a genuine multiracial democracy rather than a brief experiment that collapsed under white supremacist violence.

2. Lochner v. New York (1905)

5–4: Struck down maximum‑hour labor laws and entrenched “liberty of contract.” One vote the other way would have allowed early worker‑protection laws and accelerated the regulatory state decades earlier.

The Court’s embrace of “liberty of contract” became a constitutional shield for corporate power, striking down worker‑protection laws for decades. A flipped vote would have allowed states to regulate workplace conditions much earlier, accelerating the rise of unions, shortening the path to minimum‑wage laws, and producing a more robust regulatory state long before the New Deal. America’s labor landscape — and its class structure — would look radically different.

3. Near v. Minnesota (1931)

5–4: Established strong protections against prior restraint. A different outcome would have allowed government censorship of newspapers and fundamentally altered First Amendment press freedom.

By rejecting prior restraint, the Court created the modern architecture of press freedom. If the vote had gone the other way, governments could have shut down newspapers preemptively, especially those exposing corruption or criticizing officials. Investigative journalism as we know it — Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, civil‑rights reporting — might never have emerged. The First Amendment would be a far weaker shield against state power.

4. West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937)

5–4: Upheld minimum‑wage laws and ended the Lochner era. Had the vote flipped, the New Deal regulatory framework might have collapsed under continued judicial hostility.

This case ended the Lochner era and saved the New Deal. A different vote would have continued the Court’s hostility to economic regulation, potentially striking down Social Security, wage laws, and core New Deal programs. Roosevelt’s court‑packing plan might have succeeded, permanently altering the structure of the judiciary. The modern administrative state — OSHA, EPA, FDA — might not exist in recognizable form.

5. Korematsu v. United States (1944)

5–4: Upheld Japanese‑American internment. One vote the other way would have declared mass wartime detention unconstitutional, reshaping civil‑liberties doctrine and wartime executive power.

The Court’s approval of Japanese‑American internment stands as one of its darkest moments. A flipped vote would have declared mass detention unconstitutional, reshaping wartime civil‑liberties doctrine and limiting executive power. It would also have changed the trajectory of Asian‑American civil rights, providing a judicial repudiation of racialized wartime hysteria. The symbolic weight of Korematsu — still cited as a cautionary tale — would be reversed.

6. Brown v. Allen (1953)

5–4: Expanded federal habeas review. A different vote would have limited federal oversight of state criminal convictions, weakening civil‑rights litigation and due‑process protections.

By expanding federal habeas review, the Court allowed federal courts to correct state‑level injustices. Without that vote, state criminal convictions would have been far more insulated from federal oversight, weakening civil‑rights litigation and slowing the dismantling of discriminatory state practices. The Warren Court’s criminal‑procedure revolution — Gideon, Miranda, Mapp — would have had a narrower foundation.

7. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

5–4: Required states to provide counsel to indigent defendants. A flipped vote would have left millions without guaranteed legal representation, fundamentally altering criminal justice.

Guaranteeing counsel for indigent defendants transformed criminal justice. A different vote would have left millions of poor defendants without lawyers, cementing a two‑tiered justice system where wealth determined outcomes. Mass incarceration would likely have accelerated even earlier, and wrongful convictions would be far more common. The idea of a “fair trial” would be structurally compromised.

8. Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

5–4: Created Miranda rights. Without that single vote, police would not be required to inform suspects of their rights, reshaping criminal procedure nationwide.

Miranda warnings became a cultural and legal fixture, shaping police procedure nationwide. Without that single vote, suspects could be interrogated without being informed of their rights, leading to more coerced confessions and fewer safeguards against police misconduct. Criminal procedure would tilt heavily toward law enforcement, and the Warren Court’s legacy of expanding individual rights would be significantly diminished.

9. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)

5–4: Allowed affirmative action but banned racial quotas. A different outcome could have either fully banned affirmative action or fully upheld quotas, dramatically altering higher‑education demographics.

The Court’s compromise preserved affirmative action while banning quotas. A flipped vote could have produced two radically different Americas: one where affirmative action was struck down entirely, accelerating racial disparities in higher education; or one where racial quotas were upheld, provoking political backlash and reshaping admissions for decades. Bakke’s fragile middle path shaped admissions policy for the next 45 years.

10. Texas v. Johnson (1989)

5–4: Protected flag burning as free speech. A flipped vote would have allowed criminalization of expressive political dissent, narrowing First Amendment protections.

Protecting flag burning as expressive conduct reaffirmed the First Amendment’s commitment to unpopular speech. Had the vote gone the other way, states could criminalize political dissent involving national symbols, opening the door to broader restrictions on protest. The ruling’s symbolic power — that the government cannot mandate patriotism — would be lost, narrowing the scope of protected political expression.

11. Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)

5–4: Reaffirmed Roe’s core holding. One vote the other way would have overturned Roe in 1992, reshaping reproductive rights decades earlier.

Casey preserved Roe’s core holding for another three decades. A flipped vote would have overturned Roe in 1992, shifting abortion battles to the states much earlier and reshaping political coalitions, judicial nominations, and national elections. The cultural and legal landscape of reproductive rights—including the intensity of later political fights—would have unfolded on a completely different timeline.

12. Bush v. Gore (2000)

5–4: Stopped the Florida recount and effectively decided the presidential election. A different vote would have produced a different president and altered the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy, judicial appointments, and domestic politics.

Stopping the Florida recount effectively decided the presidential election. A different vote would have allowed the recount to continue, potentially producing a different president and altering the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy, judicial appointments, and domestic politics. The War on Terror, Iraq, the Roberts Court, and the rise of certain political movements might look entirely different. Few one‑vote decisions have had consequences this sweeping.

Across these cases, a pattern becomes impossible to ignore: again and again, the United States has been one vote away from a fundamentally different nation. A single justice’s shift could have dismantled the New Deal, erased Miranda rights, ended affirmative action decades earlier, criminalized political dissent, overturned Roe in 1992, or produced a different president in 2000. The constitutional landscape we live in isn’t inevitable—it’s the product of razor‑thin margins, fragile coalitions, and moments when one person’s reasoning redirected the entire country. These decisions remind us that American law doesn’t move in sweeping tides but in precarious increments, and that the nation we inhabit today is, in many ways, the result of twelve narrow choices that could easily have gone the other way.

Every era produces a certain kind of public figure who seems to fall straight through the floor — caught in crimes, scandals, fraud, or self‑inflicted ruin so complete that their disappearance from public life feels guaranteed. And yet, a surprising number of them don’t disappear at all. They reassemble themselves, rebrand, re‑enter the spotlight, and in some cases climb higher than before. This list follows twenty such individuals: people who hit bottom in full view of the world, faced consequences that should have ended their careers, and somehow managed to rise back up. Their stories aren’t endorsements; they’re evidence of how reputation, power, narrative control, and public appetite for redemption can bend reality in ways that defy expectation.

1. Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton’s survival of the Lewinsky scandal remains one of the clearest demonstrations of political resilience in modern American history. Caught lying under oath and facing impeachment, Clinton appeared to be cornered by evidence that would have ended most political careers. Instead, he leveraged a booming economy, disciplined messaging, and a public willing to compartmentalize his misconduct. Clinton left office with high approval ratings and rebuilt his stature through global philanthropy and diplomatic work. His post‑presidential life shows how power, narrative control, and public fatigue can allow even a seemingly fatal scandal to fade into background noise.

Clinton has come under recent scrutiny because of his presence in the Epstein Files, but for now, he isn’t catching many strays.

2. Marion Barry

Marion Barry’s fall and rise are almost folkloric in Washington, D.C. history. After being caught on FBI video smoking crack cocaine, Barry served time in federal prison — a moment that should have ended his political life. Instead, he returned to the city he once led and was re‑elected mayor, buoyed by a base that saw him as both flawed and familiar. Barry’s comeback demonstrated how local loyalty, racial dynamics, and political memory can override even the most damning evidence.

Marion Barry died on November 23, 2014, at age 78, in Washington, D.C. Among many Black Washingtonians. Barry is remembered as a civil‑rights organizer, a jobs creator, and a champion of poor and working‑class Black residents.

3. Robert Downey Jr.

Robert Downey Jr.’s descent into addiction and repeated arrests in the 1990s made him a cautionary tale in Hollywood. He served jail time, lost roles, and was widely considered unemployable. His recovery — and eventual reinvention as Iron Man — is one of the industry’s most dramatic turnarounds. Downey leveraged discipline, therapy, and a carefully managed comeback to become one of the world’s highest‑paid actors. His trajectory shows how celebrity culture can forgive almost anything if the redemption arc is compelling enough.

Downey will be starring as Dr. Doom in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, guaranteed to gross over $1 billion in sales.

4. Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart’s insider-trading conviction briefly turned her into a punchline, but she emerged from prison with her brand intact and her influence undiminished. Stewart leaned into her sentence with a mix of humility and savvy, using her time away to reframe herself as both tough and relatable. Her return to television, publishing, and business demonstrated how a well‑managed scandal can become part of a larger narrative of resilience — especially when the public sees the punishment as disproportionate.

5. Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant’s 2003 sexual assault case — which ended when the accuser declined to testify and a civil settlement followed — threatened to derail his career and legacy. Yet Bryant rebuilt his public image through relentless work, championship wins, and a carefully curated persona emphasizing fatherhood and discipline. By the time of his death, he had become a cultural figure celebrated far beyond basketball. His recovery shows how athletic excellence and narrative reframing can overshadow even the most serious allegations.

6. Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant’s 1995 arrest for solicitation seemed poised to end his rising career. Instead, he confronted the scandal head‑on, offering a public apology that was both awkward and disarming. Grant’s willingness to own the moment — combined with his continued success in romantic comedies — helped him regain public favor. Over time, he transitioned into respected character roles, proving that charm and self‑deprecation can neutralize even a tabloid‑ready scandal.

7. Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder’s 2001 shoplifting conviction led to a period of professional exile. Once a defining actress of the 1990s, she found herself sidelined by studios wary of the headlines. Ryder’s return came slowly, through selective roles and a refusal to chase the spotlight. Her eventual resurgence in Stranger Things reintroduced her to a new generation and reframed her earlier scandal as a footnote rather than a defining moment. Her comeback underscores how time and cultural nostalgia can rehabilitate a damaged public image.

8. Michael Milken

Michael Milken, once known as the “junk bond king,” was convicted of securities fraud and served prison time. His post‑release reinvention as a philanthropist and public intellectual is one of the most striking examples of reputational recovery in the financial world. Milken poured resources into medical research, education, and public policy, gradually shifting his image from corporate villain to benefactor. His trajectory shows how wealth, strategic giving, and time can reshape a legacy.

Milken recently opened the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD) in Washington, D.C., a public institution dedicated to expanding opportunity through exhibits, research, and global programs. It sits directly across from the U.S. Treasury and reflects the themes of his lifelong work:

9. Jeffrey Skilling

Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron CEO, became synonymous with corporate fraud after the company’s collapse. Convicted on multiple counts, he served more than a decade in prison. After his release, Skilling quietly re‑entered business consulting, avoiding the spotlight but successfully rebuilding a professional life. His ability to reestablish himself—even in a limited capacity—shows how white‑collar offenders often find pathways back to influence once public attention moves on.

Jeffrey Skilling today lives a low‑profile, post‑Enron life centered on private finance, advisory work, and personal investments. After serving more than 12 years of his sentence and being released in 2019, Skilling did not return to public corporate leadership. Instead, he works quietly in private equity, energy‑related ventures, and consulting, focusing on risk management, operational efficiency, and energy‑sector strategy.

10. Eliot Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer’s resignation as governor of New York after a prostitution scandal seemed to end his political future. Yet Spitzer leveraged his sharp intellect and media presence to reinvent himself as a television host and commentator. Though he never regained elected office, he rebuilt a public platform and stayed relevant in political discourse. His recovery shows how scandal can be mitigated when a figure retains a strong professional identity outside of elected power.

Eliot Spitzer today is fully active in New York real estate development, running and expanding Spitzer Enterprises, the firm founded by his father. After resigning as governor in 2008, he pivoted almost entirely into the private sector, where he has become a significant — if controversial — figure in Manhattan luxury development.

11. Anthony Weiner

Anthony Weiner’s repeated sexting scandals destroyed his congressional career and derailed a mayoral campaign. Yet despite the severity of the misconduct and the public ridicule that followed, Weiner eventually re‑entered public life through media, consulting, and commentary. His trajectory is more muted than others on this list. Still, it shows how even deeply damaging scandals rarely result in permanent exile—especially when the individual remains willing to engage with the public sphere.

Anthony Weiner is actively attempting a political comeback while also maintaining a presence in media, consulting, and financial ventures.

12. Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski’s conviction for unlawful sex with a minor and subsequent flight from the United States should have ended his career. Instead, he continued directing internationally, winning major awards and maintaining a loyal artistic following. Polanski’s survival in the film world reflects the industry’s long‑standing willingness to separate art from artist — and the power of international borders to shield reputations.

Roman Polanski remains professionally active as a filmmaker while living in France and Poland, continuing to avoid the United States because of his unresolved 1977 criminal case. Ongoing legal battles, new film activity, and international visibility define his current life.

13. Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods’ sex scandal and subsequent personal collapse were broadcast globally, threatening both his career and his endorsements. Woods rebuilt his public image through disciplined play, selective media appearances, and a narrative of personal struggle and recovery. His 2019 Masters win cemented his return as one of the most dramatic comebacks in sports history. Woods’ trajectory shows how athletic achievement can eclipse even the most public personal failures.

Woods has had some recent problems, having had multiple accidents and DUI’s related to painkillers. His social life is questionable, and a restraining order was issued against one girlfriend. He’s currently in a relationship with Vanessa Trump, which he made public in March 2025 and which remains ongoing.

14. Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Floyd Mayweather’s domestic violence convictions did little to slow his ascent as one of the highest‑earning athletes in the world. His ability to maintain financial dominance and public visibility despite serious allegations reflects the unique dynamics of combat sports, where controversy often fuels attention rather than diminishes it. Mayweather’s career demonstrates how certain industries absorb scandal without consequence.

Floyd Mayweather is currently unretiring and returning to full professional boxing in 2026, ending a nine‑year retirement.

15. Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas survived sexual harassment allegations during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and went on to become one of the most influential justices in modern American jurisprudence. His endurance reflects the political polarization of the moment, the structure of lifetime appointments, and supporters’ willingness to frame the allegations as politically motivated. Thomas’s trajectory shows how institutional power can insulate individuals from scandal.

More than half of America hates Thomas, while the right wing loves him. Ted Cruz wrote a newly released biography of Thomas.

16. R. Kelly (early 2000s period)

Before his eventual convictions, R. Kelly survived the initial sex‑tape scandal and continued a highly successful career for nearly two decades. Despite widespread public knowledge of the allegations, Kelly maintained radio play, touring success, and industry support. His ability to thrive during that period reflects both systemic failures and the music industry’s willingness to overlook misconduct when profitability remains high.

Kelly continues to create and release musical content over monitored prison phone lines. In early 2025, he participated in Chris Brown’s “Residuals Challenge” by recording a remix of “Residuals” from FCI Butner, which circulated online and sparked debate about his continued influence.

17. Woody Allen

Woody Allen has faced longstanding sexual abuse allegations that have shadowed his career for decades. Yet he continued directing films, securing funding, and receiving international acclaim. Allen’s survival reflects the divide between American and European cultural reception, as well as the film industry’s historical tendency to protect established auteurs. His trajectory shows how artistic legacy can buffer reputational damage.

Woody Allen is still actively making films, and the most recent reporting shows he is deep into production planning for his 51st feature, a Madrid‑based project scheduled to begin shooting on October 5, 2026

18. O.J. Simpson (post‑acquittal period)

Despite being found civilly liable for wrongful death, O.J. Simpson maintained celebrity status for years after his criminal acquittal. He appeared in the media, pursued business ventures, and remained a cultural figure. Simpson’s ability to remain visible—even after one of the most publicized trials in American history—shows how notoriety itself can sustain relevance.

Simpson eventually went to prison because of the 2007 Las Vegas armed‑robbery and kidnapping case, not because of the 1994–95 murder trial. He later “recovered” socially by leaning on notoriety, media visibility, and the public’s long‑standing fascination with him

19. Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal stripped him of titles and endorsements, but he eventually rebuilt a media presence and business portfolio. Armstrong leaned into selective transparency, podcasting, and entrepreneurial ventures to reframe himself as a flawed but insightful figure. His recovery shows how confession, charisma, and a loyal fan base can soften the impact of scandal.

20. Donald Trump

Donald Trump has faced multiple fraud investigations, civil judgments, and sex‑misconduct allegations throughout his public life. Yet he won the presidency twice and remains a dominant political figure. Trump’s resilience reflects a unique combination of media saturation, political polarization, and a base that interprets scandal as evidence of persecution rather than wrongdoing. His trajectory demonstrates how modern politics can invert traditional consequences.

The final judgment isn’t in. Depending on the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections, he’s facing multiple investigations and a possible 3rd impeachment. One can only hope.

Conclusion

Taken together, these twenty stories form an unofficial ledger of American reinvention — a reminder that public collapse is rarely the end, and that notoriety, power, talent, or sheer persistence can pull people back into the light even after the world has written them off. Their recoveries aren’t uniform, and they aren’t always admirable, but they reveal something about how reputation actually works: it bends, it bruises, it recalibrates, and it often survives. In a culture that treats downfall as spectacle and redemption as currency, hitting bottom becomes just another plot point. What matters, in the end, is not the fall itself but the machinery that allows certain people to rise again, reshaped but still recognizable, still present, still part of the story.

I attended Super Bowl XXVI in Minneapolis on January 26, 1992, and saw Donald Trump with a woman and a few men in suits. They stood out because they were overdressed for a football game, and Donald had that hair. Public records do not identify who the woman was, but at that time Trump was still legally married to Ivana Trump, though going through an ugly divorce. He was also publicly involved with Marla Maples, who would become Wife #2 the following year. The woman was wearing a mink coat.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, mink was already slipping out of style. PETA’s anti‑fur campaigns exploded between 1987 and 1992, turning fur from a status symbol into a political flashpoint. PETA targeted mink because it was the most visible symbol of the fur industry. The coat represented glamour, wealth, and killing animals purely for fashion. Beginning in the late 1980s, their anti‑fur campaigns exploded, using graphic ads, runway disruptions, and high‑profile protests to make mink socially radioactive. Supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington publicly rejected fur, signaling that the fashion elite had turned against it.

Fur wearers began attracting protest rather than admiration, and mink shifted from a coveted status symbol to a controversial luxury item. By the time COVID‑19 swept through global mink farms decades later, triggering mass culls, permanent farm closures, and the collapse of the supply chain, mink was already culturally out of vogue. The pandemic didn’t start the decline; it simply finished what activism and shifting public values had already set in motion. So if wearing a mink coat might mean getting paint thrown on you, why did leather never achieve the same notoriety?

Leather was never targeted the way mink was because it sits in a completely different ethical, economic, and cultural category. Activists understood that mink was a pure luxury product — an animal killed only for its fur — while leather is a byproduct of the massive global meat industry. That single distinction shaped everything that followed. Going after mink meant confronting an industry built entirely on killing animals for fashion; going after leather meant confronting the entire beef economy, which was neither politically feasible nor strategically effective. Leather was woven into everyday life — shoes, belts, work gloves, jackets — and culturally coded as practical, durable, and normal. Mink, by contrast, was coded as elite, conspicuous, and unnecessary.

PETA’s campaigns were designed for maximum visibility and moral clarity, and mink offered both. Fur farms kept animals in small wire cages, killed them solely for pelts, and produced a product associated with wealth and vanity. That made mink an easy symbol of cruelty. Leather didn’t offer the same optics: cows were already being slaughtered for food, hides were a secondary product, and the industry could argue that banning leather wouldn’t save animals. Even consumers who supported animal rights often continued wearing leather because it didn’t carry the same stigma.

By the time PETA’s runway disruptions, celebrity pressure campaigns, and graphic ads made mink socially radioactive, leather remained insulated by its practicality and its connection to everyday consumer goods. Mink collapsed under cultural pressure and later COVID‑19 farm shutdowns; leather survived because it was never the moral centerpiece of the debate.

In full disclosure: I was in Chicago on business in the early 1980s and staying at a hotel on the Magnificent Mile. I walked across the street to a store on Michigan Avenue and bought a rabbit coat to bring home to my wife. Rabbit coats were cheaper, worn by everyday consumers, and not associated with wealth or celebrity culture. Rabbit meat is available in America on a limited basis, but sellers don’t have nearly the support that the beef industry can wield.

One major reason leather hasn’t been targeted is that it is a byproduct of killing cows intended for food. While rabbits are used for food, rabbit pelts and “lucky” rabbit's feet are popular as well. You could argue that people eat rabbit meat and that a dead rabbit has multiple uses. Is it possible that the reason you can buy a new rabbit coat on Amazon but not a new full-length mink coat (you can buy a used one) is that people wanted to punish the owners of mink coats?

The backlash against mink was never purely about animal cruelty. It has always carried a class and political charge, treating mink as shorthand for conspicuous wealth, feminine luxury, and elite detachment. Activists, journalists, and cultural critics framed mink as a symbol of greed and excess, and the public shaming of fur wearers operated as a moral critique of the rich long before the industry collapsed on economic grounds. Some never felt shame, like the woman accompanying Donald Trump to the 1992 Super Bowl, long after activists began targeting mink owners.

Even at the height of anti‑fur activism, mink owners continued flaunting their coats at private high‑society events. They wore their minks as a badge of honor. While activists were shaming fur wearers on sidewalks and at department stores. Charity galas, donor dinners, and winter balls still saw mink draped over chairs.

A 2026 luxury fur guide notes that natural fur has returned to the spotlight as part of “sustainable luxury fashion,” with mink included among the premium outerwear options. An analysis of mink coats describes the cropped mink coat as the modern evolution of the garment — lighter, more architectural, and designed for everyday wear rather than gala nights. It explicitly states:

“The traditional floor-length mink is a relic of the past.”

“In 2026, the crop mink coat represents a decisive shift toward agility and functional luxury.”

The revival of fur is being reframed as nostalgic, retro, or sustainable, especially on resale platforms and in fashion capitals. This reframing positions mink as part of a cyclical fashion trend rather than a fresh act of animal cruelty.

Activists historically targeted new fur production. Vintage and resale fur fall into a moral gray zone. The animal is already dead, the harm is not “new,” and the purchase is framed as recycling. “Sustainable luxury” rhetoric makes mink sound environmentally responsible, which blunts activist messaging.

Activist energy has shifted to platform bans and policy fights, not street-level fashion policing. Recent activism has focused on:

• banning fur on major marketplaces (Etsy, Shein Marketplace)
• pushing for national and EU‑wide fur farming bans
• targeting corporate supply chains rather than individual wearers

Etsy’s 2026 ban is a clear example: activists spent 58 days protesting corporate offices, disrupting investor conferences, and pressuring platforms, and not shaming people wearing mink on the street.

Melania Trump, Donald’s third wife, often wore furs, including mink, during the early 2000s. Melania formally stopped wearing fur after becoming First Lady. Her East Wing communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN:

“She does not wear fur.”

Trump’s first wife, Ivana, wore “sables and minks and chinchillas galore,” according to her designer Dennis Basso. Wife #2, Marla Maples, wore furs, including the mink coat she wore to the Super Bowl in 1992, presuming that it was her. I’m betting that by the time the White House Ballroom opens, assuming it ever does. You might see a new mink coat on Melania. There is no indication that Melania has changed her mind since her 2017 pledge. But from her other clothing choices, she no longer seems to care about what others think, does she?

It’s been 112 years since an American president had someone acting as the First Lady other than their spouse. You can be forgiven if such a thing doesn’t exist in your memory. Here is a summary of the first nine situations, leading up to our current situation, where Melania Trump is mostly gone, and Natalie Harp has stepped in.

Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809)

Thomas Jefferson arrived at the presidency as a widower — his wife Martha had died in 1782, nearly two decades before he took office, and he had promised her on her deathbed that he would never remarry. That promise left the White House without a formal hostess for the full span of his two terms. Jefferson filled the gap pragmatically, enlisting two women who between them represented very different models of the role. His daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph visited Washington during the 1802–03 and 1805–06 social seasons, lending her father’s table a familial warmth. However, Jefferson’s own philosophy held that women should not participate in politics, which limited her to what was essentially a decorative function. The more consequential surrogate was Dolley Madison, wife of Secretary of State James Madison, who became the operational center of Jefferson’s social world, seating herself at the head of the table with an ease and authority that Jefferson himself encouraged. Dolley’s time as Jefferson’s de facto hostess was a kind of apprenticeship; she brought to the role a genius for putting people at ease across factional lines that would define her own tenure as First Lady when her husband reached the presidency in 1809. It should be noted that Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s enslaved servant whom he was raping throughout his two terms, never visited what was then the President’s House.

Andrew Jackson (1829–1837)

Andrew Jackson entered the White House in March 1829 in the shadow of personal grief. His beloved wife Rachel had died of a heart attack just weeks after his election, and Jackson — who blamed the vicious campaign slanders against her character for breaking her health — wore his mourning like armor for the rest of his presidency. The role of White House hostess fell to Emily Donelson, the niece of Rachel Jackson and wife of Jackson’s presidential secretary and foster son, Andrew Jackson Donelson. Emily was only twenty-one when she arrived in Washington, but she possessed a striking combination of beauty, poise, and education that made her a natural social presence. She managed the White House entertainments with grace and ran what an otherwise stormy administration’s social calendar with considerable skill — though she was no pushover. When Jackson insisted on socially rehabilitating Peggy Eaton, the controversial wife of his Secretary of War, Emily flatly refused to receive her, a quiet act of defiance that caused a genuine political crisis. After a period of estrangement and exile from Washington, Emily eventually returned and resumed her duties. She died in 1836 near the end of Jackson’s second term, and the hostess role then passed to Sarah Yorke Jackson, the wife of Jackson’s adopted son, who carried the duties through the final months of the administration.

Martin Van Buren (1837–1841)

Martin Van Buren became president in 1837, a widower of eighteen years — his wife Hannah had died of tuberculosis in 1819, and Van Buren never remarried. He had four adult sons, but no daughter, and the White House hostess gap was filled, with considerable elegance, by his daughter-in-law Angelica Singleton Van Buren, who had married his son Abraham in 1838. The match itself was a piece of Washington social history: Angelica had been introduced to Abraham Van Buren by none other than Dolley Madison, by then an elder stateswoman of capital society who still understood the architecture of these arrangements perfectly. Angelica was well prepared for the role, having been educated at a female academy in South Carolina and a French finishing school in Philadelphia. She quickly adapted to White House life and became a popular, accomplished hostess, though she attracted criticism for reportedly receiving guests in regal fashion—seated on a raised platform, in a manner her detractors found more monarchical than republican. She nonetheless gave Van Buren’s White House a social luster it might otherwise have lacked, and served through the entirety of his single term.

John Tyler (1841–1845)

John Tyler’s White House required not one but a succession of women to fill the First Lady role — a circumstance that made his administration uniquely complicated on that front. When Tyler unexpectedly assumed the presidency after William Henry Harrison died in 1841, his wife Letitia Christian Tyler was already gravely ill, having suffered a severe stroke in 1839 from which she had never recovered. She made only one public appearance as First Lady — at her daughter’s wedding — and the duties of White House hostess were immediately delegated to her daughter-in-law Priscilla Cooper Tyler, the wife of the president’s son Robert. Priscilla was a former stage actress — a background that, in the Victorian social order, was considered slightly scandalous but that also gave her an innate theatricality and composure that served her enormously. She was charming, witty, and energetic, managing multiple receptions and dinners each week, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and she became the first woman in the role to travel with the president as part of his official entourage. Letitia Tyler died in September 1842, and Priscilla continued as hostess until 1844, when Tyler began preparing to remarry. He wed the much younger Julia Gardiner in June 1844, ending what had been one of the more complex multi-chapter First Lady arrangements in presidential history.

James Buchanan (1857–1861)

James Buchanan holds the distinction of being the only man ever to reach the American presidency without having been married at all. His niece Harriet Lane—for whom he served as legal guardian after her parents' deaths —stepped into the First Lady role with an assurance and capability that made her one of the most admired White House hostesses of the nineteenth century. Harriet was raised in part by Buchanan himself. She accompanied him on his diplomatic posting to London, where she was presented at the Court of Queen Victoria and gained a polish and international social fluency that proved invaluable in Washington. She was poised, diplomatically astute, and genuinely interested in using her platform for substantive purposes — she advocated for the arts, championed the welfare of Native Americans, and helped establish a precedent for First Ladies engaging with reform causes that would carry forward into the twentieth century. Her popularity was enormous, and in a presidency that is otherwise remembered primarily as a prelude to catastrophe — Buchanan’s failure to act as the Southern states moved toward secession is one of the most damning executive records in American history — Harriet Lane stands out as one of its few unambiguous successes. She was so beloved that Congress later named a children’s hospital in her honor, the Harriet Lane Home, associated with Johns Hopkins.

Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885)

Chester A. Arthur came to the presidency under circumstances as melancholy as any in the office’s history. His wife Ellen had died of pneumonia in January 1881 — just months before James Garfield’s assassination elevated Arthur to the presidency — and her death so struck Arthur that he reportedly wept openly and kept a portrait of her near him throughout his time in office. The role of White House hostess fell to his sister, Mary Arthur McElroy, a middle-aged mother of four from Albany who confessed with remarkable candor that she was “absolutely unfamiliar with the customs and formalities” of the White House when she arrived. She found her footing, however, and became known particularly for her New Year’s galas and weekly open-house dinner receptions, which Washington society received warmly. To manage some of her larger events, she enlisted former First Ladies Julia Tyler and Harriet Lane as co-hostesses — a remarkable tableau of women who had all, in their own ways, held the role outside the expected parameters. McElroy divided her time between Washington and Albany throughout Arthur’s term, spending roughly six months in each city, a compromise that allowed her to maintain her own family life while fulfilling the social obligations her brother’s presidency required.

Grover Cleveland (1885–1886)

Grover Cleveland entered the White House in March 1885 as a bachelor, and his sister Rose Elizabeth Cleveland — scholar, lecturer, professor, and published literary critic — stepped into the hostess role with a combination of social grace and barely concealed intellectual impatience that made her one of the more memorable figures in the history of the position. Rose was thirty-eight, formidably educated, and had penned a volume of literary criticism, George Eliot’s Poetry and Other Studies, which she published in 1885 while simultaneously serving as the nation’s de facto First Lady. She was charming and witty in company, and Washington received her well — but she was candid about finding the social demands of the role tedious. She once admitted that she fought off boredom during presidential receptions by conjugating Greek verbs in her head, a detail that has endured as one of the more delightful footnotes of White House history. When her brother married the twenty-one-year-old Frances Folsom in the White House in June 1886 — one of only two presidents to marry while in office — Rose reportedly stepped aside with undisguised relief and returned to her career as a scholar. She later lived openly with a female companion in Italy, where she died in 1918.

Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893)

Benjamin Harrison’s wife Caroline was an accomplished and active First Lady — she helped found the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, served as its first President General, and took a deep interest in the history and renovation of the White House. But in 1891 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. As her health declined through 1892, she increasingly delegated her social duties to her daughter Mary Harrison McKee, who had lived in the White House throughout her father’s presidency. Caroline Harrison died in the White House on October 25, 1892 — just two weeks before her husband lost his reelection bid to Grover Cleveland — and Mary assumed formal hostess duties for the final four months of the Harrison administration. The circumstances made her tenure almost entirely one of mourning rather than entertaining: the White House New Year’s reception was canceled, events were repeatedly delayed, and by the time Washington social life was scheduled to resume, Harrison had lost the election and only weeks remained in his presidency. Mary McKee hosted a final event for the Daughters of the American Revolution on February 23, 1893, and a farewell reception for the incoming Clevelands the day before the inauguration—a graceful note at the end of a difficult chapter.

