This was not a partisan decision; the opinion was not about voting Democrat or Republican (five candidates are Democrats and three are Republicans). The basis was solely on the fact that, as African Americans, we have an expectation that elected officials will immediately push a Black policy agenda.

I suppose that I was bothered, even triggered, by the presupposition that African American candidates are expected by Black people to hold to a position that is a near political impossibility. To expect these politicians to appease a diverse electorate who only shares skin complexion is an impossible task.

It is not lost on me that Donald Trump asked Black people what they had to lose when campaigning in the Black community. Coming on the heels of many people who felt that President Obama did not do enough to promote policies that would empower the African American community, it was easy for Donald Trump to create apathy among Black voters.

Again, in 2024, he levied attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris as not being Black enough for the Black vote. Again, many voters became apathetic when it came to casting their ballots.

Now, what do we have to lose?

It seems that with a few strokes of a pen, he has effectively taken away decades of progress in a matter of moments.

I want to explore two factors that we are facing when the 120th Congress is seated in January 2027. First, all four of the currently seated African American Republican Representatives in the 119th Congress did not seek reelection. This means that Black Republicans are entering the general election in November with potentially no representation in the House.

Secondly, as many Republican states joined in the gerrymandering race to the bottom, congressional districts with significant Black populations have been reconfigured in ways that could reduce Black representation. While Black Republicans were silent when their party began its assault on voting rights, and some even celebrated the victory of shifting Democratic-leaning congressional districts to Republican, the voice that is silenced the most is that of the Black Republican.

Unlike normal times, I do not have any new news articles for you to read to stay abreast of the conversation today. Unfortunately, we do not need “new” information when we are watching history repeat itself.

It is a popular refrain for these Black Republicans to point out that it was the Republican Party that freed the slaves. Yes, the party of Lincoln did free the slaves.

Yet, a closer examination of history would call our attention to the election of 1876.

Progress in the African American community was achieved during Reconstruction and under the leadership of President Ulysses Grant. The 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden resulted in 20 disputed electoral votes. Tilden had 184 undisputed electoral votes, one short of the 185 needed to win. Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the dispute, and the contested electoral votes were ultimately awarded to Hayes, securing his presidency by one electoral vote.

The political compromise surrounding the election resulted in the withdrawal of remaining federal troops from the South and effectively ended Reconstruction.

We know what happened after the loss of military protection. Thousands of Black people were tortured through violent race riots, lynchings, public mutilations, heinous sexual crimes, and even subjected to looting and theft of the wealth they accumulated in the decades that followed.

History again provides us with another lesson with the presidential election of 1960.

Vice President Richard Nixon sought to distance himself from the reluctant progressive actions of the Eisenhower administration as the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional and President Eisenhower deployed federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings following Brown I and Brown II.

So, when the call came for White House intercession on behalf of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was jailed in Georgia, Nixon chose to be silent. It was Robert F. Kennedy Sr. (I wish I could say he was unrelated to his son, RFK Jr.) who intervened while working with his brother John. This, along with Kennedy’s position on civil rights, helped move many Black voters toward Kennedy in the presidential election.

When Nixon ran eight years later, he called upon white voters, particularly in the South, who felt betrayed by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ progressive civil rights policies—including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This became part of a broader political realignment that continued over the decades that followed.

Today, I am sad to say that history is repeating itself.

The deafening silence of Black Republicans can be heard as progress is speedily being turned into regression. The attacks on voting rights and equal opportunity are no longer subtle. It has shifted from dog-whistle politics to bullhorn attacks.

We have lost so much in the past year alone, between attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and the erosion of voting rights.

What concerns me is the conversations that we are not having around these issues. The issue is not the people who are shouting that they are hurting. The issue is those who are so numb that they cannot truly see how these policies will impact their descendants.

We have regressed three generations in two years; can you imagine where we will be with another two years at this same rate of regression?

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

You might be aware of states attempting to reconfigure their congressional districts to align with political ideology. While concerns have been raised that these tactics will dilute the voting power of districts represented by African Americans, this comes alongside the four African American Republicans who are leaving the House of Representatives of their own volition. Of the 273 Republicans who began the 119th Congress—220 in the House and 53 in the Senate—only one, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, could be a returning African American Republican legislator in the 120th Congress.

My question for today is: Where do African American Republicans feel they have their voice in the realm of politics?

As I develop my hypothesis, I realize that misinformation is a key instrument in creating intentional silence. I have included a Fox News article in today’s Docket, not for the truth of the matter asserted within it, but because it helps me understand how miseducation is used as a tool to invoke silence.

What we often fail to realize is that bipartisanship has shifted from Republicans and Democrats to extremists and centrists. So, what has emerged is a tri-partisanship model where you have extremist Republicans (MAGA), centrists comprised of both Democrats and Republicans who hold to traditional ideologies, and extremist Democrats (Democratic Socialists).

What I find interesting in this miseducation strategy is that extremist Republicans have taken over the party and then worked to divide Democratic voting blocs by suggesting that Democratic Socialists are anti-American. The attached article does not provide the context of the question that the article suggests tests liberals’ appetite for change, yet the effort is to find the most radical statements aimed at jarring the conscience of extremist Republicans who are actively seeking to undermine the Constitution.

I want to invite us into a conversation this week to discuss the centrist/extremist political economy and the forms that political speech and influence will take in the coming years.

Reading List

March on Washington Anniversary Brings Renewed Call to Act on Voting Rights — The Washington Post

March on Washington Focuses on Voting Rights and Redistricting — Associated Press

Black Republicans Are Leaving Congress — The New York Times

“One Constitution” Puts Liberals’ Appetite for Change to the Test — Fox News (via Yahoo News)

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

When I merge my theological background with my legal training, I am reminded of what can happen to future generations when past and present generations fail to adequately teach the historical significance of moments in time. This was a moment in time that helped galvanize the realignment of political parties in the United States. However, those born generations after this shift are raising questions that appear to be unanswered. Frustration is growing, as the model for change in the Civil Rights era was gaining access to the political mechanisms that write and enforce laws. In other words, the best mode of creating change was to become part of the system.

Now to my personal frustrations—this strategy was effective for my generation (and for this, I am grateful for the advantages and benefits), but as the system has adapted itself to this integration, it is morphing the rules of admission. Let me be clear: the very tactics that we are up against are those that were taken from the Civil Rights playbook, which was discarded after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

When past generations fail to prepare present generations to teach future generations, history has a funny way of repeating itself. It is no coincidence that the name of the campaign leading the rollback has been titled “Make America Great AGAIN.” While hidden in plain sight, we can see by their actions that the threats perceived against American greatness have been the advancement of civil rights and the great melting pot that we were taught in school.

So, I am not surprised by the questions the younger generations are asking regarding the political present and future of our country. They feel the full weight of the failure to admit the failures of prior generations who took for granted that political loyalty is a matter of choosing between the better of two evils.

The seeds of these questions were planted after having the first African American president elected, who saw the job as being president for the entire country, not just the ones who voted for him or looked like him. It raised questions for them: If we can reach the highest pinnacle of political power in the country and not obtain a utopian existence, is this really the way?

So, it was creative political targeting when a campaigning Trump asked these young Black voters, “What do you have to lose?” It was a subtle and clear reminder that the promised progress has not been achieved.

So, as I close, I am reminded of Dr. King’s sermon and the Black preaching tradition. As is often the case, the close of a sermon carries the sway of the people. We have adapted so much to the celebration of this sermon that we have forgotten the introduction—the defaulted promissory note that all people are created equal.

It appears that we might be facing a judgment-proof debtor—one that, although we acknowledge there is a legitimate debt, does not have the capacity to pay the debt.

I wonder today whether the United States of America lacks the capacity to make good on the promise of equality.

I wonder today whether we have reached a place where we will concede a moral bankruptcy, as we have allowed racism, sexism, and other sorts of oppression to centralize and broker power to the highest bidders.

I wonder today whether our children’s children will have to confront the same issues our parents’ parents had to face.

Reading List

March on Washington Faces a Gen Z Test — Axios

https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2026/08/27/march-on-washington-defend-the-vote-gen-z

Black Voters and the Changing Democratic Primary — Axios

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/27/democratic-primary-black-voters

Jobless Claims Dip as U.S. Goods Trade Deficit Widens — Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jobless-claims-dip-latest-week-goods-trade-deficit-widens-july-2026-08-27/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

Let us venture down history lane to 1953. There was a cluster of cases on the docket involving segregation in K–12 education. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court died before a decision was made. President Eisenhower nominated Earl Warren, the Governor of California, to fill the role.

One of the pauses in my Supreme Court tour was the display of impeachment pins and literature after Chief Justice Warren led the Court through both landmark Brown decisions—the first defining separate but equal as unconstitutional, the second demanding school districts across the country ramp up desegregation efforts with “all deliberate speed.”

Given that some school districts remained under federal consent decrees into the 2020s, it is fair to say that “all deliberate speed” moved at the trickle of bureaucracy.

School Choice and the Milwaukee Experiment

Being a product of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I am no stranger to how school choice can look—or the potential for corruption by persons grabbing cash at the expense of vulnerable children and parents seeking an alternative to the traditional public school system.

The Milwaukee system has provided multiple publicly funded educational options. Traditional public schools operate through the local education agency. Charter schools operate through agreements with authorized public entities, while private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program operate outside the traditional public school system and receive public funding through vouchers.

The differences among these structures provide insight into the challenge of determining how government funds should be regulated when they are directed toward schools operating outside traditional public-school systems. Funding structures vary, but public, charter, and private choice schools can all receive taxpayer dollars on a per-pupil basis.

The larger question is what accountability should follow those public dollars.

