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J. Michael Luttig: How to Save Our Nation and the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
5

On June 22, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, a greatly revered Appeals Court Judge, delivered these remarks to the Election Integrity Summit of the Cleveland Municipal Bar Association and the Task Force for American Democracy in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his conservative credentials, he has been one of the most critical voices raised against Trump since January 6, 2021. His resistance to tyranny makes you wonder why most other conservatives have not spoken out on behalf of the rule of law.

He said:

Thus it is that in less than two weeks, on July 4, 2026, we will celebrate the birth of the greatest nation on earth, the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world.

In 1787, after the Revolutionary War to secure our independence from the tyrannical King George III, “We the People of the United States . . . ordain[ed] and establish[ed] the Constitution of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union.” The Constitution was ratified and adopted by the States and became the Great Charter for our self-government and the guarantor of our cherished rights and liberties on June 21, 1788.

On July 4, 1776, the American Colonists declared their independence from King George III and the British Crown, two hundred and fifty years ago almost to the day “bringing forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

For the 250 years since its Founding, America has been the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom and liberty because of the shining light of its Democracy, Constitution, and Rule by Law, not by men.

But as we all know, today America is not the same beacon of freedom or the same envy of the world that it has been for a quarter of a millennium.

Today, two hundred and fifty years later, we are again engaged in a great battle “testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Prophetically, these times in which we live on the 250th Anniversary of this nation’s Founding are — once again – the times that try men’s souls.

As we celebrate our Founding today, the question for “We the People” of America is whether we are willing to do the sacred work necessary to return our country to its deserved place as the beacon of freedom and envy of the world, whether we are willing to do the hard, but sacred, work necessary to ensure that America will long endure.

As we struggle to decide what we ourselves want for America and what we want our America to be – and not to be – the entire world is anxiously awaiting our answer, more anxiously awaiting our answer today than it awaited our answer a quarter of a millennium ago.

Two hundred and fifty years into the greatest experiment in self-government in human history, the time of America’s testing has finally come.

The Founders of this great nation feared these times in America.

In this 250th Anniversary year, America’s institutions of government and governance and its institutions of democracy and of law are under vicious, unsustainable, and unendurable attack – from within.

At this point, five and a half years since January 6, 2021, the 47th President of the United States has all but wrought the complete inversion of our nation’s positive law — the Constitution and laws of the United States – our moral law that has been passed down to us through the ages, and even our biblical law as found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, including The Ten Commandments.

But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain . . . Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.

For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776).

Speaking in a time of similar moral and legal upheaval in America nearly two centuries ago, a 29-year-old state legislator, who would later become the 16th President of the United States, urged a revival to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, a renewed reverence for that Great Charter for our governance and guarantor of our liberty and our freedoms.

“Let reverence for the laws,” the young Abraham Lincoln implored, “be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap — let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. . . .”

“[I]n short,” Lincoln sermonized with the reverence he urged, let the Constitution and the Rule of Law “become the political religion of the nation.”

Today, America is in desperate need of such a revival to our Constitution and Rule of Law as our 16th President urged upon the nation in 1838 – a reawakening and quickening to the reverential imperatives of the Constitution from which we have strayed so very far.

Winston Churchill said that “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because . . . courage is the quality which guarantees all others.”

We Americans must summon the courage that has eluded us in our all-consuming fear over the past decade of years. We must summon from deep within the courage that was once our Founders’ courage when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor” to secure their — and our — liberty and freedom.

With the united support of a hopeful world, we Americans must overcome our fear. We must find our voices again.

We must finally – finally – rise to our feet, raise our voices, and speak out against what we are witnessing in America today.

After all, ours is a nation founded upon dissent and protest.

America’s protest against the British Empire 250 years ago is the single greatest protest in all of history – a revolutionary protest and dissent from the tyranny and oppression of King George III.

Until now, we Americans have never hesitated to support, defend, and protect our cherished liberties, our freedoms, and our fundamental constitutional rights from governmental tyranny, whether it be from abroad or from at home.

Why are we hesitating now? Why are we silent now, at the very time of America’s testing, on this 250th Anniversary of America’s birth? Why have we Americans chosen to remain silent or why have we allowed ourselves to be silenced and betray, in this fateful year of years?