Woodrow Wilson (1913–1915)

Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson — a painter of genuine talent and a woman of quiet but effective social conscience, most notably in her advocacy for improved housing for Washington’s Black residents — died in the White House on August 6, 1914, the same week that Europe collapsed into the First World War. The intersection of personal grief and global catastrophe made for one of the most somber seasons in White House history, and the burden of maintaining the presidency's social functions fell to Wilson’s eldest daughter, Margaret Woodrow Wilson. Margaret was a trained soprano — she had studied voice at the Peabody Institute and had already begun a modest concert career — and an outspoken advocate for women’s suffrage at a time when her father was still resistant to a federal constitutional Amendment. She served as White House hostess from August 1914 until December 1915, when Wilson remarried, taking Edith Bolling Galt as his second wife. The sixteen months of her tenure were constrained by the wartime atmosphere and her father’s grief, but Margaret used her position to advance the suffrage cause publicly, becoming only the second president’s daughter in the First Lady role to do so. After leaving Washington, she pursued her singing career, moved to Greenwich Village, embraced a bohemian lifestyle, and eventually, in 1938, relocated to the ashram of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India — where she spent the last years of her life, took the spiritual name Nistha, and co-edited an English translation of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna with the scholar Joseph Campbell. She died there in 1944.

Donald Trump’s Second Term (2021-Present)

In the long, unexplained quiet surrounding Melania Trump’s public absence, a different figure has stepped into the soft‑focus space traditionally occupied by a First Lady. Natalie Harp, once a loyal media surrogate, now Donald Trump’s executive assistant, has become a constant presence at his side, performing duties that look less like staff work and more like the ceremonial, emotional, and symbolic labor historically associated with the role of First Lady. It is not a formal title, but in the choreography of Trump’s second administration, Harp has become the woman closest to the president, filling a void the public cannot help but notice.

“Thank you for being my Guardian and Protector in this life.” — Natalie Harp

Harp’s proximity is the first and most visible shift. In settings where a First Lady might traditionally appear — exiting motorcades, greeting supporters, hovering just behind the president during informal interactions — Harp is there instead. She moves with the practiced ease of someone who has learned the rhythms of Trump’s public life: when to step forward, when to fade back, when to offer a document, a phone, or a reassuring presence. Her role as the keeper of Trump’s portable printer, once a quirky anecdote, has become more symbolic: she materializes whatever Trump needs in the moment, ensuring his world runs smoothly.

“I had no idea how rapidly I was approaching burnout… starting to envy those whose only ‘job’ seems to be to talk with you and look pretty. I want that job!!” — Natalie Harp

But the more striking shift is Harp’s involvement in Trump’s communications. Historically, First Ladies have shaped the tone of a presidency by softening edges, amplifying themes, signaling priorities through speeches, initiatives, or even silence. Harp’s influence differs in form but is similar in effect. Her access to Trump’s Truth Social account puts her at the center of his messaging, helping set the administration's emotional temperature. When posts appear that blend grievance, triumph, and personal narrative, observers increasingly note Harp’s hand in the mix. She is not speaking as a First Lady would, but she is shaping the president’s voice in ways that echo the influence previous First Ladies have held.

“You are all that matters to me… I don’t want to ever let you down.” — Natalie Harp

Her presence at events reinforces the impression. Harp stands where a spouse might stand, listens where a spouse might listen, and reacts with the kind of attuned attention that suggests deep trust. In photo after photo, she occupies the visual space traditionally reserved for a presidential partner — close enough to signal intimacy, visible enough to signal importance. Without explanation from the administration, the public is left to interpret the tableau on its own.

“I’ve been distracted all week… forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep.” — Natalie Harp

None of this is framed officially. There was no announcement, no acknowledgment, no narrative offered to the public about Melania Trump’s absence or Harp’s expanding role. But politics is often communicated through staging rather than statements. And in the staging of Trump’s second term, Natalie Harp has become the woman beside the president: his aide, his messenger, his constant presence. In the absence of a First Lady, she has stepped into the symbolic vacuum, performing the soft power duties that define the role, even if no one has said the words aloud.

I suppose if Melania truly cared, she could demand that Donald get rid of Natalie and insist on taking her role back. I don’t believe she will, however. Being Donald Trump’s First Lady means spending far too much time near Donald. A price she’s unwilling to pay.

Syracuse’s Common Council did the right thing on paper. In March 2026, the city revoked Flock Safety’s operating rights after Syracuse Police got caught spilling driver data to thousands of outside agencies through Flock’s national network. Sixty days to pull the cameras down.

Here’s the part the press release skipped. A month before that vote, the same council had already signed a five-year, $422,636.28 contract with Axon Enterprise. New cameras were rolling into position before the old ones came off the poles. Same streetlamps. Same intersections. Same job.

That’s what “getting the Flock out” looks like in a lot of American cities right now. Not less surveillance. A different logo on the invoice.

A Santa Clara County supervisor said it out loud on the way out of their own Flock contract: “Alternative vendors are not necessarily any safer.” He’s right. Syracuse proves it.

Ask Daniel Schwarz at the New York Civil Liberties Union. He’s been trying to see Syracuse’s Axon contract for six months. He can’t. He’s been asking for the police department’s ALPR policy for the same six months. He can’t get that either. The city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group, the body supposed to vet all of this, hasn’t met since early 2026. The vendor changed. The oversight is still nothing.

“All these vendors present surveillance risks and present opportunities for abuse,” Schwarz told CNY Central. That’s the whole thing. Flock’s problem was never that Flock is uniquely dirty. Flock’s problem is that the ALPR model is a mass-surveillance product with a “public safety” sticker. Axon does the same job with different-colored cameras.

Axon’s cameras mount to existing streetlamps and blend in on purpose. The pitch is an integrated ecosystem: body cameras, drones, real-time crime centers, license plates. One vendor holds the strings for all of it. That’s the same centralized-database problem Flock had, shipped in a bigger box.

Axon isn’t a bystander to what comes next. On February 10, a trust managed by Donald Trump’s children bought up to $5 million in Axon stock. On February 24, fourteen days later, ICE posted a $220 million notice for roughly 17,800 new Tasers, with specs aligned with Axon’s TASER 10 and excluding competitors. The White House told CNBC there is no conflict of interest. Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE chief of staff, called the timing a red flag. Whatever you make of the president’s stock portfolio, the surveillance vendor most cities are switching to right now is the same vendor his administration just cut a $220 million immigration-enforcement check to.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis approved roughly $4.6 million in state grants for 18 local agencies to buy license plate readers specifically for immigration enforcement, while publicly warning voters about a “digital AI surveillance state.” This isn’t a Florida story or a Washington story. It’s the same story running at two levels.

The person actually trying to fix this in New York isn’t a police chief or a mayor. It’s State Assemblymember Pamela Hunter. Her bill would cap ALPR data retention and require a warrant before federal agencies can access it. That’s the model. Statute, not vendor. Judge-signed warrants, not vendor policy. Retention set by law, not by whichever company won the last bid.

Without that, every “we dumped Flock” story is going to end the way Syracuse did. One contract closes. Another one opens. The cameras never stop reading plates. The data still goes somewhere you can’t audit. The people you can’t hold accountable still get to hold it.

The curtain doesn’t come down when you fire the vendor who hung it. It comes down when a law forces it down.

Everybody old enough remembers where they were on 9/11/2001, when flights crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania instead of the White House. Less well remembered are some of the events occurring immediately afterward, and how policies changed, still affecting us today. In some respects, America ground to a halt and, in others, started preparing for a war that wouldn’t take place for another 18 months.

Here are ten things that happened in the aftermath that may have faded from memory for some.

1. Nationwide Grounding of all U.S. Flights (Sept. 11–13, 2001)

The FAA ordered the first-ever complete shutdown of U.S. airspace, halting all commercial, private, and international flights. This stoppage lasted until Sept. 13, with gradual reopening afterward. I was with a group of people from all over the country, working in New York at the U.S. Open. I had driven from Orlando to New York and was able to leave. Most of my friends flew in and couldn't get home right away. Some rented cars for one-way travel. Others were stuck until flights resumed.

Before 9/11, private contractors hired by airlines handled airport security. After the attacks, Congress federalized the entire system, creating the Transportation Security Administration, which standardized screening, training, and enforcement nationwide. This was the single biggest transformation in U.S. transportation security in modern history.

Pre‑9/11 screening was minimal: metal detectors, bag X‑rays, and a quick walk‑through. Post‑9/11 brought:

• Shoe removal
• Liquid restrictions (3‑1‑1 rule)
• Laptop removal
• Full‑body scanners
• Pat‑downs
• Secondary screening for “anomalies”

The airport checkpoint became a quasi‑law‑enforcement zone, not a customer service station.

2. NATO Invokes Article 5 for the First Time (Sept. 12, 2001)

NATO declared the attacks an assault on all member nations, activating collective defense. This was unprecedented and shaped the global military response. The world stood with America when called upon. America coordinated with its allies, unlike the current war in Iran.

3. Mass Cancellations of Concerts, Sports, and Arena Events (Sept. 11–late Sept. 2001)

Major entertainment venues shut down nationwide. MLB, NFL, and large concerts paused; Clear Channel issued guidance restricting certain songs; Hollywood halted premieres. I made my living at the time selling event merchandise at concerts inside arenas and stadiums. It took a minute to realize I was basically unemployed.

On September 17, 2001, Major League Baseball officially resumed with the Mets vs. Pirates in Pittsburgh. Players traveled by commercial flight to show confidence in aviation safety. September 21, 2001, was the first game in New York, featuring the Mets vs. Braves at Shea Stadium. Players wore NYPD/FDNY caps.

4. Immediate detentions, investigations, and suspected hijacking alerts (Sept. 11–20)

Authorities detained hundreds for questioning, investigated suspected hijackings (e.g., Korean Air Flight 085, Delta 1989), and launched PENTTBOM, the largest FBI investigation in history. PENTTBOM stands for “Pennsylvania, Pentagon, and Twin Towers Bombing.” It was the FBI’s official code name for the 9/11 investigation — the largest case in Bureau history. In its first months, federal agents questioned thousands and detained hundreds of non‑citizens, mostly on immigration violations, while investigators raced to rule out any link to al‑Qaeda. The DOJ later found that most detainees had no terrorism ties, revealing how the urgency of the moment produced a dragnet far broader than the threat itself.

In the days after 9/11, suspicion toward Muslims in America didn’t rise gradually — it detonated. Overnight, millions of people who had nothing to do with the attacks were treated as if they were somehow adjacent to them. Mosques were surveilled, Muslim charities were raided, students were questioned, and entire communities found themselves living under a presumption of guilt. The country’s grief hardened into a narrative that cast Muslim identity itself as a potential threat.

Federal policy amplified that suspicion. The NSEERS registration system forced tens of thousands of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian men to report to immigration offices, be fingerprinted, interrogated, and risk detention for minor paperwork errors. The PENTTBOM dragnet swept up hundreds of non‑citizens on immigration violations simply because they fit a profile. Airports, workplaces, and schools became sites of fear‑based scrutiny. Hate crimes spiked, often targeting people who weren’t Muslim at all but were perceived to be — Sikhs, Hindus, Middle Eastern Christians.

The result is a generation of Muslim Americans who grew up under a cloud they didn’t create — navigating airports differently, speaking carefully, being hyper‑aware of how their faith is perceived, and living with the knowledge that their citizenship is often treated as conditional. The suspicion born after 9/11 didn’t just mark a moment; it reshaped the social contract, creating a tier of Americans who are watched first and welcomed second.

5. Rush to Assign Blame — Early Focus on Al‑Qaeda (Sept. 11–14)

Within days, U.S. intelligence and global media identified al‑Qaeda as responsible. This shaped early public discourse and political rhetoric. The operational blueprint was traced to al‑Qaeda leadership

Investigators concluded that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) conceived the plan of using hijacked airliners as weapons. He presented it to Osama bin Laden, who approved it and provided personnel, funding, and training.

6. Authorization for Use of Military Force (Sept. 18, 2001)

Congress passed the AUMF, giving the president broad authority to use force against those responsible for the attacks and those who aided them. Since 9/11, every administration — Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden — has used the 2001 AUMF to justify military force in conflicts far beyond Afghanistan, often without seeking new congressional approval. The best current research shows the AUMF has been invoked for operations in at least 22 countries, and used as legal cover for strikes, raids, detentions, and partner‑force missions in many more.

7. Operation Yellow Ribbon and Global Aviation Response (Sept. 11–15)

Canada redirected and grounded hundreds of flights and housed tens of thousands of stranded passengers. This was one of the largest sudden civilian air‑logistics operations ever.

8. Closures of Public Buildings, Museums, and Major Institutions (Sept. 11–17)

Federal buildings, Wall Street, and cultural institutions shut down. The NYSE remained closed until Sept. 17, marking one of the longest market closures since 1933.

9. Entertainment Industry Pauses Production (Sept. 11–20)

Television shows halted filming; late‑night shows went dark; SNL returned with a healing‑centered episode featuring first responders.

10. Early Mobilization for War in Afghanistan (Sept. 12–25)

The Pentagon began planning military operations; troop deployments and coalition-building accelerated; intelligence agencies coordinated global counterterrorism efforts.

America didn’t just change after 9/11 — it recalibrated its operating system. Fear rewrote policy, urgency rewrote procedure, and a single 60‑word authorization quietly rewrote the Constitution. The 2001 AUMF became a permanent permission slip, letting presidents wage war in countries most Americans couldn’t find on a map, all without new votes, new debates, or the public’s informed consent. We lied about weapons of mass destruction.

We rebuilt the skyline, but we normalized surveillance. We mourned the dead, but we expanded the security state. We promised never to forget, but we forgot how carefully the Constitution once limited the use of force. The legacy of 9/11 isn’t just the wars we fought; it’s the way we learned to fight them without ever officially declaring one. America once coordinated with its allies; now we wage wars practically alone.

The sounds of cracks and cursing are among my first memories.

I think the earliest comes from when I was around three years old, rubbing my mom’s belly as we pondered over names for my new sibling.

The next memory is standing in a kitchen while my father rears back and punches my already bloody mother. The crack of knuckle to skull somehow echoed over the screaming.

I stood with clenched fists to the side, shouting every taboo word in my vocabulary. I knew if I yelled the right one, they would stop fighting each other and reprimand me, a child’s logic.

The cycle of violence continued for some time, and through it all I loved my father even when I hated him.

Then, something clicked.

The blame

I blamed myself for most of my mom’s beatings. Whenever she would muster the will to escape, I would cry for my dad.

I was probably around 8 the last time I begged her to go back. We fled in the early morning with the promise of McDonald’s on my mind. I didn’t realize what was happening until my father ran out of the house shirtless with a bottle of liquor in his hand. Already an avid horror fan, his movement reminded me of the undead I usually watched to escape the horrors of reality.

My mom hit him with the car and didn’t look back. The alcohol shattered across the window, distorting reality.

I don’t remember if I cried. I don’t remember if I had McDonald’s. We ended up living in a hotel for what seemed like a lifetime, long enough for me to teach myself how to ride a bike.

My mom got a new boyfriend. I hated him because he wasn’t my dad.

I remember begging her to go back.

She did.

I blamed myself for the next beatings for about 30 years. I still have to focus to absolve myself of this crime. Remember, you can’t remove the agency from a grown woman because I was a crying child.

However, by the time I was 10, any love for my father was gone. It was replaced with a deep hatred and an even deeper shame. I’m not sure what made me hate him. It wasn’t any one particular beating. He even put his drunken hands on me more than once, but I always wanted to go back.

A switch just flipped.

I was done.

My mom was done.

We left the state, and I didn’t speak to him again for a decade.

The lost years

The absence of my father never bothered me. I never yearned for a male role model. His existence did shape me, though. I was driven not to be him.

I am alcohol and drug-free because I couldn’t be him. I saw what happened when liquor and crack took his mind. My goal was to always maintain control. Never show my anger unless it is part of some strategy. (If the anger is not controlled, it is a weakness. This is a mentality I remember in my classroom.)

He tried to reach out to me a few times while I was in college. He just knew I was going to choose some financially lucrative career like a lawyer or doctor. (It shows how little he knew me. Even as a child, I was desperate for careers that involved receiving very little financial compensation.) I assumed for a long time he only reached out in hopes of benefiting from my predicted future success.

It was a decade later when I spoke to him again, at my mother’s funeral. The sermon, instead of being about my dead mother, focused on forgiving those still living.

The preacher reprimanded me for what felt like an hour. My father attempted to talk to me after, but I wasn’t having it. I’m sure his whole family came together to create that magical sermon.

My mother’s last poem, only weeks before she died, was about my father’s abuse.

Reconnecting

After another decade of growth and healing, I started speaking to my father.

It wasn’t some grand moment; I just slowly started responding to his texts.

I did realize something recently. I hadn’t truly forgiven him, even though I was certain I had for decades.

No one is owed forgiveness, but it is important for me to give the opportunity.

I didn’t need a reconnection. I still had no love for him, but I did pity him. I tend to operate with one assumption in mind. People have the capacity to change. If I stop believing that, my career, my hope in humanity, diminishes.

However, I didn’t extend the same grace to my father. So, I started talking to him. I was not especially impressed. As far as I know, he doesn’t do crack anymore. I guess that is a huge win, but alcohol is still a big part of his life.

I hold no animosity in my heart for him, but I don’t love him. I pretend to, though. I even send some heart emojis.

We planned on sitting down to have a gloves-off discussion about life and decisions when the world decided to throw a curveball.

He has pancreatic cancer. Although we haven’t said it out loud, he is likely dying. He won’t even say the “c” word, but he is wasting away. He is in constant pain.

I wish I had more genuine love to give him.

I don’t. I pretend. I can’t offer a hug, but I would return one if it were ever offered. If he said he loved me, I would try to say the words back without wincing.

I wish I could end with some clever insight about life, but I don’t have one this time. Everyone has to move differently in this situation. For some people, the weight of seeing an abuser, no matter how many years have passed, is too much. That’s okay.

For others, failing to find the love in this situation is a failure.

For me, I’m there. That is more than I thought I would ever do. That is enough. I don’t love him, but I forgive him.

We sang “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” in my elementary school in Minneapolis, as did other children for decades in schools across the country. The song was featured on Sesame Street, Barney, and Captain Kangaroo. The Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts sang it, treating it as a cheerful work song. I can’t imagine anyone of a certain age not knowing the song. The melody was used for “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You,” the official school song of the University of Texas at Austin. It’s played at every UT football game when the team comes out. I never gave a thought to what even the current lyrics meant, let alone the original ones. It isn’t a “cheerful work song” but is about something far more insidious.

I’ve Been Working On the Railroad

Song by

Pete Seeger

I’ve been working on the railroad
All the livelong day
I’ve been working on the railroad
Just to pass the time away

Can’t you hear the whistle blowing
Rise up so early in the morn
Can’t you hear the captain shouting
Dinah, blow your horn

Dinah, won’t you blow
Dinah, won’t you blow
Dinah, won’t you blow your horn
Dinah, won’t you blow
Dinah, won’t you blow
Dinah, won’t you blow your horn

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
Someone’s in the kitchen I know
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
Strumming on the old banjo, and singing

Fie, fi, fiddly i o
Fie, fi, fiddly i o
Fie, fi, fiddly i o
Strumming on the old banjo

Fie, fi, fiddly i o
Fie, fi, fiddly i o
Fie, fi, fiddly i o
Strumming on the old banjo

The story of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” usually begins in 1894, when Princeton students published a jaunty campus song about railroad labor. But the real story begins sixty years earlier, in the 1830s, in the minstrel theaters of New York, Philadelphia, and London. Places where white men in blackface performed caricatures of Black life for white audiences. One of the era's most popular songs was “Old Joe, or Somebody in the House with Dinah,” a tune built around a stock character named Dinah, a name widely used at the time as a generic label for an enslaved Black woman. In the minstrel imagination, Dinah was not a person. She was a role: the Black cook, the domestic worker, the enslaved woman whose labor and body were treated as accessible.

I been wukkin’ on de railroad

All de livelong day,

I been wukkin’ on de railroad

Ter pass de time away.

Doan’ yuh hyah de whistle blowin’?

Ris up, so uhly in de mawn;

Doan’ yuh hyah de cap’n shouin’,

”Dinah, blow yo’ hawn?”

Sing a song o’ the city;

Roll dat cotton bale;

Niggah aint half so happy

As when he’s out o’ jail

Norfolk foh its oystahshells,

Boston foh its beans,

Chahleston foh its rice an’ cawn,

But foh niggahs New Awleens.

The line “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah” first appeared in this context — not as a harmless image of company in the kitchen, but as a racialized joke that audiences understood immediately. In the plantation caricature that minstrel shows depended on, the kitchen was a space where enslaved Black women worked and where white men could enter freely. It was a site of surveillance, exploitation, and sexual vulnerability. When a minstrel performer sang that “someone” was in the kitchen with Dinah, the “someone” was implicitly a white man, and the implication was not romantic. It was predatory. The humor came from the violation, a white man intruding into the workspace of an enslaved Black woman, framed as comic mischief for white audiences.

Minstrel shows rarely stated the sexual undertone outright; they didn’t have to. The racial coding was so strong that audiences understood the scene without explanation. Dinah was the enslaved woman. The kitchen was her workplace. The “someone” was the white man who had entered that space, uninvited, with intentions that were understood but not spoken. The joke depended on the power imbalance, on the fact that Dinah could not refuse, resist, or escape. The violence was disguised as humor, but it was violence all the same. It was intended to be a funny song about rape, though some versions called it love.

Someone’s makin’ love to Dinah

Someone’s making love I know.

Someone’s making love to Dinah’

Cause I can’t hear the old banjo!

By the 1840s, versions of the Dinah song were circulating widely, published in London and performed across the United States. The melody shifted, verses changed, but the core image remained: Dinah in the kitchen, a white man intruding, and the audience laughing at a scene rooted in coercion. When minstrel performers sang “Dinah, won’t you blow your horn?” they were invoking another stereotype — the idea of the enslaved cook signaling mealtime or starting a musical number. It was a cue, a command, a way of turning Dinah into a device that moved the performance forward. Her voice was not her own; it was something the white performer asked her to “blow” on cue.

Decades later, as the Civil War ended and minstrel shows evolved, fragments of these songs drifted into American folk culture. White college students in the 1890s borrowed melodies and verses from minstrel repertoire, often without acknowledging the source. When Princeton students assembled “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” in 1894, they stitched together pieces of minstrel songs, work‑song imitations, and invented verses. The Dinah section, already decades old, was absorbed almost intact. No one explained its racial meaning; it was carried forward, stripped of context but not of origin.

By the mid‑20th century, the song had been sanitized into a children’s tune. Music publishers removed dialect, softened imagery, and presented Dinah as a cheerful figure in a harmless kitchen scene. The sexual undertone disappeared. The racial coding was forgotten. The violence embedded in the original joke about a white man entering the kitchen of an enslaved Black woman for sexual access was erased so thoroughly that generations of schoolchildren sang the song without ever knowing what it once meant.

The evolution of “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah” is not just a story about a song. It is a story about how American culture takes material rooted in racial violence, strips away the context, and repackages it as tradition. It is a story about how the experiences of Black women, and how their labor, their vulnerability, their exploitation can be turned into entertainment and then into nostalgia. And it is a story about how silence works: how a line that once carried a clear, coercive meaning can become a cheerful chorus, its origins buried under decades of forgetting.

The kitchen remains. Dinah remains. The “someone” remains. What changed was not the lyric, but the culture's willingness to remember what the lyric originally meant. “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” is no longer a standard classroom song in most American schools, though it was a staple of elementary music education for decades. Now it’s a quiet cultural phase‑out. It wasn’t banned like so many books containing Black history. It faded steadily, driven by updated curricula, changing norms, and growing awareness of the song’s minstrel‑era origins.

When it comes to America, racism is so pervasive that you can lift any stone and find it. A prime example is political discourse, which is often so reactionary that it exposes prejudicial attitudes and beliefs people would otherwise keep under lock and key. Take, for instance, President Trump, who shared a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama, the former president and first lady, as great apes. He faced criticism, and rightfully so, yet fewer condemn racism when it comes from the left or the center of the political spectrum. If you want to clean a house, you can’t ignore the corners, the dirt under the rug, or the dust on the ceiling fan and blinds.

A recent example would be journalist Rula Jebreal, a prominent voice on the left, calling House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a “monkey” while speaking as a guest on Wajahat Ali’s podcast, The Left Hook. While the comment arose as she expressed frustration over Democratic representatives accepting money from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and homing in on Jeffries due to his position of power within the Democratic Party, referring to a Black man as subhuman was just as racist as Trump sharing a video of the former president and first lady as apes. Political ideology is not a shield for prejudice. Yet many believe it is.

Also, those in the center benefit from the presumption that they’re more reasonable in social matters. Yet in America, a country still grappling with its legacy of racism, the middle of the road often upholds racism. For instance, when Black activists and others pointed out that a centrist, John Fetterman, then a Democratic candidate in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania, once held an unarmed Black man, Christopher Miyares, at gunpoint, their arguments were seen as irrelevant. Many compared this case to that of Ahmad Aurbery, a Black man killed after White men wrongfully accused him of breaking into homes while he was jogging. Nevertheless, Fetterman became a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.

Calling out racism on the right is like calling water wet. In other words, it’s an easy target, especially in an era where conservatives are using legislation to limit or prohibit the inclusion of Black historical narratives in the classroom and remove museum exhibits that expose the nation’s ties to slavery. But the presence of racism on the political right doesn’t mean that prejudice exists only in these explicit examples, or that those on this side of the aisle are the only ones capable of expressing hatred, disdain, or prejudice for Black people. While racism manifests differently throughout the political spectrum, it’s never been isolated to one side.

Surely those acquainted with our nation’s history will know that even Northern Union soldiers during the Civil War, those believed to be anti-slavery, were known to have expressed prejudice against Black soon-to-be Americans. For instance, one of the bloodiest civil disruptions in our nation’s history occurred in New York in 1863. Tens of thousands of White men participated in riots to protest the draft to fight against the Confederacy. Many expressed frustration that they’d be made to fight in a conflict wealthy people could opt out of, and news spread that the war could liberate millions of enslaved Black people. Abraham Lincoln, the president at the time, had to send at least 4,000 federal troops to fight mobs in the streets and quell the violence.

During the New York riots, Williams Jones, an innocent Black man, was beaten to death, hanged under a lamppost, and burned so badly that his only identifying feature was the loaf of bread he was trying to carry home. Americans tend to flatten historical and present-day narratives in a way that has limited our collective ability to call out inconvenient stories about racism. The image of Northerners lynching Black people may shock those who are taught that only those south of the Mason-Dixon line are capable of racism. And there are many other historical examples, such as Union soldiers drowning hundreds of Black refugees in the Ebenezer Creek in December of 1864. But by now you should get the point. Racism is not limited to any political side, and it never has been.

Anna Kasparin, a prominent voice on the left, recently referred to Jeffries as “scum,” asking whether, instead of calling Jeffries a monkey, the black community would prefer Jebreal to use the term “political prostitute” as a criticism of Democratic officials taking money in exchange for supporting Israel, despite human rights violations the country has committed against Palestinian people. In defense of someone she politically aligns with, she referred to those Jebreal called a Black man a monkey as “race vultures” and told them to shut up. How is this any different from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other conservatives condemning “identity politics,” and arguing they’d never surrender to the “woke mob”? If there’s one thing, White Americans on the left and right seem to agree on, it’s that Black people should shut up when it comes to race and racism.

The irony of the critique from the left is that we have great Black leaders such as Bernice King, the daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta Scott King, who have demonstrated how someone can call out the injustices in the Middle East without straying from her condemnation of racism within the United States. She argued that her father “would call for Israel’s bombing of Palestinians to cease” and for “hostages to be released,” promoting peace as he was known for. She shared this perspective after a comedian, a White woman named Amy Schumer, attempted to use her father’s speeches to support the current actions of Israel. While condemning antisemitism, Bernice King called out the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians and never stopped advocating for Black Americans in the process.

Some will likely excuse Jebreal calling a Black person a monkey, as if she was at a fever pitch of disappointment with their general political stance on Palestinians, but this is disingenuous. Black people have a long history of acknowledging the injustices Palestinians have endured. Indeed, Nelson Mandela, a South African leader known for his anti-apartheid movement, suggested in 1997 that the Israeli government was “slaughtering defenseless and innocent Arabs in occupied territories,” arguing “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.” In doing so, he explicitly connected the plight of Black people in South Africa to those living in Gaza. And in the modern era, the Black Lives Matter organization stated that they “we know occupation, we know state-sanctioned violence, and we know what it means to be dehumanized by a heavily militarized police force. The fight for Palestinian liberation is a fight for global Black liberation.” Surely those on the left wouldn’t have anything negative to say about these individuals or this organization. But if you only refrain from racism against those who share your worldview, you were never anti-racist to begin with.

Despite many Black Americans disagreeing with the political ideology of those on the far right, such as Clarence Thomas, a Black man who used his authority on the Supreme Court to diminish the fight for civil rights, or Stephen A Smith, a political pundit who often sides with the conservative interpretation of current events, you’d be hard pressed to find many Black people who would cosign a White liberal, leftist, centrist, or progressive calling these men monkeys or apes. And the same would go for Black women on the right, such as Candace Owens. Racism is wrong no matter who espouses it or the political beliefs of their target. Sadly, it seems a lot of White and racially ambiguous people don’t seem to grasp this nuance, and as a result, see racism as a weapon to use against those whom they disagree with, rather than something to universally show disdain for. You can’t be a trustworthy ally when racism lies dormant within you.

Sadly, White folks on the Left seem to use racism as a weapon whenever a Black person disagrees with them. If Jefferies declined money from AIPAC, the same foolish people calling him a monkey would be praising him. This exposes a deep-seated problem, as Black people seem to have very few true allies, just folks who use our plight to advance themselves politically and then disregard us when it’s not convenient or advantageous. There’s nothing wrong with folks on the Left calling out those in the center for supporting Israel despite the nation’s human rights violations; after all, it’s estimated that 64,000 children have been killed or suffered severe injuries in Gaza since 2023, and many more have endured life-threatening malnutrition and disease. But racist bullying is not the path forward.

And even when Black Americans make some progress by calling out racism on the Left, some try to use this as a gotcha moment against that side of the political aisle more broadly, to argue that those on the left are even more racist than those on the right. But making that claim is inaccurate, as Theodore R. Johnson pointed out in the Brennan Center, “study after study has shown that people who voted for Donald Trump had higher levels of racial resentment than those who did not.” Discussing this quantitatively is only part of the equation. Racism exists throughout the political spectrum — the right, left, and center. Your political ideology will not save you from prejudice, nor does being a liberal mean you’re above the fray.

Remember, in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, he famously called out racism from the center. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” There are White folks in this country who claim to be against racism but, in reality, hate it when discussions about racism are raised.

Even many White people who are not overtly racist seem to squirm in their seats at the mention of race, condemn discussions about prejudice as “identity politics,” and want the rhetoric to quiet down rather than for us to find workable solutions to the prejudice that permeates our society. Many Democrats, including those who consider themselves more progressive-leaning and those in the center, supported a holiday honoring Charlie Kirk, a white supremacist who referred to the Civil Rights Act as a mistake. While not as explicit as portraying a Black person as a primate, it achieves the same end. After all, Kirk suggested Black pilots were unfit to fly and that Black women in positions of authority took their spot from a White man, cosigning a white supremacist worldview.

