By Richard Rothstein, Senior Fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Institute and author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America This week, New York Magazine and ProPublica published a scathing article by Alec MacGillis titled, “Is anyone home at HUD?”. Multiple sources — current and former, career, and political staff — described a U.S. Department
by Kyle Barry, LDF Policy Counsel In tweets and statements, Senate Republicans have emphatically distanced themselves from President Trump’s morally bankrupt response to the violent white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. When Trump blamed “both sides” and said that “many fine people” were among the torch-bearing neo Nazis, the bipartisan rebuke was swift. Jeff Flake said that “we cannot accept excuses for white
by Kyle Barry, LDF Policy Counsel On June 29, President Donald Trump nominated Eric S. Dreiband to be the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Department of Justice. Created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Division is charged with upholding “the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our
By James Cadogan, Director of the Thurgood Marshall Institute, and Monique Lin-Luse, Assistant Counsel at LDF There’s a troubling but little-known trend in American public education that, in many cases, threatens to undo efforts to desegregate our nation’s schools: school secession. Simply put, school secession is when a community attempts to split from its local school district. Last week, the nonprofit group
By David Jacobs, Senior Communications Associate at LDF Two nights ago, a jury in Tulsa, Oklahoma, found Police Officer Betty Jo Shelby not guilty of first-degree manslaughter for the September 2016 roadside killing of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man. The verdict reinforced, once again, that police officers are almost never convicted for killing unarmed African Americans. While every one of these
By Todd Cox, LDF Policy Director This week, law enforcement throughout the country will observe National Police Week to honor and thank fellow officers who have died in the line of duty. One officer that will be honored is Montrell Jackson, the Baton Rouge police officer who was killed less than a week after the police-involved shooting of Alton Sterling. Days
by Kyle Barry , LDF Policy Counsel Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has revealed that he is willing to trash longstanding Senate tradition and undermine his Senate colleagues to hand control of the federal courts over to President Donald Trump. Grassley said that he will allow Trump to go over the heads of Democratic senators to fill federal appeals court vacancies
Gorsuch’s Views on Civil Rights Critical as Nation Grapples with Racial Justice Issues By Todd A. Cox, LDF Director of Policy Today, as the Judiciary Committee begins in earnest its questioning of Judge Neil Gorsuch about his nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States, the Senators are sure to raise a range of very important constitutional and philosophic
