by Ja'han Jones | Jul 14, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, Supreme Court
Republicans are yet again looking for help from the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed supermajority in placing a thumb on the scale for Republicans in future elections.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican and gubernatorial candidate, and America First Legal, the far-right law firm founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, were handed a serious setback last week when a court panel dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice, meaning they can’t file it again. The suit claimed Florida had been wrongfully denied an additional congressional seat and Electoral College vote because of the way the 2020 census was conducted.
For years, many Republicans have followed President Donald Trump’s lead in falsely claiming that the census count intentionally benefits Democrats. Liberals, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, have debunked these claims while spotlighting how the process of apportionment — that is, the delegation of congressional seats based on population — has been used to benefit conservatives.
The Florida Phoenix reported on last week’s ruling from a U.S. District Court three-judge panel. Per the outlet:
The Republicans alleged that a proper count would have given Florida an additional U.S. House seat and an additional vote in the Electoral College but for the “vast use” of a statistical method known as imputation. However, for the second time in six months, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed the case, this time with prejudice, finding that any further amendment to the pleadings “would be futile.”
The ruling was celebrated by lawyer Marc Elias, the pro-democracy attorney whose law firm helped thwart conservatives in the case. A day later, the plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
For the record,
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 11, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion
The mysterious death of Mississippi teenager Nolan Wells remains under investigation. But the response to it has already served as an indictment of racism in America in some ways.
Authorities in Mississippi are investigating the circumstances by which the 18-year-old college student, who was Black, died after visiting an island off the Gulf Coast on the Fourth of July. A photo on social media, purportedly from the boat ride to the island, shows Wells and three white friends.
There’s no evidence to date that race played a role in Wells’ death. But as Capital B noted, the case “immediately drew national attention, along with a surge of misinformation, unverified allegations and skepticism by some Black online commentators … who question whether Mississippi officials will be transparent in their investigation.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton, host of MS NOW’s “Politics Nation,” appeared at a news conference Friday in his activist capacity, alongside Wells’ family and civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, and alluded to some of the speculation while demanding a thorough investigation.
“We’re not bringing in race, but we’re not discounting race either,” Sharpton said, adding: “This smacks of some of the worst fears that we’ve had historically, not only in Mississippi, but in this country.”
Sharpton’s point about not immediately “discounting” race seems apt — for all scenarios, really.
Because in the United States, particularly these United States under this administration, such a presumption is foolish. Some might say willfully ignorant.
Amid the speculation surrounding Wells’ death, I’ve thought back to a 2024 report from the Pew Research Center that garnered fierce blowback. As I wrote at the time, the report’s headline — “Most Black Americans Believe Racial
by John Pfaff | Jul 11, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion
Last Thursday, during a traffic stop in Houston, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who lived in the United States for 35 years. Salgado is at least the 10th person to be shot and killed by ICE and Customs and Border Enforcement officers since the start of the second Trump administration — and the 17th Mexican to either be fatally shot by ICE or to die in ICE detention, a death toll that has prompted the Mexican government to formally demand an investigation.
Unsurprisingly by now, ICE’s account of the shooting and the subsequent behavior of its agents are raising multiple red flags.
To start, ICE said the shooting was justified because Salgado “weaponized his vehicle,” jargon for saying he tried to run over the officers who stopped his white van. But as The New York Times was quick to point out, this is a common claim made by ICE to justify its violence, but one that has repeatedly fallen apart under scrutiny. Already the three men who were passengers in the van driven by Salgado are disputing ICE’s account, saying that Salgado never swerved and that ICE officers fired almost immediately upon stopping the van.
Unfortunately, it is not clear if this growing mainstream distrust of ICE’s defense of violence will translate into any more accountability for ICE.
In this case, refuting the officers’ claim may be tricky — but only because the officers were not wearing body cameras. An ICE spokesperson blamed the lack of cameras on “back to back Democrat [sic] shutdowns,” but, of course, the Republicans controlled Congress during those shutdowns, and the
by Max Burns | Jul 10, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion
Just four months ago, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar loudly vowed to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accountable for its lawlessness. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin condemned ICE’s “ruthless” enforcement raids in Chicago last year.