That question is particularly important because recent reporting from Wisconsin has identified private schools substantially funded by vouchers that do not operate under the same transparency and oversight requirements as traditional public schools.

This conversation and its lessons have resurfaced as political leaders seek to appeal both to parents requesting educational alternatives and to taxpayers demanding fiscal guardrails to prevent fraud and mismanagement.

When it comes to how this will look at the federal level, we must also consider the relationship between federal and state authority. The federal government can establish requirements within the scope of its constitutional and statutory authority, while states retain substantial control over the regulation and operation of education. The question becomes how jurisdictions use that authority to ensure that schools receiving public funds are not committing fraud, engaging in mismanagement, or failing to maintain educational standards.

The Federal Role in Public Education

Now, back to the historical understanding of federal involvement in local education.

In many respects, education became a twentieth-century states’ rights issue in ways that echo the states’ rights debates surrounding human chattel slavery in the nineteenth century.

What we know as modern public education developed alongside the Industrial Revolution and the changing needs of families and communities. This industrialized approach to public education carries several consequences.

First, it contributes to the structure of the traditional school day.

Second, it focuses on a standardized rather than individualized educational experience.

As a parent—one who cares deeply about the holistic educational experience of my child—I have concerns about both of these realities within our public education system.

Finally, the structure of education can condition children to function as suitable employees.

This also bothers me, but not to the extent of the first two. Let me qualify this statement: I am not bothered for my own child.

This is a direct implication of socioeconomic privilege.

I am grateful to be able to say that my son has been exposed to some unique experiences that other children have not. He has seen both of his parents function outside of this typical employee persona for the majority of his life. He has been able to see an entrepreneurial and creative spirit, to explore his own possibilities, to find things he enjoys, and to think about ways to monetize them.

What Happens When Federal Oversight Disappears?

One final thought, reflecting on the future of public education.

We have utilized five different local education agencies as a result of moving around. Not all local education agencies are built the same.

This presents the potential for hazards that are unconsidered in efforts to deregulate education.

To be clear, President Reagan campaigned on the promise of dissolving the then-newly created U.S. Department of Education as a Cabinet-level agency. His administration later commissioned the National Commission on Excellence in Education, whose 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, warned that the nation’s educational foundations were being eroded by a “rising tide of mediocrity.” The commission identified several areas in which a federal role remained important, including protecting students’ constitutional and civil rights, collecting educational data, supporting research, and providing financial assistance.

Reagan continued advocating for a smaller federal role—and even the abolition of the Department of Education—while simultaneously using the report to call national attention to educational excellence.

Rolling back intense federal oversight can ultimately mean that parents who are not free to move because of obligations such as employment, familial relationships, or economic circumstances may not be in a position to make the most faithful choice concerning their children’s educational experience.

School choice may expand the number of doors available to parents.

But choice alone does not guarantee that every parent can reach those doors—or that what waits behind them is worthy of the public dollars used to keep them open.

Reading List

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Urges Families to Sign Up for Trump Accounts in Rare Bipartisan Moment — ABC7
https://abc7news.com/post/gov-gavin-newsom-urges-california-families-sign-trump-accounts-rare-bipartisan-moment/19715863/

Private Schools Benefit From Vouchers. Now Public Schools Aim for the Cash — The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/08/24/private-schools-benefit-vouchers-now-public-schools-aim-cash/

The March of School Choice — National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/10/the-march-of-school-choice/

Autism, the Education Department, and Federal Civil Rights Protections — CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/autism-trump-education-department-civil-rights/

The Department of Education and the Enforcement of Parental Rights — The Hill
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/6048340-dept-education-enforces-parental-rights/

Trump Administration Touts Efforts to Shut Down the Education Department — ABC News
https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-administration-tout-efforts-shut-education-department-school/story?id=135903951

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

Within the background of this legislation is an event that happened in the prior decade. The Supreme Court heard a series of consolidated cases about the legality of segregation in public schools and handed down two rulings that changed the landscape of compulsory public education in the United States. In Brown I, the Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. The Court was forced to revisit this decision the following year, as school districts across the country—not just in the South—were slow to respond to this pronouncement that the practice was now illegal. In Brown II, the Court ordered public schools to be integrated with “all deliberate speed.” This ruling led the United States Department of Justice to pursue legal action against local education agencies that refused to desegregate their schools, leading to federal consent decrees and judicial oversight that remained in some school districts for generations.

Now, for today, we must look to what happened in the decade following the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. In the aftermath of the Brown decisions, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, school districts across the country were seeking ways to maintain the divide that provided certain populations with a competitive advantage found in well-funded early educational opportunities.

Now we are faced with new legal challenges based on the creation of independent school districts, where wealthy neighborhoods created school districts in sprawling suburban communities so that their funds would not be allocated to impoverished urban areas. The Supreme Court faced another decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. This case argued that this school funding structure essentially created segregation by using economic status as opposed to race. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld this manner of education funding, allowing economic disparities to provide an ongoing competitive advantage in educational access. We should not miss the fact that these practices developed before the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which dealt with discriminatory housing practices based on race.

The restructuring of the Head Start program, along with school voucher considerations, continues to expand the divide when it comes to the starting line for educational access. In my reading and listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, he speaks vividly about how early advantages and disadvantages grow over the span of time. For a child given access to a strong preschool experience, this additional time in school can help move them further along than their peers without it. For a child with parents who can afford to provide additional learning opportunities, those opportunities can dramatically increase their learning over the course of their lifetime.

This is where the Head Start program comes into consideration. It provides opportunities for parents who fall drastically below the federal poverty line. It also exposes the bubble: those children in families that do not fall below the poverty threshold and those whose parents do not have the economic capital to provide them with additional learning opportunities.

It is not lost on me that subsequent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act included a focus on identifying performance metrics, standardized testing, and reducing federal oversight. I invite you to consider what can happen in your community to ensure that educational access is not only discussed in terms of equality, but in terms of equity.

I believe that we should begin to examine where the starting line exists for the children in our community and, while efforts continue to move the goalposts further away, what is necessary to ensure that no child is forced to start behind the starting line while sprinting toward a finish line that continues to move further away.

Here is what you should know today:

Head Start Providers Warn Proposed HHS Changes Could Fundamentally Reshape the Program — The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/08/08/it-wouldnt-be-head-start-anymore-providers-say-hhs-proposal-guts-preschool/

Wisconsin Head Start Programs Face Sweeping Changes Under Trump Plan — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2026/08/17/wisconsin-head-start-programs-face-sweeping-changes-under-trump-plan/91258074007/

Head Start Was Built to Include Children With Disabilities. Don’t Weaken It. — The 74

https://www.the74million.org/zero2eight/head-start-was-built-to-include-children-with-disabilities-dont-weaken-it/

Texas School Vouchers Enter Their First Year — The Texas Tribune

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/esa-students-texas-school-vouchers-first-year/

Supreme Court Orders GOP to Rewrite Argumentative Voucher Measure Summary — Arizona Mirror

https://azmirror.com/2026/08/14/supreme-court-orders-gop-to-rewrite-argumentative-voucher-measure-summary/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

I have long believed that the chant “All Lives Matter” was less a declaration of the sanctity of every human life than a response intended to drown out the proclamation that “Black Lives Matter.” On its surface, the phrase appears inclusive. But once we begin peeling back its layers, a more troubling intention emerges.

What brings me here today is the proximity in approach and ideology between our nation’s history of human chattel slavery and our present system of immigration enforcement. I believe the similarities between the practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and the historic slave patrols should give us pause about the direction in which we are heading.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the primary functions of slave patrols were “(1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and (3) to maintain discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice outside the law.”

My reflection on that historical connection follows three questions: (1) How is American identity formed and understood? (2) Given the recent ICE-involved killings, who is responsible for policing this federal law enforcement agency? (3) What is our moral obligation once we see what we cannot unsee?

Who Is a Real American?

Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in the birthright citizenship case suggests that citizenship should be determined by one’s domicile. Here is the difficulty I have with that position: legally, a person can have only one domicile.

A domicile is the place you call home—the place to which you intend to return, where you have established roots, relationships, and commitments that define your permanent legal residence.

Recently, my wife invited me down the rabbit hole of Little House on the Prairie. We began watching the new Netflix adaptation together. At the conclusion, the family leaves everything they have known to travel somewhere entirely new. Out of curiosity, I asked why they did not simply return to their original home.

That question caused me to reflect on my own journey.

Initially, I believed the concept of domicile may have made sense in nineteenth-century America. Yet even this story reminded me that Americans have long moved in search of opportunity. The concept itself has always struggled to keep pace with the reality of mobility.

Like the Ingalls family, I left Wisconsin and have since lived in Tennessee, Illinois, Texas, and now Washington, D.C., returning to Wisconsin only occasionally. Legally, a person may have only one domicile, but what happens when someone no longer experiences any one place as home?

Our family’s recent decision to embrace a season of nomadic life has caused me to think differently about what domicile actually means. If the concept becomes difficult to define within the United States itself, I struggle to imagine how we can confidently determine another person’s intentions on a global scale.

United States immigration policy has historically rested upon the assumption that certain cultures can eventually assimilate into what is considered the American identity. Many European immigrant groups initially experienced hostility and discrimination, yet their children were gradually accepted as race became a more significant social marker than ethnicity.

Immigrants and descendants from Asia, Africa, and along the southern border have historically encountered a very different experience.

Despite the diversity of those who immigrated to the United States, descendants of immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Germany, and Eastern Europe generally found acceptance as “American” in ways that others did not.

