Weaponizing Justice: The Crisis of Accountability and America’s Political CrossroadsWajahat AliSeptember 26, 2025
VIDEO:
Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian SpeechIn a blistering opinion, a federal judge in Boston said the Trump administration used the threat of deportations to systematically intimidate certain campus demonstrators into silence.
Listen to this article · 8:35 minutesLearn more 
Mahmoud Khalil and his wife, Noor Abdalla, in New York after he was released from detention in June. Mr. Khalil was one of several students the Trump administration sought to deport. Credit: Adam Gray for The New York Timesby Zach Montague
Reporting from Washington
September 30, 2025A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration had used the threat of deportation to systematically silence noncitizens in academia who protested in support of Palestinians, violating the First Amendment as part of a broader strategy to stamp out campus activism.The remarkable ruling was a hard-fought win for a coalition of academic and civil rights organizations that had sued to block future deportations of foreign students, arguing that the government had used the threat of “ideological deportation” to punish people for criticizing Israel’s government and its war in Gaza.Describing the question before him as “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court,” Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, released a scathing rebuke of President Trump, whose administration he said had worked outside the law to curtail First Amendment protections for noncitizens.Despite finding that the Trump administration had unlawfully trampled noncitizens’ constitutional rights, Judge Young did not immediately block the government from attempting further deportations. Sticking to his usual process, he wrote that he would weigh in on a way to respond to the government’s policy against student demonstrators after another hearing at a later date.The ruling was the latest from a growing number of district court judges who have excoriated the government’s actions. The administration has appealed a series of such adverse rulings, in some cases succeeding in appeals courts or at the Supreme Court.Still, in an exhaustive and winding 161-page opinion, Judge Young struck out at Mr. Trump’s government across multiple fronts.Looking back to January, he cataloged attempts this year by the president and top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to make examples of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campuses such as Columbia, Tufts and Georgetown, and to “strike fear” into their supporters. He assailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for wearing masks, which he argued was a tactic “to terrorize Americans into quiescence” and evoked “cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan.”To emphasize the political atmosphere that informed his thinking, he pasted atop the opinion a scanned image of an anonymous threat that had been sent to his chambers in June, as he considered the case, that ominously read, “Trump has pardons and tanks. … What do you have?”An image of the first page of Judge William G. Young’s decision, which features a typed note in response to a postcard he said he received in June.Credit...U.S. District Court, District of MassachusettsHis legal finding, Judge Young indicated, was his response — something derived from shared values under “our magnificent Constitution.”The case, Judge Young wrote, “squarely presents the issue whether noncitizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The court answers this constitutional question unequivocally, ‘Yes, they do.’”“The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction, and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence,” he added. “No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and noncitizens alike.”The Knight First Amendment Institute, which helped represent the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association in the case, hailed the opinion as a landmark win for noncitizens and freedom of expression more broadly.“This is a historic ruling that should have immediate implications for the Trump administration’s policies,” Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said in a statement. “If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t imprison people simply because it disagrees with their political views.”Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, repeated claims by the Trump administration that it had initiated deportations against people who “commit acts of anti-American, pro-terrorist and antisemitic hate, or incite violence.”He added: “We will continue to revoke the visas of those who put the safety of our citizens at risk.”The case, which played out over an emotional two-week trial in Boston in July, focused on what the suing coalition described as an altered academic climate in the United States after the arrests of five students in March.Lawyers for the groups argued that the government’s moves to detain the students, Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Yunseo Chung, had ushered in panic and an intellectual retreat on American campuses, which in turn diminished the output and quality of scholarship focused on the Middle East this year.They focused primarily on a narrow provision of immigration law that allows the secretary of state to initiate the removal of people whose presence in the United States jeopardizes the country’s foreign policy goals.In laying the groundwork to deport the students, Mr. Rubio invoked that provision, officially concluding that their role in the student protests that swept the country went beyond antisemitism or hate speech and in fact constituted support for Hamas, the de facto governing authority in Gaza, which the United States has designated a terrorist group.At the trial, the government argued that it had followed no unified policy of deporting students based on their viewpoint, calling the notion “creative conjuring” during closing arguments. Lawyers for the Justice Department maintained that the State Department was within its rights to single out individual students who had expressed support for forces opposing Israel, which President Trump has held up as a close ally.The coalition called faculty members from several universities to testify about instances in which they or their colleagues felt compelled to tone down work that the Trump administration might label hostile toward Israel.After the trial, lawyers for the groups submitted as additional evidence a list of online posts, media appearances and speeches in which Mr. Trump, Mr. Rubio and various homeland security officials spoke of the arrests as part of a coordinated approach.“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Mr. Trump declared in a fact sheet in January, accompanying two executive orders related to foreign students.Mr. Rubio, who personally signed off on memos revoking each student’s legal status, has made similar generalizations.Throughout the trial in July, Judge Young hammered both sides about potential flaws in their arguments.Minutes into opening arguments, he interjected to ask a lawyer from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, which helped argue the case for the academic coalition, how the Trump administration could be in violation of the law when Congress gave Mr. Rubio power to enforce the provision.“Congress has empowered the secretary personally to revoke visas if, in the secretary’s determination, the presence of the individual embarrasses the foreign policy of the United States,” the judge said. “Now — and from my preparation for the trial, it appears that at least in some cases, if not all, the public officials have relied upon that provision to take action.”Judge Young fumed at times that the lawsuit seemed to demand that he second-guess the administration’s motives. And he expressed some reluctance to infer from a handful of arrests alone that the government had set out to crush dissent or snuff out a particular viewpoint.Particularly toward the end of the trial, he appeared equally skeptical that the government and its witnesses had demonstrated that Mr. Rubio used his power to remove lawful residents of the United States appropriately or coherently.But the opinion on Tuesday left no doubt that Judge Young came away from the trial convinced of the core point made by the academic associations: that the Trump administration had successfully turned an obscure element of immigration law into a cudgel to intimidate opposing voices.The opinion presented something of an index of the actions Judge Young saw as abuses by the president that had created a climate of fear, arranged in sections with titles like “retribution” and “bullying.”“While the president naturally seeks warm cheering and gladsome, welcoming acceptance of his views, in the real world he’ll settle for sullen silence and obedience,” he wrote.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 1, 2025, Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Rebukes Trump for Targeting Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
The American far right today: a quick primer.
‘Palestine Has Already Won.’ Watch Mehdi’s Powerful Award Acceptance Speech
Zeteo’s editor-in-chief denounced mainstream media ‘complicity’ in the Gaza genocide, but also gave his Palestinian diaspora audience a message of hope and strengthTeam ZeteoOctober 1, 2025KTH Path of Truth Award Presented to Mehdi HasanKnow Thy HeritageSeptember 29, 2025
VIDEO:
Mehdi’s Remarks on Receiving the Award Mehdi was honored with the Path of Truth Award for his unwavering commitment to truth and justice. Through fearless journalism and principled advocacy, he has exposed the harsh realities of Palestinian life under occupation and inspired global awareness and action for a just peace.“You don’t have to be Palestinian to support Palestine, you only need to be human.”