Why have we suddenly lost our voices, two and a half centuries since we were gloriously given our voices by the Constitution of the United States?
I will tell you. We have lost our voices because of fear. Fear of ridicule, fear of political reprisal. Fear of political persecution. Fear of personal persecution. Even fear of prosecution. In far too many cases, fear for our lives and livelihoods.

Fear of the known and fear of the unknown, the unknown as to when this all ends and how.
We can be forgiven for our fear, but we will never be forgiven for our cowardice in the face of our fear.

The Founders of this great country did not cower in their fear, and unlike us, they had reason to fear. When the men who founded the greatest nation on earth first came face to face with fear, “they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.” They stared down their fear and defeated fear itself.

There is no excuse or defense for the cowardice that is inflicting America today, especially the cowardice that has consumed our political leaders. Nor is there forgiveness awaiting those who have cowered or been cowered, least of all those we have elected to represent us and our country.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hauntingly warned that “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
We should pray that we will not be remembered for our cowardice and our cowered silence in these times when America needed us most.

If we are to be victorious over the evil that is warring for the heart and soul of America today, it is going to take the courage of the armies of God and the moral clarity of the collective voices of “We the People.” It is we who “ordained and established” this Constitution” “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Ours is the righteous war, not theirs.

America is calling and we must answer.

If we answer and but find the courage to speak our powerful truth to our government’s powerless untruth now — today, not tomorrow — as did the Founders and our ancestors when their time of testing came, the United States of America will soon again be the envy of the world and it will endure forever as the beacon of freedom and liberty to the world.

Once we have finished the righteous and noble task at hand, we must then finish the great task that yet lies ahead of us 250 years since our Founding.

But “[t]he dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew,” as Abraham Lincoln exhorted the nation in 1862.

So then, this must it be in this 250th Anniversary year. We Americans must think anew and act anew. We must re-found America again. We must reacquaint ourselves with the truths that we once believed were self-evident – and still are. We must reawaken ourselves to the ideals, the beliefs, the principles, the values, and the truths upon which America was founded and has flourished for two and a half centuries – and reexamine these foundational truths, beliefs, and principles, if need be.

We must build anew the hopes and the dreams upon which this country was founded, the hopes and dreams that have inspired us and bound us together into the more perfect union that “We the People” ordained and established, the hopes and dreams that have made America the greatest nation on earth.

We must “turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it,” as Abraham Lincoln once urged.

We must shore up and reinforce the bulwark of our faltering democracy and Rule of Law and refortify the institutions of our law and democracy. “Preserving virtuous institutions is its own noble purpose,” David French put it so well.

And as we refortify and restrengthen our sacred institutions of law and democracy, we need to inspire among our citizenry a reverential revival to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law. Above all else, America is “[a] government of laws, and not of men.” We are desperately in need of a revival, a revival that will renew and revitalize the flagging faith of the American People in our Constitution and Rule of Law, the organic law of our ordered liberty.

We have no other choice than to pass the test laid down for us by our ancestors, to ensure that this “nation so conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal will long endure.”

And when this storm has passed, we must promise ourselves and the generations that follow that we will never again take our Democracy and our Constitution for granted. We must learn from these tumultuous times – never to forget – that our Democracy and Rule of Law are fragile and can be wrested from us in an instant, even by those among us, if we are not ever-vigilant.

Almost two centuries ago, that same young man of mere twenty-nine years who would one day become President of the United States foretold of the “danger” “from within” that is preying on America today. Listen to Abraham Lincoln’s prescient and ominous warning.

We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours only, to transmit these . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! . . .

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.[6]

What, then, must we Americans do today, if we are to bequeath this “political edifice of liberty and equal rights” to our descendants, this legacy that was bequeathed to us by “our once hardy, brave, and patriotic, race of ancestors”?

I will tell you. We must “dedicate ourselves to the great task that yet remains before us” 250 years later. “[‘T]is ours only, to transmit this ‘goodly land’ and this ‘political edifice of liberty’ . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”

We in the profession of law belong to one of the most honorable and honored, the most noble and nobilified, and the most venerable and venerated of professions.

Of our Founding Fathers, 35 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were lawyers or had legal training. Of the Framers of our Constitution, 32 of the 55 were lawyers. Of the “Committee of Five” tasked by the Continental Congress with writing the Declaration of Independence, 4 were lawyers.