As a Black person in America, it is utterly exhausting to see people use racism as a gotcha moment to make one another look bad rather than truly confronting the problem we face. Someone on the left calling a Black person a monkey is just as offensive as someone on the right portraying Black people as apes. And those in the center who turn a blind eye to racism, such as Fetterman’s decision to hold an unarmed Black man at gunpoint, or those who cosigned a holiday that elevates a white supremacist as an American hero, are also guilty.

When it comes to racism, America’s political home is dirty, with dust in the corners, on the fan, and on the baseboards. The windows are smudged, and it’s clear the dog tracked mud onto the kitchen floor tiles. And even the guest room has hidden dirt underneath the rug. There is no political safe space, nowhere entirely clean from anti-Black racism. Beware, because there are actually more Americans willing to claim they’re anti-racist than are actually aligned with this worldview, who want you to think the home is clean, even though it’s not. Rather than denying the pervasive nature of racism, we should grab a bucket and a mop, and yes, the duster, to rid ourselves of this filth whenever and wherever it is found.

On the morning of May 16, people knelt to pray on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. It was already warm, the Alabama heat that settles in by nine and does not lift. Faith leaders went first, their voices carrying over the rail and out over the brown water. Then everyone rose and crossed the bridge. Sixty years earlier, on that same span, a state trooper cracked John Lewis’s skull for the crime of asking to vote. That afternoon, fifty-four miles east, the crowd filled the steps of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery, the city the 1965 marchers had been reaching when the troopers turned them back. In 2026 they came for the reason Lewis came the first time. They had gutted the right again, and they would not let it go quietly.

Ten weeks later, on July 24, a three-judge federal panel looked at a congressional map that slices Black Memphis into three pieces and let it stand for the 2026 elections. The judges did not rule the map fair. After Louisiana v. Callais, they ruled that fairness is no longer a question you can ask.

It wasn’t our lawyers’ fault we lost Tennessee. The ACLU got involved. The NAACP submitted its filing. And the Legal Defense Fund represented the Memphis Urban League. Kathryn Sadasivan from the Legal Defense Fund nailed it, saying it’s both shameful and illegal because it splits Black voters into three districts to boost white political power. The court listened to the whole thing and went ahead with the primary map. The Supreme Court’s April decision disabled the tools we’ve used to stop this for six decades.

Callais came down 6 to 3 on April 29. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act could not justify Louisiana's drawing a second Black district, and that Black participation had equalized sufficiently to make that district unnecessary. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, wrote that the decision leaves Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” She was not being dramatic. She was reading the room. Within weeks, Tennessee cracked Memphis, South Carolina Republicans went after Jim Clyburn’s seat, and Louisiana was told to erase the district an 88-year-old named Press Robinson had spent years defending in court.

So here is the verdict, and I want it plain. If you are waiting for a judge to save these seats before November, stop waiting. The judge is not coming. Damon Hewitt of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said Callais unleashed “a race to discriminate.” He is right, and the finish line is the 2026 midterm. The only thing standing between that map and the result it was drawn to produce is turnout. Ours.

We already have the proof, and it is not from a courtroom. In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp called a special session in June to redraw the map the way Tennessee did. It ran from June 17 to June 23, and for those seven days thousands of voters filled the Capitol. They signed up to testify. With the hallways packed, there was no space left for the bill to be routed quietly. They made the political cost of the vote higher than the reward, and the session ended with no new map.

The Legal Defense Fund credited the win to increased turnout in Georgia’s primary and runoff elections and the overwhelming resistance from voters. Not a ruling. People in a building, refusing to leave. In South Carolina, the state Senate killed the push to erase Clyburn’s district on May 26, blocked by Republicans in their own chamber who did not want their names on it. Two maps went down this cycle, and voters took down both.

That is the whole argument. When we show up in numbers a legislature cannot ignore, the map does not get drawn. When we sit it out and trust the process, the map runs. Leon Russell, who chairs the national NAACP, gave the reason in one sentence: “They are redrawing the lines because they know what happens when we vote together.” They are not confused about the power we wield. They are afraid of it. The cracking is a confession.

The people doing the work already understood this, and they did not wait for permission. Black Voters Matter ran a “We Got Us” tour across Alabama in mid-May, the same week as the Selma march, and put out plain-language reports breaking down exactly what Callais does to every district it touches. Cliff Albright and his organizers are not filing briefs and hoping. They are on the ground. In July, the “Good Trouble Lives On” weekend turned three days into voter registration aimed straight at the midterm. That is not nostalgia. That is a machine restarting.

Georgia had to rebuild while the fight was live. The New Georgia Project, which registered close to half a million voters over a decade, shut down this year under financial trouble and a state ethics fine. That would have gutted a weaker movement.

Instead, the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda under Helen Butler held registration on pace with a normal cycle, the Georgia NAACP under Gerald Griggs leaned on a hundred years of practice, and the national NAACP put one million dollars into Georgia turnout for 2026, double what it spent in 2024 and in 2020. One door closed. They walked through three more.

When we reach the polls, people are waiting to protect the vote itself. The Election Protection Coalition relaunched on May 18 and runs the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline in English, Spanish, Arabic, and several Asian languages, with poll monitors and lawyers sent to the places most likely to turn a voter away.

The Lawyers’ Committee, the National Bar Association, and the National Urban League staff it together. In Louisiana, groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center funds through its Vote Your Voice program are expanding right now. Norris Henderson’s organization, Voice of the Experienced, is registering people with felony convictions who thought their vote was gone for good. Women With a Vision doubled its canvassers from thirty to sixty. Nobody is standing down.

The record is being kept for the long fight, too. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, whose voting-rights chief counsel Jeff Loperfido has worked these Louisiana maps for years, filed historical briefs in Callais arguing the second Black district was a real community with a real past, not a line drawn only by race. In May, the group joined other Southern organizations behind a plain declaration, Southern Communities Unite Against Attempts to Undermine Black and Brown Political Power. That fight will outlast this election. This election will not wait for it.

I spent 23 years in the Air Force. I deployed to Desert Storm, to Bosnia, to Kosovo, and to Haiti. I took an oath to a Constitution, not to a party and not to a man, and part of what that Constitution promises is that my vote and my neighbor’s vote count the same. Black Louisianans were told by the court this spring that the promise comes with an expiration date. I will not pretend that did not land hard. That’s the deal.

But I know the difference between a setback and a defeat. A setback is when they take a tool. A defeat is when you put down the work. We have not put it down. And we can’t afford to, even when some have fallen victim to misinformation, confusion, and political high jinx.

November 3 is the test. Every cracked district still has voters inside it, and a cracked map counts the same ballots as a clean one when enough of those ballots show up. Memphis is still there. Clyburn’s district is still standing. Georgia held the line in a hallway. The courts have told us plainly that they will not carry us across this one. Fine. We have carried ourselves before, from that bridge in Selma to a governor’s session in Atlanta this summer, and we will do it again. Register the surrounding people. Check your own registration twice, because they are counting on you to assume it is fine. Save the number: 866-OUR-VOTE. Vote knowing that the map is rigged, as it is, and that they cannot circumvent your turnout. Because it is. Our turnout. Your vote.

Apologies to Frederick Douglass for paraphrasing the title of his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” As was the case with the Fourth of July holiday, Black people didn’t share equally in the holiday’s creation.

We start with the origin of Labor Day. The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. It was organized by the Central Labor Union, which later evolved into the AFL-CIO. Between 10,000 and 20,000 members marched through lower Manhattan in a parade celebrating the contribution of labor in building America. Labor Day celebrations spread quickly through America. At the same time, labor strikes, organized opposition, and violence against workers occurred.

On May 3, 1886, Chicago police killed and wounded several workers at the McCormick Reaper Works. Six workers were killed when police attacked unarmed strikers. German immigrant August Spies immediately published a “Workingmen, to Arms” leaflet in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, an anarchist newspaper he edited. A demonstration protesting the killings by police was organized for the following evening at Haymarket Square on Desplaines Street.

Violence erupted again; this time, a bomb was thrown, killing seven police officers and one civilian. Several others were injured during the altercation, and retribution against labor leaders occurred nationwide. Labor leaders were arrested without cause, and in August 1886, eight men, including Spies, were convicted for the deaths of the seven police officers, though none were directly tied to the bombing. Seven men were sentenced to death, and the other was given 15 years in prison. Four were hanged on November 11, 1887, and another committed suicide on the eve of this execution. The other three had their sentences commuted to life sentences and were ultimately pardoned in 1893 after public questions about their guilt.

Haymarket Riot — Square, Definition & 1886 | HISTORY

The union involved in the Haymarket Riot was the Knights of Labor (KOL), then the largest labor union in America. The union initially excluded Blacks and women, but eventually opened its doors after management used that against them in negotiations. By 1886, 10% of the union’s 750,000 members were Black people and women. The preferences of the employer could sway their support of Black members. If they didn’t want Black employees, Black union members didn’t get work. In the South, in some industries, the union was mainly Black. In 1887, 10,000 Black workers, many of whom belonged to the KOL, participated in a strike against the sugar industry in Louisiana. Workers were not paid in cash but in “scrip,” only usable at the company-owned stores; they wanted to be paid in cash, asking for $1.25 daily.

African Americans and the American Labor Movement | National Archives

Governor Samuel McEnery sent the state’s all-white militia to quash the strike; they sought out Black leaders, pulling them from their homes and shooting them. Estimates range from 60 to over 100 Black people killed for being part of the labor movement. John DeSantis, absolutely no relation to the current governor of Florida, began writing about the Thibodaux Massacre, about which little was known, in his book, “The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike.” People questioned why he was covering the material.

“I’ve been asked on more than one occasion, ‘Why do you want to rehash all this?’ And my response has always been because it was never hashed to begin with.” — John DeSantis

‘We have to tell that story’: 1887 Thibodaux Massacre descendants learn of their dark, hidden history.

Despite the massacre of Black union members in Louisiana, the labor movement was growing. Unions weren’t always open to including minorities. The KOL allowed segregated unions in the South once they admitted Blacks at all. The KOL and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) lobbied Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Unions didn’t limit themselves to passing legislation. In Seattle, KOL-led mobs rounded up Chinese immigrants. They told their members where they stood on Chinese laborers in San Francisco. Still, Labor Day celebrations spread across America, with labor leaders clamoring for national recognition.

“They bear the semblance of men but live like beasts…who eat rice and the offal of the slaughterhouse.” — San Francisco KOL

The event that directly led to Labor Day becoming a national holiday was the Pullman Strike of 1894. Workers were dissatisfied after the Panic of 1893 weakened the economy, leading to layoffs at the Pullman factory. Workers were still responsible for full rent to company-owned housing and attempted to organize into the American Railway Union (ARU). The Pullman company fought back and thwarted the initial effort to organize. When the strike against the factory failed, the ARU led a boycott against all trains using Pullman cars. Train service was significantly reduced west of Detroit. More than 250,000 workers were involved in 27 states. Other labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor (AFL), opposed the boycott because the ARU was pulling from their membership.

Violence broke out, with over 30 people killed in Chicago alone and 40 others killed nationwide. The railroads hired strikebreakers, many African Americans, to protect those willing to break the picket lines, often setting up confrontations between Black and white groups. The Pullman Company was one of the largest private employers of Black men, the Pullman porters, but Black people weren’t allowed into the union or on the picket lines. They were, however, unemployed due to the strike. The Pullman porters organized their own union in 1925, led by A. Phillip Randolph. My grandfather was a Pullman porter.

Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class: NPR

The Pullman boycott hurt America’s economy, and the federal government intervened. The railroad workers were ordered back to work by President Grover Cleveland. The ARU, led by Eugene V. Debs, ignored the injunction against the strike.

“Strong men and broad minds only can resist the plutocracy and arrogant monopoly. Do not be frightened at troops, injunctions, or a subsidized press. Quit and remain firm. Commit no violence. American Railway Union will protect all, whether member or not when strike is off.”-Eugene Debs

Debs initially thought the federal troops were coming to maintain the peace as protests continued. The troops were there to get the trains running, which they did by any means necessary. Twelve thousand soldiers worked city by city to restore service, killing 30 workers and wounding 57. When the strike ended in 1894, President Cleveland announced the Labor Day holiday to appease organized labor. You might see the similarity in the sudden proclamation of a Juneteenth holiday following the protests after the release of the George Floyd video in 2020.

The Juneteenth Federal Holiday Only Exists Because Of The George Floyd Protests | by William Spivey | Momentum

There is uncertainty about whether Peter McGuire of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, or machinist Matthew Maguire, proposed the first Labor Day holiday. There is no question that the holiday, which is now an excuse to hold picnics and barbecues and the date used to stop wearing white, has a legacy of violence and racism that should be recalled. Enjoy the festivities and a day off if you’re fortunate enough to have one. Remember those who died for an eight-hour day to be paid in cash instead of scrip, worthless outside the company store. Don’t ignore states like Arkansas that are loosening child labor laws and the attacks on unions nationwide.

While Black men and women were sometimes on the sidelines of the labor movement, they were always affected. More than any other group, they were the victims when considering those killed in the Thibodaux Massacre. Food for thought.

The simplest explanation for why dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese cities was not considered a war crime in 1945 is that the people dropping the bombs were the same people defining the rules. The United States and its Allies controlled the legal framework, wrote the postwar tribunals, and shaped the narrative of what constituted lawful conduct. Hiroshima was not prosecuted as a war crime because the laws of war at the time did not prohibit bombing cities, no rules existed regarding nuclear weapons, the Allies themselves had normalized mass incendiary bombing, and the U.S. framed the attack as militarily necessary. Under the legal standards of 1945, the bombings fit within the accepted logic of total war.

Americans often hear more about Hiroshima than Nagasaki, perhaps because Hiroshima is easier to justify within the simplified narrative that “two bombs ended the war.” But the historical reality is far more complex. The United States originally planned to drop three atomic bombs on Japan and had a production schedule for ongoing nuclear strikes as soon as each bomb became available. Manhattan Project records show that Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, Fat Man on Nagasaki on August 9, and a third Fat Man–type bomb was scheduled for August 19. General Leslie Groves and General Thomas Farrell confirmed that the third bomb’s core was already being assembled. If Japan had not surrendered, the United States planned to drop it as soon as weather and delivery crews allowed.

A Planned Nuclear Campaign, Not Two Isolated Events

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not intended as isolated events. They were meant to be the opening phase of a sustained nuclear bombing campaign. The Manhattan Project’s production pipeline was designed to deliver one bomb every 8–10 days through late summer 1945, increasing to two per month by autumn, and even more once Hanford’s plutonium reactors reached full output. The original target committee listed Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, Nagasaki, and Kyoto — removed only because Secretary of War Henry Stimson insisted. If Japan had not surrendered, Kokura was next, with Niigata also on deck. We might not have wiped Japan off the map, but anything less would be useless for decades.

The Human Toll: What the Bombs Actually Did

The human toll of the bombings was staggering. In Hiroshima, 70,000–80,000 people were killed instantly, most from blast, thermal radiation, or collapsing wooden homes. By the end of 1945, the death toll reached roughly 140,000, including radiation sickness, burns, infections, and delayed injuries. Thousands more died in the late 1940s and 1950s from leukemia, solid cancers, chronic radiation effects, and long-term organ damage. Around 70,000 people were injured.

In Nagasaki, 40,000–45,000 were killed instantly, with the Urakami Valley devastated despite the terrain limiting the blast. By the end of 1945, the death toll reached about 70,000, with thousands more dying in subsequent years from radiation-related cancers, chronic illness, organ failure, and long-term trauma. Roughly 60,000 were injured.

Casualty numbers vary because many victims were incinerated beyond recognition, Japanese wartime records were destroyed, early U.S. estimates undercounted radiation deaths, and later epidemiological studies revised totals upward. The consensus among historians is approximately 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 — figures that represent only the first five months, not the decades of radiation-related mortality that followed. Those bombs didn’t create the largest death toll in Japan in a day. That record belongs to the Tokyo firebombing five months earlier. Find those in a high school textbook.

The Firebombing of Tokyo That Killed Over 100,000 Civilians in One Night | by William Spivey | The Polis | Sep, 2026 | Medium

Why the Bombings Were Legal Then

Neither bombing was considered a war crime because bombing cities with defensive capabilities was legal, and atomic bombs — newly invented — were not on any list of prohibited weapons under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned asphyxiating gas, poison gas, and bacteriological methods of warfare. The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibited expanding “dum-dum” bullets, poisonous gas projectiles, and balloon-launched explosives, but nothing in international law addressed nuclear weapons or the mass firebombing of cities. In short, the rulebook simply did not contemplate the technology that arrived in August 1945.

Why Hiroshima and Nagasaki Would Be Considered War Crimes Today

A Completely Different Legal Landscape

Under modern international law, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would almost certainly be classified as war crimes, and likely crimes against humanity, because the legal framework governing warfare has transformed dramatically since 1945. The most important shift is the development of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) after World War II, especially the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocols, and the evolution of customary international law. These frameworks place strict limits on how states may conduct war, especially regarding civilian protection, proportionality, and the use of indiscriminate weapons.

Indiscriminate Destruction: A Clear Violation Today

Modern law prohibits indiscriminate attacks and the use of any weapon or tactic that cannot distinguish between combatants and civilians. Nuclear weapons, by their nature, obliterate everything within a blast radius, ignite firestorms, and produce radiation that spreads far beyond any military target. The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly stated that nuclear weapons violate the principles of distinction and proportionality because their effects cannot be contained. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both cities with civilian populations far exceeding military ones, and the bombs killed tens of thousands instantly, mostly civilians. Under modern law, this alone would constitute an indiscriminate attack.

Radiation as “Unnecessary Suffering”

Modern law also prohibits weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. Radiation poisoning — slow organ failure, leukemia, chronic cancers, genetic damage — fits squarely within this category. Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered long-term radiation effects for decades, including birth defects in subsequent generations. The Additional Protocols explicitly forbid weapons that cause long-lasting environmental devastation or lingering harm to civilian populations. Nuclear weapons are the textbook example of such harm.

Proportionality and the Question of Military Necessity

Even if one accepts the argument that the bombs shortened the war, the scale of civilian casualties — over 200,000 dead by the end of 1945 — would be considered disproportionate under contemporary standards. The fact that the U.S. planned to drop additional bombs every 8–10 days underscores that the strategy was not narrowly tailored to a specific military objective but part of a broader campaign of coercion through mass destruction.

The Prohibition on Terrorizing Civilians

Modern law prohibits collective punishment and attacks intended to terrorize civilian populations. The atomic bombings were explicitly designed to shock Japan into surrender by demonstrating overwhelming destructive power. Today, such intent would violate prohibitions on terrorizing civilians, which are codified in the Additional Protocols and recognized in customary international law.

The Modern Ban on Nuclear Weapons

Finally, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017) — ratified by more than 90 countries — declares nuclear weapons illegal under international law. While major nuclear powers have not signed it, the treaty reflects a global consensus that nuclear weapons are incompatible with humanitarian principles.

The Bottom Line

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not considered war crimes in 1945 because the legal framework was primitive, incomplete, and written by the victors. Under today’s laws — built from the ashes of the very destruction those bombs caused — the atomic bombings would be unequivocally illegal. One last thing to keep in mind: the bombing of Nagasaki was completely unnecessary. Japan was already negotiating its surrender. The only reason I can think of to go ahead with the bombing was to see which type of nuclear bomb was more powerful for use in the future. Sounds like a war crime to me.

When SpaceXAI/MZX Tech first came to Memphis (2024–2025), the promises were narrow, economic, and framed as “innovation,” with no community‑benefit commitments. At the time of its construction, Elon Musk’s Colossus I and II complex was not just the largest AI data center in America — it was the largest in the world, operating at a scale multiple times greater than any other known facility.

SpaceXAI spoke almost exclusively to economic‑development officials, TVA leadership, and city/county administrators, and framed the project as a clean‑energy, innovation‑driven economic win, even though the underlying plans already depended on methane turbines. The company’s early conversations emphasized “high‑tech jobs,” “economic transformation,” and Memphis becoming a “national AI hub,” but they never provided hiring numbers, workforce guarantees, or community‑benefit commitments.

When speaking with TVA, SpaceXAI framed the project as a next‑generation microgrid “powered by solar and batteries,” promising minimal strain on the regional grid and portraying the turbines as temporary, reliability‑focused generators rather than the continuous power source they actually became.

As the turbines were added, the company’s messaging to officials shifted: SpaceXAI described them as “temporary backup generation,” insisted they were part of a futuristic microgrid, and avoided public disclosure entirely. There were no community meetings, no environmental impact statements, no notification to nearby neighborhoods. Once emissions were detected and the NAACP lawsuit emerged, SpaceXAI reframed its conversations with federal agencies around national security, arguing that the turbines powered defense‑critical AI workloads and that any interruption would harm U.S. capabilities. Throughout these interactions, the company never offered mitigation, monitoring, or community protections; it consistently framed the benefits as economic uplift and technological prestige, while downplaying, obscuring, or recasting the costs as patriotic necessity.

In its April 14, 2026 lawsuit, the NAACP asked the federal court to immediately halt SpaceXAI’s operation of the 27 unpermitted methane‑gas turbines at the Colossus II site, arguing that the continuous emissions violated the Clean Air Act and posed a direct health threat to nearby Black neighborhoods. The complaint requested an injunction forcing SpaceXAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech to cease all turbine activity until proper permits, environmental reviews, and emissions‑control systems were in place. The NAACP also sought civil penalties for each day of unlawful operation, court‑ordered monitoring of air quality around the Whitehaven and Tulane Road corridors, and a mandate requiring SpaceXAI to disclose all future energy‑generation plans to the community and regulators before construction. Finally, the suit asked the court to recognize that the company’s actions constituted environmental discrimination, given that the turbines were placed adjacent to majority‑Black neighborhoods without notice, hearings, or mitigation — a pattern the NAACP argued mirrored historic environmental injustice in Memphis.

The neighborhoods where Musk placed Colossus I and II already had some of the highest industrial‑pollution cancer risks in the country — the result of decades of refineries, chemical plants, diesel corridors, and environmental neglect. The data centers didn’t create the crisis; they added new emissions to a community already living in one.

Neither Elon Musk nor SpaceX/xAI ever issued a public statement about the NAACP lawsuit or the environmental harm caused by the unpermitted turbines. Instead, the company remained silent while the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense intervened on its behalf, framing the operation as a national security matter.

DOJ’s position

• Asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely
• Argued that citizen groups should not be allowed to sue if the executive branch objects
• Claimed the turbines were essential to the economy and U.S. military
• Never disputed that the turbines were illegal or harmful

DoD’s position

• Claimed xAI’s Grok Gov model was used in active military targeting and intelligence operations
• Warned that shutting down the turbines would harm national security
• Framed the data center as essential to classified military workloads

I’ll sum up their arguments by saying, “The government doesn’t care if people in Black neighborhoods suffer or die, because the project was too important!”

Residents reported worsening breathing problems, more frequent asthma flare‑ups, and a constant low‑grade fear that the invisible emissions were compounding an already dangerous environment. Compounding the physical impact was the psychological one: the turbines arrived without notice, without community meetings, and without mitigation, reinforcing a familiar pattern in Memphis where industrial decisions are made over the heads of the people most affected. The result is a community living with both the measurable health risks of increased pollution and the emotional toll of being treated as expendable in the name of technological progress.

Residents near the Colossus I and II sites aren’t just dealing with air pollution — they’re living inside a full spectrum of environmental stressors that touch their bodies, their bills, and their daily peace. The methane‑gas turbines SpaceXAI installed without permits produce a constant mechanical roar, a low‑frequency vibration that residents describe as “a jet engine that never turns off.” That noise isn’t just irritating; it disrupts sleep, heightens stress, and compounds respiratory problems in neighborhoods already carrying one of the highest industrial‑pollution cancer risks in the country. On top of that, the turbines’ massive power draw has strained the local grid, prompting TVA to build new substations and upgrade transmission lines, costs that historically get passed on to ratepayers. Memphis residents have already seen utility bills rise in recent years, and the fear is that the data‑center load will push rates even higher, effectively making the community subsidize the pollution harming them. Taken together, the impact is layered: louder nights, dirtier air, higher bills, and the familiar sense that the people living closest to the turbines are paying the price for a project that never asked for their consent.

The federal government never disputed the environmental harm to Memphis residents. Instead, the Department of Justice argued that citizens should not be allowed to sue at all, and the Defense Department claimed the turbines were essential to national‑security operations. In effect, the government defended the data center’s operation — not the health of the community living beside it.

If the Memphis data centers were proposed today, the surrounding neighborhoods would receive protections that were completely absent when Colossus I and II were built. Modern projects are expected to negotiate binding Community Benefits Agreements that guarantee air-quality monitoring, noise-mitigation requirements, limits on turbine use, and full public disclosure of all on-site energy sources. Communities now demand independent environmental‑justice reviews, mandatory public hearings, and real‑time emissions dashboards funded by the developer. Utilities typically require rate‑stabilization agreements so residents aren’t stuck subsidizing massive industrial loads. In short, a project of this scale today would come with enforceable safeguards and community investments, the very protections Memphis never got.

But suppose a city had all these supposed protections, and pollution was found anyway, electric and water rates increased, or cancer levels rose? What recourse does a community have? We’ve seen what the government allows in Memphis, giving zero f**ks about the residents, and Memphis is a large city. In retrospect, the government recently flooded some of those same neighborhoods during the Trump administration’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit” and its successor programs, which poured hundreds of federal agents — including FBI, ATF, DEA, and U.S. Marshals — into the city. Maybe your community will be treated better, but can you count on it?

Donald Trump chimed in this week:

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” — Donald Trump

One reason might be that a community's citizens could get cancer, pay more for utilities, and suffer endless noise like a jet engine. There’s that. The Community Benefits Agreements now accompanying most new data centers offer little comfort if, when a community experiences harm, the government turns its back. If you don’t believe the will, ask Memphis. The United States government was aided and abetted by state governments in Tennessee and Mississippi, along with local governments that saw only dollar signs.

Every community should be wary of data centers — not because of what companies say, but because of what they’ve already done. They’ve installed turbines without permits, polluted Black neighborhoods, spiked utility bills, dodged accountability, and let the federal government fight their battles while residents choke on the fallout. The industry keeps promising innovation, but its track record is extraction. Until data‑center operators prove they can build without sacrificing the people living next door, skepticism isn’t negativity; it’s survival. Until you do right by Memphis. . .

Two questions I would want answers to from the government.

1. What will you do if things go wrong?
2. What did you do for Memphis?

In America, many people live under bridges and underpasses, without a home to keep themselves cool in the summer or warm in the winter. Sadly, rather than embracing policies that uplift those experiencing extreme poverty, some blame them for their circumstances. And this apathy, like water poured on stone steps, has trickled down into the laws and policies that govern our society. Consider, for instance, that following Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case in which Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of municipalities penalizing people for sleeping in public, numerous cities and states passed punitive measures.

One of the most clear-cut examples is Louisiana’s “Streets to Success Act,” which makes it illegal to camp or sleep on public property. Now, those convicted of breaking this law could face up to six months in jail and a $500 fine. Alternatively, they will be offered court-approved treatment in exchange for the charges being dropped. But as with all deals that sound too-good-to-be-true, there’s a catch. If individuals can’t afford the court-ordered treatment, judges may require them to complete unpaid labor in exchange for these services. That’s right, involuntary servitude in the 21st century.

While many Americans believe slavery was fully abolished in 1865, there’s a loophole in the 13th Amendment that permits involuntary servitude as punishment for those convicted of a crime. Taking full advantage, Southern states quickly passed anti-vagrancy laws that made it a crime not to be working, without any grace period for individuals to move or find a better employer. Black people were targeted under these laws at a disproportionate rate, and once convicted, forced to labor without pay just as they had before. Laws designed to criminalize homelessness are a revival of anti-vagrancy laws popularized during Jim Crow, and the conditions upheld during slavery.

For context, in Louisiana, a state that incarcerates people at a rate that is higher “than any independent democratic country on earth,” Black people are significantly more likely to face incarceration than White people or those of other racial groups. For instance, the Prison Policy Initiative noted that while Black people make up approximately 33% of the state’s demographic makeup, they make up 65% of the prison population. This data points to a system that is not simply over-arresting its citizens but doing so in a way that perpetuates racial disparities. As a result, Black people are more likely to be forced to labor, which is salt in the wound given the state’s legacy of slavery.

Nine states passed ballot measures to amend their state constitutions to completely eliminate the loophole; fifteen states explicitly permit involuntary servitude, and the remaining twenty-six do not mention the loophole in their state constitutions and, as a result, adhere to the federal statute by default. So, while America abolished its race-based, hereditary system of chattel slavery at the end of the Civil War, many are still forced to labor. And that means the work of abolitionists is unfinished business. Several years ago, Louisiana voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have fully closed the loophole in the 13th Amendment that permits involuntary servitude for those convicted of a crime, and lawmakers have seized this opportunity. Despite the fall of the Confederacy and the Jim Crow system, many Black people are still forced to labor.

By punishing homeless people, Louisiana’s legal system is casting blame on individuals for falling on hard times. But when we consider that the minimum wage in the state is $7.25 an hour, the average apartment costs between $1,072-$1,248 a month, and there is a 9- to 47-month wait time to access public housing, it’s clear that systemic factors contribute to homelessness in the Magnolia state, and throughout the country at large. Nowadays, someone typically needs good credit, proof that they make 2–3x the rent, first month’s rent and a deposit, a background check, and approval from a landlord or apartment manager to obtain housing. And Black Americans continue to face racial discrimination as an added burden.

Those enduring homelessness may have less-than-stellar credit, no job or a low-paying one, no savings for move-in costs, or a criminal record that prevents them from obtaining housing. While New Orleans voters passed the Fair Chance Amendment last fall, which prohibits arbitrary discrimination based on someone’s conviction history, this statute applies only to city departments and contractors, not private apartments or landlords. This means that simply by virtue of having a criminal record, someone can be deprived of housing. And if you are caught sleeping in public areas, you can be arrested, fined, or forced into an unpaid labor arrangement for treatment you never asked for. These are just a few examples of how one difficult patch in someone’s life can limit their access to housing.

States and cities fining homeless people is illogical because those who don’t have enough money for a hotel or apartment certainly don’t have funds for fees and fines. If someone cannot afford food, healthcare services, shelter to store their personal items, and to clean themselves, then what makes you think they have anything left to give? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. suggested, “It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.” And that’s exactly what these anti-homeless laws amount to, punishing those who don’t have the means to lift themselves up. If only wealth trickled down like Reagan-era politicians suggested, rather than apathy, we’d be in better shape.

Homelessness cannot be explained solely by personal factors. Indeed, the availability of jobs that pay a living wage, the cost of housing, and other qualifications are societal factors outside their control that may serve as barriers to keeping a roof over their heads. Why does this matter? According to a Sociological Quarterly study, those who believe this is a “structural problem are more likely to favor government action than those believing in individualistic causes (Lee et al., 1992).” This means that those who assume that homeless individuals are solely responsible for their conditions are less likely to embrace compassionate policies that help eliminate homelessness. It’s ironic that some of the same individuals who preach the gospel of individual responsibility, who claim that poor people aren’t working hard enough to improve their lot in life, are abdicating collective responsibility.

Due to widespread apathy, few bat an eye after learning that homeless people will be forced to labor. But in a nation once economically dependent upon slave labor, the progression of events should raise alarm bells. It’s a sign that we need to make progress on the cause of abolition because, in the absence of clarity, states can take advantage of the loophole in the 13th Amendment, much in the same ways that white Southerners did at the dawn of Jim Crow. Those who study this topic will tell you that what Louisiana and other states have done lately isn’t new. Indeed, there are many corporations that financially benefit from the exploitation of Black prison labor. Yet, expanding the population of forced laborers to include homeless individuals only digs a deeper ditch.