This is why I find what I call the Hispanic conundrum so fascinating. My hypothesis is that individuals of Hispanic heritage who can pass as white often experience tremendous social pressure to minimize or abandon visible expressions of their ethnic identity. Acceptance, it seems, frequently requires cultural assimilation.

What remains unspoken in our immigration debates is equally important. By defining who can become “American,” we simultaneously communicate who is viewed as perpetually outside that identity.

Policing the Police

Within our federal law enforcement system, we generally rely upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate criminal conduct and the Department of Justice to prosecute violations of federal law.

At the same time, local jurisdictions increasingly find themselves in conflict with the federal government when attempting to investigate ICE officers involved in violent encounters. These conflicts include the withholding of evidence necessary to prosecute officers who may have violated state criminal laws while acting under federal authority.

It is here that the historical connection between ICE enforcement and slave patrols becomes especially troubling.

If no agency investigates alleged misconduct, who holds law enforcement accountable for following the very laws they are sworn to uphold?

When considering the recent ICE shootings, another question naturally follows: Whose version of events should the public believe?

Body-worn cameras exist not only to protect citizens but also to protect officers by documenting what actually occurred. When body camera footage exists, it frequently becomes the most objective witness in the room.

Our legal system has repeatedly demonstrated that officers are most often held accountable when their descriptions of events differ substantially from what the video evidence reveals.

That reality raises another difficult question.

Why would any law enforcement agency resist requiring body cameras if the technology serves both officers and the communities they police?

Ultimately, we are left with a larger question:

Who will stand up for truth and justice?

Revolution and Resistance

As we continue reflecting on the principles upon which this nation was founded, I am struck by the irony of how our history is increasingly being rewritten.

The American story is fundamentally one of resistance to unchecked governmental power. It is the story of standing against the Crown of England, resisting militarized governmental oppression, and rejecting systems that imposed inequitable burdens without equitable representation.

Today, we stand dangerously close to embracing many of those same practices ourselves.

Like the bullied becoming the bully, we risk abandoning the very principles that gave birth to the American experiment.

Patriotism has never required unquestioning obedience to government. The American experiment was born from resistance to unchecked power. If we truly believe in liberty and justice for all, then we must be willing to demand accountability—even when the badge, the uniform, or the flag belongs to our own government.

Here is what you should know today:

Justice Clarence Thomas’s Birthright Citizenship Dissent Redefines American Identity (SCOTUSblog)
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/07/in-birthright-citizenship-dissent-justice-thomas-stakes-out-an-ideological-claim-of-who-counts-a/

Hispanic Americans Split Over What It Means to Be a “Typical American” (The Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/07/13/hispanic-adults-split-whether-they-see-themselves-typical-american/

FBI Agents Told to Stop Investigating ICE Confrontations (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fbi-agents-told-no-longer-investigate-confrontations-ice-rcna588276

Why the FBI Is No Longer Investigating ICE Shootings (The New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/19/us/politics/fbi-ice-agents-investigations-shootings.html

ICE to Require Body Cameras During Vehicle Stops Following Fatal Encounters (Newsweek)
https://www.newsweek.com/ice-to-require-body-cameras-during-vehicle-stops-after-fatal-encounters-12215928

Justice Department Activates Alien Terrorist Removal Court (PBS NewsHour)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/justice-department-activates-untested-court-for-alien-terrorist-deportations

When ICE Kills, We Cannot Look Away (TIME)
https://time.com/article/2026/07/17/when-ice-kills-we-cannot-look-away/

Crowds Disrupt ICE Arrests as Public Resistance Grows (Verify this link before publishing; the URL currently duplicates the previous TIME article.)

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

If you listen to the talking heads pushing these changes, they will tell you this is a crusade for “parental rights,” “colorblind neutrality,” and “academic freedom.” But when you look at the actual legal filings, policy briefs, and systemic impacts, the euphemisms evaporate. What we are witnessing is not a defense of liberty. It is the systemic, institutionalized construction of an absolute right to ignorance.

To understand what is happening to our schools, we have to look past the cable news soundbites. We have to deconstruct this warfare. We must interrogate the bad-faith legal maneuvers chipping away at equity, expose the sociological engineering designed to push vulnerable and marginalized students back into the shadows, and confront the theological sacrilege of an empire attempting to co-opt sacred texts to justify state nationalism.

Holy Curricula and Unholy Budgets: The Political Co-option of the Classroom

I have been a preacher since I was a teenager. My first experience with reading came from the Bible. Yet I have serious reservations about teaching the Bible in K–12 classrooms.

It is more than simply crossing the constitutional line separating church and state. That legal concern is significant enough. My deeper concern grows out of the long-standing efforts to remove certain “controversial” texts from K–12 classrooms because of the vulnerability of impressionable, still-developing minds.

The irony of introducing the Bible as a state-approved instructional text into K–12 classrooms is that Texas has also sought to minimize historical instruction regarding human chattel slavery and the unique role the state played in its expansion during the antebellum period.

At the same time, higher education has always been about transforming students into scholars through exposure to new ideas. Unlike K–12 education, higher education is not compulsory. Emerging scholars choose fields of study based upon their interests within particular academic disciplines.

In furtherance of scholarship itself, academic freedom has long served as an essential cornerstone of higher education. I believe legislative and private efforts to restrict academic freedom ultimately stem from a desire to consolidate power by manufacturing public ignorance.

The Constitutional Fault Lines: Academic Freedom and State Orthodoxy

This power vacuum is created by (1) producing scholarship that discredits the pursuit of a more equitable society; (2) attempting to restrict liberal thought under the guise of academic freedom; and (3) preventing diverse voices from contributing to the development of scholarship.

Like the fault lines beneath the earth’s surface, we often fail to recognize their significance until friction produces an earthquake. Whether we are prepared or not, the growing tension between academic freedom and state orthodoxy is setting the stage for a catastrophic academic shake-up.

While legal precedent recognizes equality, there is great danger in producing scholarship that opposes equity. Without equity, scholarship pursues an equality that can never truly be achieved. Our inability to recognize the relationship between an equitable society and genuine equality promotes ideas that reinforce separation and preserve competitive advantage.

Conversely, when we strive for equity, we acknowledge that different communities require different forms of support in order to reach the same destination.

The labels “liberal” and “conservati

ve” have increasingly become dog whistles designed to encourage automatic opposition to particular ideas. Whenever something is labeled liberal—such as a liberal arts education—it is often dismissed as too radical to embrace.

Yet liberal education has never been about telling people what to think. It has always been about teaching them how to think.

Shifting higher education away from liberal pedagogy redirects education from teaching students how to think toward teaching them what to think. It is a subtle but profoundly dangerous transformation in educational philosophy. Left unchecked, it will lead future scholars to reject original inquiry in favor of state-sanctioned academic orthodoxy.

This emerging power vacuum raises serious questions about the future of diversity within scholarship itself.

The scholarly pipeline flourishes because healthy debate occurs among individuals approaching academic disciplines from different experiences and perspectives. I remain grateful for my own education at a Historically Black College and University.

At the same time, those who seek to make higher education “great again” should remember why HBCUs exist in the first place. To receive that designation, an institution had to exist prior to 1964. The reason is painfully simple: it was perfectly legal for colleges and universities to deny admission to Black students solely because of their race.

Eliminating scholarship opportunities shaped by diversity represents a move toward exclusion through economic means. Instead of explicitly denying admission based upon race or gender, institutions increasingly communicate that higher education remains available—provided one can afford it.

Eliminating diversity scholarships, coupled with recategorizing certain academic disciplines in ways that make debt-based financing more difficult, creates barriers that will fundamentally reshape the future landscape of American scholarship.

Rescuing Truth from the Empire: The Moral Mandate to Fight Institutional Ignorance

The war on education is ultimately a battle over who gets to belong in America’s future.

When ideological grifters squander millions of taxpayer dollars on culture-war theater, when educational institutions capitulate to bad-faith legal threats out of institutional risk management, and when the legally enforceable rights of disabled children are reduced to little more than medical welfare commodities, we surrender ground to a deliberate architecture of structural ignorance.

But ignorance prevails only when communities remain silent.

True education is a holy and righteous endeavor. It is the relentless pursuit of truth that reflects the teachings of Jesus: knowing and understanding the truth is essential to freedom and liberation.

We cannot afford to become passive spectators by endorsing policies and legislation designed to lead people to perish for

lack of knowledge.

Dismantling this campaign requires us to move beyond outrage and toward strategic, proximate advocacy. It means fiercely defending the First Amendment against state orthodoxy. It requires rejecting manufactured moral panics designed to make us fear our neighbors and instead organizing at the grassroots level to ensure that every person has equitable access to knowledge.

It demands that we rescue sacred truth from the hands of political empire, remembering that genuine wisdom never operates out of fear but through a radical commitment to love, justice, and the defense of “the least of these.”

Education has never simply been about acquiring information. It has always been about shaping citizens capable of discerning truth from propaganda, wisdom from ideology, and justice from power. If we surrender that mission, we will not simply lose our schools—we will lose the intellectual foundation upon which democracy itself depends.

Here is what you should know today:

Scholarships for Women and Minority Students Continue to Disappear (The Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/07/07/scholarships-racial-minorities-women-are-disappearing/

The Think Tank Fueling the Trump Administration’s War on Higher Education (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-think-tank-fueling-trumps-war-on-higher-ed

Texas Schools Prepare to Implement New Bible Curriculum (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article316449599.html

West Virginia’s Anti-Woke Education Initiative Faces Mounting Criticism (The New Republic)
https://newrepublic.com/post/212911/republicans-million-anti-woke-program-west-virginia-failing

Federal Court Blocks Florida Restrictions on College Teaching About Race and Gender (The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5959690-court-rules-florida-restrictions-on-race-gender-education-at-colleges-violate-free-speech-rights/

Student Loan Limits Could Reshape the Black Professional Pipeline (Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardfowler/2026/07/08/trumps-student-loan-limits-could-reshape-the-black-professional-pipeline/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee La

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Criminal law was the one area of practice that interested me the least during law school. I knew this was an area of law that profoundly impacted my community, yet I could never envision myself advocating for a system I believed was designed to perpetuate oppression.

