The FBI was only marginally less equivocal about whether the shooting was a hate crime. A top official promised to leave no stone unturned and said, “there was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved.” But he also gave with one hand and took back with the other. He quickly added that he did not see the murderous attack as “a specific threat to the mosque.”

The irony is that the alleged shooters, Clark Cain and Caleb Vazquez, left little doubt just why they shot up the mosque. In what’s usual in these kinds of mass killings, the shooters leave a disjointed journal filled with scribblings that spew hate against Blacks, Jews, and Muslims. The pair did the same. If ever there was a smoking gun on a hate motive for the killing, they provided it with their diatribes against Blacks, Jews, and Muslims.

But why should that surprise? Surveys have repeatedly shown that hate crimes, violence, and harassment, and threats against Muslims have been almost the norm in many circles. Dozens of neo-Nazis, anti-government, white supremacist groups, and tens of thousands of individuals spew hate with aplomb. The site’s writers lambaste blacks, Jews, gays, and are unabashed in praise of Hitler. They perennially exhort their readers and followers to arm themselves to the teeth against the imagined assault by the federal government on white people’s rights. It was virtually a given that the murders would fire the horde of racists up, and ignite a frenzy of debate, speculation, denial, and even veiled acquiescence to the murders.

Cain and Vazquez, the alleged mosque killers, are the sort of nut jobs who would be perfectly comfortable with the white nationalist crowd.

However, even when the Cains and Vazquez’s are known tracked, monitored, and surveilled and worse commit hate acts, they often evade full punishment. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment, but rather muddled, confused, and outright lax enforcement and prosecution of hate acts. Even when the FBI and local law enforcement agencies ID them for their propensity for violence their hands are still tied.

Federal prosecutors are loath to step on the toes of police and prosecutors in criminal cases no matter how badly the crime is tainted by race, gender, or religious hatred. Federal prosecutors flatly say that hate perpetrators are more likely to be convicted and get stiff sentences in state court. That makes good legal and political sense.

Yet, that’s not the only reason for their hands off of the Cains and Vazquez’s. Except in the highest profile cases, they see these prosecutions as no-win cases with little political gain, and the risk of making enemies of local police, DAs, and state officials. Hate crimes may be horrific but they are largely seen as common crimes and are treated as such. Few state prosecutors will chance inflaming racial passions and hatred by slapping a hate crime tag on a case.

There’s also the belief that hate crimes are mostly a thing of the past. When they do occur, they are isolated acts committed by a handful of quacks, and unreconstructed bigots, and that state authorities vigorously report and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.

When Congress passed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, it compelled the FBI to collect figures on hate violence. However, it did not compel police agencies to report them. Record keeping on hate crimes is still left up to the discretion of local police chiefs and city officials. Many police departments still refuse to report hate crimes, or to label crimes in which gays, Jews, and minorities are targeted because of race, religion, or sexual preference as hate crimes.

Still other police departments don’t bother compiling them because they regard hate crimes as a politically loaded minefield that can tarnish their image and create even more political friction. The official indifference by many police agencies to hate crimes prevents federal officials, even if they wanted to more aggressively enforce civil rights laws, from accurately gauging the magnitude of civil rights violence.

Clark and Vazquez’s hideous rampage almost certainly would have been treated as a murder, charges if they had lived. But in the hands of the Trump DOJ they may well not have been slapped with federal hate crime charges. This glaring laxity is just enough space for the Cains and Vazquez’s of America to run loose.

Columnist; Earl Ofari Hutchinson

One can visit this brother online over at; TheHutchinson Report.

What happens when the highest court in the land issues a decision based on faulty reasoning or inaccurate data?

The shameful Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 decision obliterated 30 years of hard-fought progress toward racial equality under the law and thrust the nation into the dark and violent era of Jim Crow.

Last month’s decision in Louisiana v Callais, like 2013’s Shelby v Holder, is destined to live in infamy alongside Plessy. We cannot and must not a single moment – let alone 70 years, as we did with Plessy – to rectify the Court’s mistake.

The Court and Congress must acknowledge the Callais decision was based on misleading data and restore the provisions of the Voting Rights Act that it overturned.

The deluge of racially-motivated voter suppression laws that Shelby unleashed made a mockery of Chief Justice John Roberts’ claim that “current conditions” did not justify federal protection against discriminatory state voting laws.  So, too, does the frenzy of states to enact racially gerrymanderied frenzy congressional maps disprove the majority’s assumption that states would not exploit Callais to disguise discrimination as partisanship.