With those words, our very own Mehdi Hasan accepted the ‘Path of Truth’ award from Palestinian diaspora organization Know Thy Heritage (KTH) over the weekend for his “fearless journalism, bold commentary, and principled advocacy—exposing the realities of Palestinian life under occupation and inspiring global action for a just peace.”KTH educates and empowers Palestinian youth in the diaspora, organizing regular trips to Palestine and supporting business and leadership programs. Veteran Palestinian politician and activist Hanan Ashrawi sits on the organization’s advisory board.Mehdi, in his powerful speech to a packed ballroom in northern Virginia on Saturday evening, said he believed the people “most responsible for the catastrophe in Gaza are not the ones loudly and shamelessly supporting it but the ones who see it all, and stay silent. See it all, and then look away. See it all, and pretend it’s not happening.” He warned his colleagues in the mainstream media that their “silence” and “bothsides-ism” on Gaza amounts to “complicity” in the genocide.Watch his address in full above, and do please consider becoming a paid subscriber or a donor to Zeteo today.Check out more from Zeteo:Most Moral Army? Even Israeli Military Officers Disavow the Country’s Unofficial MottoDion NissenbaumSeptember 26Read full storyGaza Is Redefining What Genocide Looks LikeMartin ShawSeptember 23Read full storyEXCLUSIVE: Israel is ‘Gaslighting’ Us, Says ‘Andor’ Star After Trip to Occupied West BankMehdi Hasan and Team ZeteoSeptember 22Read full storyhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/28/supreme-court-louisiana-v-callaisThe featured essayUS supreme court A 160-year-old campaign against civil rights heads to the supreme court
by Leah Litman
September 28, 2025
The Guardian
Composite: Rita Liu/ The Guardian/
Getty Images/Wikimedia Commons
Louisiana v Callais could roll back what remains of the Voting Rights Act, putting the future of America’s multiracial democracy at stake With so many things happening everywhere all at once, the start of a new supreme court term on 6 October may be flying under the radar. It shouldn’t.The state of checks and balances in the country is among the more ominous indicators of the health of America’s democracy: in the executive branch is a president who is keen on exercising every lever of power that he has – as well as some he does not – to enrich himself and his allies and to suppress dissent and political opposition. The legislature is dominated by a regime-friendly political party that is too happy to roll over and accede to the president’s wishes, repeatedly failing to exercise the congressional powers that could rein in the executive branch.Because the executive and legislature branches seem to have jumped the constitutional shark, some people continue to hold out hope that the judicial branch, with the supreme court at its apex, will offer a way out of this mess. That would be a mistake: like Congress, the Republican majority on the supreme court has lined up behind most of the president’s sweeping assertions of novel powers. The supreme court has blocked lower federal court rulings that had reined in the president’s authority to withhold federal medical research grants for ideological reasons. It has allowed the executive branch to deploy roving immigration patrols to engage in racial profiling; to expel noncitizens to countries on the brink of civil wars where they could face torture, trafficking or death; to fire non-regime friendly officials (in violation of federal law); to dismantle entire departments and more.But one specific case on the court’s docket for this term illustrates its role in a more far-reaching rightwing project that goes back all the way to the end of the civil war.Louisiana v Callais is a major challenge to what remains of the Voting Rights of Act of 1965, and could radically rework the structure of political representation in the United States. A successful challenge to the VRA would allow the Republican party to further cheat democracy by engaging in even more partisan gerrymandering and erasing several legislative districts held by Democratic officials, many of whom are racial minorities.Callais arises out of the 2020 redistricting process, when Louisiana, like other states, drew new congressional maps. The resulting maps gave Black voters fewer opportunities to elect the candidates of their choice than white voters, significantly diluting their voting power.Louisiana has six congressional representatives in a state that is about one-third Black, but drew maps that allowed Black voters to select only one-sixth of the state’s representatives. Lower courts concluded the maps violated section two of the VRA. Passed during the civil rights movement to address a long history of disenfranchisement, the VRA prohibits voting policies that have the effect of disadvantaging Black voters, including in electoral representation. In response to these judicial decisions, the Louisiana legislature took another crack at maps that accomplished its partisan objectives – such as preserving Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson’s seat – while also affording Black voters political opportunities. A group of white voters challenged those maps as unconstitutional racial discrimination. Their theory was that the legislature, by trying to ensure both Black voters and white voters were represented, had somehow discriminated against white voters.The case is even bigger than a fight about the future of the VRA; it is also bigger than the Republican party’s decades-long campaign against the VRA. The case is part of a broad effort to not only reinterpret the Reconstruction amendments – the constitutional amendments passed after the civil war to ensure equal rights and due process – but also to weaponize them against democracy and civil rights. That conflict is being waged in both the supreme court and the White House, and its roots go back more than a century to the aftermath of the civil war.The big picture helps to underscore what is at stake: the future of the United States as a multiracial democracy. An engraving depicting freed men registering to vote in Macon, Georgia, during the first registration under army rule during the 19th century. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesThe story of Louisiana v Callais begins with the project of Reconstruction, the effort to reconstitute the United States after the civil war and the end of slavery. Reconstruction was an ambitious undertaking that sought to integrate Black Americans into the polity and to protect their rights against the states and political movements that already wanted to claw them back on the heels of the civil war.Part of this era entailed the passage and ratification of the Reconstruction amendments – the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that outlawed slavery, guaranteed equal protection, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting, among other things. The people who drafted the 15th amendment saw the measure as a way to allow Black voters “to choose from among his fellow citizens the man who suits him for his representative”, as senator John F Edmunds put it in 1869. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson detailed in an oral argument a few years ago, a report submitted by a congressional committee on Reconstruction said “that the entire point” of the project was to secure rights of formerly enslaved people. “The legislature who introduced [the 14th] amendment said: ‘Unless the constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen,’” Jackson said.The case is part of a broad effort to ... reinterpret the Reconstruction amendmentsReconstruction was an ambitious project that produced real gains. Within a few years, former Confederate states sent Black representatives and senators to Congress and elected Black leaders to state political offices. The federal military conducted voter registration drives in the south; through Freedmen’s Bureau offices, the federal government helped set up thousands of schools that educated hundreds of thousands of children who had been enslaved.In part because of these successes, Reconstruction encountered resistance that became violent. That included the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which enforced racial hierarchy through a campaign of terror. Black people in South Carolina vote in 1948 for the first time since Reconstruction. Photograph: North Carolina Central University/Getty ImagesThe many varied opponents of Reconstruction channeled several talking points. One was the idea that the very project of Reconstruction was too radical and had to be limited so as to preserve a pre-existing constitutional order of white supremacy that Reconstruction had sought to remake. The anti-Reconstruction movement scored important victories with supreme court decisions from the late 1800s that narrowly interpreted provisions in the 14th amendment and weakened the federal government’s oversight of states’ regulation of elections.Another anti-Reconstruction trope was the notion that federal civil rights protections were no longer needed since slavery was a thing of the past. And, this line of argument continued, because federal protections for Black freedmen were unnecessary, retaining the protections was actually unfair to the people who were prohibited from disenfranchising or discriminating against them. Along these lines, when Andrew Johnson vetoed a congressional statute, he insisted that since slavery had been “abrogated”, federal protections for freedmen therefore “operated in favor of the colored and against the white race”. When the supreme court invalidated the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act in 1883, it, too, insisted that the time for federal civil rights protections for freedmen was up, since “there must be some stage in the progress of [freedmen’s] elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.” (This was less than two decades after the end of the civil war.)In short, opponents of Reconstruction tried to weaponize the principles of Reconstruction against it. Southern sympathizers maintained that prohibiting former Confederate states and Confederates from discriminating against Black Americans was itself a kind of discrimination – discrimination against the Confederate states and would-be discriminators.This logic has endured: decades later, white business owners even challenged the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits businesses from engaging in racial discrimination, as a violation of the 13th amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.Civil rights organizers and leaders continued to press forward the vision that Reconstruction offered. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was a milestone in their efforts. The VRA had two main elements: section two, prohibited voting discrimination on a nationwide basis. The other, section five, required certain jurisdictions with especially bad histories of voting discrimination to get federal permission before changing their voting laws or policies. The latter system was known as preclearance.The VRA had barely become law before the modern Republican party decided to attack the statute and to specifically use the federal courts to do so. President Richard Nixon opposed renewing the preclearance process; members of his administration referred to it as “punitive” legislation – arguing, essentially, that it was unfair to, and discriminated against, the former Confederate states. Nixon reportedly promised to appoint supreme court justices who would not make the south a “whipping boy” (of all things) on civil rights; to the supreme court, he appointed a southerner, Lewis Powell, who would later warn that expansive interpretations of the VRA would turn American “cities into jungles”. Nixon also appointed William Rehnquist, who was accused of challenging Black and Latino men’s voting credentials during elections. (Rehnquist denied doing so).Later Republican administrations continued the fight against the VRA. Ronald Reagan also opposed renewing the law, referring to it as “vindictive, selective” and “humilitary [sic]” to the poor former Confederacy. His assistant attorney general called the VRA’s protections against voting discrimination a kind of “government-imposed discrimination”. (Again the same refrain: anti-discrimination is the new discrimination.) His administration produced a legal document warning that expansive interpretations of the Reconstruction amendments, which allowed Congress to adopt expansive civil rights protections, had “extreme consequences” and must be rejected. The Reagan administration hired a young Samuel Alito after he professed interest in apportionment, or how legislatures draw districts. The administration also hired a young John Roberts who helped the administration’s (unsuccessful) effort to oppose renewing and expanding the VRA. Both men are now poised to decide whether section two of the VRA can limit how states apportion representation. President Lyndon B Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act on 6 August 1965 at the US Capitol in Washington DC. Photograph: APThis effort – to weaponize the principles of equality against it – would return with Bush v Gore, the case that halted Florida’s efforts to accurately count the votes in the 2000 presidential election and, in the process, handed the presidency to George W Bush. Bush’s litigation team argued that manually recounting votes in the jurisdictions affected by lingering uncertainty resulting from machine tabulation was a denial of equal protection. Their argument was that manually recounting ballots only in those areas affected by tabulation uncertainties was unequal – in other words: “equal” protection required potentially disenfranchising voters in the affected areas, which had comparatively large groups of minority voters. The lawyers who pressed this theory included Roberts, Amy Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, all of whom now sit on the supreme court.The Trump administration has picked up these ideas and pushed them to further extremes. In an array of executive orders and guidance letters, the administration has insisted that civil rights laws actually prohibit measures that are designed to achieve equality. It has invoked federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination to insist that schools must discriminate against certain speech. It has decided that federal anti-discrimination law bars efforts designed to achieve diverse schools and businesses. It has argued that federal anti-discrimination measures actually require some discrimination against some disfavored groups.The Roberts court has channeled these same ideas into its decisions. It was unfair and unequal to “punish” the south, Roberts wrote for the Republican justices who invalidated the preclearance process in 2013. That system was too extreme in giving the federal government that kind of control over elections, he added.True equality, the Roberts court has ruled, actually requires a prohibition on schools trying to achieve diverse student bodies by considering applicants’ race. The time for schools’ race-conscious measures designed to achieve racial diversity and representation is over, according to this court. Members of the supreme court in Washington DC in 2021. Photograph: Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty ImagesSo too is the time for protecting the rights of minority voters, the court said when it invalidated the VRA’s preclearance system in 2013. Preclearance was no longer necessary, the court said, because section two’s nationwide ban on voting discrimination could do all the work.But the court has decided to consider whether section two’s time is up as well. In 2023, Kavanaugh openly stated that Congress’s authority to “authorize race-based redistricting … cannot extend indefinitely into the future”. He was referring to the VRA’s requirement that legislatures ensure Black voters are represented, not to legislatures’ frequent practice of ensuring (only) white voters are represented. The latter is apparently neutral and fine, whereas the former is seen as suspect. No wonder Justice Elena Kagan remarked in an oral argument that “in recent years”, the VRA “has fared not well in this court”.Which brings us to Louisiana v Callais. Multiple courts relied on section two of the VRA to strike down a set of legislative maps that did not afford Black voters with equal rights or equal opportunities as white voters. That set off a redistricting process where the Louisiana legislature had to ensure the state’s maps provided Black voters with political representation.Now the supreme court is being asked to find section two illegal – to say that considering political equality is a kind of discrimination. The argument is that prohibiting legislatures from discriminating against Black voters, by denying them political opportunities, actually discriminates against white voters.Callais is emblematic of several themes that have defined the work of the Roberts court to date and that the court will expand upon still. Front and center is the notion of conservative grievance – the idea that Republican constituencies are the real victims of subordination today, their power diminished by pluralism, modernity, civil rights, democracy, you name it. Conservative grievance imagines that there is no discrimination except for discrimination against white, Christian conservatives and the super rich. That’s not reality, as there is no evidence of widespread discrimination against white people."This administration always wins" --Ketanji Brown Jackson
The conservative grievance mindset insists that the constitution and civil rights laws protect social and religious conservatives’ prejudices. The idea is that if you squint hard enough, it turns out that civil rights protections actually prohibit measures that are designed to secure civil rights.The court has played a pivotal role in the rightwing project translating these grievances into a redesign of American law and politics. In cases on racial discrimination, the court has insisted that measures prohibiting racial discrimination actually discriminate against white people. In cases on LGBTQ+ equality, the court has insisted that measures prohibiting discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual people actually discriminate against religious and social conservatives who are opposed to LGBTQ+ equality. In addition to Callais, another case on the court’s docket for this term invites more of this thinking: that case asks whether it is unconstitutional to prohibit conversion practices that seek to counsel people out of being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender – a form of “therapy” a UN expert has said can amount to torture. The court will also consider whether federal civil rights protections against sex discrimination permit – or even require – discrimination on the basis of gender identity, against trans student athletes.The reality of the court’s shadow docket – the set of orders and