My earliest nightmares involved encounters with police officers. At five years old, I could not fully understand why I lived in fear of what might happen if I encountered a police officer on the wrong day, nor could I appreciate how those fears would shape my view of the world.

I have met many good people who wear the uniform and carry out their duties as a calling to serve public safety. Yet we continue to have conversations with children of African descent about what it means if they encounter law enforcement on a bad day. Those encounters do not end when the interaction is over. They often carry a lifetime of consequences, leaving a trail of destruction along the way.

The Shield of Immunity: How Police Culture Protects the System Over the Neighbor

When it comes to policing, we must remember that human beings wear the uniform. Human beings bring biases that inevitably influence the decisions they make on the job. They are influenced by emotions, experiences, and expertise, all of which shape how they respond to each call. Among the prevailing philosophies of policing is the expectation that officers make split-second decisions with robotic precision. Those decisions are often made from the perspective of survival and guided by instinct.

This is why I believe we must have three conversations regarding police training and systemic accountability.

The first is helping law enforcement officers better understand their own humanity and how implicit bias affects job performance.

The second is strengthening de-escalation strategies when an officer’s presence is perceived as a threat rather than a source of protection.

The third is creating effective policies that eliminate the practices and principles established by bad apples before they spoil the entire bunch.

We rely upon local municipalities to establish policing policies, but we must recognize that choosing to do the bare minimum is a direct affront to building community trust.

This is what I find most disturbing when reading about police departments that chose not to provide implicit bias training after the requirement was removed. That decision suggests two troubling realities: first, that the training was viewed merely as an expendable investment of resources; and second, that it never would have been implemented without a governmental mandate.

This is why policy change so often fails to endure and why rooting out bad apples frequently occurs only after the entire bunch has been infected by layers of rotten policies.

The lasting effects of poor training could not be more evident than in the recent Topeka discovery. During litigation, documents revealed that officers had been instructed during training to “have a plan to kill“ during confrontations with citizens. That revelation should alarm every American.

To its credit, the Topeka Police Department removed this material from its training curriculum. Yet one must reasonably ask whether removing the slide is enough to undo the philosophy instilled in generations of officers who were taught to enter citizen encounters with a preconceived plan to kill.

Let’s have an honest conversation. Training officers to have a plan to kill sounds remarkably similar to premeditation for homicide. An ordinary citizen who planned the killing of another person would likely face life imprisonment—or even the death penalty. Yet similar thinking can become protected under the doctrine of qualified immunity.

Do not misunderstand me. I want police officers to return home safely to their families after every shift. I simply do not want departments training officers to prioritize survival through premeditated violence while minimizing the recognition of—or response to—the factors that can cause officers to perceive threats that are not actually present.

Local departments often struggle to correct entrenched patterns of misconduct. This is where the Department of Justice has historically played a critical role in sustaining reform through federal consent decrees. These agreements have allowed communities harmed by longstanding policing practices to partner with the federal government in creating meaningful and lasting reform.

Now, as the Department of Justice appears to be retreating from those commitments, we must begin shifting toward another strategy: decertifying law enforcement officers who demonstrate a repeated propensity for making dangerous decisions.

We have watched the same story unfold repeatedly. An officer makes a poor decision, resigns under pressure, and is later hired by another law enforcement agency. Today’s reporting highlights another weakness within the system—the reliance upon self-reporting disciplinary actions while denying citizens any meaningful opportunity to initiate professional licensure reviews for officers whose conduct repeatedly places communities at risk.

Modern-Day Plantations: Forced Labor and Phantom Citizens

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished human chattel slavery—with one significant exception. Slavery and involuntary servitude remain constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime.

We must remember that America’s modern penal system was built upon many of the same business and economic principles that sustained human chattel slavery. Those principles centered on minimizing labor costs while maximizing profit.

If that historical connection was not concerning before, it should be now. As policymakers push to expand American manufacturing, someone will inevitably ask how those labor costs can remain competitive.

That concern becomes even more significant when viewed alongside privatized prisons. These institutions possess the ability to lease incarcerated labor at rates that benefit manufacturers, benefit prison operators, and depend upon maintaining a steady supply of incarcerated workers to preserve those profits.

With limited oversight of private prisons—and continued efforts to circumvent constitutional protections designed to safeguard incarcerated individuals—we should all be concerned. Increased domestic manufacturing coupled with reduced labor costs creates powerful economic incentives to preserve a constant stream of inexpensive labor.

There is another side to this conversation.

These institutions often become mechanisms for stripping already impacted communities of resources and political capital while transferring both to the communities where prisons are built. They provide employment, economic activity, and increased political representation to those communities, pushing the legacy of the Three-Fifths Compromise toward a modern form of exploitation.

Thousands of incarcerated individuals cannot vote, yet they are counted for purposes of political representation where they are imprisoned, generating both economic and political advantages for communities that often have little connection to them.

Shattering the Illusion: Demanding Dignity, Safety, and the Return of Civic Voice

Shattering the illusion of law and order requires confronting the ways the prison-industrial complex and the American criminal justice system continue to erode vulnerable communities.

We must demand meaningful training and genuine accountability from law enforcement agencies.

We must move beyond punitive systems that exploit incarcerated labor and instead embrace rehabilitative approaches that restore people, families, and communities.

Law and order cannot simply mean preserving institutions. It must also mean protecting human dignity. Until our criminal justice system values rehabilitation over exploitation, accountability over immunity, and restoration over profit, the promise of equal justice under law will remain more aspiration than reality.

Here is what you should know today:

Topeka Police Chief Responds to Controversial “Plan to Kill” Training Slide (Topeka Capital-Journal)
https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/local/2026/07/06/topeka-police-chief-addresses-plan-to-kill-slide-and-viral-incident/90788441007/

Iowa Police Departments Reconsider Bias Training After State Repeal (Des Moines Register)
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2026/07/06/iowa-police-bias-training-repeal-george-floyd/90491953007/

Police Accountability Must Extend Beyond Federal Intervention (The Hill)
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/5955507-police-accountability-beyond-federal-intervention/

Advocates Say Court Missed Opportunity to End Forced Labor at Angola Prison (Prism Reports)
https://prismreports.org/2026/06/04/court-missed-chance-to-end-forced-labor-at-angola-prison-in-louisiana-advocates-say/

How Prison Gerrymandering Distorts Political Representation (Prism Reports)
https://prismreports.org/2026/07/06/census-prison-gerrymandering/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

As a preacher, I am aware that this practice of systemic erasure in building patriotism is not a new phenomenon. This is why I have some issues with Chronicles in Scripture, particularly as its editors chose to create a national mythology that ignores the harms individuals committed along the way. Chronicles presents a mythologized King David whose administration largely omits the account of his abuse of Bathsheba.

Let us begin this journey of historical erasure with the White House report, which suggests that the Smithsonian museums are complicit in what it identifies as political activism. The White House report, Saving America’s Story, states that the Smithsonian has “explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”

I have to wonder what they mean, particularly when it appears that the goal of both the report and the administration is to remove exhibits that speak to the harm caused throughout our government and society. What is the goal of eliminating exhibits detailing the experiences of human chattel slavery?

Perhaps the goal is to create an uprising among individuals who align themselves with the ideology of groups like Patriot Front. We know them from the now-iconic photograph of members riding in a subway car with their faces covered while surrounding a lone Black woman. Their imagery evokes memories of the Ku Klux Klan engaging in domestic terrorism while revealing only the whites of their eyes beneath their hoods. Their literature and messaging, when accompanied by a movement to prevent young minds from learning the truths of American history, become a dangerous concoction that takes us back to a time whose moral failures history has already judged.

The other danger in this story is the shrinking pipeline to scholarship that reflects a diversity of experiences. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to pursue my education and professional training before this administration’s efforts to create additional barriers to access for minorities.

The attacks on DEI fail to account for the deeply ingrained reality that many minorities have long believed they must be twice as good to get half as far. That pursuit of excellence has often viewed higher education as the premier pathway to upward mobility.

We see the immediate impact as harmful, but it deserves historical context. Access to higher education has always been challenging for minorities. First, the legislation that created our land-grant public university systems—and later integrated Historically Black Colleges and Universities into that system—has long suffered from funding disparities. Then, the failure to meaningfully integrate higher education institutions persisted for nearly one hundred years, compared to a relatively brief period of affirmative action measures intended as corrective action.

So, as the cost of higher education continues to rise and access to financial assistance declines, it appears that the generations coming behind us will pay the price—with interest.

So, how do we learn and grow from our history?

Instead of erasing the parts of history that make us uncomfortable, a better way forward may be through reconciliatory conversations. These conversations are difficult, but they are necessary. They are painful, but they are productive. They create opportunities for people from different perspectives to come together honestly, acknowledge past harms, and determine how to move toward a better future together.

This is the one thing I believe would truly make America great again. Yet those pursuing that goal too often believe they can accomplish it by ignoring—or attempting to rewrite—our history.

When we refuse to learn from history, we inevitably repeat its mistakes. If America truly seeks greatness, it will not be found by forgetting where we have been. It will be found in having the courage to remember, to reconcile, and to become better because of what history has taught us.