We in the legal profession are the guardians and stewards of the Constitution and the Rule of Law, the foundations of our democratic nation and the guarantors of our liberty.

We lawyers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
We are uniquely qualified, positioned, and obligated to defend our Constitution, our Rule of Law, and our democracy – and we must do so today, tomorrow, and the next day, until the present existential threat is no longer.

Thereafter, at long last finally understanding their fragility, we must forever protect and preserve the Constitution and America’s Democracy, as we are obligated by oath to do.
If this sounds as if the lawyer holds a special place in the constitutional order that is our democracy and that we are weighted by an almost-sacred responsibility, it is because we do, and we are.

We have a high appointment, and we have a high charge.

There comes a time in every single one of our lives – whether that life be private or public – when we are summoned to attest to our beliefs and convictions, when we are summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm what we believe and what we do not believe.

This moment of truth and decision is our moment of calling. And the decision that we must make in that moment always comes at personal cost.

When our call comes, if we answer with the courage of our convictions, we are heroes, whether we be heroes just to ourselves, to our families, our friends, our loved ones, our communities – or heroes to our country.
We call those in public life and in public service heroes who, when summoned, stand, affirm, and act to preserve and protect all that we cherish and hold dear in America.

We honor these men and women as heroes because when their time comes and they are summoned, they rise, they speak, and they act – without having to decide whether to do so. For them, there is no decision to be made, for they made their decision long before.

When their time comes, these heroes stare down fear, often profound fear – already knowing what they must do and what their sacrifice might be.
We bear witness to, and we affirm, the heroism of these heroes in order that heroism will be forever encouraged in a world in which there are vanishingly few with the strength, the will, and the courage to speak and act when they are called upon — that is, in a world where there are fewer and fewer heroes.

Members of the noble profession of law, our moment of calling has come.

We here today are being summoned, as are all Americans – to stand, bear witness, and affirm that we believe in America, that we believe in our Constitution and our Rule of Law, and that we believe in our Democracy.

You, and we, as members of the venerated profession of law are being summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm again that we will honor the oath we took to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We must challenge and entreat each other today to commit and re-commit ourselves to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law, to pledge ourselves to these and to their protection and preservation.

We must vow today that it will be the Rule of Law that triumphs over politics and not politics that triumphs over the Rule of Law.

If we succeed in this, our sacred obligation to our country, we will have risen to what is our high calling to ensure that America long endures as a nation of laws, not of men. We will be heroes for the Constitution and the Rule of Law in America…

Friends, our task is righteous and our task is noble. Our struggle is not only for today, but also for our vast future, Abraham Lincoln reminded us. And the hour is late.


Godspeed America.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History

The FBI Raids an Ohio Voting Rights Organization. Why?

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2026 //
2

Denis Smith’s late brother was an FBI agent. He was part of a team of agents sent to Mississippi to protect voting rights. When Denis learned that Kash Patel’s FBI recently raided a voting rights organization in Cleveland, he had a flashback.

Denis Smith was a public school administrator. He worked in the charter school office at the State Education Department.

Smith doesn’t explain why the FBI raided a group that was encouraging people to register to vote. We are all left to wonder why.

He wrote in the Ohio Capital Journal:

Something happened in Cleveland recently that needs our attention, regardless of political affiliation.

The headline about the event was concise, specific and, in the end, alarming: FBI Raids Ohio Voting Rights Organization. 

With so many crises facing the nation now, do we have to read that six-word headline again to fully understand what we have come to as a republic celebrating its 250th birthday? 

For me, reading about the FBI raiding a voting rights organization here in Ohio brought back a vivid memory about the career of my late brother, an FBI agent. Let me explain.

Six decades ago, the headlines back then also involved the FBI and voting rights, though the setting was not Ohio, but in Mississippi.   

There was one huge difference with the Ohio FBI raid: The Bureau was not involved more than a half-century ago in raiding organizations supporting voting rights, whether in Mississippi or Ohio. 

Quite the opposite.

In June 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi by local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner died at the hands of the Klan because they were helping people register to vote. 