Even more egregiously, Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion relied on a false claim –“copied almost verbatim” from a Trump administration filing – that Black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections.

As The Guardian’s investigation revealed, the administration’s false claim rested on a misleading voter turnout calculation: The administration calculated turnout using the entire adult population – including non?citizens, disenfranchised individuals, and others ineligible to vote, which artificially inflates turnout figures—particularly for Black voters.  The generally accepted standard for calculating voter turnout is the Voting?Eligible Population (VEP).   By the common standard, Black voter turnout in Louisiana has consistently trailed white turnout in every election since at least 2012.

In fact, the racial turnout gap not only widened nationwide since Shelby, it grew twice as fast in counties previously covered by the preclearance requirement that Shelby overturned.

Instead of acknowledging the truth of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s observation that “throwing out preclearance when it has worked … is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” the majority blithely ignored the wreckage Shelby left in its wake and used its own willful delusion to justify even further destruction.

Constitutional law cannot rest on false facts.  Hard won civil rights protections cannot be snatched away on the basis of manipulative sleight-of-hand.

The Supreme Court itself has explicitly recognized that precedents resting on demonstrably false or fundamentally outdated factual assumptions warrant reconsideration or overruling.  In his concurrence in Ramos v Louisiana, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s wrote, “A precedent that is egregiously wrong…or based on a demonstrably false factual premise should not continue to bind the Court.”

The Supreme Court has the power to shape political power and voter representation for generations. Plessy, to the nation’s everlasting shame, grotesquely distorted that power. This generation has the opportunity—and the responsibility—to steer the nation back toward justice.

Columnist; Marc Morial

Official website; http://twitter.com/MARCMORIAL

All About Technology, a certified disability-owned minority business enterprise, has grown from a technology sales and service business into a trusted community resource for individuals, families, seniors, students, small businesses, and organizations seeking reliable, honest, and accessible technology support. The company’s milestone anniversary recognizes a quarter-century of helping people connect to opportunity through technology.

“Technology has the power to connect people to opportunity, independence, and community—but only when it is accessible to everyone,” said Brake. “At All About Technology, our mission has always been about more than computers. It is about helping people work, learn, communicate, and participate fully in today’s digital world.”

A refugee entrepreneur, published Personal Technology columnist, educator, nonprofit leader, and longtime community advocate, Brake is widely known for his patience, honesty, and deep understanding of his clients’ needs. His hands-on commitment to understanding and, most importantly, resolving technical challenges has positioned All About Technology as a dependable resource for those who need more than a transaction—they need guidance, trust, and support.

Before founding All About Technology, Brake, who was recently featured in Model D Media, spent more than 12 years in increasingly responsible roles with Fortune 100 companies across the automobile, consulting, education, and manufacturing industries, working in locations around the world. Those experiences helped shape his passion for problem-solving and his belief that technology should empower people, not exclude them.

Brake’s community leadership extends well beyond business. He serves as the Executive Director of a local nonprofit, is an adjunct faculty member at Wayne County Community College, and supports youth development through internships, job shadows, and employment partnerships that expose young people to meaningful workplace experiences.

As All About Technology celebrates its 25th anniversary, the company remains focused on closing gaps in access, affordability, digital literacy, and technology support—especially for individuals with disabilities, seniors, youth, and underserved communities. The company also continues to explore ways and seeks trusted, reliable partners to expand electronics recycling and redirect refurbished technology to people and organizations that need it most.

Brake is an active, duly initiated life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., and an avid learner who earned credentials from Wayne State University, University of Phoenix, Harvard Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. A native of Detroit, he is the proud father of one daughter, Olivia Madison.

“All About Technology’s 25-year journey is a Detroit story,” Brake added. “It is about resilience, service, innovation, and a belief that every person deserves access to the tools and support needed to thrive in a digital world.”

Learn more at All-About-Technology.com.

About
All About Technology is a Detroit-based certified disability-owned minority business enterprise providing computer sales, service, technical support, and community-centered technology solutions. For 25 years, the company has served as a trusted resource dedicated to bridging the digital divide and helping individuals, families, businesses, and organizations access and use technology with confidence.

For press inquiries, contact 313-218-4888 or press@all-about-technology.com.