Here is what you should know today:

Who Is Patriot Front? Understanding the White Supremacist Organization (Anti-Defamation League)
https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/patriot-front

White House Report Accuses Smithsonian Museums of Political Activism (The Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/07/06/white-house-report-accuses-smithsonian-museum-extreme-political-activism/

Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship Debate Revives Questions Raised by Dred Scott (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/07/g-s1-132164/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-race-dred-scott

Scholarships for Women and Racial Minorities Continue to Disappear (The Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/07/07/scholarships-racial-minorities-women-are-disappearing/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

At the time it was issued, there was a constitutional amendment under consideration that would have permanently protected the institution of human chattel slavery within the United States Constitution. To abolish slavery, we would have to wait for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. However, this amendment did not absolutely abolish slavery in the United States. The black letter of the amendment states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The contrast between permitting slavery or involuntary servitude following a criminal conviction and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment leads me to believe that we have sadly arrived at a place where the cruelty of prisoners is normalized and even romanticized.

Angola Prison in Louisiana reflects the tension that exists within this contradiction. First, the property itself was once a slave plantation. Second, it represents the transition from human chattel slavery to convicted servitude. It bears striking similarities to the conditions enslaved persons experienced more than 160 years ago. Corrections officers serve as overseers, ensuring that inmates continue working and producing under harsh conditions for extended periods. Inmate compensation is nonexistent or so minimal that it fails to reflect even the basics of human dignity. The legal principle at issue in this case is whether inmates have any meaningful recourse when correctional facilities implement inadequate reforms to protect them.

This is not a topic I wanted to tackle today. After the weight of my last post, I wanted to aim for something that was not so emotionally taxing. While scrolling yesterday evening, I came across a Facebook post from an East Texas social media outlet stating that Karmelo Anthony was being transferred from the Collin County Jail to a work farm outside Houston to begin serving his thirty-five-year sentence. I admit, in hindsight, that I should not have ventured into the comment section. It revealed to me that many Americans have developed a fetish with the exploitation and abuse of incarcerated persons.

Although this touches on criminal justice, the prison industrial complex, and the reality of threats faced by prison farm and workhouse inmates, it also speaks to our current political environment.

When discussing why the African American voting bloc overwhelmingly aligns with the Democratic Party, many younger people do not fully understand why. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received a four-month sentence at a Georgia work farm during the 1960 presidential election cycle. His advisors feared that someone would attempt to harm him during his incarceration and that prison guards would not protect him if they did.

King’s camp reached out to both the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon, and the Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy. Nixon sought to avoid further upsetting Southern leaders, while Kennedy chose to intervene. The same galvanizing force of the Civil Rights Movement that pushed the African American voting bloc toward Kennedy became one of its enduring political legacies.

This shift also helps explain both the motivations behind Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the recent gerrymandering efforts designed to reduce the impact of the African American voting bloc along partisan lines.

Juneteenth reminds us that freedom has always been more complicated than a proclamation. The work of liberation did not end with the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, nor with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. It continues wherever dignity is denied, labor is exploited, and voices are silenced.

Here is what you should know today:

Federal Appeals Court Allows Angola Prison Farm Labor Lawsuit to Proceed (The Appeal)
https://theappeal.org/angola-farm-line-fifth-circuit-eight-amendment/

Republicans Expand Gerrymandering Efforts Ahead of Midterm Elections (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/congress-redistricting-trump-gerrymandering-florida-2a32c663cd09190bf3a58febeef8dacd

Rhode Island Legislators Recognize Juneteenth and Reflect on Its Legacy (Rhode Island Legislature)
https://www.rilegislature.gov/pressrelease/_layouts/RIL.PressRelease.ListStructure/Forms/DisplayForm.aspx?List=c8baae31-3c10-431c-8dcd-9dbbe21ce3e9&ID=376590&Web=2bab1515-0dcc-4176-a2f8-8d4beebdf488

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Sentence to a Georgia Work Farm During the 1960 Election (Associated Press)
https://www.columbian.com/news/2020/may/05/ap-was-there-martin-luther-king-jr-sentenced-to-chain-gang/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee La

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Jury of Peers

From the beginning, this incident has been racially charged. Not only that, it was so highly publicized that I wondered whether he would ever be able to have a fair trial in the county where it occurred. For this reason, I am left wondering why the defense did not move to have the venue of this case changed to neighboring Dallas County, which would have provided a larger potential jury pool and avoided the tragedy of selecting an all-white jury

.

When it comes to jury selection, particularly in criminal trials, we rely on the landmark Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky. The premise of this case is that unless the prosecution can identify a “neutral” reason why Black people should be excluded from a jury when the defendant is also Black, there is a fundamental violation of rights, and it “undermines public confidence in the fairness of our system of justice.”

Here, I am nearly certain that the conviction of a Black teenage male by an all-white jury has evoked a lack of public confidence that Karmelo would have received a fair trial to begin with.

Choice Not to Take the Stand

We say that the American criminal justice system is based on the principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This means that the prosecution bears the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the crime charged.

In most crimes, this means the prosecution must prove that the defendant committed the act and possessed what we call a criminal mind. In cases where self-defense is asserted, there is no argument that the person committed the act. Instead, the remaining issue is whether they possessed the mental state required for conviction.

Here is where the danger lies: the prosecution cannot compel the defendant to testify against himself on this issue, but the defendant becomes subject to cross-examination if he chooses to testify on his own behalf.

In practice, for many defendants, the issue has become one of being presumed guilty until proven innocent. In other words, the court of public opinion—and perhaps even jury deliberations—requires that the defendant actively disprove something that the prosecution itself cannot prove.

The decision for Karmelo not to testify in his own defense cannot be properly analyzed without access to all of the confidential information available to his attorneys when advising him of the risks and benefits of taking the stand. Instead, this analysis rests on the difficulty of asserting self-defense without defendant testimony.

Only the defendant can testify to what he was thinking and experiencing in the moment. Only the defendant can attempt to inject reasonable doubt into a prosecution’s claim that he possessed the criminal intent to commit the crime.

In this case, the prosecution’s primary argument rested on witness testimony alleging that Karmelo provoked the incident and threatened action under the guise of self-defense. Not taking the stand in his own defense essentially robbed him of succeeding on his self-defense claim.

Nobody to Speak Up for Him

Karmelo faced a sentence ranging from two to ninety-nine years after conviction. We must ask whether, even after being convicted, more could have been done to reduce the sentence below the thirty-five years he received.

While I do not believe the defense made a strong case during the guilt-innocence phase of the trial for acquittal, I also believe the strategy should have been bolstered with efforts to reduce the potential sentence in the event of conviction.

In this light, I do not fault the jury for returning a sentence of thirty-five years. They deliberated with what they had to work with. They had the testimony of Karmelo’s mother, and not to diminish it, but it is expected that a defendant’s mother would seek leniency.

Was there nobody else in Karmelo’s life who could have offered persuasive testimony as to his character and provided the jury with context to match the sentence with the defendant?

We know Karmelo is one of many Black youth caught in a lifetime of consequences resulting from a decision made in a moment. These youth need our involvement, our voice, and our presence before—and perhaps after—they become involved in the criminal justice system.

Karmelo’s sentence reflects twice his age at the time of the incident. It is a story with which we have sadly become all too familiar. It is stained into the fabric of our criminal justice system.

Tracing this tragedy back, I realize it likely began long before the criminal justice process itself. So, I want to leave you with this thought:

Are you ready to speak up, be involved, and be present in the life of someone who is vulnerable prey for our criminal justice system?

Here is what you should know today:

Karmelo Anthony Sentenced in Frisco Track Meet Murder Case (CBS Texas)
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/karmelo-anthony-sentenced-frisco-track-meet-murder/

Texas Jury Finds Karmelo Anthony Guilty of Murder (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/09/us/karmelo-anthony-texas-verdict-murder

Karmelo Anthony Convicted in High-Profile Texas Murder Trial (The New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/us/karmelo-anthony-murder-verdict-guilty.html

Jurors Discuss Their Deliberations Following the Trial (CBS Texas)
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/jurors-karmelo-anthony-murder-trial/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

The United States is launching a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. At the same time, efforts are underway to rewrite historical narratives to eliminate discussion of the moral failures within them. As I thought about this, I returned to the way revisionist histories are used to celebrate the erasure of those failures. Recently, a group holding a national Bible reading marathon selected President Donald Trump to read one of the most prominent examples of revisionist narratives in Judeo-Christian literature: 2 Chronicles 7. Scholarship suggests that this passage was written as a post-exilic call to national identity and pride rather than as a straightforward historical account of events surrounding the Temple constructed under Solomon. Reading through Chronicles, we encounter a retelling of Israel’s history that minimizes the moral failures of King David and King Solomon in contrast to the accounts found in Samuel and Kings. Today’s question is what these revisionist narratives teach us about the political motivations shaping our own moment.

The truth is, I wonder how many of those celebrating the signing of the Declaration have actually read it. Here are a few excerpts I wish to explore today.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

History clearly reveals the irony of this statement. Human chattel slavery in the United States was built upon the rejection of the humanity of persons of African descent. Consequently, when the Constitution later declared that no person could be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law, those held in bondage remained outside the protection of that promise. Only with the abolition of slavery and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment did the nation attempt to extend this notion of equality to all humanity.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

It is not lost on me that, leading up to the celebration of this document, elected officials are pursuing many of the same practices the Declaration accused King George III of committing. The indictment contained in the Declaration bears a striking resemblance to contemporary efforts to eliminate entire voting blocs and reduce their ability to participate with both a voice and a vote in the legislative process. A document celebrating liberation can quickly become a tool reinforcing oppression when states engage in gerrymandering for political advantage. The Declaration’s indictment remains true: such strategies are beneficial to tyrants only.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

Undoubtedly, this anniversary invites us to reflect on how we respond to oppression. I am not advocating violence; however, the document we celebrate did. American history tells us that protest preceded revolution. In the midst of those protests, armed law enforcement killed demonstrators. I remember learning in grade school that the first protester killed in those struggles was a Black man. Imagine that—a Black man murdered by law enforcement while protesting government infringements upon human rights and dignity. This fight is not new to us. The experience is not new to us. Yet America, in all its celebration, often seeks to rewrite history to erase our experience.