Since the three men initially were listed as missing, the FBI was able to assume jurisdiction because the initial thinking had the three treated as being kidnapped, allowing federal agents to use federal abduction law to work around the local authorities, who were thought to be also involved in the disappearance of the trio.

That proved to be correct, as Lawrence Rainey, the Neshoba County sheriff and his deputy, Cecil Price, were indicted as part of a conspiracy that led to the murders of the activists. Rainey was acquitted but Price was convicted of civil rights violations and served most of a six-year prison sentence.

In 1988, Mississippi Burning, a film starring Gene Hackman, chronicled the epic events surrounding the murders of the civil rights workers. 

The film name came from MIBURN, the case file named for the charred vehicle used by the men that was found after their disappearance as well as referring to the burned African American churches that were set ablaze during the summer of 1964. 

As the scope of the case widened and weeks passed with no sign of the three men, more FBI agents from other field offices were put on temporary assignment to the case and traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Neshoba County seat.

One of those on temporary assignment in Mississippi was FBI Special Agent Edward C. Smith Jr., who was also from Philadelphia — the one in Pennsylvania. He was my brother.

As a career FBI agent, my brother was the utmost model of professionalism. He did not discuss his work, and during this era of civil and voting rights activism, particularly in the South, his family had no idea where he might be at any given moment.

That changed when my sharp-eyed mother was watching the Today Show at her home in Philadelphia one morning during that momentous summer of 1964. 

As she was ironing, her attention was drawn to the TV screen by a report about the ongoing investigation in Mississippi. 

When she heard the words Philadelphia, Mississippi, she dropped her weekly laundry routine to fixate on the story coming from the Neshoba County Courthouse. 

To her great surprise she saw her son Ed on the TV screen standing among some other FBI agents on the courthouse steps.

Now our family knew the scope of work our brother was involved with and why he had not contacted us recently.

This personal detail about my brother is provided to inform as well as remind readers that once upon a time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation — however reluctant it might have been during the tenure of long-time director J. Edgar Hoover — nevertheless worked diligently to protect individuals involved in civil and voting rights activity. 

It is no coincidence that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a consequence of the upheaval during the summer of 1964.

Upon his retirement, my brother did provide some details about his experience during the Mississippi Burning era, when some of the locals referred to his agency as the Federal Bureau of Integration. 

But such epithets proved to be confirmation of the effectiveness of the FBI to enforce the newly enacted Voting Rights Act as well as ensuring that the Fifteenth Amendment and the right to vote extended to every eligible citizen.

It is therefore understandable that those who lived during the bad times of the 1960s, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a mission to enforce federal law and ensure that Americans had access to the ballot box, are uneasy about a raid by the same FBI on an organization that works to promote voting rights.

Again, we are not talking about Mississippi but Ohio. In addition to the headline, the lead played out that feeling of uneasiness.

“FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state…” the story read.

My brother would be very upset if he knew his beloved FBI conducted a raid in Ohio on an organization whose mission is to ensure that people are registered to vote.

Yes, we are witness to an FBI raid on a voting rights organization in Ohio, not Mississippi. Edward C. Smith Jr., may you rest in peace. If you were still with us, you would realize better than the rest of us how far we as a nation have marched. Backwards.

Categories Elections, Ethics, History, Ohio

Randi on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Immigration Decision

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2026 //
6

Today was a good day at the U.S. Supreme Court for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller: the Court gave them permission to deport hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Syrians, and others who hold Temporary Protected Status. Some 350,000 Haitians are affected. Under the same program, Trump has welcomed white South Africans. The Court’s vote was 6-3.

Among those now subject to deportation are engineers, doctors and thousands of health care workers.

The program was established in 1990 with bipartisan support.

In a different 6-3 decision, the Court’s rightwing majority struck down a law in Hawaii that allowed private businesses open to the public, like retail shops, grocery stores, coffee shops, and gas stations to bar patrons carrying guns. The majority said the Second Amendment protects gun owners and they should be allowed to enter these places carrying their guns. The rest of us are not protected from them.