decisions the court issues without full briefing, oral argument, advance notice and often on an emergency basis – is that we do not know which other matters will make their way up to the court over the next year. The shadow docket is one of the primary vehicles the court has used to weigh in on much of the litigation concerning the Trump administration – and specifically to block lower court rulings and greenlight many of the administration’s claims of new, sweeping presidential authority.In the last three months alone, the shadow docket is where the court allowed the administration to continue to withhold almost $800m in medical research grants; to fire officials in violation of federal law; to take steps to dismantle the Department of Education; to have roving immigration patrols engage in racial profiling and more. In one of the many cases where the court’s Republican appointees voted in favor of the Trump administration on the shadow docket, Justice Jackson wrote what the supreme court is doing is “Calvinball but with a twist”. In Calvinball, the fictional game played in the Calvin and Hobbes comics, there are no rules. Here, there is one rule – “this administration always wins”, Jackson quipped. Black Louisiana voters and civil rights advocates call on the supreme court to uphold a fair and representative congressional map in Louisiana v Callais on 24 March in Washington DC. Photograph: Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Legal Defense FundBut the supreme court’s governing rule may be a little broader and even more terrifying than that. The Republican justices seem to think that not only are Republicans entitled to power, they are also entitled to use that power to do whatever they want. That is why the court treats it as an emergency when a lower federal court blocks a Trump administration policy.That is also why the court seems to look at the VRA’s prohibitions on racial discrimination as illegitimate. This is also another iteration of the Republican justices’ refrain that the constitution is colorblind – that it does not permit officials to take race into account for any reason.The theory is a work of historical fiction: as Jackson illustrated by pointedly quoting from Congress’s report on Reconstruction, Reconstructionist lawmakers argued that the Reconstruction amendments authorized measures that would benefit Black Americans, rectify discrimination against them, and prevent future discrimination as well. Moreover, the “colorblind” theory has been somewhat less than colorblind in practice. In the context of the VRA case, for example, “colorblind” constitutionalism would permit legislatures to redistrict in ways that result in white voters being overrepresented, but would prohibit laws from requiring legislatures to ensure that Black voters are represented as well. That is not being colorblind; it is racial hierarchy. In the recent past, “colorblind” constitutionalism has led the court to say that colleges considering race as one factor in an applicant’s file to ensure colleges are diverse is unconstitutional, but immigration officers considering race as one factor in who to detain and deport is perfectly legal.So-called colorblind constitutionalism has always been a tool to reinforce Republicans’ power. A century ago, it was a way of resurrecting the Confederacy and dismantling Reconstruction. Soon it could pave the way for the end of the law that made the United States a multiracial democracy.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast. She is also the author of the recent New York Times bestseller Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
I Am on Kirk’s “Professor Watchlist.” I Know How It Destroys Civil Debate.I deeply value free speech and debate. The watchlist created by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA is anathema to both.by George Yancy
September 27, 2025Truthout 
Charlie Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, speaks before former President Donald Trump's arrival during a Turning Point USA Believers Summit conference at the Palm Beach Convention Center on July 26, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. Joe Raedle / Getty ImagesAfter the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk — one that I unequivocally found to be unconscionable, unacceptable, and sickening — I thought about his wife and children. I am married, and I have children. I can’t imagine the unspeakable sorrow that Kirk’s wife and children must be experiencing. So, I will continue to mourn his death and their loss. I do so because I believe in love, forgiveness, and the sanctity of human life. I also believe in the First Amendment. So, here we are.In the aftermath of Kirk’s tragic death, a great deal is being discussed now about his legacy regarding free speech and open debate. What I have to offer to readers in this regard is my own very personal experience of the organization that Kirk founded — Turning Point USA (TPUSA). How Kirk’s Organization Targeted Me in 2016
In 2016, TPUSA produced an online list titled “Professor Watchlist,” a site designed to identify professors who purportedly “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” I don’t “teach leftist propaganda in the classroom,” and I never discriminate against conservative students, but I was nevertheless placed on the list soon after its creation in 2016, apparently because I am a philosopher who examines the complex ways in which white people are socially and psychically complicit in the perpetuation of anti-Black racism in the United States.There’s no way for me to know whether or to what extent my placement on the Professor Watchlist extended or intensified the ongoing avalanche of racist threats and slurs that I had already started receiving after I published an open letter in The New York Times in 2015 titled “Dear White America” — a letter that sought to challenge the racist “innocence” of white people and was the source that Turning Point USA cited as grounds for placing me on their watchlist. But being placed on the Professor Watchlist undoubtedly magnified the feelings of trepidation and outrage created by the racist invective constantly pouring down on me throughout that time.In response to “Dear White America,” I received an ongoing series of hate messages via email, voice message, and postal mail such as:“Dear N***** Professor… You’re a f***ing smug N*****. You are uneducated with education. You are a f***ing animal. Just like all Black people in the United States of America.”“Hey Georgie boy… You wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for affirmative action. Somebody needs to put a boot up your ass and knock your f***ing head off your shoulders…”“There are two ways you can return to Africa: On a passenger ship, or in a coffin freighter. Choose quickly.”“In a sane world, this ugly n***** would be just beheaded ISIS style. Make America WHITE Again.”With apologies to those who already encounter this kind of triggering hate speech regularly and do not need more of it in their lives, I reprint these examples here to show the ways in which there is a failure of vulnerability to truly listen to those deemed “the other,” dreams of returning to a white mythical past of “racial purity,” an unabashed ascendancy of white nationalism, political disinformation about white “victimhood,” an intentional disregard for civic responsibility, and an intentional fomentation of hatred by a Trumpian regime hell-bent on creating and exacerbating racial, political, and religious divisiveness. All of this is at the heart of what is actually shutting down space for civil debate and free speech in this country.My personal experience underscores how projects such as this watchlist are not really about protecting “civil debate” and “free speech,” as some of Kirk’s fans have argued.And my personal experience of receiving this ongoing avalanche of hate in response to publishing an op-ed, and then being placed on the TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist as an additional response to the same op-ed, underscores how projects such as this watchlist are not really about protecting “civil debate” and “free speech,” as some of Kirk’s fans have argued.The process through which I was placed on TPUSA’s list was anathema to public debate. Instead of writing an op-ed in response to my New York Times op-ed, or inviting me to a public debate on these issues, TPUSA instead added me to an online list that is — as I explained in another New York Times op-ed back in 2016 — essentially a new species of McCarthyism.I would never dream of subjecting the people I disagree with most vehemently to a list like this. I have no desire to create a watchlist that monitors conservatives and fuels their public denial or subjects them to violent retribution; I don’t believe in shaming entire groups of people or targeting individuals through a list such as this.The list — a dangerous and antidemocratic tool — follows a draconian playbook by spying on professors and labeling them as “troublemakers” for the U.S. establishment. It is a site for surveillance, control, name-calling. Functioning like a modern-day scarlet letter, the list can lead to ostracization, condemnation, and even the practice of self-silencing (because of the fear of being the object of actual or potential violence) for those who are placed on it.Before placing me on this list, no one from TPUSA asked to speak with me. Kirk never asked to debate me about my views on whiteness, white privilege, or white embodiment. In being placed on the list, I was falsely