For generations, the Black community has often been described as moral, churchgoing, God-fearing, disciplined, and upright. It is a narrative repeated from pulpits, passed down through families, and reinforced by respected voices within the community. Bell says that she once embraced that narrative herself, but over time, she says she was forced to confront a difficult reality: no community is inherently more moral than another, and at times, the Black community has also fallen short of the standards it publicly claims. That realization became the foundation for her work and raised deeper questions about the impact such contradictions can have on generations of young people growing up within those beliefs.

According to Bell, the series is not designed to tear down the community, but rather to encourage honesty so healing can begin. She argues that healing cannot happen when abuse, trauma, and dysfunction remain unnamed or hidden behind respectability and image protection. In her view, the long-standing pressure to preserve the appearance of morality has too often resulted in silence, ignored pain, and cycles of harm being repeated across generations. Through her writing and discussions, Bell emphasizes that only truth, accountability, and direct confrontation can break those cycles and better protect future generations.

Bell acknowledges that some of the conversations explored in her work may feel uncomfortable or even controversial. However, she believes silence itself has become a greater betrayal. She explains that many of these cultural myths originally developed as a survival response to racism and negative stereotypes, serving as a way for Black Americans to affirm dignity and resilience. Yet Bell argues that survival through silence is not the same as healing through truth. Her work aims to challenge illusions, expose hidden issues, and push the conversation toward restoration, accountability, and authentic healing within families and communities.

The project extends far beyond a single book and includes a broader collection of books, discussions, and multimedia content designed to continue the conversation.

Among the featured titles is Beyond the Myth, which explores how generational silence and secrecy can contribute to ongoing harm within communities while calling for greater accountability and protection of children.

Another title, Exposing Hidden Abuse: Silence and the Path to True Accountability, examines the role that trusted figures, institutions, and traditions can play in sustaining silence around abuse and trauma. Bell also authored Home is Where the Hatred Is: From Survival to Restoration, a work focused on family dysfunction, survival, buried truths, and the long-term effects of unresolved trauma within the home.

In addition to her books, Bell hosts a podcast and video series through her Healthy Self With Lily Bell YouTube Channel. The platform explores abuse, trauma, secrecy, accountability, and healing within the Black community, often focusing on the emotional and psychological impact of silence within families, churches, and community institutions. Bell says the goal of the platform is to prioritize truth over tradition, healing over image, and accountability over silence.

Her books are available physically on Amazon and digitally on PayHip.

For press inquiries, contact healingwithlilybell@gmail.com or 562-661-8609.

This evening, I will be on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to discuss topics of American exceptionalism, illegal immigration, and foreign policy. It is imperative that we do not stop bringing a constitutional conservative message to our American college and university campuses, as we cannot cede any ground to the Marxist left. Am I concerned about “protesters?” Nah, I am a combat veteran. As well, it would be quite interesting to have leftists seeking to shut down the free speech of a Black man who was born in a segregated hospital in Georgia 65 years ago.

Conservatives must indeed go where eagles dare, and challenge the most formidable bastions of Marxism. That was the essence of what Charlie Kirk did so very effectively. I recall meeting the young 19-year-old Kirk back in 2013 and being asked to be part of his Turning Point USA Board of Advisors as he was launching. His personal efforts will be missed, but we cannot focus on just a singular person. As in the movie Spartacus, we must all say, “I’m Charlie Kirk.” The message that our young people are receiving on college and university campuses is completely antithetical to the American ideal, that of individual sovereignty, rights, freedoms, and liberties. That is what America 250 is all about. However, when one ponders what we have devolved into since America 200, when I was fifteen years of age, it is quite telling.

Who in 1976 thought that we would have discussions about defining what a woman is? Or that we would be confused about two scientifically based sexes. Once upon a time, it would have been considered child abuse to recommend that minors undergo body-transforming surgeries and disturb their natural hormonal growth and adolescence. Let’s be real, little kids are not confused about whether they are a boy or a girl. Adults are injecting them with this poison. As a matter of fact, anyone under the age of eighteen is not allowed to have a tattoo, but we are supposed to believe that the removal of healthy body parts is normal?

I remember as a young fella the day when my Dad made his last house payment. It was a source of pride for the ol’ World War II Corporal, as well as for me. He gave me something to achieve: being a homeowner. We all know that our Declaration of Independence was built upon the Natural Rights theory of the English political philosopher, John Locke, called the father of classical liberalism. The three unalienable rights endowed, naturally, to all mankind are life, liberty, and property. Yes, we do need to ensure that the American dream of home ownership is attainable for current and future generations.