Contact:
Alexis Lopez
305-878-9836
alopez@aft.org

AFT’s Weingarten on US Supreme Court Ruling Ending Protection for Hundreds of Thousands of Haitians and Syrians

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to end temporary protected status protections for thousands of workers from Haiti and Syria who live and work legally in the United States:

“This country has been a beacon of hope for people around the world who seek a safe haven from violence and persecution. Immigrants with temporary protected status pour billions into the economy each year, pay taxes and fill essential jobs across industries including healthcare, agriculture and manufacturing. Losing their right to work and live here will push them into poverty and leave our country weaker, poorer and more vulnerable.

“When darker forces—like those in the White House today—closed our borders in the 1920s, millions of people who needed shelter were slaughtered abroad. We said “never again,” yet now we have a Supreme Court that’s closed its eyes to that history. 

“It is ironic that the six justices who issued this ruling would likely never visit or live in Haiti or Syria because of the extreme and ongoing instability there. Yet they somehow feel constitutionally compelled to send others back based on an administration policy rooted in discrimination and hate. History will not be kind to those who joined this warped opinion—and it is now incumbent on Congress to reverse it.”

###

Categories History, Immigration

Court Rules that Administration May Change Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2026 //
2

In the 1790s, when George Washington was President, he lived in a house in Philadelphia with nine slaves. The house is now part of the National Park Service. The city of Philadelphia approved an exhibit of panels that told the story of the President’s House.

After Trump ordered the removal from federal sites of signage and exhibits that “disparaged” American history, the National Park Service replaced the Philadelphia exhibit with its own signage.

The city sued and won in federal district court. In appeal, a federal appeals court affirmed the power of the federal government to control the exhibits on the site.

WHYY in Philadelphia reported on the decision.

Categories Censorship, History, Philadelphia

Heather Cox Richardson on the History of Juneteenth

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2026 //
4

I remember from my childhood in Houston the annual celebration of Juneteenth. It was entirely a Black event, not acknowledged by whites.

Now it is a federal holiday, signed into law by President Biden. The timing was fortuitous. Such a law would not likely be passed by the current Congress and would never be signed by Trump.

Heather Cox Richardson posted this history of Juneteenth yesterday. I enjoyed reading it (a day late), and I think you will too. I learned lots that I did not know about the history of this day.

She writes:

Today is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.

That announcement came as late as it did because while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”

Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.

Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.

But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.

In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.

Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the anniversary of the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.

By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.

Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.

Three months later the federal government, eager to explain to Black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation. The next year, the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America.

In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war’s end. In 1866 it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived.

Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.

But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy requires skewing the vote toward the wealthy and white men. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.

Today, those voices are, once again, gaining traction. One hundred and sixty-one years after Juneteenth was established, we are in danger of losing the new nation that it celebrated—one that would honor the equality of all Americans.

Categories Democracy, Freedom, History, Racism

The Lunatic Fringe of the Texas GOP Won!

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2026 //
1

Michelle H. Davis of “Lone Star Left” closes out her coverage of the Texas Republican convention. Her incisive reporting demonstrates the lunacy and cruelty that now dominate Texas Republicans. Well, at least they didn’t adopt a resolution to give the death penalty to any woman who dared to have an abortion. That’s something.

She writes:

The Republican Party of Texas is a party of hate and a party of cruelty. They were built in smoky back offices and pulpits in the early 1970s on the Moral Majority and the New Right. Then, they conquered Texas through the shady legal maneuverings of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove. The men at the top built an empire of corruption and theft. Theft of our water, theft of our clean air, theft of our labor. 

Texas Republicans have long had everything they’ve wanted. For decades, the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer. But it’s not enough. They have to keep people voting for them somehow. Dumb down education. Appeal to the most extreme elements. That’s all they have left. 

In 1964, the John Birch Society found its moment at the Republican National Convention. Barry Goldwater didn’t fully embrace them. But he didn’t reject them either. When Nelson Rockefeller stood at that podium and named the John Birch Society alongside the Ku Klux Klan as examples of extremism that the party should refuse, the crowd booed him off the stage. Goldwater then declared, “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

Goldwater was a total shit.

The Birchers never went away. And over the next sixty years, what was once considered the lunatic fringe became the Republican mainstream. The “deep state.” The “new world order.” Conspiracies about globalists, infiltrators, and enemies within. It’s the same playbook.

Which brings us to the 2026 Republican Party of Texas Convention.