labeled and marked in ways that are not true. I have recently listened to clips of Kirk complaining that there are those who didn’t listen to him; in the clips he expresses frustrations about times when others just made assumptions about things that he didn’t say, or distorted what he meant by what he said.I understand his point because that’s exactly what his organization, TPUSA, did to me. I was placed on the list without a mumbling word about making sure that I was given democratic space to debate my position on whiteness. TPUSA sought to tar and ostracize me as an “enemy” of conservative thought without first inviting me for civil debate.Conversations That Kirk and I Never HadKirk and I would have had much to debate if our engagement had involved an in-person conversation rather than his organization simply placing me on a McCarthyist shunning list. It appears that we disagreed on many topics.For example, though Kirk never said that all Black women lack “the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” he did accuse Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson as “lacking” such brain processing power. All these women are Black and all of them graduated from Ivy League schools. So, what was the basis for Kirk’s insult? He can’t simply make such an egregious claim without that claim being mediated by the history of anti-Black racism. Indeed, his accusation was loaded with white racist overtones. So as not to miss Kirk’s nuance, he says these women lack such brain power because they have benefited from affirmative action. He says they stole “a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” The assumption that because they may have benefitted from affirmative action they are therefore not bright enough is a blatant non sequitur. He assumes that affirmative action involves the automatic lowering of standards. Affirmative action was never designed to discriminate, but to create an equitable playing field. To hold this position about brain power and affirmative action, it would follow, based upon Kirk’s reasoning, that white women, the group that has benefited most from affirmative action, are also cognitively incompetent.Similarly, when asked about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Kirk responded, “Obviously [DEI is] about trying to destroy the excellence of the country and elevating racial tribal politics.”I’m not cherry picking here. Notice that he says, “obviously.” But to whom is this “obvious”? Certainly not to Black people, who have been enslaved in this country longer than we have been “free.” But let’s face it, the United States was founded upon white racial tribal politics.Kirk also problematically raised the issue of race, affirmative action, and DEI while clarifying a statement that he made about Black pilots. Originally, his comment was within the context of United Airlines saying that it wanted 50 percent of its pilots to be people of color or women, which still disproportionately favors white men. Kirk went on to talk about how there are relaxed standards anytime there are racial quotas. And he extended his reasoning to air traffic controllers, professors, and college admissions.He later clarified, “Boy, if I see a Black pilot, I’m now going to wonder is that individual qualified or were they selected because of their race.” He went on to assert that he had this thought not because of who he is, but because affirmative action and DEI hiring practices made him think that way.Here’s the problem. Being a qualified Black pilot and benefitting from affirmative action or DEI hiring practices are not mutually exclusive. When I’ve seen a Black pilot, I don’t “hope” that they can fly the plane. I’m proud to see them. And if they have benefitted from affirmative action or DEI, this in no way creates trepidation for me about their qualifications. I am fine with the fact that United Airlines cares both about making sure some pilots are Black and also making sure that those same pilots are well-qualified.This is a conjunction that Kirk rejected. Kirk also didn’t seem to understand why United Airlines would be concerned with the color of the skin of the pilot. To wonder about this is to pretend ignorance about white supremacy in this country. Since Kirk didn’t address this, I will. Actually, it is Kirk who was concerned with the color of the skin of pilots. His concern was part of the perpetuation of white racism and had everything to do with the whiteness of the skin of those pilots who have dominated aviation. United Airlines does not hire based upon racial quotas, which are illegal. Its aim was merely to open possibilities and opportunities for those who have been systemically and systematically excluded from the field and from the cockpit.I hope that articulating my disagreements with Kirk here isn’t interpreted as a virulent attack. I just think that he was wrong on these issues. In a functional democracy, to disagree with someone is a politically protected right, and it ought to be productive of greater mutual understanding and clarity. In fact, philosophically and democratically, agonism (a creative tension between interlocutors) is to be valued and treasured. In his book The Multivoiced Body, philosopher Fred Evans argues that agonism exemplifies an enduring creative interplay between voices, “not a reaction to enemies.” The Right Is Weaponizing Kirk’s Murder to Fuel Attacks on Democracy and SpeechTo engage in critique and productive disagreement should be the lifeblood of a democracy, and of this fragile experiment known as U.S. democracy. Yet, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and many right-wing activists are using the tragic occasion of Kirk’s murder to foment retribution on those who disagree publicly with Kirk’s views. Indeed, they are effectively and anti-democratically weaponizing the death of Kirk.Trump and his sycophants are implementing political repression, censorship, and politically targeting free speech, which means that those of us who believe in democratic speech, in dissent, in open and critical debate, are being targeted, are being silenced, are being marked for further violence. This is not new for Trump. As someone who aspires to be a political strongman, his modus operandi is to threaten to use government power to imprison and to prosecutethose who he sees as his political enemies, despite it being unconstitutional. The Justice Department is not, or should not be, a political tool to be wielded against one’s perceived or real political rivals.The soul of this country is at stake, if it has a soul worth saving. I don’t say this flippantly. I say this because I mean it, and I am serious about it. I say it because I refuse to feign ignorance about what is happening to this country before our eyes. It is becoming increasingly fascistic. Is it now a crime to use that term, to speak freely? If it is, then that only confirms the truth that I speak.The reactionary call for blood and collective punishment after the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk is a form of ethical debauchery and warmongering. For those who encourage it, especially those who identify as “Christians,” you might as well spit in the face of Jesus. Some of us — many of us — detest the murder of Kirk, even as we passionately disagree with his politics. I am one of those. As Frantz Fanon writes in Black Skin, White Masks, “Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.”My question is, what do you believe in?ABOUT THE AUTHOR:George Yancy
George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery fellow at Dartmouth College. He is also the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural fellow in the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Program (2019-2020 academic year). He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including Black Bodies, White Gazes; Look, A White; Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America; and Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. His most recent books include a collection of critical interviews entitled, Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), and a coedited book (with philosopher Bill Bywater) entitled, In Sheep’s Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (Roman & Littlefield, 2024…
Reading ListRacial JusticeI Am on Kirk’s “Professor Watchlist.” I Know How It Destroys Civil Debate.Environment & HealthAnti-Trans Policy Deserves Same Scrutiny as Trump’s Tylenol DisinformationImmigrationSweeping ICE Raid Shakes Small New York Town as Dozens Remain “Disappeared”War & PeaceTexas Judge Overrules Jury to Send Anti-Genocide Activist to Jail for GraffitiPolitics & ElectionsState GOP Officials Seize Trump’s “War on Crime” to Disempower Blue Cities Human RightsMicrosoft Blocks Israeli Spy Agency From Using Its Cloud Platform, AzureRelated Stories:NewsPolitics & ElectionsMilitary Weighs Using Charlie Kirk’s “Legacy” to Recruit SoldiersThe Pentagon is reportedly considering using Turning Point USA chapters as potential military recruitment centers.by Sharon Zhang
Truthout
September 18, 2025
Op-EdCulture & MediaJimmy Kimmel’s Suspension Is Shocking, But the Worst Could Be Yet to ComeThe ouster of comedian Jimmy Kimmel signals a broader crackdown on media. Let’s double down, not back off in response.by Negin Owliaei & Maya Schenwar
Truthout
September 18, 2025News AnalysisPolitics & ElectionsConservatives Are Using Charlie Kirk’s Death to Enact Sweeping Speech CrackdownThe US has entered a new era of McCarthyism as the Trump administration equates leftist critique with “terrorism.”
