by Charles F. Coleman Jr. | Nov 7, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, Politics, White House
It will be hard to fix what Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon broke as the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. A conservative culture warrior who as a private attorney represented Donald Trump during the House committee’s Jan. 6 investigation, she quickly delivered on the administration’s goals to roll back civil rights protections and reversed many the hard-fought gains of Kristen Clarke, her predecessor at the Civil Rights Division.
Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and Heritage Foundation figures like Russell Vought, Brendan Carr and Kevin Roberts all connected MAGA culture war with efforts to roll back civil rights, making the leader of the DOJ’s civil rights unit of paramount importance. Dhillon delivered what MAGA wanted.
It will be hard to fix what Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon broke as the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Though the departure of a civil rights chief who fixated on imaginary discrimination against white men might seem like a step in the right direction, we won’t know that until we know who Trump will replace her with.
But in the meantime, we can point out just how bad Dhillon was for civil rights. Take, for example, allegations of discriminatory policing. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has historically investigated allegations of mistreatment of Black people and other marginalized groups by law enforcement officers. When police civil rights violations required federal intervention, the division led that effort and entered into consent decrees with law enforcement agencies to grant injunctive relief, often mandating additional training and accountability measures.
There were examples of such consent decrees in cities across the country before Trump became president in 2017,
by Anthony Coley | Nov 4, 2026 | elections, Opinion, Politics
Florida entered Election Day with two streaks on a collision course: Republicans had won seven straight races for governor. No Black Republican had ever been elected governor anywhere in America. Only one streak would survive.
We now know the answer.
MS NOW projects U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds has won Florida’s governorship, defying political gravity and breaking a new barrier for a Black Republican candidate. Two other Black Republicans were running for governor Tuesday: Lisa Demuth in Minnesota and John James in Michigan.
Florida entered Election Day with two streaks on a collision course. Only one streak would survive.
Here at MS NOW in September, I wondered if Florida’s Republican advantage would be enough to carry Donalds and pointed out the national political environment hostile to his party and that he was trying to break through a barrier no Black Republican ever had.
Donalds ran as a conservative successor to Ron DeSantis, promising lower property taxes and insurance costs, expanded school choice, less red tape and tougher immigration and crime enforcement. He has also leaned into culture-war fights and portrayed Jolly as offering a blue-state model for Florida.
Jolly focused relentlessly on affordability, led by a state-backed catastrophe fund to lower property insurance costs. He also supported more public-school funding, tighter rules on vouchers, Medicaid expansion, abortion rights, gun reforms, climate resilience and a moratorium on hyperscale data centers. He ran against culture wars and ethics scandals while presenting himself as a former Republican offering a more inclusive alternative.
Play
Trump-backed Byron Donalds, Democrat David Jolly win FL governor primaries
August 18, 2026 / 13:13
In August’s Republican primary, Donalds’ support was notably weaker in rural northern Florida, a region that
by Felicia Schwartz | Oct 6, 2026 | 2026 election, elections, News, Politics, White House
The Trump administration declined to invite election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to witness the midterms, blocking monitors from the regional security group for the first time in more than two decades.
Their absence comes as Democrats and election integrity experts have raised concerns about potential election meddling after the Department of Justice announced plans to send its own monitors.
Washington joins only Russia and Belarus in its decision to exclude OSCE observers.
The OSCE called the U.S. decision “regrettable” and Human Rights Watch said the move “fuels fears of serious human rights concerns around the upcoming elections.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told MS NOW the administration’s decision “risks undermining public trust in America’s safe and secure election system.”
“The Trump administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy and transparency that defines our elections,” she said, adding that the U.S. should hold “itself to the same standards that we would expect of any other democracy.”
Asked why the U.S. did not invite observers this year, a State Department spokesperson said OSCE “should focus its limited resources on elections where it can have the greatest impact.”
The OSCE has observed every federal election in the U.S. since 2002. OSCE monitors typically visit some polling stations and issue a report about how the elections were conducted, among other activities.
Monitors do not interfere and have no enforcement power, with their access to polling stations decided by each state.