However, government-run housing and policies of rent control are not the answer. I got a unique opportunity to see what that looked like — not once but twice — when visiting East Berlin, and government-controlled transportation was ugly. The purpose of government is to protect our life, liberty, and property. French economist Frederic Bastiat wrote of such in his phenomenal essay of 1850 called The Law. It was an apparent direct response to a differing philosophy that was introduced in 1848, the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In Marx’s work, he advocated for heavy progressive taxation and the elimination of private property rights, two things that the Marxist/Islamist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has made central to his policy.

I have no issue with those who say that they hate President Trump. I would suggest stopping shooting at him. Americans are free to have differing opinions. It was New York liberal Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once asserted, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” The same can be said about the absurdity of claiming one’s own truth, which is rooted in situational morality and ethics.

It is therefore imperative that we go where eagles dare, and not confine ourselves to our respective echo chambers of adoration. I will never forget the young lady on the campus of Northwestern University some eight to 10 years ago who asked me, “Do you identify as Black?” It was a truly shocking inquiry, but reflective of the low standards of academic rigor and critical thinking that exist on many college and university campuses. Northwestern University is one of the top academic institutions in our country, yet someone had filled this young lady’s mind with the folly that one’s skin color should dictate how they think, totally bypassing the brain that God gave to each of us. As my Mom and Dad would say, “some folks got a lot of book learning but ain’t got the common sense to come in outta the rain.”

One of the world’s great minds, Albert Einstein, advocated on behalf of socialism in his 1949 essay Why Socialism? He believed that socialism would quell the “predatory phase” of human development caused by capitalism. As opposed to economic minds like Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and Sowell, Einstein believed that capitalism brought about “economic anarchy” and that the pursuit of profit was less admirable for individuals than a government-planned economic system that ensured social welfare. That sounds a lot like Marx’s “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” wealth redistribution schemes.

America has a clear choice in this election cycle, and future ones as well: shall we choose the philosophy of economic servitude and enslavement and collectivism, or do we still believe in the indomitable individual spirit that yearns for freedom, economic empowerment, and yes, rugged individualism? I dare to choose the latter over the former. As history has proven, the former never works out well. As Sir Winston Churchill said, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” He also affirmed that “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” And we know that socialism is the economic model of Marxism.

Go where eagles dare, spread the message of individual entrepreneurial economic achievement.

Columnist; Allen West

Official website; https://x.com/AllenWest

Trump did not offer new ideas. Rather, the vagueness of MAGA and America First promised an idea-generation machine powered by a pair of nationalist principles. The implicit pledge that anything would be possible was reinforced in his second term by out-of-the-box personnel picks like Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Intellectually exhausted, in permanent defense mode, and paralyzed by the internal contradiction between their New Deal history and their Clintonite present, Democrats tacitly conceded the framing to the opposition. 2016, 2020 and 2024 were referenda about Trump.

Liberals took comfort in Joe Biden’s win, failing to recognize that COVID-19 was a black swan moment, that Trump’s weird disavowal of Operation Warp Speed was political suicide, and that “nothing will fundamentally change” is not an appealing campaign message under normal circumstances.

Yet here we are, 10 years into this current political drama, and Democrats are entering the midterms with one repeatedly failed message — we’re not Trump — and one predicated on faulty assumptions: Black and Latino voters will be so angry about GOP efforts to disenfranchise them via gerrymandering that they will turn out in record numbers for Democrats.

About those assumptions: Latinos are no longer a majority Democratic voting bloc and probably never were. Blacks were but are far less likely to support Democrats nearly unanimously as they have done historically. These days, it turns out, minority voters (and everyone else) often stay home unless something exciting — Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter — compels them to head out to their local school gymnasium or firehouse to cast votes that, individually, as everyone knows, cannot make a difference.

Stupidity by people who seem smart enough to know better — when that stupidity is unmistakable, avoidable, yet repeated, and then repeated again! — fascinates me. How can it be that the Democrats are once again arriving at the field of battle without having prepared a set of policy prescriptions tailored to this moment, as well as a poll-tested messaging campaign to promote it?

The fact that they keep doing this — or, more accurately, not doing what they should be doing — suggests that they have not suffered enough from previous iterations of this misjudgment for the lesson to stick. What happens to individual Democrats who lose elections in a two-party system, after all, is less than awful. They while away their wilderness years in academia and the media until, inevitably, they return or someone close to them returns and hooks them up with some sinecure. Meanwhile, the party apparatus fundraises as an opposition unaccountable for either the outrages of the incumbents or those of its own past, cuz ahistoricity.

