Garrity v. New Jersey: The 1967 Supreme Court decision linking Rodney King’s trial to probe of Joseph Mensah
Five Wauwatosa Police officers with important information about the scene of the 2016 police shooting of Jay Anderson were not interviewed as part of the independent investigation into the shooter, Officer Joseph Mensah. Those five officers were not questioned because...
Calling Races: The necessary role of the news media to project the outcome of elections in the United States
Fifty-one separate elections — one in each state and one in Washington DC, each with different rules and regulations, and no national elections commission to tell the world who wins. How, then, to quickly and accurately determine who won the highest office in the...
Dictatorship over Democracy: Concerns grow over Trump staging a coup as he refuses to concede election loss
Trump refuses to acknowledge Biden’s win, but experts say there is not a constitutional path forward for him to remain president. Joe Biden won the presidential election, a fact that Donald Trump and other Republicans refuse to acknowledge. There are worries the...
Data-Mining during protests: Wisconsin courts consider legality of “trickle down surveillance”
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court asked to consider a new legal frontier regarding police collection of cell data. The District III Court of Appeals has certified a case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court which explores the limits of law enforcement’s ability to download...
Jim Crow and World War I: How racism compounded the grief of Black families who lost sons in battle
In the summer of 1930, Mrs. Louise Kimbro, a 57-year-old African American woman from Columbus, Ohio, boarded a train for New York City. She was one of 6,685 women who accepted the government’s invitation to join the Gold Star Mothers and Widows pilgrimage between 1930...
Beyond Veterans Day: How the public can honor retired members of the military on the other 364 days
By Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Purdue University As the nation celebrates our 17 million living veterans, it is also important to know that the number of these heroes who are ending their own lives...
Rightwing Violence: White Supremacist groups found behind most of this year’s domestic terror attacks
White supremacists and other rightwing extremists have been responsible for 67% of domestic terror attacks and plots so far this year, with at least half of that violence targeting protesters, according to a new analysis from a centrist thinktank. The report found...
The Rot Runs Deep: A new president will not be enough to repair the Greatest Democracy
The good news is that Donald Trump has been voted out of the White House. The bad news is that Trump was not a unique, aberrant threat to American democracy; it was already broken so deeply and in so many ways that no single election can possibly repair the damage....
Presidents and Black America: Chief Executives have a long history of outright racism
By Stephen A. Jones, Adjunct Instructor of History, Central Michigan University; and Eric Freedman, Professor of Journalism and Chair, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University The fury over racial injustice that erupted in the wake of...
Joe Biden claims mandate to unify a shattered America after winning 2020 presidential election
Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, November 7, positioning himself to lead a nation gripped by the historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social turmoil. His victory came after...
The long national nightmare is over as voters overwhelmingly tell Trump: You’re Fired
By Brian J Purnell, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History, Bowdoin College; Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell; and Neta C. Crawford, Professor of Political Science and Department Chair, Boston...
Wisconsin Votes: An unsatisfying result after the worst presidency in American history
How did we come to this point? President Donald Trump made history on Tuesday night with his false declaration of victory while votes were still being counted all across the country. At least, by signaling in advance that he would reject the election results if they...