by Daniel Moritz-Rabson
Truthout
September 17, 2025Latest Stories:NewsRacial JusticeBig Tech Data Centers Compound Decades of Environmental Racism in the SouthThe American South has long been a site of both corporate extraction and fierce political resistance.by Jai Dulani
September 20, 2025TruthoutInterviewRacial Justice“I Have Not Surrendered”: Leonard Peltier Remains Committed to Indigenous RightsPeltier discusses his time in (and release from) prison, his ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights, and more.by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 19, 2025InterviewRacial JusticeWe Can’t Let White Nationalism Dictate What Is Taught and Learned in ClassroomsCurricula that challenge oppression are being shut down. How do we resist?
by George Yancy
September 18, 2025
Truthout
NewsRacial Justice“His Family Deserves Answers”: Black Mississippi Student Found Hanging From TreePolice said they found no evidence of foul play, but the family of Demartravion “Trey” Reed has yet to see the report.
by Aallyah Wright
September 17, 2025
CapitalB
InterviewEducation & YouthTrump’s Education Plan Seeks to Make Cruel Domination Into “Common Sense”
Trump isn’t even trying to hide his authoritarianism within social acceptability.by George Yancy
Truthout
September 13, 2025NewsEducation & YouthEd. Department to Divert $350M in Grants From Colleges Serving Students of Color“Cutting this funding strips away critical investments … and will destabilize colleges in 29 states,” said one critic.
by Ariana Figueroa
Stateline
September 12, 2025Op-EdRacial JusticeTrump Wants to Bury Slavery. My Family Went South to Unearth It. Trump wants a populace unaware of the Black freedom struggle — because it is a guide for defeating his fascist plans.by Jesse Hagopian
Truthout
September 12, 2025InterviewRacial JusticeAuthoritarian Wave in US Shows Democracy’s Fragility, South African Scholar SaysThe racist upswell in the US looks “clearer from the outside,” says South African philosopher Nuraan Davids.
by George Yancy
Truthout
September 6, 2025NewsRacial JusticeFacing Defunding, Indigenous Cultural Workers Say They Cannot Be SuppressedThe proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities threatens Indigenous libraries and arts programs.by Marianne Dhenin
Truthout
September 6, 2025
Op-EdEducation & YouthRacist Lies About College “Quotas” Stoke Support for Trump’s War on Higher EdCollege quotas haven’t existed since 1978, but the right keeps people misinformed.by Bedelia Nicola RichardsTruthoutShare via Bluesky
Assata Shakur Dies at 78; Convicted Revolutionary Found Refuge in CubaA member of a Black militant group, she was found guilty in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper, escaped from prison and fled to Cuba, where she taught and wrote.
Listen to this article · 8:07 minutesLearn more 
Assata Shakur in Havana in 1987. She had channeled her politics through the Black Liberation Army, a Marxist-Leninist organization that had broken away from the Black Panthers. Credit: Ozier Muhammad/Newsday, via Getty Imagesby Clyde Haberman
September 26, 2025
New York TimesAssata Shakur, the Black revolutionary once known as JoAnne Chesimard who found decades-long sanctuary in Cuba after escaping from a New Jersey prison where she was serving a life sentence in the 1973 shooting death of a state trooper, died on Thursday in Havana. She was 78.Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced her death without specifying a cause, citing only “health conditions and advanced age.”Assata Shakur was both lionized and demonized long after she and the Black Liberation Army, the militant group she had embraced, faded from broad public consciousness. To supporters she was a tireless battler against racial oppression. To detractors she was a stone-cold cop killer, the first woman to land on the F.B.I.’s “most wanted terrorists” list, with $2 million in state and federal money offered for her capture.For her part, Ms. Shakur regarded herself as “a 20th-century escaped slave.”In the early 1970s, an era of American ferment on multiple fronts, Ms. Shakur channeled her radicalism through the Black Liberation Army, a Marxist-Leninist organization that had broken away from the Black Panthers. Its members were accused of planting bombs, killing police officers and carrying out robberies that they described as “expropriations.”Ms. Shakur herself was indicted 10 times by federal and state authorities in New York and New Jersey on charges of murder, robbery and kidnapping. All but one of those cases ended in acquittals, dismissals or hung juries. The lone exception began with a car ride in the early morning of May 2, 1973.She and two colleagues were in a beat-up Pontiac when New Jersey state troopers stopped them on the New Jersey Turnpike for having a broken taillight. The police account was that she and the others left the car with guns blazing. She fired first, they said, touching off a shootout in which a state trooper, Werner Foerster, was killed and another, James Harper, was wounded. One of Ms. Shakur’s companions, James Costan, was also wounded and died later. She, too, was shot, in the left shoulder and the underside of her right arm.Soon captured, she was not put on trial until 1977 because, while in a holding cell with a man named Fred Hilton in an unrelated Bronx robbery case, she had become pregnant.Ms. Shakur’s version was that she never held a gun on that 1973 morning and that her arms were in the air when she was shot. Her lawyers said she was mistreated in jail and given poor medical care. Doctors testified on her behalf that the wounds supported her claim that her arms had been raised. 
Ms. Shakur — then known as JoAnne Chesimard — was escorted to her trial in 1977 in New Brunswick, N.J. An all-white jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and assault. Credit: Bettmann Archive, via Getty Images
Nonetheless, prosecutors insisted that, when shot, she was in a crouch and firing at Trooper Harper. In the end, an all-white jury of seven women and five men believed them. Though there was no evidence that she had fired at the slain Trooper Foerster, everyone involved in the killing of a police officer was deemed equally responsible under New Jersey law.
In March 1977, the jurors swiftly found her guilty of first-degree murder and assault. She was sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years.
She did not remain behind bars for long.
On Nov. 2, 1979, three armed men from the Black Liberation Army broke her out of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women, a penitentiary in western New Jersey now named for Edna Mahan, a prison superintendent. Using false identification, and apparently not having been searched for weapons, her colleagues were able to free her, taking two guards hostage and commandeering a van. The hostages were later released unharmed.
In an unrelated case eight years later, one of the men who had helped her escape, Tyrone Rison, testified that Ms. Shakur was taken to a “safe house” in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and then to an apartment in East Orange, N.J., followed by stops in Pittsburgh and the Bahamas. She arrived in Cuba in 1984 and was granted asylum.