Those who see people living under bridges and underpasses, sleeping on park benches, as a problem to be hidden from the prying eyes of tourists or shuttered away behind bars are overlooking their humanity. We mustn’t deny the ways in which our society has perpetuated poverty, particularly among Black people and other racially marginalized groups. In any wealthy nation, homelessness is evidence of corruption, not individual failings. And in America, a country that once economically depended on slavery, forcing impoverished people to labor, should raise alarms. It shows that lawmakers are still looking for exceptions that would allow them to maintain a system of involuntary servitude, rather than fully abolishing an unjust system.

Luis Manuel Aviles Roa was driving his car to the mechanic on August 22 when the Border Patrol pulled him over. Forty-eight years old, Nicaraguan-born, roughly nineteen years in Florida. In his wallet: a driver’s license, a Social Security card, a work permit, and a pending green card. DHS said he had entered the country illegally at some point they could not specify and would remain in ICE custody pending removal. His son Joshua was nine months into a deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the war against Iran, when the call came through.

Joshua Aviles spent nine months on a warship in the Arabian Sea so a government that would not give him a port call could turn around and detain his father in Key West. That is the sentence the Pentagon and DHS need to sit with, not the sanitized one they put out through spokesmen. And this story does not need embellishment to indict the people running it.

I want to be precise here, because precision is the whole argument. Aviles Roa was not deported; he was detained, booked into ICE custody, and released three days later after an immigration judge dismissed the case at his first hearing. DHS has never explained the arrest, and it has never explained the release either. Nobody at that agency has said why a case strong enough to justify holding a deployed sailor’s father in custody collapsed the moment it reached a judge. And that gap, not some manufactured conspiracy, is the scandal. I will not tell you they ordered this as retribution for the growing uproar over conditions aboard the Lincoln. Nobody outside that building knows that, and neither do I. But an administration that spent two straight weeks insisting nothing was mistaken on that ship, then wound up holding the father of one of that ship’s sailors in a detention cell, has spent its own credibility. It does not get to demand the benefit of the doubt it never extended to the families who were begging for answers.

And those families had plenty to be begging about.

The Lincoln left San Diego on November 21 last year for what was supposed to be a seven-month Pacific deployment. It got rerouted into the Middle East, then swallowed whole by Operation Epic Fury and the broader war against Iran. Nine months turned into over 250 consecutive days at sea, with a single overnight stop at Guam in December and a short, restricted resupply call in Oman. A modern record for an American carrier, and not the kind of record anyone in the Navy should want. Roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines lived through it: mold in the showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks at a stretch, mail lost for months, a meal that on bad nights came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. Watchstanders stopped at least one sailor from going over the side. About 200 relatives confronted acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao at a San Diego town hall and told him, to his face, that leadership had broken trust with them.

Here is how the chain of command answered that. Central Command called the reporting false; Admiral Brad Cooper toured the ship and called the visit “awe-inspiring”; retired General Jack Keane went on Fox News to call the media reporting “insulting to these troops”; Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the reports had been “completely misrepresented”; and the President, from behind a desk in Washington, called it a “CNN fake report.” That is the institutional response to sailors telling their government they were breaking: deny it, minimize it, and accuse the messengers of disloyalty.

Then Border Patrol pulled a handyperson off the road in Key West.

Call it isolated if you want. The numbers say otherwise. The Associated Press found over fifty parents and spouses of active-duty troops detained since January 2025, at least six of them deported and one who self-deported. Congressional investigators put the number of attempted removals of veterans and their relatives at 282. ICE has arrested sixteen non-citizen service members this fiscal year alone. Nearly fifty thousand foreign nationals are serving in the active and reserve components right now, and the services still recruit them in part by advertising immigration benefits for their families.

For decades, under presidents of both parties, there was a basic, unspoken agreement that you did not go after the mother or father of a deployed rifleman. Nobody voted to end that agreement. It just ended.

DHS’s actual defense, when pressed on the Aviles case, was that “military service by an immediate relative does not automatically grant parole, lawful status, or immunity from immigration enforcement.” That is technically true, and it is also a dodge. Military parole in place exists precisely for cases like this one: a discretionary benefit USCIS created specifically for parents, spouses, and children of active-duty troops, granted on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons. Nobody is asking for a free pass. The question is whether an agency holding that discretion arrested the father of a man fighting an active war on his country’s behalf. Call it enforcement without judgment. The difference matters more than the press release admits.

Now set that next to what the Navy has reportedly been doing with a hull number.

CNN and NBC News, citing officials familiar with internal discussions, reported that the Navy has been weighing whether to strip the name Doris Miller from the future aircraft carrier CVN-81 and replace it with Donald Trump’s. The Pentagon says it has nothing to announce. Officials have reportedly stopped calling the ship the USS Doris Miller internally and now refer to it only by hull number. Miller’s own family found out from the news. Great-nephew Thomas Bledsoe told CNN it was “quite a shock” that nobody at the Navy had told them.

Doris “Dorie” Miller was a mess attendant on the USS West Virginia, one of the only jobs the segregated Navy of 1941 would let a Black sailor hold. On December 7, when the bombs started falling at Pearl Harbor, he helped carry Captain Mervyn Bennion, mortally wounded on the bridge, through the oily smoke to a sheltered spot on the deck behind the conning tower. Amidst the attack, two officers trained him on a fifty-caliber Browning machine gun, which he then operated and fired until his ammunition was depleted. He became the first Black American awarded the Navy Cross. Two years later, he was dead, killed when a Japanese torpedo sank the USS Liscome Bay out from under him. He was twenty-four years old.

In January 2020, under this same president in his first term, the Navy announced that CVN-81 would carry Miller’s name: the first aircraft carrier ever named for a Black American, the first ever named for an enlisted sailor’s valor instead of an officer’s rank. That announcement happened at Pearl Harbor, on purpose, on a day meant to mean something. Taking his name off that ship to put a living politician’s name on it would not just be an insult to one family’s memory. It would tell every enlisted sailor on every ship in the fleet exactly where they rank against the man in the Oval Office.

This would not even be the first name Hegseth’s Pentagon has scrubbed. In June of last year he ordered the Navy to strip Harvey Milk’s name from a fleet oiler and rename it for a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, insisting at the time that the move was about “taking the politics out of ship naming.” Say that line again with CVN-81 in front of you and see if it still holds up.

None of this happened by accident. Navy Secretary John Phelan was fired in April in the middle of the Hormuz blockade; Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore was dismissed after thirty-five years in uniform, with no explanation ever offered; and at least seven Navy officers selected for promotion by their own boards, disproportionately women and minority officers, were blocked outright. This is not a good look at all.

Reporters from the AP, the Times, and Fox News turned in their Pentagon badges rather than sign restrictions a federal judge later ruled unconstitutional, walking out in a line with boxes in their arms rather than sign away the job. Every one of those decisions teaches the same lesson down the chain of command: loyalty runs up, and consequences run down.

The Lincoln finally got a real port call. Thailand, the first week of September, after nine months without one. And it took senators, reporters, and furious military spouses to force it. Senator Richard Blumenthal had already written to Hegseth and Cao in August, demanding to know who authorized each extension of that deployment and why, and asking the harder question beneath it: whether the Navy can sustain this operational tempo at all while this administration keeps choosing new wars to fight. Send the bipartisan delegation Senator Ruben Gallego asked for. Put it on that flight deck. And while it’s there, get three things on the record that the Pentagon and DHS have so far refused to put anywhere near a press release.

Who ordered the arrest of a deployed sailor’s father, and on what evidence, given that a judge threw the case out within hours of booking? A written policy, the kind that used to be understood rather than written, that the immediate family of a deployed service member does not become a target while the service member is standing watch in a combat zone. Secretary Hegseth signed a document confirming that CVN-81 would be commissioned as the USS Doris Miller, without ambiguity.

Joshua Aviles wrote from the deck of that ship that he was still “fighting for a country that has given me everything” when the call came through about his father. He kept his end of the bargain. It is a long pastime for somebody in Washington to keep theirs.

Magneto was right.

In the early 2000s, when I was at an age when I could truly digest and analyze what I was reading, this slogan made its way into my life. I first remember seeing it on a rebellious mutant’s shirt in a comic book. It stuck with me because Magneto was the bad guy.

He was the bad guy in the video games. He was the bad guy in the cartoon. He was the bad guy in the movie. He was the bad guy in most of the comics I owned. How was he right?

Writing relatable villains is nothing new. I remember plenty of people saying Thanos had the right idea. In some cases, the villains are so relatable the writers force them into more heroic roles. This isn’t exactly the case with Magneto.

The state of the world needs Magneto to be a hero.

Most casual readers probably know Magneto best as Sir Ian McKellen from the X-Men movies, and with a new season of the animated series airing now and new movies on the horizon, this felt like the right time to discuss the complex character.

Magneto is a comic book villain published by Marvel Comics and created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to fight the X-Men. If you asked Stan Lee, he would claim Magneto was Malcolm X to Professor Xavier’s Martin Luther King Jr.

If anyone reads the comics from the 60s, this is a reductive statement for two complex historical figures. For the most part, Xavier is a traditional hero of the time, sending teenagers out to fight villains. Magneto’s goal is to disrupt the system, the most villainous act of the time, but he is presented as nothing more than a moustache twirling cliche with no redeeming qualities.

The X-Men comics actually failed and were cancelled for several years until Chris Claremont took over the book in the 70s. He is the one who adds the additional layers to Magneto.

Magneto grows closer to Malcolm X once Claremont is in charge. His villain of the week antics and monologues are replaced with nuance and sympathy. Magneto was revealed as a Holocaust survivor in the early 80s, creating a direct parallel to the way mutants and Jewish people were treated.

In God Loves, Man Kills, around the same time, we see Magneto mourn for murdered Black children who also happened to be mutants. Events like this led to the mutant metaphor becoming a popular phrase. In short, it describes how the mutants in these stories represent different minority groups.

Magneto experienced a genocide, had his daughter killed by a racist mob, and still watches oppressed groups suffer in modern times. Suddenly, his desire to tear down the system becomes more reasonable. By the end of Claremont’s run, Magneto was even teaching students and had basically replaced Professor Xavier. However, against Claremont’s wishes, Marvel wanted the old Magneto back.

The X-Men needed a bad guy, and no one was quite like Magneto. For the next few decades, there was a power struggle behind the scenes. I’ve seen new readers confused about Magneto’s alliance. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Truly, it is dependent on how the writers and editors view the past material and the world.

Most people consider Chris Claremont the most important writer in X-Men history, but many people say Grant Morrison is a close second.

Ironically, Claremont and Morrison have opposing views on Magneto.

“What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he’s just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear at this time,” -Grant Morrison.

This is a fair take, especially if one looks at Magneto from the 60s and his return to the dark side in the 90s. Morrison started his run on New X-Men in 2001, and from the start, he knew he would end with what he considered to be the definitive Magneto story, the final Magneto story.

Magneto poses as a character named Xorn, hiding in plain sight among the X-Men. In this run, he breaks Xavier’s spine, enslaves New York City, threatens to destroy the human race, and fatally injures an X-man before being stopped.

Magneto had killed plenty of people before this moment, but this escalated his villainy to a degree unlike anything readers had seen. Even then, some would argue he was driven to insanity when 16 million mutants were killed on Genosha, and he started taking a new drug.

Of course, Morrison makes it clear that there is no real excuse for these horrific acts. It is true, and Marvel also knew it was true.

Once Morrison left, Chris Claremont returned to write X-Men and immediately retconned Morrison’s story to reveal that Xorn was actually a real person and only believed he was Magneto. Of course, it doesn’t make sense, but we know how Claremont feels about Magneto.

Is Magneto a freedom fighter or is he a fascist tyrant? For decades, it truly depended on who you asked, but in recent years, the picture is solidifying.

The recent episode of the X-Men animated series has Magneto performing some of the most heroic acts, and he is basically a part of the X-Men at this point despite being depicted with the villains in the introduction.

In recent comics, Magneto is now firmly on the side of the heroes. He sacrificed himself to save the world, even using his powers to stay alive a few extra excruciating moments after having his heart ripped out.

Of course, comic characters do not stay dead, and after facing his sins in the afterlife, he is brought back and currently serves as a leader of the X-Men.

It’ll be hard to go back to Magneto being a villain. The thing Malcolm X and Magneto have most in common is how revolution was once viewed as evil by mainstream society. In the last several years, I’ve spoken to people who thought Malcolm X murdered white people. I know people who still ignore what the Black Panthers really did and stood for because they see them as terrorists.

The narratives the world spun about revolutionaries are the acts Magneto committed in the comics. They could never say that his goal for liberation was villainous, so they presented him as going to the extreme. The way he went about it was villainous.

Other X-Men enemies, like the Mutant Liberation Front, also fall into this category. It isn’t that their goal is wrong, but they should peacefully protest, assimilate, and be sure to clear the streets when good ol’ normal white people approach.

If we look at the world today, we have Nazi-adjacent groups marching through the streets. We have people literally attacking the country in an attempt to destroy democracy. Minority groups are hunted with such inhumanity the real world makes 1960s Magneto look tame, and at least he had a just cause.

There will always be people who call for the X-Men to keep their mouths shut and save the normal people. It is very “shut up and dribble” energy. However, the world has moved past that. We need people to say, not anymore. We need Magneto to be a hero.

I’m in the armpit of summer so the cookouts smoke a-plenty — three weekends straight of graduations and anniversaries. Love and country and a Knicks championship.

I can celebrate more life by just living. I imagine my kin dearly, dollar-winin’ as our days get long and then short again. I see Brooklyn sunrises ruing the feeling that our overall day count also shortened a little.

A while ago, I was in Rahway, New Jersey with my girlfriend’s family. They’re a proud Dominican bunch with jet-fueled Spanish and thick-curled grandmothers. A mean margarita pitcher. Playful jabs with warmth wrapped around.

“I haven’t seen you in forever, mi amor. You got thick! Don’t tell me you hiding a baby under there!”

Then to me: “You know I’m the one who taught her to dress. Don’t let them tell you any different.”

A younger cousin was graduating high school. She calls them all ‘the baby.’ The baby just started sophomore year of college. That baby is driving down from D.C. to finish her med school program. The baby got married and they’re talking about having a baby!

I keep saying these ain’t babies you’re talking about and she resists.

“Everyone under 30 with no kids is a baby,” she says to me.

“But then I can’t tell who it is you’re talking about when we meet your family. One baby is in the military about to do his first tour and one is in fourth grade and starting his own YouTube. Those is different kinda babies, baby,” I say.

But she’s right. The passage of time is cruel and unjust, and I don’t want to imagine any of these younger people enduring the hardships that we start to call life as a means of getting used to it.

The World Cup is on. Uncle is the DJ, and he loves it, but I suspect it keeps him out of the spotlight too, providing the seasonal groove.

“He keeps playing Bel Biv Devoe and this party is more Hector Lavoe, dique!” someone yells. Then he switches it up and he’s dancing by himself a little while the others give him the best possible approval: wordless dancing in the grass out back. Some have taken off shoes and closed eyes to get further into their two-step bag.

I’m one in a quartet of grown men, half of us not really useful in this setting. The women have made the food, set up the tents, chilled the ice, slid the chairs outside, everything. One dad is on the grill, quietly attending to his half of the family, the non-Spanish speaking Black side. DJ has his place, as described. I’m in a frightening purgatory of half-overhearing and roughly translating Dominican Spanish chatter, and bobbing to salseros I don’t know well enough to name. The memories of their tunes not yet ingrained in my hips or feet.

“Do you think your uncle’s family is off in the cut because they don’t speak Spanish?”

I front-load my question.

“They’re just like that,” she says.

“How many of the kids speak it? They’re all second generation at this point. They have each other, I guess.”

“I know the eldest daughter might understand a little, but you’re right they don’t speak it. Trust me though, his family is, like, stone-faced. It gives ‘not my culture’ vibes.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“Fair point but you don’t gotta be sitting around like that,” she offers. I know the discussion is over because we don’t see eye to eye.

I imagine her, who has not yet met my Jamaican family, especially with tongues syruped in patois, folding her body inward, obscuring her light so she doesn’t cross sun rays.

Or, maybe that’s how I’m feeling. Either way, I shut up, which is the best way to enjoy this party.

Soon, the swells of each song support an all-cousin dance break or an all-auntie laugh-scream. The waists are rocking, and the flesh is searing in the midday sun. But no one feels anything, not even the sweat trickling down our spines and into our shorts. Much less the crunch of the dry grass or the barks of dogs.

The story stops there because dancing and smiles and laughter wash out the discomfort of a two-hour commute to the sticks. The fatigue of the NJTransit ride with drunken fans fades. We get back to my place too full, perfumed with charcoal and lover’s fondness.

The following week was more of a heatwave, but with the advantage of our good fortune, my mother’s house to cool us off. I have relatives from Jamaica who go back and forth from the country there to Long Island, New York — the country here, in a sense. The humidity stifles in New York without the sea breeze to relieve the sun’s quick lashes.

Plus, mom’s fridge broke down during an outage the previous day. We took a ride out to pick up forty-pound ice bags. At one point, after assigning pounds to each cooler, shuffling sodas into place, freezing personal spray bottles for the DJ, I laid on a lawn chair with the last of the ice pack on my chest. My locs have grown too long to have even a minute of respite in New York’s highest temps. I begin to shrivel at the first sign of 80-degree weather. I must be put on ice or in a pool or I’ll perish.

But as the dehydration headache set in, and I found my way to the basement den where I could hoard my own ice and plate, I got teary eyed.

I heard the identical laugh-scream rolling in from outside that I’d submitted to at the Dominican party. The air had cooled enough so three generations of women in my tribe were dancing to reggae hits from the 90s. Getting lower and lower and defying space. The religious pair were seated in plastic chairs in long skirts but clapped along. Granny has her shortest haircut but her dress flowed long and wrapped her in wind enough to glue a placid smile on her. She’d been up since 5 a.m. cooking for this moment. (Lord be damned if anyone helps her, she’s getting these pounds of fish fried and pickle-peppered.) I tried grabbing my phone and my other camera but stopped on the staircase instead. The moment was better.

I paused and watched my mother, replenished from seeing her younger sister dance, her cousins mouthing holy curse words, and her mother giggling they’d pulled it off. I froze myself in time to stop guilting over whether I’d done enough or sufficiently taken over this tradition.

They don’t want me taking over yet. They are living their lives just as fully as they had hoped or something close to it. They’re able to understand suffering, under a thick layer of warming Earth or under oppressive regimes, is relative.

We have house and home; we have music and dance. We had those uncles who are now gone for long enough to know they would’ve tapped a foot to this tune.

We had language for each other, for school days past, for dropped plates and melted ice baths from the cooler as the rhythm closed. We had sunglasses and sun dresses, cargo shorts and linen shirts, towels draped over the shoulder.

We had each other. We were a poem, soaking in the last of our flesh, spreading our molecules among millions. We were recipes charred. We were light.

How could anyone write about this, I thought.

I’ve been through Aiken, SC, and never given it a thought. Aiken is in western South Carolina, where you’ll find the University of South Carolina-Aiken and the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum. Founded in 1835, Aiken was named after William Aiken, President of the South Carolina Railroad. Across the state, Aiken also owned the Jehossee Plantation and the entire island it was on. At one time, Aiken owned over 700 enslaved people, which would have made him the 5th largest slaveholder. Slightly ahead of Louisiana Governor John L. Manning (with 670 slaves and a ways ahead of President Thomas Jefferson with 600.

Fourth place belonged to Meridith Calhoun in Louisiana. Third to sugar producer John Burneside, also of Louisiana. Second place went to cotton producer Dr. Stephen Duncan, who owned over 15 plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. First place ostensibly belonged to the “King of the rice planters,” Col. Joshua John Ward, who controlled six large rice plantations in South Carolina. Ward had over 1,100 enslaved people, but they were all outdone by an entity one never thinks of as slaveholders… the railroads.

The railroads owned and/or rented more enslaved people than any of the largest plantations. You’d never know it to read their histories. It’s fairly well known that up to 20,000 Chinese workers made up 90% of the workforce that built the Western railroads. At one time, they were paid $26 a month working six days a week. That compared favorably to the black slaves who built the Southern railroads, many of the trains used to transport enslaved people to southern plantations that were bred on the breeding farms in Richmond, VA, Maryland Eastern Shore, and elsewhere.

America’s Breeding Farms: What History Books Never Told You | by William Spivey | Medium

Rarely mentioned in history books or taught in schools is the fact that slaveowners were the majority shareholders in most of the Southern railroads. William Aiken’s South Carolina Railroad never bragged about it. If you look deeply into their records of financial losses after the Civil War. You’ll find defaulted Confederate Bonds, uncollected transport charges, and 111 emancipated slaves for which they weren’t reimbursed.

“Southerners built some of the earliest and longest railroads in the nation.” — William G. Thomas III.

Professor William G. Thomas III documented the role enslaved people played in building the Southern railroads. He cited historian Theodore Kornweibel, who indicated over 10,000 enslaved people worked on the railroads between 1857–1865. Dr. Mae Gilland Wright estimated the railroads used 15,000 enslaved people in 1860 alone. Many were rented from local plantations, with some doing double duty by harvesting cotton, tobacco, and rice in their day jobs. The work was often dangerous, sometimes involving dynamite to dig tunnels. Slaveowners who leased their slaves often took out insurance as they realized they might not get their slave back healthy or alive.

Railroads and the Making of Modern America

The legend of John Henry told of an ex-slave who was pitted in a steel-driving race against a steam-powered machine. John Henry won the race but died afterward after his heart gave out from stress. Accounts vary about whether this was a true story, and one version places the contest in Talcott, West Virginia, after slavery ended. Henry was a convict who was leased out to the railroads to do their bidding. Only the name changed once slavery ended. The new owners who rented out slaves were the state and federal prisons. The more modern chain gangs and current road crews, or in some cases prisoners serving as firefighters, are little more than enslaved people. It might well be that some states today might be renting out more slaves than were owned by Thomas Jefferson, William Aiken, or Col. Joshua John Ward. Think about it!

She said it into the intercom at 8:34 p.m. The floor was concrete. The overhead light did not go off. She said it again at 2:55 a.m. By then, the cell smelled the way a cell smells when a person has been vomiting into a metal toilet for six hours. She said it, according to Indiana State Police records her attorneys later obtained, between sixteen and twenty times across the twenty hours before she died. I need to go to the hospital. I’m throwing up blood.

Ta’Neasha Chappell was 23. A mother. Black. Ta’Neasha Chappell was in Jackson County Jail in Brownstown, Indiana, facing untried charges. And she was being poisoned. That is not a stray claim. That is what emergency-room doctors at Schneck Medical Center in Seymour wrote when EMS finally reached her at 3:15 the next afternoon. They suspected ethylene glycol. Antifreeze. Or methanol. The cleaner. Multiple inmates later told police that other prisoners had been slipping something they called “the green cleaner” into her food and drink for days.

The medical team pronounced her dead at 5:45 p.m., less than two hours after she left the cell.

In October 2025, Jackson County completed a $5.6 million settlement for her daughter. No jail worker faced a charge. The county prosecutor cleared everyone in that building. He cleared the inmates who allegedly poisoned her. He cleared the officers who, on the surveillance video her family’s attorneys later released, watched her writhe naked on a concrete floor, vomiting and moaning, and told investigators they thought she was faking.

That is the story. The rest is why it keeps happening.

What the video shows

Watch it if you can stand it. The audio came out first, in January 2022: sixteen intercom clips stitched into one long confession by the jail itself. Then the surveillance: a young woman on a concrete floor, ill and undressed, dying while people in uniform walked past.

Attorney Sam Aguiar, who also represents Breonna Taylor’s family, filed the federal complaint alongside Ben Crump and Lonita Baker. In a March 2022 deposition, Sheriff Rick Meyer admitted that they did not follow proper medical procedure. If she vomited blood, he said, they should have sent her to a hospital or had a physician see her. She was not.

The autopsy came back “probable toxicity from an unknown substance.” Manner of death: undetermined. Detectives could not find a lab willing to test her body fluids for the specific cleaner that other inmates had named.

So the paperwork, no surprise, stayed clean. And the people in charge stayed in charge. After all, where would they go? And a little girl grew up without her mother. This sad fact falls on deaf ears among white people unless it’s Charlie Kirk. Different genders and different races. The prison system seems to fuel white officers' hostility towards black people, stripping them of their worth and dignity, and resulting in harsher sentences and mistreatment motivated by racial bias rather than criminal conduct.

The same script, different jail

Two years before Chappell died, Kevil Wingo, 36, spent over seven hours in the Cobb County, Georgia, jail infirmary vomiting and fainting from what turned out to be a perforated ulcer. Surveillance video showed him banging on the door, collapsing five times, crying I can’t breathe. A nurse told him he was “playing around.” Officers moved him to a padded cell used for people in mental-health crisis, stripped him, and left him face down on a toilet grate. He lay dead for an hour before anyone noticed. No one lost their job. Authorities did not charge anyone. He left two teenage daughters and an 11-year-old son.

In 2018, Madison County, Mississippi, jailed Harvey Hill, 36, for misdemeanor trespassing after a former employer called police to report his need for a mental hospital. Within a day, guards had tackled him, pepper-sprayed him, kicked him in the head, and slammed him, handcuffed, into a concrete wall. This was not rugby or an unsanctioned wrestling match. And it certainly was not a game. A licensed practical nurse in the infirmary, not legally authorized to make medical decisions in Mississippi, gave him nothing. A guard pinned him to the floor of an isolation cell and left.

A common thread in these prison deaths is the righteous declaration of leaving the victim alone. I suffer in silence plenty of times, but the paid guard and healthcare providers have a duty of care. Don’t they?

Nobody checked on him for 46 minutes. When they did, he had no pulse. Autopsy: homicide. Liver laceration. Neck hematoma. Severe internal bleeding. Sheriff Randy Tucker’s office publicly attributed the death to “possible cardiac arrest” the next day. The sheriff's office did not release the autopsy to the family for 25 months. By then, Mississippi’s one-year statute of limitations for a civil assault claim had long since passed.

In September 2022, LaShawn Thompson, 35, died in the psychiatric wing of the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta after three months in a cell so infested with bedbugs that the family attorney counted more than a thousand bites on his body. His antipsychotic medication was in his file. It was not in his bloodstream. Fulton County paid $4 million. The independent autopsy called it homicide by neglect.

In June 2019, Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, a 27-year-old Afro-Latina trans woman on Rikers Island because she couldn’t pay $500 bail, had a seizure in a solitary cell. The video showed that staff failed to check on her for 47 minutes. She was dead before the 48th. New York paid her family $5.9 million.

In July 2015, authorities arrested Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas, for an alleged improper lane change, and they found her hanged in her cell three days later.

Same script. Different jail.

Even the building where Chappell died has a second name on the docket. Joshua McLemore, 29, spent 20 straight days in 2021 locked into a windowless cell in the Jackson County Jail. The cell lacked a bathroom or a sink. He experienced a psychotic break during this time. Dehydration and malnutrition caused his death. It's the same sheriff. The same courthouse. The same shrug.

Here is the wiring. Investigation of the sheriff’s jail is being conducted by the sheriff. The prosecutor decides whether to charge the prosecutor’s officers. The vendor keeps the contract because they already have it. An insurance pool, which is not accountable to voters, is where the county disburses funds. Nobody in the chain has an incentive to end the chain.

The devil’s work

Incarceration should not abandon the human dignity in any prisoner. But the racism outside the prison walls attaches itself to Black prisoners like a terrible weed that keeps cropping up in a garden despite every attempt to stop its growth. Unlike weeds strangling plants, racism places a real noose around Black prisoners’ necks. They write it into the shift schedule. Unwritten decisions about which body on which floor get treated like a human being include racism.

Despite training and oaths, prison officials up and down the chain of command carry their incessant racial biases into every duty. The Chappell video makes it plain. Officers delayed and made a weak attempt at even basic aid to a young Black woman, the only Black person in a jail pod of all-white women who watched their fellow prisoner call out for help. If the white inmates and the white guards cannot offer aid, then a country that fills its Christian pews on Sunday is doing the devil’s work the other six days.

These unexplained deaths are the same reminder every time. A second-term Trump Justice Department will not reach into a county jail in Indiana or Mississippi to demand better care for a Black prisoner. Slavery is on the books as abolished. What grew out of it, and what nobody in this administration is going to touch, is not. And it does not happen in a vacuum. It happens when the top brass has decided, in writing or not, that this floor is not worth calling a nurse to.

The numbers underneath the names

Reuters had to sue and beg to build the count Congress refuses to. Its investigators documented 7,571 deaths in over 500 U.S. jails between 2008 and 2019. Authorities held roughly 4,998 people, at least two-thirds of the total, without conviction on the charges they faced. Black Americans made up at least 28 % of the dead, more than double their share of the U.S. population.

Research published in Health Affairs has found that jail mortality among Black incarcerated people is disproportionately driven by illness rather than by suicide or violence. The dying you do slowly while someone in uniform decides whether to believe you.

The federal government is supposed to know all of this. In 2013, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act, which required every state and federal agency to report in-custody deaths to the U.S. Attorney General. States that refuse could lose up to 10% of their federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grant money. Twelve years later, the Justice Department has never once withheld a dollar. It has never fully collected the state and local data. The GAO has said so. The DOJ inspector general has said so.

A law with teeth is a law that bites. This one has not bitten.

If you cannot count the dead, you cannot fix what killed them.

What actual reform looks like

Not slogans. Not committees that report to the sheriff are being investigated. Real fixes are moving right now, in statehouses and county boards, and others can copy them:

Take the sheriff off his own case. In October 2025, California signed the Forensic Accountability, Custodial Transparency, and Safety Act (AB 1108), which bars sheriffs from overseeing medical death investigations at their own jails. Starting January 2027, every county with a combined sheriff-coroner office must contract with an outside civilian medical examiner or independent physician who controls the scope of the investigation and signs the death certificate. Every state should copy it, word for word.

Put civilians in the building. In Riverside County, California, a grand jury this summer recommended replacing the sheriff’s advisory committee with an independent civilian body empowered to audit jail health care and inspect facilities without warning. Washington State’s jail-standards proposal would create an independent agency with the power to set minimum staffing, conduct unannounced inspections, and force the closure of jails that put lives at risk. Body cameras on jailers, under study in Tarrant County, Texas, are a floor, not a ceiling.

Enforce the law we already have. The U.S. Attorney General can withhold up to 10 % of a state’s Byrne Justice Assistance Grant money when that state refuses to report jail deaths. The statute has said so since 2013. Twelve years, and not one dollar withheld. If your state is on the noncompliance list, ask your senator why. Fund the reporting portal. Publish the study Congress ordered years ago on what policies feed these deaths.

Tell the family. Ta’Neasha Chappell’s family got a phone call. Lashawn Thompson’s mother saw the bedbugs on the internet. There is no federal baseline requiring a facility to do better than that. The Family Notification of Death, Injury, or Illness in Custody Act (S.1322), reintroduced by Sens. Jon Ossoff and John Kennedy in 2025, would establish family-notification standards within federal detention facilities and provide states with a template to follow. Pass it.

Medical care to the standard of care. Minnesota’s Larry R. Hill Medical Reform Act, signed this year, sets new standards for county-jail health care. New York City’s Local Law 2025/105, passed by the Council on July 14, 2025, requires the Department of Correction to notify the medical examiner and the Board of Correction within three hours of a person’s death in custody, and requires the Board of Correction to complete an independent investigation within 180 days. Every state needs a version.

End the private-vendor shell game. Wellpath. Quality Correctional Care. Advanced Correctional Healthcare, named in the McLemore complaint in Jackson County, appears repeatedly in these lawsuits. Publish the contracts. Publish the complaint data. Terminate vendors with a pattern of preventable deaths. No more revolving-door bidding on human lives.