OSCE observers were invited to observe the 2018 midterms during Trump’s first term and more recently
by Cedric Alexander | Oct 3, 2026 | immigration, Opinion, Politics, White House
The lawsuits filed this week by the survivors of Renee Good, who was shot dead Jan. 7 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, make the general claim that Ross had no reason for killing the 37-year-old mother of three. But plaintiffs make two more specific allegations that particularly trouble me as a 40-year law enforcement veteran who trained other officers.
The lawsuits say at least one ICE agent told Good, who was in the driver’s seat of an SUV, that she could leave the scene where ICE agents were working at about the same time other agents were ordering her out of her car. The lawsuits also allege that agents at the scene not only failed to provide aid to Good after she was shot but also stopped a doctor from trying to help her.
These are but allegations. The government has claimed Ross fired in self-defense because he feared she was about to run over him with her vehicle, and a court may eventually decide whether he was justified. But the allegations that Good was given conflicting orders and denied medical aid after she’d been shot describe failures I’ve seen before and know have no place in professional policing.
The allegations that Good was given conflicting orders and denied medical aid after she’d been shot describe failures I’ve seen before and know have no place in professional policing.
As someone who has led police officers, I have defended them when they are right. I know a vehicle can kill an officer as surely as a gun can, and agents are right to respect that. But that’s why sound
by Keith Reed | Oct 3, 2026 | Congress, Opinion, Politics, Sports
The Protect College Sports Act, sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and passed by the Senate this week, is ostensibly an effort to bring common-sense reform to an NCAA that, in pursuit of the almighty dollar, has abandoned all pretense of developing college athletes academically and personally. It’s hard to pinpoint when the cries to fix college sports got so loud, but one especially hears it everywhere NCAA Division I football teams compete on Saturdays.
But no matter how it looks on its face, the bill is a deeply flawed attempt at reforming college sports “because its framework confers consequential legal and economic benefits on institutions that already exercise enormous power,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote to Senate leaders in August. Johnson argued that the bill could be catastrophic for Black student-athletes, who make up the majority of FBS football and Division I men’s basketball rosters and have already suffered decades of economic harm under the NCAA’s former rules.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the cries to fix college sports got so loud, but one especially hears it everywhere NCAA Division I football teams compete on Saturdays.
Among other things, the Congressional Research Service’s summary of Cruz’s bill notes that it would require agents representing college athletes to register with at least one state and caps their compensation for negotiating Name, Image, and Likeness deals at 5% of a contract’s value. It bans the NCAA and its member institutions from limiting what student-athletes can make from such deals and establishes a reporting requirement for any deal worth more than $600.The bill would also bar colleges and NIL collectives from paying athletes in ways
by Dr. Owais Durrani | Oct 2, 2026 | Health, Opinion, Politics, White House
A patient recently showed up to my emergency department after he’d been doing home repairs for several days, including lifting heavy equipment and moving boxes. When he started feeling a recurring tightness in his chest, he entered his symptoms into a large language model, which told him he likely strained a muscle. He rested and waited for the pain to go away, but it never did.
When he finally came to my emergency room a few days later, his EKG and lab tests showed that he had suffered a serious heart attack. Because of the long delay, part of his heart muscle was permanently damaged, and he now has chronic heart failure.
Because of the long delay, part of his heart muscle was permanently damaged, and he now has chronic heart failure.
At a Make America Healthy Again summit Tuesday that was co-sponsored by OpenAI and Anthropic, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. boasted that artificial intelligence would soon give Americans a second opinion “much better informed than any doctor in the country.”
He’s wrong to say that, and my position doesn’t arise from any philosophical opposition to AI technology. To the contrary, not only am I an emergency room physician, but I am also U.S. chief medical officer at Keikku, a clinical AI company. I use AI in some capacity every shift. However, the patient who consulted a chatbot and suffered irreversible heart muscle damage that a cardiologist could have prevented is an example of why human expertise matters now — and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future.
The AI chatbot a person uses at home cannot conduct