Ms. Shakur was the first woman to land on the F.B.I.’s “most wanted terrorists” list, with $2 million in state and federal money offered for her capture. Credit.: F.B.I.
There she stayed, getting by with money from the government while teaching, writing poetry and studying. Despite being labeled a terrorist by the F.B.I., and despite the $2 million bounty on her head, she remained beyond the reach of American authorities, all the while professing her innocence.
In 1987, Ms. Shakur published an autobiography, “Assata,” a name she had assumed in 1971, forsaking what she called her “slave name.” The book was replete with spellings and locutions that were standard in radical circles, like references to America as “amerika” and to the police as “pigs.” She routinely used a lowercase “i” as a first-person pronoun — to “take away from the egotistical connotation of the word,” she said.
As for her name, she wrote: “It sounded so strange when people called me JoAnne. It really had nothing to do with me. I didn’t feel like no JoAnne, or no negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman.”
And so she became a Muslim named Assata Olugbala Shakur (Assata derived from an Arabic name meaning “she who struggles,” Olugbala from a Yoruba word for “savior” and Shakur from the Arabic “thankful one”). She regarded herself as a godmother to the rapper Tupac Shakur, who was shot to death in 1996 when he was 25.
To many Black people she was a folk hero. Several rap artists name-checked her or even devoted entire songs to her. In “Rebel Without a Pause,” Public Enemy sang, “Hard, my calling card/Recorded and ordered, supporter of Chesimard.” In “A Song for Assata,” Common wrote in part, “Shot twice with hands up/Police questioned but shot before she answered.”
In 1987, Ms. Shakur published an autobiography, “Assata,” the name she had assumed in 1971. It was reissued in 2001. Credit: Lawrence Hill BooksAt the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which Ms. Shakur once attended, a scholarship bore her name for several years. At the City College of New York, another school she attended, students named a community and student center for her and for Guillermo Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist who was implicated in many bombings and who also found refuge in Cuba. A 2005 resolution in the New York City Council urged clemency for her, but it did not pass.In Cuba, Ms. Shakur gave few interviews. She was described as being wary of strangers, concerned that such contact — not to mention the reward money — might lead to her being taken captive and returned to a prison cell in the United States.Her survivors include Kakuya Shakur, her daughter with Fred Hilton.The woman who became Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Deborah Byron in Queens on July 16, 1947. Her father, Carl Byron, was an accountant; her mother, Doris Johnson, was a schoolteacher. They divorced soon after their daughter was born. Part of JoAnne’s girlhood was spent shuttling between New York and North Carolina, where she lived with her maternal grandparents.“All of my family tried to instill in me a sense of personal dignity,” Ms. Shakur wrote in her autobiography, “but my grandmother and my grandfather were really fanatic about it. Over and over they would tell me, ‘You’re as good as anyone else. Don’t let anybody tell you that they’re better than you.’”Her teenage years were troubled and, she acknowledged, her temper was “terrible.” At 17, she dropped out of a Roman Catholic high school, took several jobs that didn’t last and finally attended night classes to get a diploma. At 21, she married a man named Louis Chesimard, and though their union ended after a year, the surname endured. She attended City College from 1968 to 1971 but did not graduate.By then, her radicalism was in full bloom, first with the Black Panthers and then with the Black Liberation Army, a group that had fallen apart by the 1980s.“I feel I’ve been a victim of America,” Ms. Shakur told a Newsday reporter who interviewed her in Cuba in 1987.“If I owe allegiance to anything,” she said, “it is my ancestors, especially the ones who came over the slave ship. I feel I am answerable to them. I want to be able to say I tried, and that I tried to stand on this earth proud.”Ash Wu contributed reporting.A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 27, 2025, Section A, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Assata Shakur, 78, Revolutionary Who Found Refuge in Cuba, Is Dead. Order Reprints | Today’s PaperSee more on: Black Liberation Army
Assata Shakur, a fugitive Black militant sought by the US since 1979, dies in Cuba
by PHILIP MARCELO
September 26, 2025
Associated Press Leer en español Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said.Shakur, who went by Joanne Deborah Chesimard before changing her name, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.Officials in New Jersey, where Shakur had been arrested, convicted and imprisoned, said she was 78.A member of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Shakur’s case had long been emblematic of the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his first term, demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.The FBI put Shakur on its list of “ most wanted terrorists,” but, in her telling — and in the minds of her supporters — she was pursued for crimes she didn’t commit or that were justified.On May 2, 1973, Shakur and two others were pulled over by New Jersey State Police troopers because the car they were driving had a broken taillight.▶ Stay up to date with the latest U.S. news by signing up to our WhatsApp channel.A gunfight ensued and one of the troopers, Werner Foerster, was killed and another was wounded. One of Shakur’s companions was also killed.The New York City native fled but was eventually apprehended. She was found guilty of murder, armed robbery and other crimes in 1977 and was sentenced to life in prison. Shakur was charged with additional bank robberies and in the nonfatal shootings of two other police officers, but most of those charges were dismissed or resulted in her acquittal.Shakur’s prison stint was short-lived, though. In November 1979, members of the Black Liberation Army, posing as visitors, stormed the Clinton Correctional Facility for women, took two guards hostage and commandeered a prison van to break her out.Shakur disappeared before eventually emerging in 1984 in Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum.Offering Shakur safe harbor was one of the most famous examples of Cuba aligning itself with what it describes as revolutionary forces struggling against the oppressive capitalist empire to the north.Much like Cuba supported anti-colonial and left-wing forces in Africa, Central and South America, the Cuban government saw the armed Black liberation movement in the U.S. as part of a global revolutionary struggle.New Jersey officials decry her asylumNew Jersey State Assemblyman Michael Inganamort, who sponsored a resolution last year calling on Cuba to extradite Shakur, lamented Friday that “justice was never served” in Foerster’s death, while the labor union representing New Jersey officers dismissed Shakur “for her crime and cowardice.”New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and State Police Superintendent Patrick Callahan said they would “vigorously oppose” any attempt to repatriate Shakur’s remains to the U.S.“Sadly, it appears she has passed without being held fully accountable for her heinous crimes,” they said in a joint statement. “Unlike his killer, Trooper Foerster never had a chance to live out his days in peace.”Sundiata Acoli, who was also convicted in Foerster’s killing, was granted parole in 2022.In her writings over the years, Shakur has maintained she didn’t shoot anyone and had her hands in the air when she was wounded during the gunfire. Shakur’s writings became a rallying cryMore recently, her writings became a rallying cry during the Black Lives Matter movement, though opponents criticized her words as being influenced by Marxist and communist ideology.“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win,” Shakur wrote in “Assata: An Autobiography,” originally published in 1988. “We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”Black Lives Matter Grassroots Inc., a collective of racial justice activists from around the U.S., vowed to “fight in her honor and memory.”Malkia Amala Cyril, an early organizer of the BLM movement, expressed sorrow because Shakur died during a time of rising authoritarianism.“The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love she practiced if we are going to survive it,” said Cyril, whose late mother had been part of the Black Panthers in New York alongside Shakur.Shakur’s influence extended into the music world. She was famously close to the family of late rapper Tupac Shakur, who had considered her a godmother.Public Enemy, the political hip-hop group and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, are thought to be the first major artists to reference Shakur. The 1988 song “Rebel Without a Pause,” from the album It Takes A Nation, includes the lyrics “supporter of Chesimard,” referring to her legal name.Rapper Common told Shakur’s story in his 2000 song “A Song for Assata.” The Grammy award-winner’s invitation to a White House poetry event in 2011, during the Obama administration, drew outrage from conservatives and law enforcement groups who felt it was disrespectful to Foerster’s family and police officers broadly.___Associated Press writers Aaron Morrison and Michael Weissenstein in New York contributed to this story.___This story has been corrected to reflect that Joanne Deborah Chesimard was Shakur’s married name, not her birth name. It has also been corrected to reflect that she was charged with attempted murder, not murder in the shootings of two other police officers.ABOUT THE AUTHOR: PHILIP MARCELO
Marcelo is a general assignment reporter in the NYC bureau. He previously wrote for AP Fact Check and before that was based in Boston, where he focused on race and immigration.Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo
twitter
DEMOCRACY NOW!