The sentence

$5.6 million cannot bring Ta’Neasha Chappell back. It is impossible to un-record the intercom. It cannot un-see the video. This will be filed with the other settlements, provided we permit it. Another line item in a system that already knows it treats Black pain as performance.

The jail heard her twenty times. Upon hearing the tapes, the prosecutor allegedly shrugged. Unable to find a lab, the medical examiner heard about the green cleaner. The county’s insurer wrote a check.

The rest of us don’t get to shrug. I certainly can’t. Not while this same script is running in a county building tonight, with someone else on the floor, someone else on the intercom, someone else whose name we haven’t heard yet. My name could be next, or a neighbor's.

What to do?

Count the dead. Take the sheriff off his own case. Put civilians in the building. Fund the standards. Pay the medical workers who tell the truth. Fire the ones who don’t.

Ta’Neasha Chappell said I need help twenty times.

The country has said not yet for twenty years.

She has stopped waiting.

We should be, too. It is happening again somewhere in America where racial bias lives and thrives.

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, some will deny that the government response to blackouts after storms in Gary, Indiana, and Memphis, Tennessee, has anything to do with race. Despite these denials, evidence points to a pattern of discrimination. In the aftermath of natural disasters like tropical storms and hurricanes, black communities are more often impacted by downed power lines, outdated electrical grids, delayed maintenance, and faulty energy systems. The fact that thousands of Black people are suffering without access to electricity during some of the hottest summer days is the latest example of racist neglect.

While we often think of racism as something that is done to Black people, they’ve also been harmed due to negligence. Consider, for instance, that due to racial redlining and other discriminatory housing policies, many Black people live in low-income communities with failing infrastructure. America’s legacy of racism leaves Black people more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters. The fact that Gary, Indiana, a city where approximately 76% of residents are Black, or Memphis, Tennessee, where approximately 63% of residents are Black, faced outages that lasted for days, and in some cases weeks, is not a coincidence. Neither is the slow government response to the humanitarian disaster unfolding because of these power outages.

In addition to wind damage from storms, city officials in Gary, Indiana, claim a major setback to restoring power has been trimming trees to access and fix power lines, something that, if done on a regular basis, wouldn’t present a problem. In contrast, delays in Memphis, Tennessee stemmed from selective prioritization of work orders. According to Justin J. Pearson, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, these are “two working-class, majority Black cities with tens of thousands of residents without power for days, bearing the brunt of the affordability crises, extreme weather events, and the strain of data centers on our electric grids.”

The slow governmental response to blackouts in black communities is a dereliction of duty, reminiscent of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After a major hurricane devastated the Gulf Coast region in August of 2005, many Black people were left waiting on their roofs for days in the 9th Ward neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana. Hundreds drowned after the levee system and pumps designed to drain the floodwaters failed, and those who survived struggled to find food, clean water, and shelter. While the storm itself was natural, the racist policies that confined most Black residents in low-lying areas were not. Neither was the failing infrastructure in those communities — this was the accumulated effect of racist policies. For many, the assistance that did come was too little, too late.

Ideally, disaster relief work would help to restore communities damaged by natural disasters, but who receives assistance, when, and how much exposes racial bias. As Matt Plaus explained in an article published by the Harvard Kennedy School, “Black Americans receive less Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief funding on average than their white counterparts.” Without sufficient funding, their communities take much longer to recover. Part of the problem is that FEMA determines the level of financial aid needed based on the value of properties within a given area.

Due to America’s legacy of racist housing policies, many Black people live in low-income communities. Still, the formulas government officials use to determine how much aid is needed fail to consider this. Without an intentional policy shift, one that considers the disparate impact of natural disasters on black communities and other marginalized groups, this cycle will repeat itself in perpetuity. Whoever said a rising tide lifts all boats knew nothing about the role race and class played in shaping the experiences of Hurricane Katrina survivors, or those of other disasters.

Black Americans are no stranger to neglect as a form of racism. After chattel slavery, a quarter of the formerly enslaved people died from starvation and diseases due to malnutrition and exposure to the elements, as the historian Jim Downs suggested in his text, Sick From Freedom. And while the Reconstruction Era, a period when the country formally abolished slavery, established birthright citizenship, and equal legal protection regardless of race, this would prove to be only a glimmer of light in an otherwise dark tunnel. Jim Crow represented a return to overt racism, characterized not just by the separation of races, but by the subordinate treatment of Black people and their communities. And while the civil rights movement ended formal segregation, it did nothing to improve living conditions in black communities or ensure infrastructure was properly maintained.

While there’s a great bit of denialism in American society, as many claim that we’re living in a post-racial society, where the color of someone’s skin no longer matters, the truth is that the color of your skin, your race, and the race of your parents still impact your quality of life in America. This is more pronounced following natural disasters, when priorities are laid bare. Black people today are more likely to live in communities with poor air and water quality, have less access to financial resources for disaster preparedness, and, as the blackouts in Gary, Indiana, and Memphis, Tennessee, highlight, struggle more so following natural disasters. Racist neglect deprives Black people of an opportunity to develop resilient communities that have the resources and support they need to weather a storm.

I’ve never thought of Donald Trump as a teacher. To be honest, I never thought of him as particularly intelligent. I can name 44 other men who have served as President (all of them) I consider smarter. Yet Trump has managed to simplify the economy so that everyone in the country understands it, something no other president has done before.

Gas Prices

It used to be the common perception that presidents had little control over gas prices. Gas and the crude oil from which it’s produced are determined by factors all over the world. Some presidential actions, like releasing extra gas from oil reserves, can minimally affect prices, but presidents are generally perceived to have little control. Trump has shown us that by arbitrarily starting a war with an oil-producing nation that controls the Strait of Hormuz. A single action can raise prices worldwide.

I have an Economics degree from Fisk University. I didn’t go to college to major in economics. Economics 101 was a basic college course everyone took during freshman year. On the first day of class, we discussed a supply-and-demand chart, and on the last day, the chart was basically the same, with possibly extra lines for supply and demand (S2 or D2). The class made things simple by assuming that when any variable was introduced, everything else remained the same. This made calculations easier but wasn’t how things were in the real world where multiple variables affect the economy at once. Trump made it all simple: his war cut supply, demand went up, and prices rose.

Tariffs

I quickly found that an Economics degree without a Masters Degree or PhD had little value if I intended to stay in Economics. Even with those degrees, most of the employment opportunities were with the government, despite the simple graph introduced on the first day of class. There are hundreds of economic terms with specific meanings, and one of those is tariffs. Everybody understood taxes as they came directly out of paychecks and tax returns were due every year. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods, applied only at the border, and only on foreign goods. Tariffs are normally considered part of trade policy and not domestic fiscal policy.

Most Americans never considered tariffs to be taxes. When applied previously, tariffs were generally small and applied to specific products like steel, aluminum, textiles, or food products like dairy. Never before Trump did we apply tariffs to everything everywhere in the world (including uninhabited islands). The price of all imports went up, and Americans now clearly understand that tariffs are a tax. Even domestic products are affected if anything in the supply chain costs more because of the tariffs.

After the tariffs were declared unconstitutional, corporations that collected the tariffs and turned them over to the government were entitled to receive refunds with interest. The repayments went to the companies that collected them but not to the individuals who paid them, either through higher prices for consumers or lower dividends to investors. Despite what the Trumpm adminstration says, all Americans now know that tariffs are taxes, and the people bear the brunt of the costs.

Insider Trading is Rigging the System

It isn’t a normal assumption that the President of the United States (and his sons) will engage in insider trading. For all of Nixon’s faults, insider trading wasn’t one of them. Across the first quarter of 2026, Trump’s investment accounts executed 3,642 trades — an unprecedented volume for a sitting president. The trades totaled $220 million to $750 million in value, depending on the ranges disclosed.

These trades were concentrated in:

• Major tech firms (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD)
• Large financial institutions (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo)
• Municipal bonds and ETFs

This alone does not prove insider trading — but the timing and alignment with policy actions raised red flags among ethics experts.

Why the trades raised insider‑trading concerns

1. Trades overlapped with administration policy moves

Reporting shows a “striking overlap” between Trump’s trading patterns and his administration’s policy priorities.

Examples include:

• Heavy accumulation of semiconductor stocks (Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD) at the same time the administration was:
• imposing tariffs on Asian chip supply chains, and
• launching domestic semiconductor‑boosting industrial policies.
• Sales and purchases in tech giants (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta) during periods when the administration was making regulatory and trade decisions affecting those sectors.

This alignment does not prove wrongdoing — but it is the core reason experts flagged the trades.

2. A specific Nvidia timing issue

One of the most cited examples:

• Trump approved several Chinese companies to purchase Nvidia AI chips — a move requiring U.S. government approval.
• Before Nvidia shares moved substantially higher, Trump’s accounts accumulated Nvidia stock in million‑dollar increments.

This is the clearest instance where policy action and profitable trades appear closely linked.

Truth Social launched a paid “Truth API” that sells early access to President Trump’s posts for up to $100,000 a month. High‑frequency trading firms are buying the feed because Trump’s posts routinely move markets, and milliseconds of early access can produce large profits. The program has triggered lawsuits and ethics complaints, with critics calling it corrupt, unconstitutional, and a privatization of government information for Trump’s personal financial benefit. Insider trading relies on early information.

Lying About the Economy Isn’t Fooling Anyone

Every day, the Trump administration tells Americans the economy is “the greatest in history,” a line Donald Trump repeats with the confidence of a man who believes saying something loudly enough makes it true. But people who buy gas and groceries know better. They don’t need a press conference to tell them what the economy feels like — they feel it at the pump, at the checkout line, and in the shrinking space between paychecks and bills. When Trump insists that inflation has been “obliterated” or that prices are “coming down like never before,” it lands as theater, not truth, because the lived experience of ordinary Americans contradicts the script. The distance between the administration’s claims and the public’s reality is not ideological; it’s arithmetic.

Two of Trump’s economic claims are objectively false, not matters of interpretation. First, he has repeatedly said he “beat the affordability crisis,” even though consumer prices — especially food, rent, and insurance — remain historically high and continue rising in many regions. Second, he has claimed that gas prices are “the lowest in 20 years,” a statement directly contradicted by federal data showing average prices well above pre‑pandemic levels. These aren’t exaggerations or political spin; they’re statements that collapse under the weight of publicly available numbers. And Americans don’t need charts to know they’re untrue — they need to look at their receipts.

In one respect, we should thank Donald Trump, who has clarified economic terms and the economy itself that used to be over the heads of many Americans. On the other hand, we now know that President Trump is directly responsible for the affordability crisis, including gas prices, food prices, and a tax increase that regular Americans have to absorb. Something I thought I’d never say is that Trump has made America smarter.

Too bad he also made us poorer.

Publicly reported cases of Black people found hanged from trees were rare for decades. In the last two years, the number has risen sharply, and it doesn’t appear to be a coincidence.

Since January 20, 2025, there’s been a national onslaught of policies designed to harm Black people, coupled with the administration’s passion for fighting so-called racism against white people.

The facts are not in dispute. Mass firing of Black women from federal government jobs. An end to diverse government contracting. No more equity or inclusion. Threats to sue companies that dare to want a diverse workforce. The “they’re coming to take your jobs” nonsense. Rounding up and deporting Black and Brown people who haven’t committed any crimes. Removing decorated Black military heroes from government libraries and websites.

The message is loud and clear. And the cumulative effect of all of that is a government stamp of approval and a free pass to say and do whatever overt hateful thing a racist’s heart desires.

Enter lynchings.

Over a dozen Black men and women found hanged, most of them from trees, in just two years.

In Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. But also up north in Wisconsin, New York and Michigan.

Almost all ruled suicides, often before a full investigation even took place.

Suicide, of course, is a sad and serious thing that impacts people of all backgrounds. Including Black people.

But the idea that Black people are resorting to hanging themselves, mimicking the racist lynchings that went on in this country all the way through the 1960s, reeks of a cover-up, and of more government silence and tacit approval of racism at the local, state and federal level.

Javion Magee was just 21 when he was found at the base of a tree with a rope around his neck in September 2024 in North Carolina. The state medical examiner ruled it a suicide.

Dennoriss Richardson, 39, of Sheffield, Alabama, was found September 28, 2024, hanging in an abandoned house miles from his home. Richardson had sued local police in federal court for unlawfully assaulting him.

Then he ended up dead.

The Colbert County Sheriff’s Office ruled the hanging a suicide despite the suspicious circumstances of his death. The FBI opened an investigation two months later, and an independent second autopsy reached a different conclusion than the state’s.

An unnamed 58-year-old Black man was found hanging from a tree in Albany, New York, in June 2025. The medical examiner ruled it a suicide, and police to this day refuse to release the man’s name.

Demartravion “Trey” Reed, 21, of Cleveland, Mississippi, was found September 15, 2025, hanging from a tree at Delta State University. The Mississippi State Medical Examiner ruled it a suicide. Cleveland police turned their files over to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and an independent autopsy funded by the family’s advocates has never been released.

Torrance “Tory” Medley, 39, of Brookfield, Wisconsin, was found November 13, 2025, kneeling beside a tree at Brookfield Hills Golf Course with a strap around his neck. Brookfield police called it a suicide the same day they found the body. Before an investigation.

Kyle Bassinga, 21, a Georgia State student, was found February 18, 2026, hanging from a tree in Fair Oaks Park in Marietta, Georgia. The Cobb County Medical Examiner ruled it a suicide because there were “no signs of foul play.”

Juliana Umba Nzita, 16, of Charlotte, North Carolina, went missing in late April 2026 and was found May 8 in a north Charlotte churchyard, suspended by a ratchet strap with her feet near a toddler-size chair. The county medical examiner ruled it a suicide within a mere three days. And the police department closed the case four days later. Without a full autopsy, without locating her phone, and without interviewing the man who found her.

To’Nea Nicole Miller, 27, of Flint, Michigan, was found June 18, 2026, near Gwen Cherry Park in Miami. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office called the findings “consistent with suicide” — because there was, wait for the familiar chorus, no evidence of foul play. Case closed.

Justice Kai James, 21, of Albany, Georgia, was found June 21, 2026, at the Turner Job Corps center. He was widely described online as hanging from a tree on campus, but Albany police said he was found unconscious outside the campus cafeteria and initially classified the death as suspicious. On July 20, 2026, the medical examiner ruled it a suicide and police ruled out foul play.

Jerard “Jay” Jackson, 28, went missing June 29, 2026, and was found June 30 in a wooded area about 150 feet off the Hart–Montague trail in Michigan after attending the Electric Forest festival. Michigan State Police stated, “It appears Jackson died by suicide” — because they found, drum roll please, “no indication of foul play.”

Tasia Fortune, 29, was found August 3, 2026, hanging from a tree behind a vacant house in Jackson, Mississippi. The state medical examiner has released no cause or manner of death.

An unnamed 32-year-old man in Raleigh, North Carolina, was found hanging from a tree with an electrical cord on August 15, 2026. Police Chief Rico Boyce announced a finding of suicide within days because video showed the man approaching the tree by himself. Before any other investigation. The North Carolina NAACP has called for more transparency.

And then on August 21, 2026, another Black man was found hanging. Demetrius Fleming. Just 38 years old. Found about 85 miles from the last hanging in North Carolina.

None of us can say that not one of these deaths was a suicide. But the pattern has grown too consistent, and the investigations too thin, to leave the obvious unsaid.

Black people are being lynched again.

And just like 60 years ago, the government is turning a convenient blind eye.

Every case that has drawn a ruling has been ruled a suicide. Fortune’s and Fleming’s remain open.

Homicide or lynching just isn’t considered a cause of death.

But the history of anti-Black lynching, coupled with the speed at which most of these determinations have been made — sometimes within hours, other times within days, and long before autopsies are completed or surveillance footage is reviewed — tells us that Black lives again don’t matter.

It’s time to bring in the full weight of the FBI, fully investigate these deaths, and put killers away for life.

And to send a strong message that violence and hatred against Black people will no longer be tolerated.

On a deeper level, we need to reverse the national rhetoric and trend on the value of Black lives. They matter. In boardrooms. In colleges. As colleagues. In federal government. In contracting. In all aspects of American life.

When the government prioritizes policies that harm Black people, literally the first act on January 20, 2025, it sends a powerful negative message that once again Black people and their racial struggles in America don’t matter.

The natural consequence of that message is open season on Black people.

In Brevard County, FL, Deputy Michael Fultz was honored as the2025 Deputy of the Year. In 2026, Fultz resigned after investigators documented “egregious misconduct.” Among the things in his record was stalking his ex-girlfriend by using Flock cameras to track her as part of an “investigation.” On the same day in 2025 that he received his award. His former girlfriend called to report activities she thought the department should know about.

“My intention in providing this information is not to pursue personal retaliation but to ensure the agency is aware of conduct that, in my understanding, may conflict with departmental policies or professional standards.”

The department subsequently audited its Flock Safety license-plate reader system and found that Fultz had searched his ex-girlfriend’s license plate. Fultz could not point to any official investigation as a basis for his search.

The Sheriff’s Dept. investigation into Fultz uncovered photos of him placing the barrel of his service weapon into his girlfriend’s mouth while having sex. Who does that? Both parties say the act was consensual at the time, but upon reflection, the girlfriend found the behavior unacceptable.

There were screenshots of Fultz engaging in what appeared to be masturbation while in uniform and in a patrol car. The images weren’t clear enough to provide proof. In another photo, he was shown having a mustache like Hitler and performing a Nazi salute. Fultz said it was “a joke.”

Several text messages showed his frequent use of the N-word. He was also stopped by the Highway Patrol traveling 111 miles per hour on Highway 192. The maximum speed limit anywhere in Florida is 70 mph. Fultz was not arrested, as was called for, but given a citation for traveling 74 mph in a 65 mph zone.

Fultz was hired as a probationary deputy in September 2024. Seven months later, he fatally shot a suicidal man who allegedly charged him with a knife while he was responding to a disturbance at a home. Fultz was lauded for his actions and later given an award for Deputy of the Year.

“Deputy Fultz’s decisive actions and extraordinary restraint under extreme pressure undoubtedly saved the life of a frightened mother while also protecting himself from grave harm,” — Sheriff Wayne Ivey

Fultz resigned instead of being fired, which the department had decided to do. He is eligible to work elsewhere as a police officer, even in Florida.

Michael Fultz isn’t the only Florida officer to have been honored and wilted under the light.

In 2018, a City of Orlando police officer, Jonathan Mills, was named “Patrol Officer of the Year” for being “the most proactive member of his squad.” Mills made over 100 arrests and confiscated a large quantity of drugs and guns. The report nominating him said he was considered a leader who motivated and assisted others in his squad. Mills was an example of many things, which makes us wonder which behavior OPD was rewarding.

Former Orlando ‘officer of the year’ found guilty of battery

Mills had come to the attention of his superiors several times in the two years before receiving his award. In 2016, he was disciplined for making racist comments to a Black woman, causing him to be removed from an elite tactical unit. The Orlando Police Citizens Review Board said this.

“I’m concerned as a citizen that you have a police officer that makes these comments, which I believe were racist, still patrolling the streets. It poses a danger to the community and the police force as well.” — Henry Lim, Board Member

Mills received a verbal reprimand and was reassigned. The Board felt the punishment should have been more severe. They wrote to Chief John Mina to suggest a harsher punishment, and Mina ignored them.

“I will take the board’s advice into consideration in future matters and will take any other action that he deems appropriate.” — Chief John Mina

In 2017, Jonathan Mills was named in two lawsuits accusing him of excessive force. Those lawsuits eventually cost the City of Orlando $130,000. In one case, Mills and another officer stopped a vehicle similar to the one they were looking for and immediately determined the suspect was not in the car. Mills ordered the passenger out of the vehicle, then handcuffed and searched him without consent. Mills allegedly pulled on the man’s genitals and stuck his finger up his rectum.

In a second case, Mills stopped someone accused of driving with a suspended license. Despite the man not resisting and raising his hands. Mills tased him twice, then twisted his arms while handcuffing him. The man underwent three surgeries to repair a torn rotator cuff. Between 2012 and 2015, there were more than 15 complaints against Mills for excessive force, and Mills was never disciplined.

City settles lawsuit against Orlando police officer accused of excessive force — Orlando Sentinel.

The state attorney’s office began looking at Mills in December 2018 after Mills was accused of inciting a suspect. Mills charged the man with resisting arrest and destroying evidence. Bodycam evidence contradicted those charges. The state attorney looked into seven other instances of questionable behavior. They ultimately charged him in the 2014 case where he stuck his finger up a man’s butt in an illegal search. Months later, he was disciplined for the 2016 incident in which he taunted teenagers.

State attorney finds red flags for Officer Jonathan Mills

In 2021, Mills was charged with misdemeanor battery and sexual battery. The second charge was ultimately dropped. Mills was sentenced to 30 days in the Orange County Jail, 11 months of probation, and 50 hours of community service. He has also been ordered to relinquish his law enforcement certification and write a letter to the victim.

Lest you think this is all, here are several other Florida examples of decorated officers gone bad.

1. Deputy Jonathan Price — Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office

Award: 2016 Law Enforcement Officer of the Year (local civic award). Trouble: Arrested in 2019 for domestic battery after allegedly striking his partner. Outcome: Suspended; later resigned. Status: Criminal arrest.

2. Officer Matthew Steiner — Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office

Award: 2018 JSO Medal of Merit. Trouble: Involved in multiple controversial shootings; later arrested in 2023 for DUI after crashing his vehicle. Outcome: Administrative discipline; criminal charge. Status: Criminal arrest.

3. Deputy Christopher “Chris” Morman — Polk County Sheriff’s Office

Award: 2015 Deputy of the Quarter (precursor award to annual honors). Trouble: Arrested in 2018 for domestic violence and false imprisonment. Outcome: Fired; criminal case. Status: Criminal arrest.

4. Officer Angel Lopez — Miami Police Department

Award: 2017 Officer of the Year (MPD internal award). Trouble: Arrested in 2020 for felony battery after allegedly assaulting a handcuffed suspect. Outcome: Fired; criminal prosecution. Status: Criminal arrest.

5. Deputy William “Billy” McKinney — Escambia County Sheriff’s Office

Award: 2014 Deputy of the Year (ECSO). Trouble: Arrested in 2017 for child pornography possession. Outcome: Fired; convicted. Status: Criminal conviction.

6. Officer Michael Martinez — Orlando Police Department

Award: 2015 Officer of the Year (OPD). Trouble: Arrested in 2019 for insurance fraud and staged vehicle damage. Outcome: Fired; criminal prosecution. Status: Criminal arrest.

Conclusion

In the end, the fall of these once‑celebrated officers isn’t shocking; it’s predictable. When departments hand out awards faster than they enforce standards, they create heroes on paper and liabilities in practice. The press releases get written, and the warning signs get ignored. Then the misconduct surfaces, and everyone pretends it came out of nowhere.

The truth is simpler: if you reward image instead of integrity, you eventually get exactly what Florida has been getting, decorated officers who turn out to be cautionary tales. The scandal isn’t that they fell. It’s that they were lifted up without anyone looking closely enough to see they were already cracking.

Florida just helped fire the people who bathe its parents, lift its disabled residents from bed, change the sheets in nursing homes, and sit beside old folks when family cannot get there.

Not because those workers failed. Not because the need disappeared. They lost their jobs because Washington stripped Temporary Protected Status from Haitians and canceled the work authorization tied to it. As of July 27, 2026, employers could no longer legally keep Haitian TPS holders on the payroll unless those workers produced some other form of employment authorization.

Call this what it is. A government-ordered labor purge in a state already short on caregivers, dressed up as an immigration adjustment.

Florida is where the purge lands hardest. Nearly half of the nation’s Haitian population is concentrated here. The 2020 Census found that 46.4 percent of people who identified as Haitian alone lived in Florida, and Broward County had the largest Haitian population of any county in the country.

These are not strangers passing through. They are part of Florida. What gets me is how the MAGA majority and the fence straddlers believe an all-out assault on immigrants improves their safety. I would argue that getting rid of black Haitians is more about a policy architected by senior WH staff based on racism instead of improving the country. DHS is the instrument, but the WH wields its hand.

They are also a load-bearing part of the state’s care economy. Haitians make up 28 percent of Florida’s immigrant direct-care workforce, the largest share from any single country of origin, according to PHI, a policy-research and advocacy organization. Direct-care workers do the intimate, exhausting labor that political speeches glide past: feeding, bathing, dressing, monitoring, lifting, cleaning, comforting.

Florida did not have too many of these workers. Florida was already desperate for them.

KFF found that long-term care has suffered for years from worker shortages and brutal turnover driven by low pay and thin benefits on top of high stress. Immigrants now account for 30 percent of the nation’s direct-care workforce, with an even larger share in home care. PHI projects nearly 800,000 new direct-care jobs will be needed over the coming decade as America grows older.

The federal government looked at that shortage and removed trained people from the floor.

The hole is already open

The usual political defense says the labor market will adjust. Someone else will take the jobs. Wages may rise. Employers will figure it out.

That argument sounds tidy from behind a microphone. It collapses inside a home-care office.

Two agencies in Miami-Dade and Broward counties closed after each lost more than 80 Haitian TPS workers. Jewish Community Services of South Florida dismissed 18 Haitian employees, including home health aides who had served there for more than 20 years. The organization cares for roughly 400 Holocaust survivors and covers the missing labor with overtime and extra hours from the people left behind.

Picture one of those eighteen. A home health aide who spent two decades in the same apartments, learning which client wanted the shades left half-open, which one liked her coffee warmed twice before she would drink it, which one would let no one else lift her from the bath, which one asks the same question about her sister every Tuesday morning. She was told, in the careful English she learned on the job, that Washington says she cannot come back on Monday. The overtime falls on the woman down the hall.

The backfill looks like this.

Overtime. Exhaustion. Fewer admissions. Closed agencies. Nursing beds taken offline. Family members are leaving their own jobs to care for parents and grandparents.

You cannot order a home health aide of twenty years off a shelf. There is no warehouse of trained caregivers waiting for a politician to point toward the loading dock. A home health aide who has spent twenty years learning how to move a frail body without injury cannot be replaced by a campaign slogan. Trust cannot be ordered by executive action. Twenty years of knowing which patient bruises easily, which one panics in the shower, which one still remembers her husband’s face on a good morning does not appear because somebody in Washington decided cruelty counts as management.

Florida was warned

The scale was sitting in plain view before TPS ended. An analysis prepared by Princeton research fellow Phillip Connor using augmented 2024 American Community Survey data estimated that 93,000 Haitian TPS holders were working in Florida. That included 16,000 cooks and servers, 12,000 agricultural workers, 8,000 stockers and packers, 5,000 security guards, and 4,000 nursing assistants.

Those workers generated an estimated $2.6 billion in annual economic activity in Florida. They paid about $300 million in federal and payroll taxes and another $306 million in state and local taxes. But right-wing pundits, politicians, and GOP supporters publicly and privately relish hurting, detaining, de-humanizing brown and black immigrants.

It’s not them having their families torn apart. Is this the American way of life? Is poverty, homelessness, and a fractured society safer with fewer minorities or just more comfortable with their own?

The nation was founded and built by immigrants. So, why now are immigrants and especially minorities suddenly the scourge? Maybe it's a white nationalist agenda rooted in white supremacy or the overarching fear of the economic and political power held by the slowly diminishing white majority. I don’t have the answer, but I have an opinion on the matter.

Florida’s leaders love to brag about growth and the state’s business climate, on top of low taxes. Here was a population working, paying taxes, buying homes, raising children, serving meals, harvesting crops, stocking shelves, and caring for the elderly.

Washington answered with a pink slip.

The Trump administration said Haiti no longer met the conditions for temporary protection and argued that repeated extensions had allowed a temporary program to become permanent. A program becomes permanent when the conditions that created it stay permanent. Haiti has been in near-collapse since the 2010 earthquake. Gang control of Port-au-Prince, mass kidnappings, and a caretaker government too weak to hold national elections. None of that improved on the schedule Washington wanted, so Washington moved the goalposts instead of moving the workers to a durable status.

Fine. Bring the real argument into the open. Debate the future of TPS. Build a lawful transition. Create realistic work pathways. Give employers time to retain experienced workers who have built lives and filled essential jobs.

Instead, the government killed the work permits first and left Florida to count the empty shifts.

That is not a serious immigration policy. It is political theater staged inside nursing homes.

The rest of the workforce heard the message

The damage does not stop with Haitian TPS holders. Immigrants with other statuses watched coworkers disappear from payrolls after years of legal employment. They saw families pushed toward deportation. They saw federal protection become a trapdoor.

Fear shrinks a workforce, too.

KFF warns that intensified immigration enforcement and restrictive policies are spreading anxiety among immigrants of every status and could deepen existing care-worker shortages. PHI says TPS terminations and benefit cuts, layered onto visa restrictions, are driving immigrant workers out of direct care while choking off the pipeline of new workers.

If you ask me, I don’t believe Florida can deport, frighten, and disqualify its way into a stronger labor force.

The people cheering this policy should have to explain it in person. To the daughter at her kitchen table on a Tuesday morning, crossing another agency off a printed list of thirteen names, saying please into the receiver while her father waits in the next room for someone to help him into the shower. To the nursing-home director, closing beds. To the small restaurant owner, cutting hours because the kitchen crew is gone. To the aide who spent twenty years covering the weekend shifts nobody else wanted, why were the same hands that were legal on Friday illegal on Monday, while the beds she cleaned sat in the same rooms?

No backfill. No transition worthy of the name. Just a hole where a workforce used to be.

Florida has the nation’s largest concentration of Haitians because Haitians helped build modern Florida. They built businesses, staffed hospitals, steadied nursing homes, fed tourists, worked the fields, paid taxes, and cared for people at their weakest.

The state took all that labor, all that loyalty, all those taxes.

Then the country told them to clock out.

Florida will pay for that decision. The bill has already reached the bedside.

To those reading the tea leaves, it’s no secret that America has a two-tiered justice system, one that affords privilege to white, wealthy people at the expense of Black, poor people. But those who stubbornly deny the impact of race needn’t look any further than the case in which authorities accused white college students of selling drugs on campus, turning their frat houses into trap houses for evidence of its impact. Media reports highlighted photos of the young white men, suspected ringleaders of this operation, wearing suits and smiling in their class portraits against a crisp bluish background. The use of these photos seems to suggest that, aside from recent transgressions, these were good schoolboys who deserve a second chance, that “boys will be boys.” This framing is problematic in a nation where racial disparities persist.

Indeed, the irony wasn’t lost on members of the black community that no mug shots circulated alongside national media reports of their alleged criminal behavior. Agostino Abbatiello, a 24-year-old accused of supplying students with drugs through the Signa Chi fraternity house, and Thomas Robinson, a 23-year-old white college student suspected of buying drugs in bulk from Abbatiello, were charged, along with a dozen others. Authorities believe they played a significant role in a drug operation, using pledges, students who want to formally join their fraternity, to distribute drugs at Penn State University. Yet, photos included in reports about this case that emphasize their academic careers provide further evidence that white people in America do not face the same level of scrutiny that others do.

When media reports choose to feature flattering photos of white people suspected of committing a crime, it exposes the racial bias in American society. And this is bigger than any one case. Consider, for instance, that one study found that 45% of images of Black defendants showed them in mug shots, compared with only 9% of White defendants. While 8% of Black defendants were shown wearing an orange jumpsuit, none of the White defendants were. And while 13% of White defendants were shown in media reports wearing a suit, only 6% of Black defendants were. White victims were “nearly 4x more likely than Black victims to have a photo with friends or family.” Coverage was 50% more likely to use White defendants’ names in reports. Together, their findings expose the prejudice behind seemingly neutral media reports.