So, as we approach the 250th anniversary of this historic document, I leave you with the words of Frederick Douglass from his speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? The enthusiasm surrounding these celebrations is being met with increasing skepticism, partly because of inconvenience and, more profoundly, because many are wrestling with what exactly we are celebrating.

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. — Frederick Douglass

Perhaps that is the challenge of anniversaries. They force us to decide whether celebration means remembering only our triumphs or wrestling honestly with our failures. Revisionist histories may inspire national pride, but they cannot heal national wounds. If America hopes to enter its next 250 years stronger than the first, it must resist the temptation to erase uncomfortable truths and instead embrace the difficult work of remembering them. For only a nation willing to tell the truth about its past can hope to fulfill the promises it makes about its future. And perhaps that is what we should really be celebrating—not a perfect history, but a continuing struggle to become a more perfect union

.

Here is what you should know today:

President Trump Reads 2 Chronicles 7 During National Bible Reading Marathon (YouTube)

Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (National Museum of African American History and Culture)
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/nations-story-what-slave-fourth-july

Washington Residents Brace for America 250 Events, Security, and Road Closures (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2026/06/08/residents-dread-america-250-events-road-closures-security-tourism

White House Announces UFC Event Plans Amid America 250 Celebration (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/white-house-ufc-fight-lawsuit-trump-birthday-da95554d7137ca297dd47951a3b95cc8

Artists Withdraw from Freedom 250 Concert Series (CBS News)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/young-mc-morris-day-drop-out-freedom-250-concert-series/

Tracking Federal Actions Affecting History Education and Historical Narratives (American Historical Association)
https://www.historians.org/teaching-learning/current-events-in-historical-context/tracking-federal-actions-affecting-history/

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill

The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

The understanding of belonging in the debate over immigration policy has often centered on proximity to Anglo-Saxon heritage. The resistance faced by first-generation European immigrants frequently faded for their children as they became more distant from their parents’ countries of origin. At the very beginning of immigration regulation, however, there was far more enduring resistance toward Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their descendants. Even worse, we shall not soon forget the vitriolic rhetoric from President Trump describing immigrants of African descent as coming from “s-hole countries.”

As we become a country engaged in a reckoning with our history, we are on a collision course with the stark contradiction between our values and our actions. Although there is a strong legal separation between church and state, there remains a conflict between the Judeo-Christian values professed by many proponents of stricter immigration policies and the way we treat our neighbors and strangers.

The tension is the belief that enforcing immigration regulations provides a justifiable reason to be cruel or inhumane. The fallacy in this argument is that our values shift based upon a person’s status. This reasoning sounds remarkably similar to arguments made prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Jurisprudence from that era can be found in the opinion of the Dred Scott case, which effectively suggested that the Black man—or, in this case, the immigrant—has no rights that the white man is bound to respect.

During President Trump’s first term, my wife coerced me into walking across the U.S.-Mexico bridge in El Paso, Texas. Her photojournalism background compelled her to witness and document the residual impact of harsh immigration policies that left people imprisoned in cages along the border. The government’s response has increasingly involved privatizing the detention of individuals in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security. The notion of privatizing detention facilities means that human dignity can become subordinate to corporate profitability.

This cruelty is on display in the twisted humor of some within the current administration, exemplified by the following statement:

“If you’ve witnessed an Alien abduction, do not be alarmed. The Alien is in good hands. We will take care of it … and return it safely to its place of origin.”

Increased enforcement is not the central issue in this conversation. The concern is whether that enforcement remains legally compliant. Communities increasingly live in fear of enforcement efforts driven by an act-first, ask-questions-later philosophy. When the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security cannot readily affirm that the agency will comply with judicial orders, everyone should be concerned.

Again, this conversation ultimately revolves around the question of who belongs here.

The answer to that question often changes depending upon who is asked. And the truth is, when that question is placed in the wrong hands, it increases the likelihood that someone can illegally determine that our presence here is unlawful.

As we approach the anniversaries of both the Declaration of Independence and Juneteenth, we should remember that America’s greatest struggles have rarely been about whether people belong. They have been about who possesses the power to decide.

History repeatedly teaches us that when belonging is determined by proximity to power rather than adherence to principle, liberty becomes conditional and justice becomes selective. The question before us is not simply who belongs here. The question is whether we will remain a nation committed to extending dignity and due process to all people, or only to those we have already decided are worthy of it.

Here is what you should know today:

Private Immigration Detention Operator Faces Lawsuit Over New Jersey Facility (USA Today)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/06/02/geo-group-lawsuit-delaney-hall-detention-new-jersey/90377098007/

White House Launches “Aliens” Immigration Enforcement Website (White House)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/aliens/

New White House Immigration Website Draws National Attention (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/03/nx-s1-5843359/white-house-gov-website-alien-immigration

DHS Secretary Dodges Questions About Compliance With Court Orders (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/06/02/dhs-chief-dodges-questions-obeying-court-orders/

Federal Immigration Enforcement Expands Amid Ongoing Legal Challenges (Apple News)
https://apple.news/AZpoATFhYQxeMCIzr2ouDbA

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

The employees worked behind a counter with a larger-than-life Confederate flag hanging on the wall, sending a clear marketing message about their target audience. If that message was not immediately obvious, it certainly became clear after standing in the store for five minutes without being greeted and watching the employees’ faces as they wondered why we were there.

My understanding of efforts to deregulate gun control is twofold.

First, deregulation efforts are largely focused on the business side of the industry, offering additional protections for manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of firearms and firearm-related products.

Second, gun control deregulation is ultimately driven by questions of who has access to guns and what types of firearms people can access.

Looking at the trends of the current administration, I am left wondering what the ultimate purpose of these efforts to roll back gun regulations really is.

To explore gun deregulation further, we must consider how guns end up in the wrong hands. Gun control requirements are often circumvented by gun traffickers—individuals who purchase firearms with the intent of reselling them to people who cannot legally purchase them on their own.

Is there any logical justification for diverting resources away from preventing gun trafficking? Is there a reasonable explanation for extending invitations to firearms dealers who lost their ATF licenses because of regulatory violations and allowing them to reapply?

The most obvious answer points to protecting the chain of commerce within the firearm industry.

These are the deep-pocketed interests that fund lobbying efforts and encourage politicians to pursue deregulation. For decades, plaintiffs have struggled to hold anyone within the chain of commerce accountable for the way individuals ultimately use—or misuse—their products.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gun manufacturers accused of marketing firearms to cartel members in Mexico. In that case, the Court upheld legislation shielding manufacturers and sellers from liability for a third party’s criminal or unlawful use of a firearm.

The central legal question was whether manufacturers had “aided and abetted” criminal activity. Under the law, this requires proof that members of the chain of commerce took an affirmative act in furtherance of the offense and intended to facilitate its commission.

This brings me back to that gun shop in Collin County, Texas, and perhaps to the broader reason this administration continues to roll back gun regulation efforts.

Many of the businesses affected by the potential loss of their ATF licenses are small gun shops that lack sufficient compliance protocols to meet federal standards. When ideology becomes more important than compliance—or more important than profit—it increases the likelihood that firearms will find their way into the hands of people who intend to do more harm than good.

It was in Collin County, Texas, that the individual ultimately convicted of killing 21 people in an El Paso Walmart picked up a firearm he had purchased online.

He later stated that his actions were motivated, in part, by rhetoric suggesting that migrants crossing the border could only be stopped through violence and that ordinary citizens would need to act because law enforcement resources were stretched too thin.

If anything, examples like this call for greater regulation, not less.

The debate over gun regulation is often framed as a question of constitutional rights versus government control. Yet beneath that debate lies a more practical question: Who benefits when safeguards are removed, and who bears the consequences when those safeguards fail?

If gun traffickers continue to find ways around existing regulations, it is difficult to understand why the solution is to weaken enforcement further.

The right to bear arms may be constitutional, but public safety remains a public responsibility. Any serious conversation about freedom must also include a conversation about accountability.

Here is what you should know today:

Trump Funding Cuts Raise Concerns About Crime Prevention Efforts (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/31/trump-federal-funding-cuts-crime

How the Trump Administration Reversed Biden’s ATF Gun Crackdown (ProPublica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-trump-reversed-biden-gun-crackdown-atf

Gun Rights Advocates Celebrate New ATF Rollbacks Under Trump (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-5810190/gun-rights-trump-rules-atf

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides the following definitions for the prefix anti-:

• Of the same kind but situated opposite, exerting energy in the opposite direction, or pursuing an opposite policy.

• One that is opposite in kind to.

• Opposing or hostile to in opinion, sympathy, or practice.

• Opposing in effect or activity.

• Serving to prevent, cure, or alleviate.

• Combating or defending against.

Simply stated, the use of “anti-DEI” rhetoric suggests a desire for policies situated in opposition to, hostile toward, or designed to prevent the progression and impact of efforts promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The term often misses its mark with those who benefit from DEI policies, so let us explore some of the antonyms of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Diversity: similarity, likeness, homogeneity, sameness

Equity: prejudice, bias, favor, partiality, favoritism, partisanship, nepotism, chauvinism

Inclusion: omission, elimination, deletion

I wonder: Do any of these terms describe the kind of society we truly desire to inhabit?