VIDEO:
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/29/death_legacy_assata_shakur?jwsource=clBlack Liberation Activist Assata Shakur Dies at 78 in Cuba; Hear Her Read 1998 Letter to Pope
September 29, 2025
Topics:
VIDEO: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/29/death_legacy_assata_shakur?jwsource=cl
PHOTO: Image Credit: Frank Hurley/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesThe Black liberation activist Assata Shakur died on September 25, 2025, at the age of 78. She passed away in Cuba, where she received political asylum in 1984 after escaping the U.S. prison system, and where she continued to reside for decades despite U.S. attempts to capture and extradite her. In 1998, Shakur wrote an open letter to Pope John Paul II during his historic visit to Cuba, after New Jersey state troopers requested the pope call for her extradition. “The New Jersey State Police and other law enforcement officials say they want to see me brought to 'justice.' But I would like to know what they mean by 'justice.' Is torture justice?” Shakur wrote. “When my people receive justice, I am sure that I will receive it, too.” We play Shakur’s recording of her letter, in memory of her life and her work.AMY GOODMAN: This is_Democracy Now!_ I’m Amy Goodman. We end today’s show with the words of Assata Shakur, who died in Havana, Cuba, Thursday at the age of 78. She was a legendary figure within the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Assata Shakur was convicted in the May 2nd, 1973, killing of a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout that left one of her fellow activists dead. She was shot twice by police during the incident. In 1979, she managed to escape from jail and flee to Cuba, where she received political asylum. She long proclaimed her innocence. In 1998, Democracy Now! aired her reading an open letter to Pope John Paul II during his trip to Cuba. She wrote the message after New Jersey state troopers sent the pope a letter asking him to call for her extradition. This is Assata Shakur. ASSATA SHAKUR: My name is Assata Shakur and I was born and raised in the United States. I am a descendant of Africans who were kidnapped and brought to the Americas as slaves. I spent my early childhood in the racist segregated South. I later moved to the northern part of the country, where I realized that Black people were equally victimized by racism and oppression. I grew up and became a political activist, participating in student struggles, the anti-war movement, and, most of all, in the movement for the liberation of African Americans in the United States. I later joined the Black Panther Party, an organization that was targeted by the COINTELPRO program, a program that was set up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to eliminate all political opposition to the U.S. government’s policies, to destroy the Black Liberation Movement in the United States, to discredit activists and to eliminate potential leaders. Under the COINTELPRO program, many political activists were harassed, imprisoned, murdered or otherwise neutralized. As a result of being targeted by COINTELPRO, I, like many other young people, was faced with the threat of prison, underground, exile or death. The FBI, with the help of local police agencies, systematically fed false accusations and fake news articles to the press accusing me and other activists of crimes we did not commit. Although in my case the charges were eventually dropped or I was eventually acquitted, the national and local police agencies created a situation where, based on their false accusations against me, any police officer could shoot me on sight. It was not until the Freedom of Information Act was passed in the mid-'70s that we began to see the scope of the United States government's persecution of political activists. At this point, I think that it is important to make one thing very clear. I have advocated and I still advocate revolutionary changes in the structure and in the principles that govern the United States. I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed people inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty. To make a long story short, I was captured in New Jersey in 1973, after being shot with both arms held in the air, and then shot again from the back. I was left on the ground to die and when I did not, I was taken to a local hospital where I was threatened, beaten and tortured. In 1977 I was convicted in a trial that can only be described as a legal lynching. In 1979 I was able to escape with the aid of some of my fellow comrades. I saw this as a necessary step, not only because I was innocent of the charges against me, but because I knew that in the racist legal system in the United States I would receive no justice. I was also afraid that I would be murdered in prison. I later arrived in Cuba where I am currently living in exile as a political refugee. The New Jersey State Police and other law enforcement officials say they want to see me brought to “justice.” But I would like to know what they mean by “justice.” Is torture justice? I was kept in solitary confinement for more than two years, mostly in men’s prisons. Is that justice? My lawyers were threatened with imprisonment and imprisoned. Is that justice? I was tried by an all-white jury, without even the pretext of impartiality, and then sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years. Is that justice? Let me emphasize that justice for me is not the issue I am addressing here; it is justice for my people that is at stake. When my people receive justice, I am sure that I will receive it, too. … I ask nothing for myself. I only ask you to examine the social reality of the United States and to speak out against the human rights violations that are taking place. On this day, the birthday of Martin Luther King, I am reminded of all those who gave their lives for freedom. Most of the people who live on this planet are still not free. I ask only that you continue to work and pray to end oppression and political repression. It is my heartfelt belief that all the people on this earth deserve justice: social justice, political justice, and economic justice. I believe it is the only way we will ever achieve peace and prosperity on this earth. I hope that you enjoy your visit to Cuba. This is not a country that is rich in material wealth, but it is a country that is rich in human wealth, spiritual wealth and moral wealth. Respectfully yours, Assata Shakur Havana, Cuba AMY GOODMAN: That was Assata Shakur reading an open letter to the pope in 1998. The Black liberation activist died on Thursday at the age of 78 in Cuba, where she had political asylum. That does it for our show. Happy birthday to Paul Powell! This coming weekend, I’ll be speaking Saturday, October 4th, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, doing a Q&A after the Jewish Film Institute’s special documentary screening of Steal This Story, Please, a new documentary about Democracy Now! Sunday, October 5th, I’ll be in Berkeley at BAMPFA for a screening of the documentary again, with the Oscar-nominated directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. On Friday, October 17th, I’ll be in Santa Fe at the Lensic theater, and October 18th and 19th at the Woodstock Film Festival. Go to democracynow.org for details. I’m Amy Goodman.
Watch Full Show