While Black people are stereotyped as more likely to engage in criminal behavior, including drug use, a National Registry of Exonerations report found that innocent Black people are 19 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent White people, despite using “illegal drugs at a similar rate.” So while Black people are more likely to face arrest for drug charges, the high rate of exoneration suggests they’re overrepresented in the criminal justice system. This is problematic because criminal charges diminish opportunities after release and can create lasting damage to a person’s reputation. It’s not a coincidence that America’s “war on drugs” targeted black communities. Nor is it happenstance that Black suspects are portrayed differently in the media when compared to White suspects.

Anyone suspected of a crime would want to put their best foot forward by hiring a good defense attorney, dressing well in court, and emphasizing their ties to the community. But Black people are more likely to be arrested on drug charges, denied bond, face conviction, even when they’re innocent, and serve longer sentences. On the flip side, White people are more likely to be seen in news reports as upstanding citizens who’ve temporarily fallen from grace. They have the privilege of being seen as human, separate from their actions, and of having their behavior seen as individual decisions rather than reflective of their entire race. After White students were allegedly caught selling drugs on campus, no one is making any sweeping generalizations, such as suggesting white fraternities have a drug problem, or that young White men are inherently criminal, or that their families are to blame.

The response would be very different if authorities suspected students attending an HBCU were involved in a similar scandal, selling drugs on campus. We’d be more likely to see Black students’ mug shots than their senior photos if that were to happen. Black people have been killed for less. Consider, for instance, the 2016 case of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old Black father who was selling CDs and DVDs outside the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Two police officers confronted him and initiated a physical altercation, pinning him down and then shooting him six times. In America, a Black person accused of selling bootleg music and movies is treated worse than a White person accused of selling drugs on a college campus. Talk about a double standard.

Reports emphasizing class photos of a few White students accused of leading the frat house drug operation are reminiscent of a viral post by comedian Zack Fox of a White man riding on jet skis, with the satirical comment, “this how the photos be lookin in headlines when a white man kills his entire family.” This quote pokes fun at the way media reports tend to emphasize something positive about a White person accused of committing a crime, as a way to preserve their reputation in the public eye, even when authorities suspect them of committing a heinous act. But underneath every clever joke is at least an ounce of truth. While we haven’t seen photos of these White students accused of selling cocaine riding on jet skis, living their best life in photos, the use of class photos as opposed to mug shots exposes racial bias.

If authorities can prove these White students were selling cocaine on college campuses, using drug use as a sort of initiation into these fraternities, it will be interesting to see what their sentencing looks like. Based on America’s legacy of racial discrimination within the criminal justice system, they will likely serve less time than most Black defendants facing similar charges. It wouldn’t be shocking if they were put on probation or given a suspended sentence rather than facing a long period of incarceration. Black suspects are more readily criminalized before reaching trial, a problem exacerbated by the language used to describe crimes they’ve been accused of and the way they are introduced to the public, more often through the use of mug shots rather than graduation pictures. Nearly sixty years ago, authors of the Kerner Commission Report concluded that the nation was moving “toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” And it’s sad to say that duplicity persists.

Donald Trump openly brags about the people he’s hired that look like they came from “central casting.” Central casting originally referred to Hollywood’s real casting office (Central Casting Corporation, founded 1926), which supplied extras and bit‑players. Over time, the term became shorthand for a person who looks or behaves exactly like the cliché of a particular type. Looking like you came from central casting doesn’t speak to qualifications or skills, only appearance.

In the Trump administration, central casting includes a preference for white people and, in certain roles, men. Pete Hegseth was handed a list of candidates for military promotions. He personally blocked all the Black and female officers.

Military Times reports that Hegseth blocked the promotions of four Army officers — two Black men and two women. He personally removed their names from the list. NPR confirms that Hegseth crossed out four Army colonels (two Black, two women) and two more colonels from another service (one Black, one woman). This was described as “highly unusual and possibly even illegal.” AP News reports that Hegseth cut nine Navy officers from a promotion list — including all the women and two Black men. This resulted in zero women being promoted to one‑star admiral that year.

Hegseth implemented and defended a grooming policy that would result in Black service members with medical shaving conditions being separated from the military after 12 months. He framed non‑shaving as grounds for needing a “new position or a new profession.” Black men with beards apparently aren’t central casting.

Trump isn’t limited to reserving roles in his administration to white men (in certain roles). He told the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamil, he looked like what an Israeli should look like. He told Chinese President Xi Jinping he’s who Hollywood would choose as a leader of China. Among the white men who look like white men in their roles should, Trump at various times has declared General James Mattis, Vice President Mike Pence, Ronny Jackson, Kevin Warsh, General Dan Caine, and Pete Hegseth, all looked like they came from central casting.

Central casting is a place where the only requirement is to look the part. This must be how those opposed to DEI must think Black men and women got their jobs. Look the part, get the job, qualifications be damned.

I mentioned there are roles reserved for women. Usually blonde, but not always. The Stepford Wives would be proud of how they manage to look the same, talk similarly, wear make-up in the same way. Over his first and second terms, Trump has surrounded himself with interchangeable women. Most had degrees from one religious school or another. I’m not implying a sexual relationship with any or all; maybe their company is enough? Some have already left the circle; few are better off than before.

Caroline Sunshine

Madeline Westerhout

Kayleigh McEnany

Cassidy Hutchinson

Alyssa Farah Griffin

Sarah Matthews

Hope Hicks

Caroline Leavett

Natalie Harp

If DEI is the contemporary right‑wing shorthand for “identity preferences,” then central casting is the older, more cinematic version — the one Donald Trump has used for years to describe the ideal look, posture, and vibe of the people he wants around him. DEI is about metrics; central casting is about aesthetic destiny.

Central casting is Trump’s preferred talent‑acquisition framework: a visual litmus test for whether someone fits the archetype Hollywood has spent a century burnishing. A general should look like a general. A vice president should look like a vice president. A foreign leader should look like the man who would play a foreign leader in a movie about America winning something. It’s not a résumé; it’s a silhouette.

DEI, in conservative discourse, is framed as the opposite: a system that elevates people because of identity rather than competence. But Trump’s version of central casting is simply DEI with the polarity reversed — a preference for white, male, square‑jawed, camera‑ready authority figures who match the cultural template of power. It’s not anti‑DEI; it’s DEI for the historically dominant group, dressed up as instinct rather than ideology.

The irony is that central casting is every bit as identity‑driven as the DEI programs Trump rails against. It just selects for the identities Hollywood taught America to trust: whiteness, maleness, height, military bearing, the kind of face that looks good framed by a flag. DEI asks institutions to diversify the archetype. Central casting insists the archetype is the qualification.

In practice, central casting is a visual quota system — not written down, not formalized, but enforced through Trump’s own language. DEI is bureaucratic. Central casting is vibes. But both are systems for deciding who gets to stand closest to power. One expands the frame; the other freezes it.

Conclusion

In the end, “central casting” and DEI aren’t opposites so much as mirrors — each revealing who an institution believes should stand closest to power. DEI tries to widen the frame; central casting freezes it in place. One asks what leadership could look like; the other insists leadership must look exactly as Hollywood taught America to imagine it.

Trump didn’t invent central casting, but he weaponized it — turning a century of cinematic shorthand into an informal hiring doctrine. It’s a worldview where competence is measured by silhouette, where authority is a jawline, and where the country’s most powerful roles are filled by people who resemble the last people who held them.

If DEI is accused of elevating identity, central casting is guilty of the same charge — just for a different identity group, one that never needed a program to be chosen. It’s DEI for the already‑chosen, a preference masquerading as instinct, a pipeline disguised as nostalgia. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it: the administration built like a movie set, the generals who look like generals, the advisors who look like advisors, the America imagined as a casting call rather than a democracy.

Central casting isn’t just a phrase. It’s a worldview — and a reminder that the fight over who gets to lead is never just about policy. It’s about who gets to be seen as believable in the role. In Trump’s case, it’s also about surrounding himself with women in hopes it makes him appear masculine. Instead, it provokes laughter.

In the end, central casting isn’t a compliment — it’s a confession. Power keeps choosing the same faces because it can’t imagine any others. And the war against DEI is about holding onto power and preventing others from obtaining it

A conservative medical advocacy group called “Do No Harm” is suing the “Find a Black Doctor” directory, claiming this program racially discriminates against non-Black doctors. Dr. Dina Strachan, a New York dermatologist, launched the website in 2005 and later expanded it to all 50 states to help Black people connect with Black doctors, a process that is often challenging because Black doctors are underrepresented in the workforce. Similar to efforts to ban race-based affirmative action policies, this is being done under the guise of colorblindness. But, given the medical racism Black patients endure, axing a program designed to help them connect with Black doctors may cause harm.

Research suggests Black people report better outcomes when receiving care from Black doctors. For instance, one study found that racial concordance, meaning the patient and clinician share the same race, was predictive of better health outcomes (Shen et al., 2017). Participants reported lower satisfaction with the quality of communication from non-Black providers. They had shorter visits, received less information, and reported that physicians did most of the talking, made less eye contact, and engaged in less partnership building and participatory decision-making. In other words, the study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities showed that many Black patients didn’t feel they were treated fairly by non-Black doctors.

Preventive healthcare is also impacted by racial concordance. In a National Bureau of Economic Research study, researchers randomly assigned 1,490 Black men in Oakland, California, to either Black or non-Black physicians. Their investigation revealed that Black men were more likely to agree to invasive screenings when paired with a Black physician, 49% more likely to agree to a diabetes screening, and 71% more likely to agree to a cholesterol screening (Alsan et al., 2019). Likewise, a report found that Black women also have better outcomes with a doctor of the same race. Their visits were longer (84% compared to 76%), they were more likely to have things explained in a way they could understand, and to engage in shared decision-making. Yet within a three-year period, 63% of Black women had less than half of their appointments with a healthcare provider of the same racial or ethnic background (Schumacher et al., 2024). One in five Black women reported they were treated unfairly by a healthcare provider due to their race.

The lawsuit against the “Find a Black Doctor” directory overlooks research that shows diversity improves health outcomes for Black patients. Instead of accusing the program of prejudice, we should confront the disparate treatment they receive. For instance, Snyder et al. (2023) found that a 10% increase in Black primary care physicians’ representation was associated with a 30.61-day increase in life expectancy and a lower mortality rate among Black individuals (12.71 deaths per 100,000). A study published in the Journal of Health Economics found that when Black patients in Florida hospitals were paired with a Black physician, their likelihood of dying in a hospital dropped by 27% relative to their overall average mortality rate (Hill et al., 2023). Since research suggests Black people are more likely to receive higher-quality treatment from someone of the same race, it’s misleading to suggest a program connecting Black and doctors is rooted in prejudice. While some may see the directory as evidence of “reverse racism,” this is a survival tactic, a way of increasing the likelihood of a positive health outcome.

Racism persists within the healthcare industry. Black patients are more likely to be admitted to lower-quality hospitals (Akré et al., 2024). The rate at which Black women die from pregnancy-related complications is 3–4x that of White women (Howell, 2018). When Black patients report pain to healthcare providers, they are less likely to be believed. Hoffman et al. (2016) found that 40% of first-year medical students believed Black people had thicker skin than White people and thus didn’t need the same level of treatment. Historically, medical diagnostic tools have contributed to inaccurate diagnostic outcomes. In 2022, the Yale New Haven Health System stopped using an outdated method to assess patients’ kidney health, which relied on the false belief that “Black patients have more muscle mass than white patients.” Including race in their calculation led physiologists to believe that Black patients’ kidney function was “21% [higher] relative to non-Black patients, regardless of other factors,” according to Louis Hart, MD, the medical director in the Office of Health Equity at YNHHS.

While the lawsuit attempts to prohibit the use of the “Find a Black Doctor” directory, a study published in the British Medical Journal found that “African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American patients reported greater satisfaction with care if their doctor was of the same race or ethnic background than if their doctor was of a different background” (Tanne, 2002). So, Black people are not the only ones with this preference. The fact of the matter is that “patients who could choose their doctor were more likely to be of the same race as the doctor, compared with patients who could not choose.” While many in the modern era claim to endorse a colorblind worldview, research indicates that race impacts our experiences in personal and professional settings. We have to reckon with that reality. Rather than eliminating this program, we should encourage more research into this phenomenon and invest resources that improve Black health outcomes in the care of non-Black doctors.

While the conservative group that filed the lawsuit is called “Do No Harm,” their name is ironic. Given that medical racism persists, and Black people report better health outcomes with same-race doctors, removing this program may cause harm. Their lawsuit claims the “Find a Black Doctor” directory “openly discriminates against doctors by race” by limiting “eligibility to Black physicians and dentists in an active practice.” But what about the racism that Black people endure within the healthcare industry, which diminishes their quality of care? While some are attempting to enforce a race-neutral approach, they’ve overlooked why such a program was needed in the first place. In the absence of this program, Black patients are expected to roll the dice and hope they’re treated fairly. Regardless of the results of this case, Americans should acknowledge there are legitimate reasons why Black people often seek care from same-race doctors. As it stands, they’re trying to eliminate the use of “race” without addressing the racism that persists in our society. And in doing so, they’re jeopardizing the health and well-being of Black patients.

New information is coming out that we never saw during the Karmelo Anthony trial. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t known. The prosecution team and the defense attorneys, all white, decided to exclude the material because it might prove inflammatory in what was already going to be a heated trial. Some of the material made Karmelo Anthony look worse. He was allegedly stalking his ex-girlfriend, and he’d texted a photo of the knife, legal to carry in Texas, eventually used to kill Austin Metcalf. Right-wing media is running with the new information about Anthony, portraying him as a violent thug who deserved the guilty verdict in his murder trial.

What is barely covered is the material about the victim, showing he’d been “accused of spray-painting racist messages and engaging in threatening conduct.” Metcalf had been accused of more than that, but that's for later.

Anthony, now 19, was convicted of murder on June 9, 2026, and sentenced to 35 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Metcalf at a Frisco high school track meet on April 2, 2025. The verdict arrived in under three hours. The jury was not all-white, but all potential Black jurors had been excluded before trial. At the trial, the jury pool had been whittled to 18 jurors, of which 12 would be jurors and 2 alternates. The prosecution used its final three challenges to eliminate the three remaining Black jurors. The defense challenged their removal. The prosecutor gave the excuse that the three Black people were educators and, therefore, had interaction with children. They argued that people who work with youth might be more lenient toward a teenage defendant.

The defense immediately challenged this explanation because a white educator was allowed to remain on the jury. If “educators are too sympathetic” was truly the reason, then all educators should have been struck. But prosecutors struck only the Black educators, not the white one. The defense argued that the “educator” rationale was a pretext for racial exclusion. The jury was told, by attorneys on both sides, that race had nothing to do with what happened beneath the Memorial High School tent on that rainy spring afternoon. Race, it turns out, may have had quite a bit to do with it. It just never made it into the courtroom.

The narrative the jury received was clean and prosecutable. Two teenagers, strangers to each other, ended up beneath the same tent. One belonged there. The other was from a rival school. Words were exchanged. A shove occurred. A knife appeared. The confrontation lasted under thirty seconds. The white teenager died.

Prosecutor Bill Wirskye distilled his theory to a single declarative sentence: “You don’t get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke the shove.” The defense, led by Mike Howard, countered that Metcalf had no legal right to put his hands on Anthony, and that Anthony’s belief that he needed to defend himself was sincere. Anthony had told the arresting officers: “He put his hands on me. I told him not to.”

That self-defense framing of a Black teenager claiming the right to respond to a white teenager’s physical aggression — sits at one of the most statistically treacherous intersections in American criminal law. A 2021 Everytown for Gun Safety study found that homicides are ruled justified more often, in nearly every state, when the killer is white, and the victim is Black. Research from the Urban Institute put precise numbers to that disparity: when the killer is Black and the victim is white, the killing is ruled justified in just over one percent of cases. When the racial dynamics are reversed, that figure rises to 11.4 percent. Karmelo Anthony was, before a single piece of evidence was introduced, swimming against a current that powerful. But he was also swimming without a life jacket that his own attorney had agreed to set aside.

During a new-trial hearing in August 2026, before visiting Judge Michael B. Chitty — who had replaced trial Judge John Roach Jr. after Roach gave post-verdict media interviews that raised questions about his impartiality — Anthony’s appellate attorney Russell Wilson described something he said he had rarely encountered in a murder case.

“I don’t know that I’ve seen a murder case with this much off the record stuff,” Wilson told the court. What had been off the record, it emerged, was substantial. Prosecutors and Howard had reached an unwritten agreement — never formally placed before the court, never approved by the defendant in any documented on-the-record colloquy — to exclude character evidence about both teenagers. The stated rationale was sensible enough on its face: the case had already exploded across social media in racial terms, and both sides believed that introducing the backgrounds of the two teens would turn the courtroom into a referendum on race in America rather than a focused examination of what happened on April 2.

The agreement worked as designed. Race, as a formal evidentiary matter, stayed out of the courtroom. Both sides honored the deal. The jury was shielded from inflammatory material. And Karmelo Anthony was convicted of murder.

What Wilson now argues — and what the new-trial hearing has forced into open court — is that the deal protected both sides’ strategic interests while gutting Anthony’s only viable defense. Because the agreement, by excluding character evidence symmetrically, was not actually symmetrical. The excluded evidence about Metcalf was directly relevant to whether Anthony’s fear of him was reasonable. The excluded evidence about Anthony was only relevant to undermining him on cross-examination. The agreement traded Anthony’s most powerful defense card for a shield he never asked for.

What the Files Contained

The files that never reached the jury told a different story about Austin Metcalf than the one presented to the public in the year between his death and the trial.

The most significant item was a juvenile court record from Denton County. Austin Metcalf and his twin brother, Hunter, had been adjudicated for spray-painting racist and antisemitic graffiti. The phrases they painted included “KKK kill all blacks,” “Heil Hitler,” and the N-word. Both boys received twelve months of juvenile probation. When asked about it, Hunter and Austin reportedly told authorities: “We did some dumb stuff.” “We did some vandalism.”

The graffiti alone reframes the tent confrontation in ways worth exploring. A Black teenager was ordered to leave a space by a white teenager who had previously, with his own hand, written “kill all Blacks” on a surface intended for public view. Whatever one concludes about what happened next — whatever weight one assigns to Anthony’s split-second decision — the question of whether Anthony’s fear had a reasonable basis looks different when that context is available. Jurors never had the chance to weigh it.

The graffiti was not an isolated artifact of a bad moment. School records introduced at the hearing documented a pattern. In 2023, Metcalf was accused of bullying a Black student in class and using racial slurs — conduct that, combined with the adjudicated graffiti, traces something more durable than adolescent impulsiveness.

There was also a documented history of violence. In 2018, while still in elementary school, Metcalf and his brother were accused of bullying and assaulting a female student; Austin was arrested in connection with that incident. In 2024, he allegedly knocked another female student to the ground and punched her in the stomach. That same year, he was removed from a football game and sent a text message in which he said he had been about to “beat the shit out of those kids.” He met with a school counselor at least five times in 2024 to address anger and rage problems that had surfaced during athletic events. He was banned from basketball games for an entire season in 2021 for yelling profanity at a player. Court documents describe a separate track meet incident in which, after being told that someone on the other side of the bench was “talking wild,” Metcalf allegedly replied: “Kill that mf.”

In a particularly striking detail, school records indicate Metcalf was suspended after he and another student discussed bringing a gun to school the following day.

The picture that emerges from those records is of a young man with a documented capacity for explosive anger, a documented history of anti-Black racism — not as rumor, but as adjudicated fact — and a documented pattern of physical aggression. None of that picture was available to the twelve people asked to decide whether Karmelo Anthony’s fear, in the moment he reached into his bag, was reasonable.

Howard testified at the new-trial hearing that he knew about Metcalf’s background report and agreed not to use it anyway. He explained that introducing it would have opened the door to Anthony’s own prior conduct, which prosecutors had documented in a 75-page file that included, among other things, a text message Anthony allegedly sent to his former girlfriend hours before the stabbing: “I’m low key on the verge.” It also included a message, sent on a prior occasion, that read: “When I stab somebody I’m gonna lick their blood off the blade.”

That material, in a conventional trial, would have been devastating on cross-examination. Howard’s calculus was understandable in isolation: don’t open a door that lets in something worse.

But Wilson’s argument is not that Howard made a strategically incomprehensible decision in a vacuum. It is that the decision was made without Anthony — then a 17-year-old facing a murder charge — having a full, on-the-record understanding of what he was giving up. Wilson argues that the agreement, which was never formally placed before the court, coerced Anthony into not testifying in his own defense. Anthony chose not to take the stand; the defense argues that testifying would have exposed the agreement and brought to light 75 pages of prior conduct material. The defendant’s constitutional right to testify, Wilson contends, was made effectively illusory by a deal he had not meaningfully approved.

“He was denied a complete defense,” Wilson argued. What he meant, stripped to its core, is that Anthony was handed a strategy—race stays out; we fight on the facts of the tent—and then denied the context that would have made those facts cohere.

There is a final element of the trial that cannot be disentangled from everything else. The jury that deliberated for less than three hours and chose murder over manslaughter contained no Black members. The Black potential jurors had been struck during jury selection.

This is not, by itself, proof of anything. Prosecutors strike jurors for reasons that survive Batson v. Kentucky every day in courtrooms across the country. But it is context. It is the context within which twelve people were asked to evaluate the claim of a Black teenager that he was afraid of a white teenager who was physically larger and had put his hands on him first. And it is the context within which those twelve people were never told that the white teenager had, years earlier, written “kill all Blacks” on a wall in Denton County and received twelve months of probation for it.

The jury reached a verdict on a story edited by lawyers who were not the defendant. The question before Judge Chitty is whether that edited story constituted a fair trial. The question for the rest of us is broader.

American jurisprudence has long grappled with the tension between keeping trials focused and keeping them fair. Evidence rules exist for legitimate reasons — relevance, prejudice, confusion of issues. The agreement in the Anthony trial was not illegal. It was a choice, made by two attorneys, two white attorneys, to define the boundaries of what a jury would know, keeping race out of a discussion it belonged in.

But a self-defense claim is, by its nature, a claim about context. It asks a jury to inhabit the defendant’s perception at the moment of the act — to ask whether a reasonable person in that position, with that history, facing that threat, would have done the same thing. Strip away the context, and you strip away the claim. You are left with a body on the ground and a teenager with a knife, and the verdict writes itself.

Karmelo Anthony’s jury was given exactly that. A body on the ground. A teenager with a knife. Less than three hours to decide.

What they were not given was the knowledge that the person who approached that teenager, who told him to move, who escalated until physical contact occurred, had already told Denton County, in paint, what he thought about Black lives. That information did not appear in the jury’s instructions. It did not come in through testimony. It was in a file that both sides had agreed, off the record, to leave closed.

Judge Chitty now has to decide whether a new trial is warranted. He will weigh procedural standards, constitutional arguments, and the record of what was and was not disclosed. He will likely not be asked to rule on whether justice, in the broader sense, was done.

That question remains open. It was decided by an agreement nobody voted on, in a case where a jury was told it had nothing to do with race, while the evidence that it did sat in a manila folder, unread.

Karmelo Anthony is currently serving a 35-year sentence at a Texas correctional facility. A hearing on his motion for a new trial before Judge Michael B. Chitty is ongoing. His conviction has not been overturned.

As we walked to the corner store sex shop in the Flatbush Avenue junction, we’d already deliberated that our tallest friend would manage the purchase. He had, of course, bought the first tape that we watched over and over again. Our other friend, with the glasses, looked even younger than the rest of us and it would’ve been breaking some kind of law to sell him the tape, we knew. So, in our boxy sneakers and shifty glances, we huddled off to the right like we were going in a candy store and left it to Rock to bring the collected money to the counter. This was 1996, I wanna say, and the tapes weren’t labeled nor would we have stayed in that seedy store long enough to browse. These were the kind of New York adults who fomented a dangerous contraband tradition of selling to anyone with the money to buy their ill-gotten goods.

We arrived at Rock’s house before his parents and sister and while his brother was in practice. There was a small window we had to review the tape of unknown runtime, blank white label box, and banned sound. We’d need to close his door, sit there mouths agape and ears alert to the front door downstairs. I was practicing my giggle and the jokes I’d make about what looked gross to offset the silence that enveloped us when something became both nasty and intriguing. Three young Black boys, slurping up a screen full of men going inside women, live action style with sweat and hair. At that point, we were thirsty consumers so the VHS tapes were edits of many gonzo hardcore movies spliced together so that the original order was lost. Sex wasn’t a story, we learned, just an act. Two body parts thrumming in a roughly syncopated beat. No matter how many jokes I rehearsed, the silence beat us every time.

I find this ritual unimaginable now. In college at the turn of the century, it was even more surreal and cramped. My friends then had access to an older brother’s apartment that served as a kind of flop house. His brother had been minted Eldest Boy and enjoyed privileges like free rent from his parents for being in college. That midtown Atlanta boys’ club was a strange refuge and screening ground for his unreal pornography collection. “Booty Talk” represented the best of West Coast Productions slime and we’d wait, again like we were captives to thirst, for the Friday haul his brother inevitably wrangled on his way back from the strip club. At the time, those studios were putting out an insane number of titles, none scripted or lampooning like the White adult film industry that was their close parallel. Dick and pussy. Floppy organs and straight rods and bulbous breasts and tattoos and blunts and severely choppy edits characterized these raunch-a-thon reels.

They were also a communal affair. It was not my apartment so I got no quiet time with my friend’s brother’s stash. That was an etiquette we wouldn’t dare violate. Again, we sat like a gallery, his older friends and us, the freshmen, viewing like we were in a Times Square theater trying not to get arrested. No one spoke except for a few shaky puns or the click of a soda can opening to address the pervasive thirst. Were we meant to watch these flicks with Our Boys, none of us daring to touch and fully clothed? I don’t know, but that’s how we did it. Oddly, we had been among each other when the idea of ganging up on a girl was in play or when someone hired a stripper and brought her back for the entertainment of two or three of us (like on my 20th birthday when we ran a train on a girl and I was too dizzy of 8 Smirnoff Ices to get my pants from around my ankles).

This was a bizarre time when, through porn, I adopted the wrong belief, that sexual performance was about impressing other men and discarding women. I did not understand that Black men’s sexual conquests had taken on a homoerotic meaning in the bonding customs we’d been subject to. That had been in my lyrics, my lockers, my lies and my loneliness. I did not understand that I would become addicted to porn, the mechanism of proving manhood through a hard-cocking display, the opportunity to bond with other men the only way I knew how—by proving we could fuck anything but each other. That was the calculus of love among friends I had at the time and I didn’t resent them their ignorance just like they let me have my sensitivities. It’s only after I committed one sexual taboo, during the train, that I knew we were all in an obstinate cycle of denying ourselves pleasure so we could inhabit better masks.

DHS says the shock glove is a de-escalation. Read the manual, and it reads like something else.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to hand ICE officers a glove that shocks people up to 380 volts on skin contact. Between $10 million and $20 million of taxpayer money, no-bid, out the door to a Kentucky company called Compliant Technologies before March 31, 2027 (AP; Washington Post).

The device has a friendly bureaucratic name: “Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter.” DHS calls it a “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Device.” A U.S. Army fact sheet says it delivers “electrical pulses” to “gain compliance.” That is the whole thing right there, in that one verb. Compliance. It seems like DHS looks at me, citizens, and everyone, not ICE, as a threat. I still don’t have a coherent answer to why a manufactured immigration crisis is greater than healthcare, child welfare, and housing.

But, I see DHS has funds to procure weapons to administer more pain and injuries to people within our borders and city streets.

I served twenty-three years in uniform. I know what use-of-force training looks like when it is honest, and I know what it looks like when the paperwork is doing the honesty for you. This is the second one.

What the glove actually is

Compliant Technologies sells the CT-G5 as a normal-looking tactical glove. Flip the switch on the hand, and it becomes a weapon in one second. Voltage runs 324 to 362 volts, capped at 380. It has to touch bare skin. It leaves no burn mark (Compliant Technologies; AP). That last detail is not incidental. A weapon that hurts without leaving a photograph is a weapon built for a specific kind of encounter. And a specific kind of accountability problem: the one where the person who got hurt cannot prove it happened.

The manufacturer’s own manual tells you who this thing should not be used on: the elderly, small children, pregnant women, and the severely handicapped. The manual bars use “in response to verbal defiance,” and bars use for “punishment,” “torture,” or “horseplay” (AP).

Read that list twice. Then look at who ICE grabs off sidewalks, out of Home Depot parking lots, and out of driver-side windows every week in this country. The manufacturer has essentially written a warning label for the population DHS is about to hand these to.

What the glove has already done

Twenty-seven glove shocks. Thirteen Taser shocks. That is what a pending lawsuit says a 43-year-old man received in 2024 at the Madison County Detention Center in Richmond, Kentucky, before he died. An internal investigation found that two of the glove shocks lasted 45 seconds and 99 seconds. The manufacturer’s own recommended limit is 15 seconds. Court documents quote the investigation: “These actions not only inflicted unnecessary pain but also heightened the risk of serious health complications.” (AP).

Twenty-seven times. Ninety-nine seconds. A tool marketed as a quick “distraction” was used as a torture instrument on a man in custody. That is not a hypothetical. That is what this glove has already done inside a facility where the person could not walk away, could not resist, could not leave.

Now DHS wants to move it out of the jail and onto the street, where the person is a landscaper, a grandmother, a delivery driver, a kid on a bike, and where the encounter is not on camera the way a booking hallway is.

The DHS defense, translated

Here is what DHS actually said when asked to justify this:

“ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country.” (AP)

“Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.” (AP)

Two paragraphs. Zero specifics. The statement does not name the device, describe the training, or cite the policy. It skips the Kentucky death entirely. It does not explain the no-bid contract; it does not explain why an agency that already carries firearms, Tasers, batons, pepper spray, and hands-on tactics needs one more pain compliance tool for people it is arresting, not fighting. Why are poor Americans the enemy? Racial profiling already targets people of color unfairly, making non-white people a target for shocking mistreatment.

Notice the phrase “criminal illegal aliens.” That is the trapdoor in the sentence. It lets the reader picture a violent felon. But ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arrests a lot of people who have never been charged with anything except being here. The glove will not sit in a locker waiting for the imagined worst case. ICE will issue it to the officer for the ordinary case: the traffic stop, the courthouse hallway, the front-yard arrest. Ordinary is where misuse lives. And minorities are on the receiving end of batons, chokeholds, kneeling, and now, shock treatment.

What the professionals are saying

John Sandweg used to run ICE. He is not an activist; he is the former acting director of the agency now buying the glove, and he told MS NOW plainly: “It’s too easy for this to get misused, against a population that doesn’t pose a threat.” (AP).

Michael Mannheimer, a law professor at Northern Kentucky University, asked the question DHS refuses to answer: “if ICE agents have this at their immediate disposal, will they use it more than they should? Will they jump over a lesser force that could be appropriate and successful to attain compliance, and instead use this first?” (AP).

New York Attorney General Letitia James went further, calling the plan a source of outrage and warning that ICE officers who misuse the glove in her state could face criminal and civil consequences (AP).

Even the industry has recognized the problem. Axon, the maker of the Taser, recently phased out its drive-stun mode (a similar pain-compliance function) after years of documented misuse by officers (AP). DHS is picking up a tool the private-sector market is walking away from, and buying it in bulk.

What “de-escalation” is supposed to mean

I want to be direct about this word, because DHS is hiding behind it. De-escalation is the deliberate practice of lowering the temperature of an encounter. It is voice, distance, time, cover, and options. In the military and in every legitimate law-enforcement curriculum I have ever seen, pain compliance is not de-escalation. It is force. Renaming it does not change what it is.