A society that rejects individualism and celebrates sameness.

A society grounded in prejudice, implicit bias, favoritism, and the rejection of perspectives from across ideological lines.

A society that intentionally excludes people without regard for the harm exclusion causes or the value inclusion might create.

Yet we continue to witness legislators and politicians embrace this rhetoric with little discussion of its practical consequences for the communities they were elected to serve.

Much of this rhetoric is supported by replacing policies emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion with so-called merit-based policies, as though the two concepts are opposites. However, merit-based systems are often strengthened and undergirded by diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Efforts to strip away DEI protections may therefore weaken the very merit systems proponents claim to support.

The Government Accountability Office identifies several principles that help establish merit-based systems.

The core principle of merit personnel systems is the protection of employees from discrimination, improper political influence, and personal favoritism. In other words, a merit-based system cannot legally coexist with the elimination of policies designed to prevent discrimination or ensure equitable treatment of applicants and employees.

The federal government further explains:

“Equal employment opportunity is an integral part of every merit system. Affirmative action plans, designed to provide a workforce reflective of the Nation’s diversity, must assure that both in operation and results the merit system reflects equal opportunity at every step of the personnel process.”

Any policy designed to oppose the intentional inclusion of certain populations ultimately undermines merit-based systems because it diminishes efforts to identify and recruit individuals who possess the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities.

If merit-based systems rely upon diversity, equity, and inclusion principles to strengthen them, then we must consider what becomes of merit when the mechanisms designed to ensure fairness, equal opportunity, and broad participation are removed.

Perhaps the conversation is not about whether DEI and merit are opposites.

Perhaps the real question is whether anti-DEI policies can sustain the very merit principles they claim to protect.

Here is what you should know today:

Ohio’s Proposed DEI Ban Could Impact Special Education and Gifted Programs (Cleveland.com)
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/05/ohio-gop-pushes-a-dei-school-ban-so-vague-it-could-kill-special-education-and-gifted-programs.html

Federal Contractors Already Facing Enforcement of New Anti-DEI Order (Federal News Network)
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2026/05/even-as-a-legal-challenge-unfolds-a-new-dei-order-for-federal-contractors-is-already-being-enforced/

Federal Merit System Principles and Equal Employment Opportunity Requirements (Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/4/2.4

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

I remember when we decided to place a home on a piece of land. It was a tedious but necessary process. The land had to be cleared, debris removed, and dirt added to level it properly. There was always the risk that shortcuts would create instability in whatever was eventually built upon that foundation.

Creating a level socio-economic playing field is just as difficult.

Yet we continue to short-circuit the process of leveling the social and economic landscape, hoping to construct a society capable of withstanding storms and environmental pressures for generations to come. Instead, we have built assumptions about a “post-racist” America upon a faulty foundation — one that assumes racism is merely a relic of the past and no longer manifests itself through modern systems and institutions.

What we are witnessing through this administration’s approach to civil rights enforcement is the dangerous attempt to build a foundation of justice on the assumption that racism no longer exists, or worse, that racism and sexism now primarily disadvantage Caucasian men. That assumption threatens to set this country back generations.

We rely upon agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to protect historically disenfranchised communities. While the law still allows individuals to pursue discrimination claims independently, access to justice remains deeply unequal.

Litigation costs money. Lawsuits take years. As a lawyer, I often feel compelled to take on cases involving housing and employment discrimination. The challenge is that many plaintiffs are severely under-resourced and ultimately pressured into settling for pennies on the dollar — not because justice has been achieved, but because financial strain forces compromise. Law firms themselves face pressure to remain financially solvent while navigating lengthy litigation battles.

The benefit of federal agencies pursuing predatory employers and lenders is that they possess the institutional resources necessary to create meaningful accountability and systemic course correction.

Recently, however, the CFPB announced that it would no longer pursue cases rooted in disparate impact claims.

For many Americans, that phrase may sound technical or abstract. But the implications are profound.

We are not far removed from the era of redlining, where lenders openly denied loans to African Americans seeking homes in certain geographic areas. Those practices produced what the law refers to as disparate impact — policies that may appear neutral on their face while disproportionately harming protected communities in practice.

The creation of the CFPB allowed the federal government to pursue remedies for impacted communities and push financial institutions toward fairer practices. Ironically, some of the very housing discrimination frameworks now being weakened were once used in litigation involving Donald Trump’s own rental practices.

Here is what you should know today:

Lawsuit Challenges CFPB Rollback of Fair Lending Enforcement (CU Today)
https://www.cutoday.info/Fresh-Today/CFPB-Faces-Lawsuit-Challenging-Fair-Lending-Deregulatory-Changes

Trump-Era CFPB Move to End Anti-Discrimination Protections Faces Legal Challenge (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lawsuit-challenges-cfpbs-ending-anti-discrimination-protections-under-trump-2026-05-27/

When the administration’s refusal to pursue disparate impact claims is paired with efforts to recall agency employees back to Washington, D.C., eliminate remote work flexibility, and simultaneously terminate the lease for the CFPB headquarters itself, serious questions emerge about the administration’s long-term vision for the agency.

CFPB Recalls Employees Nationwide to Washington Amid Agency Restructuring (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-consumer-watchdog-recalls-all-staff-nationwide-washington-headquarters-2026-05-28/

Trump Administration Ends Lease for CFPB Headquarters (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trump-administration-ends-lease-consumer-protection-bureaus-headquarters-records-2026-04-15/

We have gone from asking marginalized communities, “What do you have to lose?” to watching those same communities count their losses and tend to their wounds.

The progress of the last fifty years is being undone with the stroke of a pen.

The effort to “Make America Great Again” increasingly appears to be moving us toward the reconstruction not simply of Jim Crow — but of Jim and Jane Crow alike.

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

More and more, I find myself frustrated by two political strategies that have become increasingly common. The first is the dog-whistle stump speech: carefully crafted rhetoric designed to tell voters what politicians think they want to hear without offering meaningful solutions. The second is the strategy of presenting oneself as merely the better of two bad options, spending more time explaining why an opponent is unfit for office than why the candidate has earned the public’s vote.

Together, these approaches create a dangerous environment for voters seeking to make informed decisions at the ballot box.

This is one of the greatest dangers of partisan politics. Increasingly, voters cast ballots for political parties rather than for the merits of individual candidates. Partisanship has always influenced legislative strategy, whether through advancing an agenda or obstructing one. But over the last two decades, these tactics have moved from the background of political life to center stage.

We have drifted far from moments such as President George W. Bush publicly recognizing Nancy Pelosi as Madam Speaker and celebrating the historic significance of the first woman elected to lead the House of Representatives. While political disagreements remained, there was still room for public acknowledgment of democratic milestones.

Since then, the Democratic Party has nominated the first African American man, the first woman, and the first African American woman to serve as a major party’s presidential nominee. During that same period, African American voters have remained one of the most consistently partisan voting blocs in American politics.

As a result, political battles over district lines, voting power, and electoral influence often have significant consequences for African American communities. When partisan maps are drawn to reduce the influence of Democratic districts, the effects frequently extend beyond party politics and into questions of representation for historically marginalized populations.

The death of bipartisanship should be mourned.

What we are witnessing in today’s political landscape is not healthy for American democracy. Too often, politicians face greater consequences for breaking with their party than for failing to serve their constituents. Recent primary elections have repeatedly demonstrated that elected officials may be punished more severely for distancing themselves from party leadership than for neglecting the concerns of the people who sent them to office.

This reality weakens accountability and shifts political incentives away from public service.

When I consider what we need most from elected officials, my attention turns not to committed partisans, but to those who choose not to vote at all.

Low voter turnout is often discussed as a civic failure, but it can also function as a political strategy. Electoral success frequently depends on energizing a loyal partisan base while leaving less-engaged voters discouraged, overwhelmed, or convinced that their participation will not matter.

Many voters encounter a steady cycle of campaign attacks, legislative gridlock, and policy solutions that seem disconnected from everyday concerns. Eventually, some conclude that none of the available options will meaningfully improve their lives and opt out of the process altogether.

If partisan politics is here to stay for the foreseeable future, then the challenge before us is clear. The future of American democracy depends not only on mobilizing party loyalists, but on educating, empowering, and engaging those voters who remain unconvinced that their voices matter.

A healthy democracy requires more than winning elections. It requires citizens who believe participation is worthwhile and leaders who understand that earning a vote is different from simply inheriting one.

Stay informed. Stay engaged.

Attorney Jeremiah Hill

— The Daily Docket

I know this is a light-hearted story compared to the heaviness of today’s news cycle, but it raises an important question about affordability and consumer convenience. We often focus on the price we pay at the register without considering the costs absorbed elsewhere throughout the system.

Here is what you should know today:

PepsiCo Raises Prices on Smaller Bags of Chips as Consumers Push Back on Costs (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/lays-doritos-pepsico-raise-prices-small-bags-chips-rcna346181

American capitalism has always struggled with the tension between workers’ rights and corporate profits. Labor negotiations can be tedious because they require compromise that allows both sides to walk away with something they value. Yet workers are not merely asking for higher wages. At their core, these negotiations are often requests for dignity in the workplace.

At the intersection of capitalism and consumerism lies an ethical dilemma: Are we willing to pay more for the people who deliver the goods and services we rely upon? Likewise, are employers willing to make the concessions necessary to ensure that their workforce is adequately cared for?

Cargill Locks Out 1,700 Workers at U.S. Beef Plant Amid Labor Dispute (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/cargill-locks-out-1700-workers-us-beef-plant-labor-dispute-2026-05-20/

Then there is the question of how society responds when government employees are treated unfairly.