Punishment this fall, such as it will be, will probably see Republicans overperforming but losing the House — i.e., beating the spread. Because they won, Democrats will say, and privately believe, that the results reflect voter approval and thus validate running against Trump. This will be a repeat of the error of 2020. Winning a majority while throwing away a chance at a supermajority is political malpractice.

Given their vast experience, donor base and media alliances, corporate Democrats have no excuse for their lack of imagination. That’s just as true of Trump’s MAGA movement; with nothing to lose, their pariah status ought to have freed them from establishment encumbrances. They had the chance to make good on their vision of a Republican Party opposed to foreign wars, dedicated to adding American jobs by leveraging our consumer base, and repealing and replacing Obamacare. They have instead succumbed to the siren calls of militarism, Zionism and transnationalism, betraying their base and the country at large.

So 2026 has become a contest no longer between a party bereft of ideas and one offering the possibility of future ideas, but between a party bereft of ideas and one with no credible argument to make concerning future ideas.

Happy 250th.

Columnist; Ted Rall

Official website; https://x.com/TedRall

As Donald Trump meets Xi Jinping, the headline items are trade, Taiwan, and Iran. Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the agenda, too. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent named two key risks of powerful AI that demand the leaders’ attention: weaponization and runaway AI.

I went to China hesitantly, as a skeptic of broad cooperation with China. But cooperation on AI is not the goal. The goal is establishing a competition floor. Above the floor, America accelerates as hard as it can. Pax Silica stays untouched. Export controls tighten. We compete without restraint on market share, models, chips, and standards. We play to win. Below the floor, we coordinate on the narrow category of risk that does not respect borders.

Two years ago today, the Biden administration sat down with Chinese officials in Geneva for the first U.S.-China AI dialogue. It produced nothing because there was no leverage. There is now. The rapid pace of AI development means that this effort has come none too early.

In his opening remarks today, Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that “the world has come to a new crossroads” and asked whether the two countries can “transcend the so-called Thucydides Trap and pioneer a new paradigm of major-country relations.” He called on the United States and China to be “partners, not rivals.” That is a false dilemma. Either the two countries transcend the Trap by easing pressure, the framing implies, or they fall into it. There is a third option: a competition floor with guardrails on the narrow set of risks.

Weaponization and runaway AI are exactly that category. Mythos showed the first risk in operational form. The second is no longer theoretical either. American frontier labs now publish safety evaluations in which their own models attempt to deceive evaluators, disable oversight mechanisms, or take unsanctioned actions to preserve their goals. These behaviors appear in controlled tests today. They are already starting to appear in deployed agentic systems.

Answering Mr. Xi with a competitive floor is the strongest position the United States can take. It accepts the seriousness of the risk he raised. It refuses the broader concession he is hoping for, and it rejects the false choice he is offering.

They listen to people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who says, “Capitalism … is the absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental and social cost. That is not a redeemable system.”

Give me a break.

Yes, capitalism is often ugly. It brings out greed in some, exacerbates wealth differences, creates pollution (creating an actual need for government regulation, which capitalism funds) and leaves some people behind.

But nothing else works! Nothing else makes life better for most people, including the poor!

“Capitalism is moral, precisely because success comes from meeting the needs and wants of others,” says Steve Forbes of Forbes magazine. “Higher standard of living comes from trading, buying and selling with one another. Everybody gets something from a transaction.”

Everybody, because capitalism, unlike socialism, and most of government, is voluntary. Transactions happen only if both sides believe they won.

It’s why there’s often an odd double “thank you” moment when we buy something — both buyer and seller say, “Thank you.”

Why? Because the seller wants my money more than his product. I want his product more than the money I paid. Otherwise, the trade wouldn’t happen.

Millions of such voluntary transactions create wealth.

That’s capitalism.

The ignorant think rich people take from poor people. As the popular YouTube channel Secular Talk puts it, “Jeff Bezos … his wealth is making a lot of people poor … because we have a finite amount of money.”

Wrong! There is not a finite amount of money. That silly idea is the essential fallacy in attacks on capitalism.

Because capitalism is voluntary, it creates wealth.

For thousands of years, everyone but the nobility was poor. Then, when some countries tried capitalism, wealth skyrocketed.