If DHS wanted de-escalation, it would fund more agents trained to talk, more interpreters, more supervisors on scene, and more body cameras that actually stay on. Instead, it is buying a glove that hurts people without leaving a mark, and calling the hurt a de-escalation.

The vocabulary is the tell. When an agency has to redefine the verb “shock” to mean “calm,” it has stopped explaining itself and started laundering.

I have questions that Congress and the courts should ask before a single glove ships

• Under what specific use-of-force policy is the glove authorized, and where is that policy published?
• Every activation of the glove records an event. Will those records be preserved, made available to Congress, and disclosed to defense counsel? (Compliant Technologies)
• Will body-worn cameras be required to run for every activation?
• What is the training requirement, in hours, and who audits it?
• Will the manufacturer’s exclusions (elderly, pregnant, children, severely disabled) be written into policy as bright-line prohibitions, with termination as the penalty?
• Why a no-bid contract for a tool, the industry’s leading manufacturer of the closest analog, just abandoned?

If DHS cannot answer those in plain English before the March 2027 delivery date, Congress should block the purchase. The Appropriations Committees have the authority. Use it.

Midterm elections are coming up.

A federal agency does not need a new weapon to safely detain a landscaper on a ladder. It does not need a shock glove to serve paperwork to a family in a driveway. It needs adults, training, transparency, and restraint. The reason DHS is buying the glove is not that ICE cannot do its job without one. The reason is that the glove makes pain easier, quieter, and less visible in the news.

That is not de-escalation. What it really is is a $20 million pain button for an agency that has not earned another one.

I served this country. I do not recognize the country that hands its officers a glove designed to hurt people off camera and calls the hurt a courtesy.

My friend recently sent a video with a Black judge admonishing a young lady for wearing a durag to court. The woman tried to defend herself by explaining that it was part of Black culture.

This only irritated the judge further.

“Excuse me. I’m Black, and guess what? I’m not wearing a durag…because I’m in a courtroom. Not only am I not wearing a durag, I’m not picking up unauthorized used or criminal cases, so please, don’t try to tell me about Black culture….I know more about Black culture than you, and I respect the Black culture by remembering that my ancestors were slaves, and I’m not going out picking up criminal cases”- Judge Boyd

This exchange is a microcosm of a larger discussion that seems to come and go but always persists in the background of the Black community.

It recently made its way into the mainstream news again.

Tuskegee University, an HBCU, updated its dress code by banning bonnets and durags in classrooms and the cafeteria. What should have been a debate kept inside of the community has leaked to the public, and everyone has an opinion.

Although most people speak on this topic as if it is black and white, my thoughts are a bit more complex.

As an older person, the intention feels obvious. The university wants to prepare the students for the real world. Yes, you have class at 8 am, but many jobs start early and with a longer commute. Most jobs are not okay with someone showing up in slippers and a durag.

Dr. Mark Anthony Brown, the president of Tuskegee University, called it practice.

Durags and bonnets are specifically Black, and so this specification feels extremely targeted when outsiders look in. However, this is what I mean when I say this discussion was meant to be private.

This probably wasn’t so much about durags and bonnets, but presenting professionally. Still, all roads lead to the same conclusion for many people. This is just another form of respectability politics.

Respectability politics, a term coined by Evelyne Brooks Higginbotham, is when a marginalized group attempts to dress and act a certain way to be accepted by the majority group. To simplify it for this discussion, it is when Black people dress nicely to impress white people.

It has been proven again and again, no matter how well we dress, how refined our speech, how independent our finances, they will always attempt to tear it down.

Respectability politics don’t work.

However, is that really what is going on at Tuskegee University?

Growing up in the 90s, I only remember dress code being truly prevalent in two arenas of my life: school and church.

At school, the dress code mostly targeted the girls because the boys apparently could not control themselves if they saw too much shoulder. The only thing the boys had to worry about was pulling up their pants. I’m not sure how I so often failed to wear a belt, but I remember all of my clothes being far too big. I wasn’t the most stylish kid, so I’m not sure how much of that was choice versus this is what I own.

However, I do know I chose my clothing on Sundays. I don’t remember why my mother eventually gave in and started allowing me to wear whatever I wanted to church, but I’m sure I fought her on it for years.

It mirrors what some of the professors said at Tuskegee University: at least the kids are in the class and ready to learn.

Either way, I spent many weekdays using most of my time pulling my pants up to avoid detention, and I spent my weekends wearing a T-shirt and too big jeans while everyone around me dressed in their Sunday best.

In 2004, a celebrity who has since fallen from grace called for Black people to pull up their pants. It was the first time I could comprehend the respectability politics debate.

The celebrity went on to blame single mothers and “Black” names like Shaniqua for society’s problems. He implied racism was a scapegoat for the failures of the Black community.

Clearly, he is coming from an angle of privilege here. He was rich from selling a safe style of Blackness, and the mindset is “if I did it, you can do it too.”

These are the same talking points some white people use when presented with the topic of systemic racism. Don’t be a victim. Pull up your pants, and you will be successful.

I hope I’ve made it clear that I don’t buy into respectability politics, but is that really what’s going on at Tuskegee University?

Culture or cap

I stumbled across another video while thinking about this topic. In this one, a Black judge seemingly has to tell multiple people each day how to dress for court. Although these were online court hearings, it is still shocking to see so many adults show up in bonnets or tank tops (and sometimes less).

Dr. Brown called it practice.

Many students responded that they know they can’t wear bonnets to work, but here we have so many people showing up to court seemingly clueless. I’m not implying that these people graduated from Tuskegee University, but they missed the memo somewhere that this isn’t how you dress to tend to business.

“Ah ha!” I hear you declare. “LG just wants us to conform to the white man’s rules. He wants us to dress to impress the white man.”

I’m going to tell you a little secret. Plenty of white people don’t want to dress up either. They want to wear their ball caps and their tank tops and their ripped jeans.

I imagine the two judges I mentioned here and the president of Tuskegee University wouldn’t complain if someone showed up wearing a dashiki. The same even goes for traditional head wraps. If this is really about culture, let’s talk about that.

For the most part, wearing bonnets and durags to class and court are just signs of laziness. If we use culture to justify laziness, we lose the power to use culture when it matters.

Respectability politics tend to fall across two lines: the socioeconomic divide and the generational divide.

I’m not as poor as I used to be (teacher salary allows me to eat three meals a day and have money left over for rent), and I’m kind of old now. I try to remember what it felt like to be young and poor and have some old rich guy tell me how to dress.

I know now that age brings a bit of wisdom. This doesn’t mean give up your identity or conform to social norms, but it does mean apply pressure when you are walking into a place of business. If you want to talk about style and culture, bring your fly. I’ve never seen anyone bring fly with bedroom bonnets and slippers.

any people think of racism in America as something strictly historical, like that collection of dusty Ku Klux Klan robes found in the closet of the Mississippi Public Safety Department, a discovery that sparked some outrage last spring, but for some felt like only relics from a long-gone era. While it’s important to consider how past events set the stage for today, these narratives, when isolated, can lead some to assume that prejudice is long gone. But new technological advances expose racism as something that changes. It does not disappear, like steam escaping after you take the lid off a pot of rice, but lingers like the smell of fried catfish, even after the meal is over.

The uncomfortable truth is that Black people are not given an equal opportunity to survive and thrive in this country. And those whose eyes are trained to see racism in only its explicit, most extreme forms, such as someone using racist slurs, hanging “whites only” signs in front of their businesses, or committing a violent hate crime, may miss all the subtle ways in which prejudice persists in modern times. In terms of technology, consider the rising popularity of Flock cameras and other automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems that collect identifying information, such as license plate numbers and the vehicle's color, make, and model. While seemingly neutral, Flock cameras have helped to streamline the process of racially profiling Black people.

For example, data from Oak Park, Illinois, showed that 84% of drivers stopped in Flock-related traffic incidents were Black, which is outrageous given that they make up only approximately 19% of the local population. An Electronic Frontier Foundation report suggested police officers use language when searching through Flock video logs that “mirrors long-standing patterns of discriminatory policing.” For instance, officers used phrases such as “suspicious behavior” or “high crime area” to justify additional surveillance in predominantly Black, Latine, and Native communities. They also found that officers targeted ethnic minorities, such as Romani people, by using terms such as “Roma” or “g*psy.”

Mass surveillance is concerning in its own right, but when used in a society where prejudice against Black people persists, it’s a recipe for disaster. For example, law enforcement agencies are growing increasingly dependent on facial recognition software. Before this technological advancement, investigators relied on eyewitnesses, but White people frequently misidentified Black people, contributing to wrongful arrests and convictions. In one high-profile case, the author of Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold, wrongfully identified a Black man as someone who raped her in 1981, causing him to spend 16 years in prison. This is not an isolated problem, and research suggests racial bias among White people “can increase the false identification of Black faces in simultaneous lineups (Vitriol et al., 2019).

Now, with law enforcement increasingly relying on automated facial recognition technology, Black people are at an even greater risk of being misidentified. While companies have marketed facial recognition software as reliable and trustworthy, these flashpoints overlook the high rate of inaccuracy of facial recognition software when these models are used to identify Black people and other people of color. For example, one investigation showed that three unique algorithms developed by IBM and Microsoft “performed the worst on darker-skinned females, with error rates up to 34% higher than for lighter-skinned males.” Some may assume that using an automated facial recognition system can take the guesswork out of identifying those suspected of committing a crime, and that it would eliminate the risk of racial bias or outright racism associated with eyewitnesses. Yet, facial recognition technology tends to misidentify Black people, particularly those with dark skin tones, at a much higher rate than other racial groups.

Black people have already experienced injustices due to automated facial recognition software. In fact, nearly all of the victims of false arrests due to the use of this technology so far are Black people. A couple of high-profile cases include Michael Oliver, a 25-year-old Black man arrested by Detroit police officers in July of 2019 after a program claimed he was a thief who stole a teacher’s cell phone. The system confused him for a student, so officers dropped the charges. During the following January, a Black man named Robert Williams was arrested by the same police department and charged with stealing a luxury watch, but after thirty hours, officers discovered the automated system had confused him with another Black man with a similar body type. Given that Black people in America are more likely to be wrongfully accused and convicted of crimes, this technology could worsen the problem.

Modern-day racism is streamlined by surveillance technology. Consider, for instance, how ankle monitors worn by individuals as instructed by state and federal law enforcement agencies are reminiscent of the shackles worn by enslaved Africans. Both devices were designed to confine an individual and prevent them from leaving an assigned area, but with the Global Positioning System, satellite-based technology better known by its acronym GPS, law enforcement agencies can locate someone with great precision. While the enslaved could escape under the cover of night, and with the right sense of direction, luck, and support from others, this technology makes it nearly impossible for someone to evade authorities. Some would argue that this technology is needed, without considering the racial injustices within the criminal justice system.

Evidence suggests ankle monitors are disproportionately used on Black people. A 2020 report found that in Marion County, Indiana, approximately half of the people in the pretrial program, individuals required to wear an ankle monitor, were Black, despite making up approximately 29% of the county’s population. In Cook County, Illinois, the disparity was even worse, with 70% of the electronic monitoring (EM) population being Black, despite making up 29% of the county’s population. To give one more example, in San Francisco, where Black people make up roughly 5% of the population, approximately 44% of those subjected to electronic monitoring were Black. It’s not the technology itself, in this case, that’s causing the problem, but how it’s used that perpetuates racist outcomes.

Just as law enforcement agencies are more likely to keep tabs on Black Americans by using ankle monitors, the same can be said about federal immigration agencies keeping tabs on Black immigrants. For example, after the Trump administration removed the temporary protected status from thousands of Haitians living in Ohio, immigration enforcement agencies have targeted Haitians for deportation. And many of those who stayed were required to wear ankle monitors. Placing digital shackles on Black immigrants provides a startling contrast to the treatment of White immigrants, such as those White South Africans welcomed by the Trump administration, who were practically given red carpet treatment, without the presumption that they represented a security threat.

Racism is not only a historical phenomenon. Indeed, law enforcement using Flock cameras to locate and stop Black drivers at a disproportionate rate, facial recognition software proven to misidentify dark-skinned people more frequently than White people, and electronic ankle monitors used more readily on Black people than members of other racial groups demonstrate that racism and bias have evolved with technological advancements. This technology has also been cited in cases where women faced harassment, as illustrated by the dozens of officers accused of, in some cases, being charged after misusing Flock video footage by stalking or monitoring individuals for personal reasons. The use of mass surveillance technology is a problem in its own right, especially in a country where the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects people from “unreasonable searches,” but it’s important to acknowledge that this technology leaves Black people and other marginalized groups uniquely vulnerable. In a society where racism persists, the constant watchful eye of authorities presents a security threat to black communities.

A Warship Adrift

On July 24, the USS Benfold — a billion‑dollar Arleigh Burke–class destroyer carrying roughly 300 sailors — lost power in the middle of the Pacific. Not partial power. Not degraded systems. Total power loss. For four days, the crew endured conditions that would shame a neglected civilian ferry: no drinking water, no functioning toilets, no air conditioning, no ability to cook meals.

This wasn’t a minor malfunction. It was a full‑scale engineering failure that left a frontline warship helpless in contested waters. And yet the public didn’t hear a word about it until weeks later, when USNI News forced the Navy to acknowledge the incident.

The official language was antiseptic: “an engineering casualty involving its generators.” But sailors don’t live in euphemisms. They live in heat, sweat, backed‑up sewage, and the knowledge that a powerless destroyer is a sitting target.

An unnamed U.S. Navy Destroyer near Puerto Rico once experienced something similar. Former Navy captain Carl Schuster described a complete power loss aboard a destroyer near Puerto Rico that lasted about four hours.

This account is important because it confirms that total power failures have happened before, even if they were shorter and less catastrophic. Even the approximate date is unknown, as is the administration under which it occurred.

Schuster’s description of the crew’s stress — worrying about drift, weather, food, and when help would arrive — mirrors what Benfold’s sailors endured, but on a smaller scale.

The USS Robert Smalls delivered meals to the stranded ship. Eventually, the Benfold was towed — not escorted, not assisted, but towed — to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs. It arrived on July 28. Only then were sailors given food and lodging off the ship.

On August 8, the Navy announced the destroyer had returned to normal operations. Crisis over, they said.

But crises don’t end when the lights come back on. They end when leadership confronts the failure honestly. That part never happened.

Overshadowed by Another Failure

While the Benfold drifted powerless, the Pentagon was consumed with a different embarrassment: the USS Abraham Lincoln, trapped in a record‑breaking 250‑day deployment with shortages of food, hygiene supplies, and basic necessities. Sailors reported stress, exhaustion, and deteriorating mental health. Democratic lawmakers demanded investigations. The Lincoln became the headline. The Benfold became the secret.

Three hundred sailors went four days without water, toilets, or air conditioning — and the Navy kept quiet. The acting Secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, focused instead on messaging around the Lincoln’s return and the administration’s shifting posture toward China. Optics over accountability. Again.

The Navy’s statement praised the Benfold crew for “resilience, grit, professionalism, and unwavering steadiness.”

And yes — sailors are resilient. They are gritty. They are steady. They do not panic when the lights go out. They do not complain when the air grows thick and hot. They adapt. They endure. But resilience is not a substitute for leadership. And grit is not a shield against neglect.

The statement said nothing about why the generators failed, why the breakdown lasted four days, why the incident was hidden, or why sailors’ suffering was treated as an inconvenient detail rather than a warning sign. It said nothing about the systemic maintenance failures that have plagued the Navy for years — deferred repairs, understaffed shipyards, aging vessels pushed beyond their limits. It said nothing about accountability.

The story isn’t just about a ship. It’s about the people aboard it. It’s about the sailors who tried to sleep in 100‑degree heat. The sailors who rationed water. The sailors who wondered whether anyone in Washington cared. The sailors who watched leadership prioritize public relations over truth.

It’s about families who learned of the breakdown from the news rather than the Navy. Parents who wondered whether their children were safe. Spouses who wondered whether the silence meant something worse. These are not abstractions. They are the human consequences of institutional failure.

The administration insists that China is now “a settled force” — not the top adversary it was under the previous administration — and that deterrence is the priority.

But deterrence requires credibility. Credibility requires readiness. Readiness requires ships that work — and leadership that tells the truth when they don’t.

A Navy that cannot keep its destroyers powered cannot project strength. A Navy that cannot feed its sailors cannot sustain operations. A Navy that hides its failures cannot learn from them. And a Navy whose leaders prioritize appearances over accountability cannot be trusted.

The sailors aboard the Benfold did their part. They endured. They adapted. They survived. Now it’s time for the Secretary of the Navy and the President to do theirs.

Leadership’s most important priority seems to be hiding failures and avoiding the appearance of weakness. But pretending everything is fine is the weakest posture of all. It signals to adversaries that the U.S. military is stretched thin and unwilling to confront its own vulnerabilities. It signals to service members that their suffering is secondary to political optics. And it signals to the public that transparency is optional.

Strength is not the absence of failure. Strength is the willingness to confront failure honestly.

Until leadership chooses honesty over image, the Benfold will remain what it was for four days in July: a symbol of a military adrift, a ship in the dark, and a reminder that resilience is not enough when leadership fails.

The other failure is not addressing the cause of a total power failure. Was it a powerful EMP blast causing all electrical systems to fail? Were those ships attacked with a new weapon by a foreign power? If a car loses power, a mechanic ultimately discovers the reason. When a large naval vessel loses power, there’s a reason as well. Do you think this administration will ever acknowledge what it was?

Modern genetic ancestry exposes a basic historical reality most people have, for generations, tried to sweep under the rug.

Populations we now treat as distinct “races” or “ethnicities” have been mixing for centuries, too often in ways that our recorded histories minimized, sanitized, or downright ignored.

Part of what that DNA reveals is super positive.

Like the Lemba people in Zimbabwe, some of whom have DNA that traces their roots to the priestly tribe in Israel, the Kohanim, not far off from people with the last name Cohen in America who have similar DNA.

DNA has also allowed families to find their histories.

For Black Americans, what countries they were stolen from. For everyone, what mix of ethnicities they are. And for some, what diseases or other genetic characteristics they might be more prone to.

My DNA came back 80% Russian/Ashkenazi Jewish, 9% Middle Eastern, 2% Moroccan and Algerian, and the rest from Central Asia. Admittedly, I didn’t read the medical part.

At its core, DNA is also an undeniable record of who had children with whom. Geneticists can examine autosomal DNA alongside mitochondrial DNA, which follows maternal lines, and Y-chromosome DNA, which follows paternal lines.

These patterns reveal how populations mixed and had babies together.

For Black Americans, studies consistently find substantial European ancestry alongside predominantly African ancestry. One large genomic study found a median European ancestry of about 18.5% in its African American sample.

But Researchers found a profound disproportionate African ancestry on the X chromosome, a pattern consistent with more European male ancestry and more African female ancestry.

Said another way, DNA evidence preserves the actual racial and sexual power structure of American history.

This was true throughout the Americas.

Researchers examining descendants of the Atlantic slave trade found a recurring heavy bias toward European male and African female genetic contributions. In many Latin American populations, researchers similarly find disproportionately European paternal ancestry combined with Native American and/or African maternal ancestry.

We have spent centuries pretending racial boundaries were rigid. But our DNA says otherwise.

The much darker point is that DNA tells us something about the unequal circumstances under which that sex occurred. Rape and dominance.

In the United States, that immediately leads us to the untold stories that don’t get told of what occurred during slavery.

A Black American can have overwhelmingly African maternal ancestry but a significant European paternal contribution.

That genetic asymmetry is consistent with the historical record of abusive sexual encounters including rape, coercion, and exploitative relationships between European-descended men and enslaved African-descended women.

The genetic evidence obviously can’t tell you whether each particular sexual encounter was consensual, but at the population level it records a striking sex imbalance and proves up a heavy dose of rape of Black women.

Otherwise, we would have seen a more equal mix of European female ancestry.

Not only is DNA proving up a sad untold story of mass rape, but it also exposes the frequent concealment of racial identities.

Research has detected African ancestry among many so-called white Americans. So, someone whose family has identified as “white” for generations may nevertheless descend from African ancestors.

America spent hundreds of years creating laws to stop interracial relationships.

Anti-miscegenation laws (banning interracial relationships and sex), the one-drop rule, and strict racial classifications were society’s attempt to impose artificial boundaries that human sexual behavior violated over and over. DNA now lets us see through those ridiculous boundaries.

The gross irony is that the people most committed historically to racial purity were leading societies whose genomes were becoming increasingly mixed. Through their owned forced sex.

But our DNA is an uncensored history book. And not one that leaves much room for debate.

It records migrations, invasions, slavery, colonization, love affairs, marriages, rape, and relationships that society often refuses to acknowledge.

Much of what we call ancestry is ultimately the accumulated history of people crossing the racial boundaries their societies constructed.

Ok. Great. DNA tells us about history. Why is this all important, though?

Here’s the thing. We can argue over textbooks. We can sanitize history. We can even try to erase extremely uncomfortable stories and pretend that racial groups lived in neatly separated worlds. We can teach our kids about chopping down cherry trees and pretend our forefathers were all saints.

But our DNA doesn’t care about the stories we tell ourselves. It carries evidence of people crossing those boundaries for generations, sometimes through love, sometimes through survival, and sometimes through mass violence and oppression.

Nobody ever suggested that understanding that history will magically solve racism or inequality today.

But it can destroy one of the myths that keeps them alive. Namely, that we have always been separate peoples with separate stories. We haven’t. Our histories are tangled together because our ancestors were tangled together.

Solving some of today’s divisions begins by finally understanding just how genetically connected we are.

Two hundred and fifty days into the USS Abraham Lincoln’s deployment, a sailor still hasn’t stood on land. The carrier left port in November 2025. By August, it had gone longer without a port call than some enlistments run between reenlistments. Navy Times and Stars and Stripes have reported sailors attempting suicide aboard the ship, and morale bad enough that officers have flagged it up the chain. Pete Hegseth called those reports “completely misrepresented.” (Reuters)

That’s one data point. It isn’t the story by itself. But it’s where the story starts, because eighteen months into Hegseth’s Pentagon, the same question keeps surfacing: what happens to a military when the people running it treat race, gender, institutional history, and political loyalty as part of the definition of readiness?

Look at any single decision, and there’s an explanation. Look at the pattern, and the explanations stop being enough.

The Pattern Starts With Erasure

A viral claim said Hegseth personally scrubbed Colin Powell, the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs, from Arlington National Cemetery’s list of notable Americans. That specific claim is false. Powell’s profile stayed up. What actually happened was broader and, in its way, worse: about 40 profiles were pulled down and later restored, part of a sweep that stripped Arlington’s website of its African American history, Hispanic American history and women’s history categories.

That’s not a story about one webpage. It’s a story about which parts of military history the Pentagon decided were worth keeping visible.

The sweep started with language and expanded fast. By February 2025, identity-based observances and DEI programs were being cut across the department. In April, the Naval Academy pulled nearly 400 books tied to a directive reviewing material on race and gender. In May, the Pentagon ordered every military school to search its libraries for “divisive concepts and gender ideology.” (Reuters)

Then it reached people.

Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations, was fired in February 2025. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, the first woman in that job, had already been removed on the administration’s first day. In April, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO’s Military Committee, was pulled as well; officials told reporters the move traced back to her past support for diversity initiatives.

These weren’t mid-level personnel lost in a reorg. They were among the most senior women the American military had.

Then the Purge Widened

Hegseth ordered a 20% cut to four-star positions and a 10% cut across general and flag officer ranks, framed as trimming bureaucracy. Maybe it was. But the framing doesn’t answer the harder question: who got removed, how, and whether professional judgment was giving way to political judgment.

Two moments in 2026 make that question impossible to wave off.

In March, Hegseth removed two Black male officers and two women from an Army promotion list for one-star general, overriding a secretary who had resisted the change on the strength of their records.

In June, the Navy sent up 31 names for a one-star admiral. Hegseth cut nine, including all three women on the list and two Black men. What went to confirmation was an all-male slate, in a service where women make up roughly a quarter of officers and nearly a third of the midgrade ranks.

Hegseth’s office says none of it involved race or gender. Take that seriously. Then look at the same list twice, once before he touched it and once after, and decide for yourself what changed.

The Ship Tells the Same Story from a Different Angle

The Lincoln isn’t an isolated bad deployment. Sailors aboard have gone months on disrupted mail, plumbing that hasn’t worked right since spring, and water that runs the wrong color out of the tap. That’s what “more than 250 days without a port call” looks like from inside the ship instead of on a briefing slide.

A long wartime deployment isn’t proof of mismanagement on its own. But a ship that hasn’t touched port in the better part of a year is a readiness problem, whether or not anyone wants to call it one. Weapons and fuel are half of readiness. The people running the ship are the other half, and exhaustion doesn’t stop counting just because leadership calls it resilience.

The Same Administration, the Same Pattern

The Lincoln isn’t sitting off the Middle East by accident. It’s supporting a war with Iran that opened in February 2026 and is still running, and that war is the clearest place to see how this leadership crisis and the country’s economic crisis are the same, wearing two uniforms.

The war was sold as decisive. General Dan Caine told reporters US forces had struck more than 11,000 targets and were “focused on interdicting and destroying” Iran’s missile and drone programs. Eighteen months later, the Pentagon’s own casualty count has climbed past 600, munitions stockpiles have run low enough that the department is leaning on defense contractors to speed up production, and the president says the US is “low-keying” negotiations rather than closing them out. Gas prices are still running more than a third higher than before the war began.

The same pattern shows up in the deportations and the tariffs.

Deportation was sold as a jobs program for American-born workers. A May 2026 study tracked what actually happened: a 5% employment drop among undocumented workers, and a 1.3% drop for American-born men without a college degree working the same industries, because employers didn’t raise wages to pull native workers into the jobs left open. Texas, one of the states leaning hardest into enforcement, saw its job growth fall from roughly 2% a year to near zero. Tariffs were sold as protection for American consumers. Wholesale vegetable prices jumped nearly 39% in a single month, with food-industry officials pointing to the same labor shortages the deportations created.

Sailors without a port call. Officers removed from promotion lists. Workers who lost jobs were supposed to be saved by the deportations. Families are paying more at the register for the tariffs that were supposed to protect them. Different departments, different press releases, the same administration asking people to accept the cost up front on a promise that the payoff is coming.

Eighteen months in, that promise is still a promise.

The Obligation Doesn’t End at the Gangway

The Pentagon and the VA are separate departments, and it would be wrong to lay every VA failure at Hegseth’s feet. But the two are connected by the same promise: the country asks for real sacrifice, then owes the people who gave it. A Senate Veterans’ Affairs report from January 2026, produced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office and worth reading with that in mind, found the VA lost more than 40,000 employees in fiscal 2025, 88% of them health care staff. That’s not Hegseth’s decision. It’s the same question asked from the other end of a career.

What the Pattern Adds Up To

None of these facts alone proves intent. Cutting DEI programs can be called eliminating bureaucracy. Changing a promotion list can be called enforcing merit. A long deployment can be called a wartime necessity. A stalled economy can be called short-term pain before long-term gain. Each explanation is plausible in isolation.

Stacked together, the record is short. The Pentagon erased the history. It removed the senior women. It stripped officers from two promotion lists in three months. It produced an all-male slate. It kept a carrier at sea without a port call and called the complaints misrepresented. It asked for a bigger budget the year after it promised to cut waste. And it did all of it while the war ran past its promised decisive window and the bill for tariffs and deportations landed on the people who were promised the opposite.

That’s not a coincidence. So who’s answering for it?

Colin Powell, Lisa Franchetti, Linda Fagan, Shoshana Chatfield, the four officers dropped from the Army’s list, the nine cut from the Navy’s, the sailors on the Lincoln, the workers priced out of jobs the deportations were supposed to save for them, the 40,000 employees who left the VA. None of them are the story by themselves. Together, they’re the evidence.

The Test of a Military Isn’t the Uniform

The United States doesn’t have the world’s most capable military because its leaders are good at slogans. It has one because millions of people have trusted the institution with their lives, and that trust runs on specifics: a Black general believing his record outweighs his race, a female admiral believing her judgment gets weighed on its own, a sailor nine months from home believing someone in Washington understands what that costs, a veteran believing the country hasn’t forgotten what he gave it, a worker believing the sacrifice asked of him is actually buying something.

The real story behind Colin Powell was never that Hegseth deleted him. It’s that his Pentagon has spent eighteen months redefining who counts as ready, who counts as deserving, and who counts as remembered, inside an administration asking the whole country to carry more than it’s been carrying, on a promise that keeps getting pushed back.

Can a military, or a country, stay ready while its leadership is fighting over who gets remembered, who gets promoted and who gets believed?

That answer won’t come from a press release. It’ll come from the retention numbers, the promotion records, the price of groceries, and from whether the sailor on the Lincoln finally sees land and finds anything waiting for him worth the wait.

That’s the real Hegseth test.

In the summer of 1870, a sea captain named Lorenzo Dow Baker bought a small bunch of bananas in Jamaica for a shilling apiece and sold them eleven days later in Jersey City, New Jersey, for two dollars a bunch. It was a modest transaction — almost accidental — but it set in motion one of the most consequential commercial adventures in American history. Baker had stumbled upon something extraordinary: a tropical fruit that Americans had barely tasted, a perishable cargo that demanded speed, refrigeration, and clockwork logistics to reach its market, and a gap in the world that an ambitious man with the right ships could fill. That man turned out to be Andrew W. Preston.

Preston was born in 1846 in Beverly, Massachusetts, to a modest New England family. He drifted through a series of occupations — shoe manufacturing, produce trading, stints with fruit merchants in New Orleans — before landing in Boston in the 1880s, where he began distributing bananas that Baker was shipping up from the Caribbean. Nothing about what Preston built next was accidental. Where Baker saw a lucky trade, Preston saw a system. He understood intuitively that the banana business was not really a fruit business at all. It was a logistics business. Whoever controlled the boats, the docks, and the timing controlled everything.

In 1885, Preston and Baker formalized their partnership and established the Boston Fruit Company. From the outset, Preston poured energy not into the plantations — that was Baker’s domain — but into the fleet. He started with four small, aging steamships, the kind of rust-streaked coastal vessels that ran ordinary commercial routes up and down the Eastern Seaboard. He replaced them, one by one, with faster, more powerful ships, vessels purpose-built for a trade that gave no quarter to delay. A banana that missed its market window by forty-eight hours was worthless. Speed was not a competitive advantage. It was the entire business.

By the late 1890s, Boston Fruit’s white-hulled ships — kept brilliantly white in part to reflect tropical heat and slow the spoiling of cargo — had become a recognizable sight in Caribbean ports from Kingston to Havana. And Preston was still not satisfied.

The real transformation came in 1899. Minor C. Keith, a brash Bostonian who had spent two decades hacking railways through the jungles of Costa Rica and Colombia, approached Preston with a proposition. Keith had land. Keith had railroads. Keith had political relationships with Central American governments that no outsider could easily replicate. But Keith was perennially short of cash, his Caribbean banana export business was growing faster than he could finance it, and he needed partners with capital and, crucially, with ships.

On March 30, 1899, the merger was completed. The United Fruit Company was born, capitalized at $11.23 million, with Preston as president and Keith as vice president. Preston brought the West Indian plantations and, most importantly, the fleet. Keith brought the Central American railroads and an entire geography. Together, they had assembled the pieces of something unprecedented: a vertically integrated tropical empire that controlled cultivation, transport, and distribution from the jungle clearing to the American grocery.

Preston’s first act as president of United Fruit was to expand the fleet again. He did not tinker at the margins. In 1903, he commissioned United Fruit’s first refrigerated vessel. This technological leap transformed the entire calculus of perishable cargo shipping and effectively locked out competitors who lacked the capital to match it. Within a decade, the fleet had grown to 115 ships. No private company in the United States operated anything comparable. Collectively, they became known by the name that would echo through the history of the Caribbean for the next half-century: the Great White Fleet.