When it comes to convenience, few modes of travel are more convenient than flying. Yet that convenience depends upon thousands of Transportation Security Administration employees who report to work every day to ensure both safety and efficiency.

These workers are expected to show up even when government shutdowns delay their paychecks. They still have rent due. They still need transportation to and from work. They still must feed their families, regardless of whether Congress has resolved its budget disputes.

Among America’s major airport hubs, few feel the impact of government shutdowns more acutely than Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. During the last prolonged shutdown, some reports estimated security wait times exceeded five hours. Those delays—and the frustration they created—have prompted airport leaders to explore whether privatizing portions of the security process could provide greater efficiency and convenience.

Atlanta Airport Considers Privatized Security Model Following Shutdown Concerns (USA Today)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2026/05/21/does-the-atlanta-airport-have-private-tsa-it-could-be-coming-soon/90173852007/

The common thread connecting all of these stories is convenience.

We want affordable snacks, inexpensive goods, reliable transportation, and shorter security lines. We want products delivered quickly and services provided efficiently. Yet every convenience has a cost. The question is not whether someone will pay it, but who.

Will consumers pay more at the checkout line? Will corporations accept lower profits? Will workers absorb the burden through stagnant wages and difficult working conditions? Or will taxpayers ultimately carry the cost through government subsidies and privatization efforts?

Affordability remains one of the defining political and economic issues of our time. But perhaps the deeper question is whether we are willing to acknowledge the true cost of the conveniences we have come to expect.

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

Litigation, by design, is adversarial. In fact, one could argue that there is no legitimate legal controversy when there is no true adversarial relationship between the plaintiff and defendant. That became the central judicial concern when President Trump became a party in litigation filed against the Internal Revenue Service.

The significance of the settlement is not merely that it occurred, but that it happened before the scheduled hearing where the parties were expected to argue whether the case actually represented a legitimate legal dispute in which both sides stood in opposition to one another.

Ordinarily, settlements of this kind address past conduct. That is standard legal practice. However, the Justice Department’s statement appears to suggest that future probes could also be limited if they involve what the administration might characterize as unfair investigations into President Trump’s finances.

The financial allegations surrounding President Trump over the years have frequently involved accusations commonly described as “cooking the books.” Prosecutors and investigators alleged that Trump and his business entities presented favorable financial figures when seeking loans and financing, while simultaneously reporting substantially lower values on tax filings to minimize tax liability.

A successful audit of President Trump’s financial affairs could reportedly have resulted in liabilities exceeding nine figures once penalties and interest were included. When one considers that forgiven debt can itself be treated as taxable income, the settlement raises difficult questions about whether political self-dealing may have financially benefited President Trump by more than $100 million in a single transaction.

Here is what I’m Watching Today:

1. Justice Department Releases Statement on Trump-IRS Settlement (DOJ)
   https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441216/dl

2. Inside the IRS Settlement Involving President Trump (New York Times)
   https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/admin/irs-trump-lawsuit-deal.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

3. Questions Grow Over Trump’s Settlement With the IRS (New York Times)
   https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-settlement-irs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

In addition to any financial benefit potentially tied to forgiven tax debt, we have also witnessed the broader profiteering of political office. From cryptocurrency ventures to accepting a private aircraft from a foreign government, this presidential term appears to have been financially advantageous for President Trump and those within his orbit.

This naturally raises additional concerns surrounding insider trading. Presidents routinely receive access to confidential and market-sensitive information capable of influencing financial markets and securities trading. At the same time, former advisors have previously alleged that President Trump often ignored or declined to read portions of those intelligence briefings.

To be fair, the Trump Organization has maintained that a “Chinese Wall” exists between President Trump, his family, and the organization regarding the “selecting, directing, approving, influencing, or soliciting specific investments,” and between the family’s blind trust and the company itself.

4. Trump Financial Activity Raises Questions About Stock Trades and Political Power (New York Times)
   https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-stock-trades.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

The final issue worth considering is the relationship between political favor and financial reward.

What exactly does a golf club manager have to do with receiving a multimillion-dollar no-bid contract tied to sophisticated government projects? Increasingly, it appears that proximity, loyalty, and declarations of patriotism are becoming qualifications for influence over government contracting decisions.

5. Questions Raised Over No-Bid Government Contracts and Trump Allies (New York Times)
   https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/reflecting-pool-trump-schutzenhofer.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

I believe we are entering a season in which ethical concerns in politics are no longer merely tolerated but increasingly ignored altogether.

There was once an expectation — regardless of political ideology — that elected officials genuinely believed their actions served the country’s best interests. That expectation is what ultimately compelled members of President Richard Nixon’s own party to pressure him toward resignation following the Watergate scandal.

President Trump became the first president in American history to be impeached twice during a single term. Yet despite repeated controversies, it increasingly appears that many elected officials within his own political coalition remain unwilling to hold him accountable, even when the costs are ultimately borne by the American public.

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill

The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law

“Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.” — Luke 9:49-50 NRSVue

Friends, how many of us have them?

When I think of friendship, I think of someone who is comfortable enough to confront me in my wrongness and offer gentle correction. As I reflected on today’s news cycle, my heart was unexpectedly saddened by the life of President Trump. He increasingly appears to embody the emperor with no clothes — surrounded by people occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, from the worst of friends to the best of enemies.

Is there anyone within his circle willing to confront him about his behavior?

From a biblical perspective, I am reminded of the Prophet Nathan confronting King David after his abuse of Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. Yet many religious figures surrounding President Trump seem to lack the prophetic courage necessary to challenge immoral behavior, often because of the personal or political benefits they themselves gain from proximity to power. Spiritually, I find this deeply troubling.

Time after time, Trump has demonstrated that there are consequences for those who attempt to become better friends by challenging his behavior. Meanwhile, the rewards for remaining among the “worst of friends” appear politically and personally substantial.

So let us examine how these stories may shape the days ahead.

1. Partisan Justice

One factor that historically helped preserve the integrity of the Department of Justice was institutional continuity. Career prosecutors and law enforcement officials served across Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Their loyalty was expected to rest not with a president’s political agenda, but with the black-letter law itself.

The current administration witnessed a significant exodus of career officials, many of whom reportedly faced pressure to prioritize political objectives over institutional independence. The danger of partisan justice is that it creates pathways for selectively prosecuting political enemies while shielding political allies from accountability.

Justice Department Faces Growing Questions About Political Loyalty (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/17/james-maurene-comey-trump-doj-00924420

2. Perverted Justice

One of the constitutional principles that sustains the American system of government is the limitation placed upon federal pressure against state governance.

Most individuals involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election were eventually pardoned because their crimes fell under federal jurisdiction. Tina Peters’ conviction, however, occurred under state law, meaning a presidential pardon could not reach her case. President Trump’s alleged threats to withhold federal projects from Colorado unless state officials intervened raises profound concerns about federal overreach and political coercion.

When justice systems become distorted to serve political ends, they risk permanently losing their intended purpose.

Federal Pressure Campaign in Tina Peters Case Raises Constitutional Concerns (The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/05/election-denier-tina-peters-release/687212/

3. Unjust Reparations

The administration has reportedly authorized a $1.8 billion compensation fund for individuals convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Historically, America has struggled deeply with the question of reparations. Formerly enslaved people were promised “40 acres and a mule,” promises that were never fulfilled. Ironically, former slaveholders were among the only groups to actually receive compensation following the abolition of slavery, often under constitutional arguments regarding property rights and financial loss.

While I wrestle with compensation being directed toward individuals who were not found innocent but instead politically pardoned, it reflects a recurring American pattern: systems often compensate power while neglecting those historically harmed.

Trump Administration Approves Compensation Fund Related to 2020 Election Cases (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/trump-doj-fund-irs-trump-family-lawsuit-c9aaa94c59988508c253d7200043cecc

4. Political Retribution

It is increasingly clear that Republican politicians who fall out of favor with President Trump often face significant political consequences, including difficult primary challenges or loss of endorsements.

This dynamic creates a dangerous dilemma for elected officials: vote according to conscience or govern according to political appeasement.

Endorsements and primary threats have become powerful mechanisms of political discipline, reinforcing loyalty over independent governance.

Trump’s Political Retaliation Strategy Continues to Reshape the GOP (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-crusade-oust-disloyal-republicans-politics-desk-rcna345786

5. Does Any of This Make America Great Again?

Representative Lauren Boebert recently found herself criticized within MAGA circles after advocating for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and standing publicly with victims of sex trafficking.

This brings us back to Jesus’ instruction to the disciples: “Whoever is not against you is for you.”

At first glance, my instinct was to reverse the statement: “Whoever is for you is not against you.” But reversing the text fundamentally changes its meaning. Jesus’ framing centers communal good rather than personal loyalty.

Too often, movements built around “America First” rhetoric appear focused less on the common good and more on protecting a narrow vision of whose America matters most.

Rather than aligning themselves with the ethical demands of the Gospel, some political movements attempt to align the Gospel with their political ambitions.

And that may be the deeper danger.

Lauren Boebert Faces MAGA Blowback Over Epstein Files Push (HuffPost)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lauren-boebert-yes-saw-president-post-donald-trump-thomas-massie_n_6a0ad8d8e4b0ee7169738714

So the question remains: How many real friends does President Trump actually have — people close enough and courageous enough to tell him when he is heading toward the edge of the cliff?

Or will the “best of enemies” ultimately help bring about the downfall of the American empire simply by refusing to tell the emperor that he has no clothes?

Stay informed. Stay empowered.

— Attorney Jeremiah Hill
The Daily Docket | Jubilee Law