The “Abolish Abortion” plank failed the final vote in the platform. That’s the one that would have handed the death penalty to any woman who received abortion care. Any woman. A minor. A rape survivor. Doesn’t matter. But don’t mistake that for a victory, because the men who stood on that convention floor and pushed for it are still on the ballot. Including: 

  • Rep. Bret Money (R-HD02). You can donate to his Democratic opponent, Fatima Muse, HERE. 
  • Rep. David Lowe (R-HD91). You can donate to his Democratic opponent, Yisak Worku, HERE. 

But what did pass on the platform? 

Banning IVF. Banning Sharia Law. 

In 2026, the Birchers write the Republican Party platform. 

Why IVF? Well, because they say this is a person:

But, actually, that ⬆️ is a mouse embryo I found on Google. But if women who are struggling with fertility are not allowed to have IVF in Texas anymore. 1- It will eventually spread to other states, and 2- what kind of repercussions will come from this? 

America already has a history of this. 

  • The Indian Adoption Project, beginning in the early 1950s, adopted Native children out primarily to non-Indian families to reduce reservation populations. By the time Congress finally acted, approximately one-third of all American Indian children had been removed from their homes. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was the legislative response, and the right has been trying to gut it ever since.
  • Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 30,000 Guatemalan-born children were adopted by US parents. The US Embassy in Guatemala knew as far back as 1995 that birth mothers’ lives were threatened if they tried to reclaim their children. Guatemala shut it down in 2008.

The Evangelical Christian adoption movement has a documented history of manufacturing an “orphan crisis” to justify removing children from living parents in developing countries. Even Erika Kirk had an orphanage in Romania, which she was later accused of sex trafficking children out of. 

Banning Sharia Law? 

First of all, they already tried this in the 2015 Legislative session during the last time Muslim panic swept the state of Texas. During that time, Beth Van Duyne, the then-mayor of Irving, was directly responsible for the statewide outrage and upset. This was simialar to the Muslim panic after 9/11. Maybe, not that bad. But the Republicans go back and forth between which marginalized group they hate most each year. This year, it happens to be Muslims. 

When you Google “What is Sharia Law,” you get a lot of different answers, so hear it directly from Rep. Salman Bhojani (D-HD92): 

From the Republicans’ perspective, it really boils down to ignorance and bigotry. Just like the “Show Me Your Papers” bill. Just like the DEI bans. Same rhyme, different verse. 

All the Texas transplants, pretending to be Texans. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, we love our transplants. They add to the vibrant culture that makes our state so unique. But nothing chaps my hide more than a bunch of dudes that moved here in their 40s rambling on about how THEY represent Texas values more than ME. Like, sirs, I have a grandfather and a great-uncle in the square the day JFK got shot, and they were both born in Dallas.

And all of these Republicans, the wealthy ones, who came here to get into politics or nepo-baby their way into their daddy’s corporation that came to Texas for the low taxes, they think the Texas spirit is all about taking as much as you can for yourself, while screwing everyone else at the bottom, and hurting anyone different from you. 

Senate Majority Leader Tan Parker, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, stood at that podium and invoked the Alamo. He talked about faith, family, liberty, and the God-given right of free people to govern themselves. He said Texas is proof that freedom works. 

Parker has been rated as one of the most dangerous anti-choice legislators in Texas. He’s endorsed by both Texas Right to Life and Texas Alliance for Life. His legislative priorities in 2025 centered on capital markets packages and making Texas a hub for financial services, because when women are dying from abortion ban complications, and Texas has a maternal mortality rate that rivals that of developing nations, but Parker’s focus is on helping rich people move their money here faster. 

The man flew in from Pennsylvania, wrapped himself in the Texas flag, invoked the memory of the men who died at the Alamo, and has spent nearly two decades making life harder for the working Texans he claims to represent.

Same thing with Dannie Goober yesterday. 

The rest of the planks we covered mostly passed. 

The full platform will be posted on the Republican Party of Texas website in the coming weeks. Read it. Share it. Make sure every voter in your life knows exactly what these people are planning.

Because we already know what’s coming in the 90th Legislative Session. They’ve written it down for us. Frozen embryos have more rights than the mothers who made them. Muslims are the designated enemy of the cycle. A Texas that looks less like the state we love and more like the fever dream of a John Birch Society pamphlet from 1962.