When people are allowed to buy and sell things freely, everyone is better off.

Socialists don’t get that. AOC insists: “No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion.”

But no billionaire showed up at my door demanding I give them money. Under capitalism, they can only get rich by offering people something we think is better than what we bought before.

Yes, Amazon’s founder is now absurdly rich, but consumers didn’t lose. Jeff Bezos got rich by inventing a way for us to shop efficiently and pay less.

And as Forbes points out, most billionaires weren’t born rich.

“What’s amazing about these individuals, they’re from the most unlikely backgrounds, and (they invented) things you don’t plan for.”

Margaret Rudkin, a housewife in Connecticut, noticed that bread worsened her son’s asthma.

She experimented with different recipes, came up with modern whole wheat bread and grew her business into the company we now know as Pepperidge Farm.

“What planner would have planned that?” laughs Forbes in my new video.

He uses the term “planner” because socialists claim government dictates will make our economy work better than letting individuals making our own choices.

They’re wrong. The failure of socialism everywhere should have taught us that!

But no. Politicians still think they can do better. “Capitalism has let a lot of people down,” says likely presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

Maybe, but capitalism also lifted more people out of poverty, created more opportunities and improved more lives than any other system.

Economist Thomas Sowell said, “I don’t ask, ‘What is the cause of poverty?’ Everybody is born poor and ignorant. The question is, what factors allow some groups to get from that position?”

“Sowell put it well,” concludes Forbes. “What is the difference between people today and people in the Stone Age? Difference is — we know more. That’s how you get a higher standard of living, from experiments in the marketplace, the laboratory, always trying to find new things. That’s why planning doesn’t work, because if we already knew it, we’d already be doing it!”

Only capitalism allows the experiments that create better lives.

Columnist: John Stossel

Official website; https://twitter.com/JohnStossel

For most of American history, that color has been Black.

No ad has taught that lesson more brutally than the Willie Horton ad of 1988. It showed the face of a Black man convicted of murder. It blamed Michael Dukakis for a furlough program. It told voters mercy was dangerous.

After that, clemency withered. Democrats especially learned to treat grace as a trap. To this day, too many Democratic politicians fear using their clemency powers. Even when their cowardice means people receive punishment they do not deserve.

Republican governors and presidents have often been more sweeping. Our nation’s current president has used the pardon power boldly and repeatedly. He has never seemed afraid of the power itself. Too many Democrats still are.

This spring marks 10 years since the Bernie Sanders campaign made a very different kind of ad. Nearly three decades after Willie Horton, I asked the campaign to do the opposite. Put a Black man convicted of murder in a presidential ad. Not to destroy the campaign. To strengthen it.

His name was Chris Wilson.

Chris grew up in Baltimore. He saw violence young. At 17, he took a man’s life. He went to prison.

There is no hiding from that truth. There should not be.

But Chris did what we say we want people to do. He took responsibility. He educated himself. He built a master plan for his life. He came home determined to work, mentor, and help others escape the traps that nearly swallowed him.

At the time, Chris was painting my house. When the campaign came to film the ad, Chris helped find the location.

To me, his story was not a liability. It was the point. Real public safety requires redemption. Prevention. Education. Jobs. Second chances.

The idea carried risk. Given the legacy of Willie Horton, some had concerns. That was understandable. This was not a safe testimonial. It was a direct challenge to a powerful racial taboo.

But in a nation with the highest incarceration rate on Earth, Willie Horton politics had trained campaigns to distrust voters. My experience told me voters were better than that.

Years earlier, I had been part of polling for a big-box retailer that wanted to know what would happen if customers learned it provided second-chance employment for formerly incarcerated people. Customers said they would be more likely to shop there. The company stood to gain market share, not lose it.

People were ready to believe in second chances. Politics just had to catch up.

Everyone signed off on taking the risk. The campaign made the ad. The name said it all: “Be Bold, Change the System.”

There was Chris, looking into the camera, telling the truth. No hiding. No sugarcoating. No mug shot. No monster. Just a man. A Black man. A Baltimore man. A man who had caused harm, paid a terrible price, and fought to become a force for good.

It was the anti-Willie Horton ad.

The Willie Horton ad said Black men are the reason to fear mercy. The Chris Wilson ad said Black men are among the reasons to believe in redemption.

And it worked. The ad drew roughly a million clicks in the first 24 hours. It sent Bernie’s support up fast in Illinois. It was used powerfully in Michigan and Missouri. It moved people because it trusted them.