For many Democrats in Congress, calling out the cruelty and impunity of ICE has become a common refrain. Why, then, are some of these same representatives now co-sponsoring a bill that would give ICE new power to harvest Americans’ personal information?
Congressional Republicans are racing against the legislative clock to pass a mountain of major legislation before an extended August recess, but razor-thin voting margins and unpopular bills have rendered Capitol Hill even more dysfunctional than usual.
For a GOP already struggling with sky-high unpopularity, the less voters see of its policies, the better.
Faced with the prospect of dozens of controversial votes on President Donald Trump’s agenda, GOP leaders are instead cramming their most controversial bills into this year’s must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.
For a GOP already struggling with sky-high unpopularity, the less voters see of its policies, the better.
Among the worst offenders is the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, which hides a historic power grab by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and ICE in a bill so bland that 144 House Democrats actually supported it in a roll-call vote back in May.
More than a dozen Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring the bill, including Klobuchar and Durbin. Senate Democrats’ support for CORCA has shocked immigration and civil liberties advocates, especially after Democratic lawmakers shut down DHS for 76 days by repeatedly voting against a funding bill that gave $70 billion in additional funding to ICE. The bill’s Democratic co-sponsors
by David Noriega | Jul 10, 2026 | Civil Rights, News
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas this week drew calls on Thursday for a transparent and independent investigation, even as many of the inquiries into previous deaths at the hands of immigration agents remain in limbo.
Salgado was shot and killed on Tuesday during a traffic stop in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Salgado had “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”
The shooting was at least the 17th time in the last year that federal immigration agents have fired their weapons at people in their cars, then subsequently said the shots were fired in self-defense. In many of those cases — most notably in the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 — the government’s assertions that the motorist tried to run over federal agents were directly contradicted by video or other evidence.
According to The Associated Press, eight people have died in fatal encounters with federal immigration authorities since the Trump administration began its widespread crackdown last summer, including Good and Alex Pretti, whose killings in Minneapolis touched off unrest across the Twin Cities.
No video of the Houston shooting had been publicly released as of Thursday afternoon. But Salgado’s family, along with advocates and elected officials in Texas, are questioning DHS’s version of events. And, citing the government’s recent track record of misrepresenting the events that have led up to previous shootings, they are demanding an independent investigation into Salgado’s killing.
“It is un-American to use lethal force against a human
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 9, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion
It’s election season and, like clockwork, some conservatives are resorting to anti-Asian racism and anti-Chinese xenophobia as the Republican Party faces a potential shellacking in this year’s midterms.
The below campaign ad featuring Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican and gubernatorial candidate, in which she crushes fortune cookies while vowing to “hunt down” communists and “crack down on China,” is a prime example.
Some observers, while rebuking the racist video, noted that modern fortune cookies weren’t invented in China, but rather in the United States by Japanese immigrants.
The US really is an idiocracy.This Republican Congress member boasts of how much she hates China by crushing fortune cookies with her hands.By the way, fortune cookies were invented by Japanese immigrants in the US. They don’t eat them in China.And the gong at the end… https://t.co/BhgrL3TJE9— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 9, 2026
Anti-Asian racism has also roiled the Arizona Republican Party. The state’s GOP primary race for schools chief was recently rocked by a racist incident in which a dark-money group put out a bigoted ad with gong noise and stereotypical Asian imagery that labeled candidate Kimberly Yee, who is Asian American, as the “empress of DEI.”
Yee’s primary opponent, incumbent Tom Horne, has requested that the group remove the ad. “I am shocked by the appeal to ethnic prejudice and denounce it,” he told Phoenix television station KPNX.
The ad bears some similarity to a bigoted ad out of Arizona ahead of the 2022 midterms — a commercial I thought might have been the most racist ad of that year’s election cycle.
And more recently, a top official for Arizona-based Turning Point USA, Tyler Bowyer, has faced
