The Truth Makes Us Free
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Basically, everyone knows that “making America great again” means making America racist again – making racism the cultural norm again, unlocking the cage of political correctness and freeing, you know, regular Americans to strut again in a sense of superiority.
My political awakening happened in California. I was 13 years old when I saw the Rodney King video. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I asked my father how it could be possible—how people with badges and nightsticks could commit such violence and walk away unpunished. The following year, the city exploded. The 1992 uprising etched itself into my memory—not as lawlessness, but as outrage born of injustice and mismanagement. I’ve spent years studying those events, learning what we could’ve done better. We should’ve de-escalated, we should’ve listened, we should’ve shown restraint.
President Trump finally got his wish for a conversation with Xi Jinping. Or perhaps I should say that President Xi granted Trump an audience. The Chinese leader has no doubt been energized by the adverse reaction inside as well as outside the US to Trump’s tariffs.
Roberts told me that, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for deportation power the Trump DOJ had found the Sedition Act of 1798 very appealing because it made it a crime to criticize the government or the President. Justice Roberts had made a statement condemning calls to impeach Judge Boasberg who ruled against Trump and that “criticism” prompted the indictment.
Here at the United Nations in New York City, the Security Council is expected to vote on a resolution calling on all parties to respect an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
America’s democracy isn’t being destroyed by foreign enemies—it’s being slowly dismantled by elected officials from within. Today’s Republican leaders, driven by fear of a more diverse society, are trading democratic values for authoritarian control.
The slaughter goes on, usually in the name of war, which reduces human life to, at best, a strategic abstraction. Dead civilians – dead children – are collateral damage, which means they’re nothing at all.
When ICE and other agencies began arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants this past January under orders from Donald Trump, unions stepped up to support immigrant workers. They called for the release of workers detained and imprisoned without due process, offered know-your-rights workshops and legal assistance, accompanied workers to their ICE check-ins, and gave public displays of solidarity, such as the May Day marches this year.
Fire has always helped shape our forests, especially in the West. But those forests have evolved around natural frequencies and intensities of fires. What we are seeing now is new. This early-season smoke is a stark reminder that fire season is no longer confined to the West or wild areas, and more intense and longer-lasting fire seasons are the new normal.