They are telling us exactly who they are.

The question is whether we’re going to let them keep doing it.

We can stop them by flipping the Texas House. Democrats need a net gain of just 14 seats to break Republican control, and the candidates to do it are on the ballot right now. 

The line in the sand is at the ballot box.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Ignorance, Republicans, Texas

Watch the Removal of Trump’s Name from the Kennedy Center, Live!

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2026 //
5

MS NOW is live-streaming the removal of Trump’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Right now.

Categories Art, Ethics, History, Trump

Colorado: Governor Polis Bends to Trump Pressure, Frees Tina Peters

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
2

Trump has spent a lot of time rescuing, pardoning and trying to reward the people who joined him in attempting to overturn his election loss in 2020. He is a giant baby. He is a sore loser. He lost decisively, and he refuses to accept it. More than 60 federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected his appeals because there was no evidence of election fraud.

Someday, with time, we will look back on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat as a low point in our history. Of course, we will look at his two terms in office as the absolute nadir of our history, as a time he spent rolling back civil rights, environmental protections, international alliances, access to healthcare, defunding medical and scientific research, bullying universities, and censoring the mass media.

Trump bullied Governor Jard Polis of Colorado to free Tina Peters, and Polis succumbed:

Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.

Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Injustice, International, Trump

Rep. Steve Cohen Introduces Six Articles of Impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2026 //
4

The U.S. Supreme Court was designed to be a separate branch of government, the one that monitored the adherence to the Constitution by the other two branches. The Court disappoints sometimes, but it has never been as nakedly partisan as it is under Chief Justice John Roberts. The far-right wing of the Republican Party has a reliable friend at the Court.

It’s hard to say which of their decisions is the worst.

Some might say it was their recent decision to overturn the Voting Rights Act, which will sharply reduce the number of Black members of Congress.

Some might say it was their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite promises by most of them not to do so.

Some would say it is their decisions that tear down the wall of separation between church and state.

I say it was their decision in Trump v. United States, in which the majority decided that the president was above the law and could not be charged for anything he did while in office as part of his official duties. We can be certain that the same court would claim that whatever he did was part of his official duties, including tearing down the East Wing of the White House without seeking anyone’s approval.

Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee has had enough. He introduced six articles of impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts. Good for him!

Scott Dworkin reported on his blog:

Rep. Steve Cohen

Rep. Steve Cohen has represented Memphis, Tennessee, for 19 years. Republicans cut his district into pieces, and he decided to retire—but not without a fight.

Cohen told The Dworkin Report in 2019: “[Trump’s] life has been one crime after another. One misdeed after another. One lie after another.” Now he’s applied that same standard to the man who put Trump above the law.

On May 21, Cohen introduced six articles of impeachment against Chief Justice John Roberts. Charges include allowing the Court to become a partisan weapon, placing the president above the law, endorsing a corrupt campaign finance system, and failing to recuse himself while his wife collected millions recruiting attorneys for law firms with cases before the Court.

Cohen was direct: “Under Chief Justice Roberts’ stewardship, [The Supreme Court] is now understood as biased: with decisions designed to benefit Republicans at the expense of representative government.”

They gerrymandered Cohen’s district to silence him. John Roberts now has six articles of impeachment to his name—an award no other Chief Justice has ever received in US history.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Injustice, Justice, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson on the History of Memorial Day

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2026 //
1

Heather Cox Richardson describes the history of Memorial Day. She begins by relating Trump’s proposed Arch, which “perfectly frames Arlington House, the mansion built by endlaved Americans and once owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.” If the Trump Arch is built, after winning approval by two panels stacked with Trump allies, there is always the possibility that it will be demolished by the next president, along with other gaudy changes, such as his tacky ballroom and the swimming pool blue paint in the august Reflecting Pool on the Mall.

Richardson writes:

President Donald J. Trump’s proposed triumphal arch would sit at a rotary on the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The proposed arch obscures the Lincoln Memorial, built to honor the president who steered the country safely through the Civil War, but perfectly frames Arlington House, the mansion built by enslaved Americans and once owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The arch does not frame the nation’s honored dead, but frames instead the home of the man who led the armies of the Confederacy that killed them.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton approved the land that had been Lee’s plantation as a national burying ground for soldiers on June 15, 1864. After 32 years in the U.S. Army, Lee resigned his commission and took over command of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, fighting across the state.