The ships were more than cargo carriers. They were instruments of total commercial power. Preston grasped what many businessmen of his era did not — that in the underdeveloped ports of the Caribbean and Central America, a private fleet of steamships was not merely a logistical tool but a form of sovereignty. When a country’s only reliable connection to the outside world ran through your hulls, you were, in a practical sense, that country’s government in all but name.

The Great White Fleet dominated the region’s ports so thoroughly that United Fruit could — and did — shut down commerce to any given territory simply by withdrawing its ships. During labor disputes, strikes, or moments of political inconvenience, Preston could impose a maritime blockade without firing a single shot. No fruit moved. No mail moved. No passengers moved. The governments of Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Colombia understood this leverage perfectly, which is why they granted United Fruit its legendary concessions: enormous land grants, tax exemptions that lasted for decades, and control over the very railroads that connected the plantations to the ports.

The “banana republic” — a phrase coined by the writer O. Henry after a stint in Honduras — was not merely a colorful metaphor. It was a precise description of the political economy that the Great White Fleet made possible. A nation organized around a single export crop, shipped by a single company on its own ships, had, in every meaningful sense, surrendered its economic independence.

By the 1920s, United Fruit had extended the Great White Fleet’s reach across the Atlantic. Its British subsidiary, Elders and Fyffes, had been shipping Caribbean produce to England since the early 1900s, and by 1928, United Fruit had purchased ninety-nine percent of Fyffes’ shares, cementing its grip on the European banana market. By then, the fleet was not simply a Caribbean concern. It was a transatlantic commercial network, one of the largest in the world.

The ships themselves had acquired a cultural dimension that no one in Preston’s counting house had quite planned for. Because the routes between New Orleans, New York, and the Caribbean ports were reliable, comfortable, and exotic by the standards of the era, the Great White Fleet became a popular passenger service. American tourists booked berths to Havana, Kingston, and Puerto Limón, drawn by the romance of the tropics and the elegance of the white hulls gleaming in the harbor. Travel posters depicted smiling passengers on sun-drenched decks, with azure water stretching toward palm-lined shores. The fleet was, at once, a tool of commercial empire and a vehicle of American leisure. This peculiar combination said something profound about the relationship between the United States and the Caribbean in the early twentieth century.

Meanwhile, Preston had also commissioned the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company in 1913, linking the fleet’s vessels and the company’s far-flung plantations into a communications network that gave United Fruit a real-time operational awareness most governments in the hemisphere could not match. The company knew where every ship was, what it carried, how long it had been at sea. It knew the weather along every route. It knew the political situation in every port. In almost every practical sense, it was a state within a state.

The political dimension of the Great White Fleet grew darker as the twentieth century wore on. United Fruit’s connections to the American government were not accidental — they were cultivated over generations. John Foster Dulles, who served as Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, had spent thirty-eight years as a lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell, which counted United Fruit among its most important clients. His brother Allen Dulles, who became CIA director under Eisenhower, had done the same. When the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz began nationalizing unused United Fruit landholdings in 1954, citing them as the basis for an agrarian reform program, the Dulles brothers helped orchestrate a CIA-backed coup that removed him from power. It was not a coincidence that the operation was code-named PBSUCCESS. Success, in this context, meant preserving the commercial architecture that the Great White Fleet had spent fifty years constructing.

The coup was the high-water mark of United Fruit’s political reach — and, in retrospect, the beginning of its unraveling. The Guatemala operation attracted the kind of scrutiny that no corporation could indefinitely survive. Latin American nationalism, which had been simmering for decades in the shadow of the fleet’s smokestacks, began to boil. The word imperialismo acquired new resonance, and United Fruit became its most recognizable symbol.

The decline came in waves, each one more damaging than the last. In 1958, the U.S. Justice Department, which had been circling the company for years, forced United Fruit into a consent decree that required it to divest significant holdings and divest its control over the Great White Fleet’s monopoly routes. Then came the banana diseases — Panama disease and later the Sigatoka blight — which ravaged monocultural plantations across Central America and forced expensive replanting and reengineering of the entire agricultural model. The old certainties, built on vast monocultures and captive governments, proved fragile in ways that no number of refrigerated ships could fix.

In 1969, Sam Zemurray’s successor generation sold United Fruit’s controlling interest to AMK Corporation, and the company was formally reorganized as United Brands the following year. The Great White Fleet, that glittering armada of white hulls that had once seemed as permanent as the trade winds, was broken up, sold off, and repurposed. The passenger service — those sun-drenched Caribbean voyages that had charmed a generation of American tourists — quietly ended. The communications network was absorbed into larger systems. The ports remained, but the ships that had given them their purpose were gone.

In 1984, United Brands was reorganized, eventually emerging as Chiquita Brands International, a name conspicuously stripped of the word “fruit” and its imperial associations. The company that remained was a shadow of what Preston had built — a branded marketer of bananas, no longer an empire of steel and steam.

What the Great White Fleet left behind is not easy to categorize. It was, in the most literal sense, one of the greatest feats of private logistics in American commercial history — a system of such complexity and reach that it outpaced the administrative capacity of every government in the hemisphere it touched. It democratized tropical fruit for the American consumer, making the banana not a luxury but a staple, cheap and ubiquitous. It pioneered refrigerated shipping technologies that would eventually transform the entire global food supply chain.

But it also installed the template for what it means to be a “banana republic” — a nation whose sovereignty is conditional on the goodwill of a foreign corporation, whose government bends to the needs of a fleet of white-hulled ships anchored in its harbors. The men who sailed those ships, the dock workers who loaded them, the plantation laborers who filled them — they were the ones who bore the cost of an empire whose profits sailed north.

Andrew Preston died in 1924, before the worst of it, in the decade when the company he built was at the absolute peak of its power. He left behind 115 ships and an empire of fruit. He could not have known what it would eventually come to mean — or perhaps, in the quiet certainty of a man who had spent his life thinking about hulls and harbors and the distance between a jungle and a market, he understood exactly what he had built.

The Great White Fleet was named as such because all the ships were painted white to reflect heat and minimize spoilage. Not because it embodied white supremacy and helped perpetuate a system resembling enslavement (which it did).

By the time United Fruit became Chiquita Brands International in 1984, the fleet was a memory the company had decided was better forgotten. The new name said everything: away from ships, away from sovereignty, toward something softer — a logo, a cartoon sticker on a piece of fruit.

The enclave economies United Fruit engineered across Central America proved far more durable than its hulls. The land concessions, the captured governments, the suppressed wages, the vagrancy laws that delivered indigenous labor to the plantation — these did not dissolve with the fleet. They calcified into the economic architecture of entire nations. Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia remain among the most unequal countries in the hemisphere. That inequality was not an accident of geography or culture. It was constructed, deliberately, over fifty years of corporate statecraft, and the construction was so thorough that dismantling it has taken generations and is not finished yet.

And then there is the banana itself — cheap, ubiquitous, taken entirely for granted — which is perhaps the fleet’s most lasting monument. Preston did not democratize the banana out of generosity. He did it because volume drove profit. But the effect was real: a fruit that once appeared only at world’s fairs became the least expensive item in any American grocery. Americans eat around 27 pounds of bananas per person per year. Very few of them have ever considered what it cost to make that possible, or who paid the cost, or whether they were ever asked.

Andrew Preston died in 1924, celebrated and unchallenged. His obituaries described a self-made man who had turned a tropical curiosity into a global industry. They were not wrong. They were simply incomplete. The workers who loaded his ships were not mentioned. The Jamaican farmers whose trade he swallowed were not mentioned. The strikers of Ciénaga were not yet dead.

They are mentioned now. History has a way of keeping its own accounts, independent of the ledgers that corporations prefer. The Great White Fleet is gone — sold for scrap, renamed, forgotten. What it built, and what it cost, is still on the books.

Lead Belly, a blues musician from Mooringsport, Louisiana, recorded a song called the “Scottsboro Boys,” dedicated to nine Black teenagers wrongfully accused of raping two White women on an Alabama freight train in the spring of 1931. All-white juries found each of them guilty, and when counted together, they served over 100 years in prison. The four youngest had their charges dropped after hard-fought appeals in 1937, and the other five served sentences ranging from 12 to 19 years. This case highlights why Black people needed to “stay woke,” as racial injustices during Jim Crow were commonplace.

“I advise everybody, be a little careful when you go along through there — best stay woke, keep your eyes open,” Lead Belly said in his 1938 song, encouraging his listeners to be aware of racial injustices that took place in the South. A few years earlier, in 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a Black postal worker, published “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” which provided guidance to Black travelers on which gas stations, rest stops, restaurants, hotels, and other places they could safely visit. So, while Lead Belly’s song urged Black people to “stay woke,” one could argue the Green Book offered practical instructions on how to do so.

Despite the term dating back to the 1930s, some mistakenly believe “woke” is new-age lingo. Before the rise of social media, few outside of the black community understood the nuances of African American Vernacular English. As a result, while many Black people recognize “woke” as it’s been used for nearly a century within the black community, it’s common for others to mistakenly believe it recently sprouted, perhaps from an expansion of left-leaning politics following the racial reckoning of 2020. The latter seem to hold more negative views of “woke,” typically detaching its meaning from its origins.

By my estimate, many non-Black people have misused the term “woke.” While those on the far right are more likely to use it as a slur to mock Black people for raising awareness of racism, those on the left are more likely to strip the term of its racial context. For instance, some frame “woke” as a general awareness of social injustice and support for policies designed to address inequality. While this expansion may be useful in finding common ground with others, this description allows some to frame their resistance to “woke” as opposition to so-called extremist policies across the board, overlooking the ways in which Black people have used the term to promote sustained awareness of racial injustice. Those attempting to redefine the term are colonizing the language, laying claim to it without considering harm.

During an interview with Johnathan Karl this week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent progressive congresswoman whose name is often floated in conversations about future presidential candidates, seemed to distance herself, along with a politician she supported, New York City Council Member Chi Ossé, from the negative connotations of “woke.” When asked about previous statements on social media about support for policy proposals such as defunding the police and abolishing prisons, she classified those statements as “woke 1,” dismissing that movement as “crazy” in its scope. Rather than clarifying that she doesn’t personally support these policies, as they fall outside her political comfort zone, she used “woke” as a derogatory catch-all phrase, despite its roots within the black community. Also, the backlash to “defund the police” is ironic since many law enforcement agencies received additional funding during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite national protests following the police killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others sparking rigorous policy debates.

Referring to “woke” as something outlandish, rather than a reasonable strategy for those enduring discrimination, overlooks the origins of the terminology. And based on Ocasio-Cortez’s description of “Woke 1,” Woke 2, if it exists at all, must stand as a shadow of its former self. It seems to be an ideology that allows politicians to acknowledge the injustices that saturate our system while distancing themselves from those designed to bring about structural change. Such rhetoric clips the wings of a potentially powerful movement before it can fly above the fray and be seen in its full glory. If those living in America are conditioned to see only incremental change as viable, they will dismiss any structural change as absurd. But they’re forgetting that gradual abolition of slavery in some Northern states failed to inspire national change, and that systemic solutions are best suited to address systemic problems.

Colin Kaepernick, the former professional football player blackballed after kneeling during the National Anthem to protest racial injustices, described the consequences of a piecemeal response to racism in a 2021 Literary Hub article, saying, “It is only logical that systemic problems demand systemic solutions.” Furthermore, he explained that “modes of reformist and reactionary ‘justice’ fail to remedy the uninterrupted deaths caused by policing and prisons and frequently leave us disheartened, disjoined, and disillusioned.” It may be easier to gain support for surface-level changes, but when you’re dealing with a foundational problem like racism in America, you have to pull from the root. Yet, many Black people who confess to wanting structural changes are scoffed at. Reframing “woke” as something “crazy” is in alignment with that tradition of mockery.

In 2016, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal Supreme Court Justice, called Kaepernick’s protest “really dumb” and “disrespectful.” Never mind that some historians argue that the third stanza of the original Star-Spangled Banner mocked or taunted people for trying to escape, or that in the modern era Black people endure police brutality at a disproportionate rate. Her criticism illustrated how even some well-meaning White folks didn’t understand this protest. It’s reminiscent of the argument made in 1851 by Dr. Samuel Cartwright, who claimed that enslaved Black people who tried to escape had “drapetomania,” a mental illness that positioned resistance as pathological. Resistance is a natural response to oppression, but those who won’t acknowledge the harm caused by racism will never see their awareness as necessary. They won’t understand why Neo-Soul singer Erykah Badu included the words “stay woke” in her 2008 song “Master Teacher.” Or why we’re still talking about this concept years after it re-entered mainstream discussions in America.

There’s thinly veiled racism in the way White people and some others talk about “woke.” From legislators passing laws against including the ideology in schools, even though for generations it only existed in music and casual conversations that rarely left the black community, to politicians trying to build a thick wall between themselves and revolutionary policy proposals that stray from the mainstream. Non-Black people have been striking “woke” like a piñata, beating it so many times and from so many directions that its original shape is skewed and deformed, nearly unrecognizable in the way the blues singer Lead Belly once described. Some are trying to redefine the term “woke,” and in doing so, openly disregarding the linguistic proprietorship of Black people.

For much of the world over many centuries, Africa has been viewed as a place to take, take, take. We know the sad, abusive history, and the continuing patterns even today.

What we don’t like to talk about, because it doesn’t fit our narrow 21st-century black and white narratives, is how Israel takes a different approach to the continent than most countries. One that involves partnership and sharing technology.

A little history is in order.

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Israel was a major partner with many African countries.

In 1958, Israel established MASHAV, its agency for international development cooperation, after then-Foreign Minister Golda Meir traveled throughout Africa.

Her plan was for Israel to share technology and knowledge it had developed while confronting many of the same challenges facing newly independent African countries. Dry land. Water shortages. Food insecurity. Public-health problems. Newly developing institutions. And larger, more powerful countries attempting to control them.

Israel began sending agronomists, doctors, irrigation specialists, educators and engineers to African countries. And numerous Africans traveled to Israel for training in agriculture, medicine, education, women’s empowerment, community development and cooperative management.

By 1971, Israel had strong diplomatic relations with 32 African countries.

In Ghana, Dr. Kwabena Darko became one of the first African professionals trained through MASHAV in 1959. He returned home and helped develop Ghana’s entire poultry industry.

In Cameroon, Israel helped establish agricultural and civic-training centers as early as 1960. Israeli specialists later worked with Cameroonians on poultry breeding, irrigation and the testing of new vegetable varieties.

This is not to suggest Israel had none of its own interests. It, of course, wanted countries that would treat it fairly at the U.N. Countries that would stand up for it from time to time, especially when it gets more focus than some of the worst catastrophes in the world.

But Israel’s approach to Africa was still far different than most other nations.

It involved showing people how to produce more food, conserve water, treat patients and develop their own local institutions. It wasn’t about showing up, taking minerals and then leaving.

But in 1973, during and immediately after the Yom Kippur War, Arab governments demanded African nations kick Israel out. Oil-producing Arab countries promised that they would fill the void if they did. That they would do the partnering instead of Israel.

Twenty-five Black African countries acceded to the demands and ended relations with Israel that same year. By the end of 1973, only four Black African countries — Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius and Swaziland, now called Eswatini — maintained diplomatic relations with Israel. In fairness to many African nations, they feared Arab oil producers might cut off supplies or refuse to provide discounted oil.

Sadly, though, once Israel was kicked out, almost none of what African nations had been promised by Arab nations materialized.

A few Arab nations provided financial assistance. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya and other Arab oil exporters provided approximately $1.7 billion in assistance to Black African countries between 1973 and 1981.

But the handouts didn’t replace the same broad network of hands-on farming, irrigation, medical and educational partnerships Israel had provided. Israel was teaching African nations how to fish. Temporary financial assistance usually just provides the fish.

By the early 1980s, numerous African governments were disappointed with the minuscule level of Arab assistance and the failure of the promised partnerships to materialize. Arab nations didn’t fill the void in the way many African leaders had expected. They left many African nations holding empty bags.

In the 1980s and 1990s, after years of those broken promises, slowly but surely African nations renewed their partnerships with Israel.

Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, restored diplomatic relations with Israel in 1982. Liberia followed in 1983. Côte d’Ivoire restored relations in 1986, Kenya in 1988, Ethiopia in 1989, Nigeria in 1992, and Uganda in 1994. Shortly afterward, all but a few Black African countries restored relations with Israel.

And the development partnerships began again.

In 2001, Israel helped establish the first trauma unit at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana. In 2008 and 2009, Israeli doctors and development specialists helped establish two mother-and-baby care units in Kumasi. Israeli neonatal specialists continued training Ghanaian doctors and nurses, and the two units reported saving approximately 700 babies each year.

In Ethiopia, Israel helped launch a small-farmer horticulture project in 2005. It brought Israeli irrigation technologies and new varieties of avocado to thousands of Ethiopian farmers.

Since 2013, Ugandan university students have participated in Israel’s AgroStudies apprenticeship program, receiving hands-on training in advanced farming methods and technologies, including irrigation, post-harvest technology, animal husbandry and water management.

By 2023, Makerere University reported that approximately 2,000 Ugandan students had benefited, with some graduates establishing agricultural businesses and transferring Israeli farming technologies to other Ugandan farmers. The program was still accepting Ugandan applicants for 2025–2026.

In Cameroon, more than 2,000 professionals have received Israeli training. Israeli doctors also conducted eye-surgery camps, bringing medical equipment and treating patients with serious eye conditions. Between 2017 and 2019, Israel partnered with Cameroon on a project to increase the productivity and income of 1,000 small mango farmers by twenty percent.

By 2018, approximately 36,000 African professionals had received MASHAV training in Israel, while another 31,500 had participated in Israeli-sponsored training programs in Africa. That’s more than 67,000 Africans trained in farming, irrigation, health, education, entrepreneurship and other areas, not counting thousands more trained since then.

In 2019, Israel opened its first embassy in Rwanda. That same year, it restored diplomatic relations with Chad, a Muslim-majority African country that had severed relations in the early 1970s.

At the end of 2025, Israel’s partnership with African nations culminated in its recognition of Somaliland. During 2026, that recognition developed into a much broader diplomatic, economic and security partnership.

The territory previously known as British Somaliland gained independence from Britain on June 26, 1960. Five days later, it united with the former Italian-colonized territory to create the Somali Republic.

In 1991, Somaliland ended its union with Somalia after decades of failure, repression and civil war. It returned to its former borders, issued its own currency and built a functioning, relatively stable nation.

Somaliland created its own government, security forces, courts, currency and electoral system. Although its democracy is far from perfect, it has held competitive elections and experienced peaceful changes of power. In 2024, the opposition defeated the governing party, and power was transferred without the country collapsing into war. That’s something numerous officially recognized countries still haven’t figured out how to do.

While most of the world treats Somaliland as a de facto nation, no United Nations member state had officially recognized it.

Israel finally did on December 26, 2025, becoming the first U.N. member to formally recognize Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state. The two governments signed a declaration of mutual recognition and announced that they would establish full diplomatic relations.

But not as a political stunt.

Indeed, almost no country praised Israel for its recognition. So, it wasn’t like Israel won any points with the world.

Somalia fiercely opposed it. And most of the world condemned it. Including nations that ironically have raped Africa for hundreds of years.

Israel nevertheless entered into a full partnership with the Black Muslim nation.

It involves agriculture and livestock technology, water management, renewable energy, healthcare, cybersecurity, food security, science, trade and security cooperation.

In January 2026, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar traveled to Somaliland and announced that water professionals from Somaliland would travel to Israel for training. In May 2026, Somaliland’s first ambassador to Israel formally presented his credentials. Israel’s president specifically identified food security, energy and science as areas in which the countries would work together.

In June 2026, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi led a major delegation to Israel. Somaliland asked Israeli businesses to invest and help develop its agriculture, livestock, water systems, renewable-energy industry, healthcare services and cybersecurity capabilities.

Of course, Israel has strategic interests. Somaliland sits on the Gulf of Aden, across from Yemen, where the Houthis have attacked ships and fired missiles and drones at Israel and other nations. Somaliland wants recognition, investment and technology. Israel wants a reliable African and Muslim partner along one of the most important shipping corridors in the world.

Both nations benefit.

That’s called partnership.

Israel gets diplomatic, economic and strategic opportunities. Somaliland gets official recognition, agricultural knowledge, water technology, medical cooperation, professional training, investment and a partner willing to treat it like an actual country.

That’s not the normal take, take, take paradigm.

For nearly seventy years, Israel repeatedly has approached African nations with an offer to share the technology it developed to survive its own difficult conditions. To teach African nations how to fish, and not just provide fish for today.

[Important side note. None of this absolves Israel’s right wing government of responsibility for their reprehensible leveling of Gaza in response to Hamas’s horrific terror attack on October 7 or their policies in the West Bank. As with any nation, though, the country is bigger than any awful political parties or a prime minister.]

The bottom line is that Africa doesn’t need pity. It doesn’t need outsiders who show up to take its oil, minerals, diamonds, cocoa, cobalt and land.

It needs partners willing to share knowledge, build local capacity and recognize African nations as equals.

So, the question really isn’t why Israel continues to partner with so many countries in Africa.

Maybe the bigger question is why so much of the world keeps refusing to do the same.

When the decision came down on April 29, I was disappointed. I was not surprised. I have spent years writing about what it takes to get a veteran basic mental health care in this country, and that fight is uphill on a good day, and it is worth having anyway. I expected this one to be uphill too.

What I did not expect was the speed.

Eight days. That is how long it took the white political apparatus in Tennessee to erase the state’s only majority-Black congressional district after the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act. Not quietly. Not with a fig leaf and a study committee. In a special session, on the record, with the spotlight on that state as bright as it has been in years, and they said out loud that race had nothing to do with it.

So I answered the way that counts. I voted early, ahead of Florida’s August 18 primary, and I did it fast.

Tennessee votes on Thursdays. On Thursday, August 6, Memphis stood in line for a congressional primary in a district redrawn ninety-one days earlier to make Memphis stop mattering, and Democratic turnout in Shelby County hit its highest level in a decade.

A Memphis voter named Lonzo Taylor had already put the question to a PBS NewsHour crew. “We only had one district in the whole state of Tennessee, and you don’t even want that to be fair?”

Nobody in Nashville answered him. Memphis did.

That is the argument. The rest is receipts.

I have written on the Election War Room page at Big-Sarge.blog that there is an organized effort to erase us. Black people. Erase the district, erase the delegation, erase the ability to elect somebody who picks up the phone when your neighborhood calls. I stand on every word of it. What I could not write then, because it had not happened yet, is that the erasure carries a cost the mapmakers did not price in. Three states have now shown what that cost looks like. Two of them never got to finish the job.

Here is the mechanism, because mechanism matters more than outrage.

On April 29, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais, 6 to 3. Justice Samuel Alito wrote it. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson dissented. The Court threw out a Louisiana map containing two majority-Black districts and held that Louisiana could not use race to justify drawing the second one, because the Voting Rights Act did not require it. Read that again. Complying with the Voting Rights Act is no longer, by itself, a good enough reason to draw a district where Black voters can elect the candidate they want. Sixty-one years of Section 2 enforcement, narrowed to a keyhole in one opinion.

Tennessee moved first.

Governor Bill Lee signed the new map on May 7, the same day the legislature passed it, two days into a special session called for that purpose. It carves Memphis and Shelby County into three separate districts, the 5th, 8th and 9th. The 9th, in Democratic hands for more than forty years, is now L-shaped, running east out of Memphis across rural Middle and Southwest Tennessee before reaching toward Nashville’s suburbs. PBS NewsHour reported that 71 percent of the voters in it are new. Representative Steve Cohen announced he would sue hours before the vote. The NAACP Tennessee State Conference filed suit hours after the ink dried.

Then Memphis voted.

State Representative Justin J. Pearson took the Democratic nomination in the redrawn 9th with nearly 65 percent. State Senator Brent Taylor took the Republican side with just over 46 percent. They meet November 3. In the 5th, Representative Andy Ogles, endorsed by Donald Trump, lost his own primary to Charlie Hatcher. The Washington Post reported the Shelby County turnout figure on August 8. Highest in ten years.

Georgia never got its map at all.

Governor Brian Kemp called a special session on redistricting for June. Before it produced anything, House Speaker Jon Burns sent a letter on June 17 saying the maps would wait on pending appeals. The session ended June 23 with no new congressional map. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund credited, in plain language, “thousands of voters who packed the Georgia Capitol.”

Those voters had already shown up once. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced in early May that more than 214,000 Georgians voted in the first week of early voting, against roughly 167,000 in the same week of 2022. A 28 percent increase. Raffensperger took his victory lap about how easy the state makes it to vote. Fine. It was also Black Georgia, which made up about 34 percent of that early electorate against 26 percent of the 2022 midterm electorate. Kemp called the session in May. By the time his members sat down in June, they were looking at those numbers.

South Carolina Republicans watched all of this and blinked.

The plan there was never hidden. State Representative Adam Morgan described it as a “new 7–0 Republican map eliminating Jim Clyburn’s unconstitutional race-based district.” The House Rules Committee moved it 12 to 2 on May 6. The full House passed the enabling amendment 87 to 25. It needed two thirds of the state Senate. On May 27, with early voting already underway, it died. Senator Richard Cash, a Republican, said this: “South Carolina citizens are going to the polls today. And neither my conscience or common sense is going to let me stop an election that is already underway.”

Take that as conscience if you want to. I take it as arithmetic. You do not stop an election that people are already standing in line for.

The pattern is measurable, not anecdotal. VoteHub tracked 78 Black Belt counties across the South after Callais. All but one shifted left in partisan turnout compared with 2024. The median shift was 12.3 points. Hampton County, South Carolina, moved 36.2. In Alabama, Greene County cleared 50 percent primary turnout, a differential of 27.6 points above the state. In Louisiana, Black voters were 35.7 percent of the primary electorate while being 32.1 percent of the population, and cast ballots at a higher rate than white voters. The state that lost the case answered it first.

Now the part I will not do, because I have watched too many people get sold a finish line that was never there.

I am not telling you this is won. Primary turnout is not general turnout. A 12-point leftward shift in a county of nine thousand registered voters does not offset a map engineered across a whole state. Cohen’s suit and the NAACP Tennessee suit have not been decided. Georgia’s House leadership said wait, not no, and their letter said so out loud. South Carolina adjourned. Legislatures reconvene.

So let me say the hard part plainly, because I do not think anybody is served by pretending the work is small.

The work is enormous. Every Black community in this country, Memphis and Macon and Orangeburg, Detroit and Cleveland and Milwaukee, Oakland and Phoenix and Las Vegas, is going to have to find people who have stopped believing their vote does anything and give them a reason. Not a slogan. A reason. That means standing on a porch in Orange Mound in August, heat coming up off the boards and a window unit rattling behind the screen door, in front of a man who has been told for two years that the game is rigged, and telling him the truth, which is that they rigged it because his vote works. It means registering his daughter. It means driving his mother. It means coming back in September, and again the week before. Nobody claps. Somebody pays for the gas. Most of it happens without an audience.

It has always been enormous. Getting Barack Obama elected was enormous, and people gave up their Saturdays for two years to do it. Walking from Selma to Montgomery was enormous, and people got their skulls opened on a bridge for it. Putting three words together, Black Lives Matter, and making a country say them out loud was enormous, and it cost the people who did it their jobs, their peace, and in some cases their safety. None of that was won by anybody who calculated the odds first and then decided whether to move. They moved, and the odds adjusted.

I spent twenty-three years in the Air Force. The oath I swore was to the Constitution, not to a legislature, not to a map, not to a governor with a special session and a deadline. That oath does not expire when a court narrows a statute. The right to choose the person who represents you is not a favor a state grants and can withdraw when the arithmetic gets inconvenient. It is the reason the government exists in the first place.

Dilution is not removal. They can take the district. They cannot take the voter.

So the calendar.

November 3 is 82 days from today. Justin Pearson against Brent Taylor in a Memphis district built to beat him, where seven of ten voters have never seen his name on a ballot. Georgia’s governor’s race, with a General Assembly that comes back in January, is still holding a map it already tried to redraw. South Carolina’s 6th, standing by one procedural vote and no promises past that. Every one of those is a decision about whether a legislature gets to pick which Americans count.

Lonzo Taylor asked for one fair district out of nine. He did not get it. What he got instead was a turnout number nobody in Nashville can redraw.

They cracked the map in eight days. Memphis answered in ninety-one.

Do it again in eighty-two.

I did my research so you didn’t have to. Vote.

Trump won white working-class non-college degreed voters by a massive margin in 2024. Roughly two-thirds, about 66–67%, according to national exit-poll analyses. That’s more than any group.

This group accounted for 51% of Trump’s entire votes in 2024.

Working-class non-degreed Latinos also voted for Trump over Harris. They accounted for another 8% of Trump’s total votes.

Even 14% of Black working-class voters supported Trump.

Of all of Trump’s voters, 67% were working-class non-college-degreed, regardless of race.

Now, of course, people with college degrees aren’t better than anyone else.

I know plenty of amazing people doing incredible things who fall into the non-degreed category. One of my three adult children didn’t go to college and he’s killing it as a young energetic hard-working entrepreneur. And he’ll probably make more than my other two. Several very close friends don’t have college degrees.

But it’s been a head-scratcher why of all the voting groups, people who statistically have way less resources than doctors, lawyers, accountants, psychologists, engineers and the like put their trust in billionaires and elected officials who protect them.

More specifically, trust in billionaires who promote tax cuts for the rich.

The ones who oppose guaranteed health care. Who advocate for cutting Medicaid. Who vote against increasing high speed public transportation. Against free community college. Against childcare tax credits. Who voted against paid family and medical leave. The list goes on.

The 2025 reconciliation law signed by Trump, just by way of one of many examples, reduced federal Medicaid and SNAP spending while reducing federal revenues through tax provisions. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that the law will reduce resources for households toward the bottom of the income graph while increasing resources for households toward the top.

A large chunk of people who need it the most consistently vote against their own interests.

Then it dawned on me why recently.

Most of us who don’t grow up with resources. Who grew up in struggling families. Some living paycheck to paycheck. With bill collectors calling each week.

We think we can “get there.”

We look at the nice houses. The international travel. The cars. The clothes.

Then we say to ourselves, I can have that. I can have what they have.

I know that’s what I thought as a young kid in a family with no money.

Not unlike the football star on a high school team who might forego all other opportunities thinking he can make it to the NFL.

And lo and behold, a very select few people do make the NFL. Some people who grew up in struggle do “arrive.” They end up getting that car. The house. The nice stuff.

And so we look at those billionaires who just tell everyone to work hard sort of like unintentional idols. We aspire to be them. They must know what they’re doing, so we put our trust in them. We set aside that many of them started with small family loans of a few million.

Being a millionaire or billionaire doesn’t make someone bad. There are plenty of amazing wealthy people who advocate for fairness and equity. There are plenty who donate so much to help people. To advance science and cure diseases. To eradicate poverty. Provide scholarships for students in need.

Still, there are enough in power who aren’t there to protect people. They’re in it to protect themselves and line their own coffers.

Until the masses of people who are the ones who actually keep this country running understand that their best way towards financial security and upward mobility isn’t to prioritize the dream of fancy sports cars or making it to the NFL of life, but it’s first to support politicians and policies that remove the many obstacles preventing those sample people from getting there.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting financial security. To have plenty of resources to travel. Or to have that nice home. To aspire to build something.

Not at the expense of kindness or family and friends or doing good in the world, but it’s ok to like nice things.

Just not if it comes on the backs of most hardworking Americans trying to get by.