Chris later received a book contract. The Master Plan told how he refused to let prison be the end of his life. That work became the basis for an education program that has trained more than 100,000 incarcerated people.

Today, Chris is a celebrated artist whose paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

That is what Willie Horton politics never wants America to see. It wants to freeze a Black man forever at the worst moment of his life. Chris Wilson proves something else. Redemption does not erase accountability. It fulfills it.

Ten years later, the lesson is urgent. Willie Horton politics is still with us. It has changed targets. Today, the scary Black man in the old ad has too often become the scary brown immigrant in the new one. Campaigns still take one terrible crime, attach it to a whole people, and tell voters mercy, due process, and fairness will get them killed.

The faces change. The formula does not.

The Chris Wilson ad, and the life he has led since, prove the best way to combat racist, authoritarian propaganda is with the bold and transformative truth.

Bold enough to believe accountability and redemption can live in the same sentence. Bold enough to trust voters with the full humanity of a Black man who changed his life. Bold enough to bury the politics Willie Horton made famous — and build a politics worthy of the people of every color we too often leave behind.

In America, the color of trust is the color of the blood in all our hearts — red and blue, flowing together as one.

Columnist: Ben Jealous

Official website; https://twitter.com/BenJealous

But the anxiety many are carrying is not simply economic. It is emotional, psychological, and profoundly political. Conversations with activists, clergy, teachers, nonprofit workers, caregivers, journalists, and parents often arrive at the same conclusion. People are tired — not merely physically tired, but weary in a deeper sense, exhausted by years of instability, outrage, uncertainty, and struggle without resolution. Americans have lived through a pandemic, political upheaval, racial backlash, economic volatility, social isolation, and a digital culture that demands constant vigilance and immediate reaction. Before one crisis is fully processed, another arrives demanding attention.

The human spirit was never designed for perpetual emergency.

At the same time, exhaustion is not the only emotional current shaping American life. Many people are energized, alarmed, and newly engaged precisely because they believe democratic norms themselves are under threat. Across the country, people are organizing, protesting, voting, fundraising, and showing up at demonstrations proclaiming “No Kings.” Millions are turning out in protest. Yet even this activism often carries an undertone of strain, because much of today’s civic engagement is fueled less by optimism than by fear of what may happen if people disengage entirely.

Polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country reflect more than partisan division. Many Americans feel they are working harder, worrying more, and falling further behind, even as they are repeatedly told the economy is fundamentally sound, even as rising prices continue to outpace wages for many workers.

Reading The Fire Next Time today, one is struck not only by James Baldwin’s prophetic brilliance, but also by the exhaustion beneath his prose. Baldwin wrote as a man who deeply loved his country while watching it revisit the same moral failures over and over again. More than sixty years later, many Americans are asking some version of the same question: how many times must we fight the same battles?

That exhaustion is especially familiar within Black political life. More than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress between the late nineteenth century and the early twenty-first century. Again and again, activists marched, testified, fundraised, wrote editorials, gathered petitions, and demanded federal protection, only to watch legislation delayed or blocked. Federal anti-lynching legislation did not finally become law until 2022.

The NAACP once hung a banner outside its headquarters reading, “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY.” The repetition itself became part of the tragedy, as generation after generation was forced to sound the same alarm while institutions moved slowly, if at all, to respond.

It took more than a century for anti-lynching legislation to become federal law. How long will Americans wait for meaningful affordability relief? The struggles are obviously not the same, but they are connected by a familiar frustration: ordinary people sound the alarm while institutions remain paralyzed, indifferent, or consumed by political calculation.

Exhaustion is not new in American life, but today it threatens to erode civic participation itself. People are withdrawing from public engagement not necessarily because they do not care, but because they are depleted. Democracy requires participation, but participation requires emotional, physical, and economic reserves that many Americans no longer possess.

An exhausted public becomes vulnerable to cynicism, resentment, manipulation, and authoritarian appeals that promise easy answers to complex problems. Exhausted people stop imagining alternatives and retreat into survival mode.

America is running on empty. The danger is not simply economic instability, but civic depletion — a public so exhausted that it loses the capacity to imagine, organize, or resist. Exhaustion may explain the national mood, but it cannot be allowed to become the nation’s destiny.

Columnist; Julianne Malveaux

Official website; https://www.juliannemalveaux.com/