In early 1864 the U.S. government bought Lee’s property at public auction after Lee defaulted on property taxes, and months later it became the logical place to establish a national cemetery after the U.S. Army under General U.S. Grant began its spring 1864 offensive to crush the Confederate forces once and for all.

As the army advanced the Wilderness Campaign, grinding through the Battle of the Wilderness, the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, and on to the siege of Petersburg, the dead piled up.

The Army buried the dead and sent the wounded back to Washington, D.C. Journalist Noah Brooks wrote: “Maimed and wounded…. arrived by hundreds as long as the waves of sorrow came streaming back from the fields of slaughter…. They came groping, hobbling, and faltering, so faint and so longing for rest that one’s heart bled at the piteous sight.” For many, that rest was forever. In the era before antibiotics and modern medicine, the soldiers died in the summer heat.

Cemeteries in the city quickly became overwhelmed and Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs proposed to Stanton that the government begin burials at the Lee property. The National Republican newspaper called it, along with the establishment of a village of formerly enslaved Americans, “righteous uses of the estate of the rebel General Lee.”

By August 1864 the government had buried the bodies of twenty-six U.S. soldiers around the perimeter of Mrs. Lee’s rose garden, and it continued to bury bodies around the house to make sure Lee would never again be able to live there. By the end of the war, more than 16,000 Civil War soldiers were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

It was there, on May 30, 1868, that the first official Memorial Day ceremony took place. In those days the observance was called “Decoration Day” and was widely celebrated after the war as people put flowers on the graves of the war dead. At the 1868 event, the newly organized Grand Army of the Republic honored the occasion with a speech by then-congressman James Garfield, who had served as a major general and seen action across the war, including at the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga.

Garfield, who would later be elected president and lose his life to an assassin, told his comrades that the men buried at Arlington had “summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus…made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.“

They had fought, he said, to defend the fundamental principle of the United States. Before the war, Garfield said, “[t]he faith of our people in the stability and permanence of their institutions was like their faith in the eternal course of nature. Peace, liberty, and personal security were blessings as common and universal as sunshine and showers and fruitful seasons; and all sprang from a single source, the old American principle that all owe due submission and obedience to the lawfully expressed will of the majority. This is not one of the doctrines of our political system—it is the system itself. It is our political firmament, in which all other truths are set, as stars in Heaven…. Against this principle the whole weight of the rebellion was thrown. Its overthrow would have brought…ruin.”

And so, he said, “[t]he Nation was summoned to arms by every high motive which can inspire men. Two centuries of freedom had made its people unfit no for despotism. They must save their Government or miserably perish.”

For those who had died to defend the nation, he asked: “What other spot so fitting for their last resting place as this under the shadow of the Capitol saved by their valor?”

“Seven years ago, this was the home of one who lifted his sword against the life of his country, and who became the great Imperator of the rebellion. The soil beneath our feet was watered by the tears of slaves, in whose hearts the sight of yonder proud Capitol awakened no pride and inspired no hope…. But, thanks be to God, this arena of rebellion and slavery is a scene of violence and crime no longer! This will be forever the sacred mountain of our Capital….

“Hither our children’s children shall come to pay their tribute of grateful homage. For this are we met to-day.”

Garfield’s grand words obscured the extraordinary human cost of the war to defend the U.S. government. Almost seven years before, on July 14, 1861, at the very beginning of the conflict, Major Sullivan Ballou of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote his final letter to “My Very Dear Wife,” Sarah. Ballou anticipated the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the war, and wanted to explain why he was willing to give up his life for his country, and what it would cost.

“If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle-field for my country, I am ready,” he wrote. “I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon the triumph of government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.”

“Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break; and yet, my love of country comes over me like a strong wind, and bears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battlefield.

“The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable manhood around us.”

Ballou fell at the Battle of Bull Run. Sarah never remarried.

May you have a meaningful Memorial Day.

—

Notes:

https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/cemetery.htm#2
https://www.nps.gov/articles/first-official-national-decoration-day.htm
https://americanliterature.com/author/sullivan-ballou/letter/letter-to-sarah-ballou
Categories History
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