King’s Vision: How the Vietnam War pushed the Civil Rights leader to embrace global justice
By Anthony Siracusa, Senior Director of Inclusive Culture and Initiatives, University of Colorado Boulder On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although not the...
Still no justice for Emmett Till: Why the spirit of the Jim Crow era remains alive and well
On December 6, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it has closed an investigation into the 1955 murder of Black teenager Emmett Till. The case had been reopened in 2018, a year after the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act (the Till...
Advocates demand DC statehood: Almost 700K American citizens still denied voting representation in Congress
As people nationwide marked the first anniversary of the U.S. Capitol attack amid rising concerns about American democracy, District of Columbia residents and advocates for full representation renewed calls for congressional action on DC statehood. January 6, 2021...
Coup by a thousand cuts: Trump’s erosion of American democracy depends on vicious conspiracy theories
By Ken Hughes, Research Specialist, the Miller Center, University of Virginia Now that a full year has passed since the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, the 2020 election and the republic, it is evident that the attack never really ended. Instead, it spread...
Waukesha Judge sides with conservative lawsuit that ballot drop boxes are not allowed under state law
A Waukesha County Judge has ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes are not allowed under Wisconsin law, a ruling that could potentially remove an option for voting ahead of the state’s midterm elections. Ruling from the bench on January 13, Circuit Court Judge...
Wisconsin jurisdictions part of new federal effort giving non-English proficient citizens access to vote
By Gabe Osterhout, Research Associate, Idaho Policy Institute, Boise State University; and Lantz McGinnis-Brown, Research Associate, Idaho Policy Institute, Boise State University As Americans and their elected representatives debate who should be allowed to vote and...
Wisconsin panel explores root causes of domestic terrorism in response to January 6 insurrection
A year after the deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Wisconsin and national-level experts on domestic terrorism spoke at an event in McFarland on causes and responses to the problem. The event, sponsored by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Wisconsin group We...
Political Panic: Libraries across America report surge of coordinated attempts to ban books in schools
From calls in Virginia to burn “sexually explicit” books in a school library to a wave of challenges to titles by authors ranging from Toni Morrison to Alison Bechdel, the American Library Association is charting an unprecedented rise in attempts to ban books in...
American Autocracy: 2024 will most likely see the end of our Civil Liberties if voting rights not secured
One year since then-President Donald Trump and his Republican accomplices’ lies about voter fraud led to a failed coup on January 6, 2021, progressives are warning that the GOP’s ongoing, nationwide assault on the franchise will continue as long as Senate...
Insurrectionists in suits and ties: How the next coup to overthrow American Democracy has already begun
The next attempted coup will not be a mob attack, but a carefully plotted and even technically legal one. Instead of costumed rioters, the insurrectionists are men in suits and ties. American democracy suffered two brutal blows on January 6. The first has been seared...
Beyond Omicron: The laws of biochemistry mean that COVID-19 variants cannot improve indefinitely
By Ben Krishna, Postdoctoral Researcher, Immunology and Virology, University of Cambridge It is controversial whether viruses are alive, but they do evolve like all living things. This fact has become abundantly clear during the pandemic, as new variants of concern...
Standards of care: How the COVID-19 surge forced hospital staff into impossible ethical decisions
By Matthew Wynia, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus As the omicron variant brings a new wave of uncertainty and fear, I can’t help reflecting back to March 2020, when people in health care across the...
