News & Commentary

Last week the Ohio Redistricting Commission enacted maps reflecting new electoral district boundaries. As the first state in the nation to pass statewide maps this year, Ohio had a promising opportunity to show the country what fairly apportioned electoral district boundaries look like. Instead, the state of Ohio presented a map that was grossly gerrymandered and far from fair. That’s why the ACLU filed a lawsuit this week challenging the Ohio state legislative map as unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. M

The latest violent imagery to emerge from Border Patrol’s actions at the U.S.-Mexico border warrants not only outrage and immediate action, but also deep reforms to an entrenched culture of abuse at Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal law enforcement agency that includes the sub-agency Border Patrol. One video from Del Rio, Texas shows a Border Patrol officer telling a Haitian migrant, “This is why your country’s shit, because you use your women for this!” This abhorrent comment is not an aberration: CBP has long had a pervasive culture of cruelty and dehumanization of migrants that includes this kind of — often anti-immigrant and racist — verbal abuse. The Biden administration must ensure CBP personnel treat people with dignity and humanity. N

When President Joe Biden came into office, he promised to end the cruelty and inhumanity of President Trump’s immigration policies. W

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) into law in May, I felt an unwelcome sense of déjà vu. In January of 2016, I was dialing every phone number I could find, trying to locate a clinic where I could receive abortion care in Austin, where I live. After many phone calls, some of which I accidentally made to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, I finally found one of the last open abortion clinics and got an appointment. I was seven weeks pregnant, and their schedule was packed; the earliest opening they had was more than two weeks later. This was the wreckage of House Bill 2, a restrictive abortion law passed in 2013 that forced approximately half of all abortion clinics in the state to close. The U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately overturn the law in June 2016, just months after I had my abortion, bringing relief to Texans seeking basic health care. T

It’s official: The once-in-a-decade redistricting process has begun. Communities and jurisdictions across the country are crunching 2020 census data to redraw district lines. The way these lines are drawn will determine political representation, resource allocation, and the weight of your vote. T

Last month, people detained in a Fayetteville, Arkansas jail became the unwitting subjects of an unsafe experiment — like many incarcerated people before them. In late August, a county official revealed during a budget meeting that a doctor employed at the Washington County Detention Center had been treating COVID-19-positive incarcerated people with ivermectin. The anti-parasitic drug has garnered increased media attention in the last few weeks as poison control centers across the country field an increasing number of calls from people who have misguidedly attempted to treat or prevent COVID-19 with the drug. T

I first met Damon Thibodeaux early in 1998, on death row at Angola Prison in Louisiana. I was his lawyer for the next 15 years, while he successfully fought for and won his exoneration and freedom in 2012. I was his friend until he died, on August 31, of COVID-19. T

Gaining the public’s trust in artificial intelligence (AI) will take more than just setting technical standards. It will require that institutions using this technology first prove they are worthy of our trust. Earlier this year, Congress passed its most significant law to date on AI. As part of this law, Congress tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with creating a framework to manage risks associated with the use of AI. While this is a critical first step towards AI accountability, technical standards alone can’t guarantee trustworthiness in AI development and use. That’s why last week we sent a letter responding to NIST’s draft proposal on methods to manage bias in AI. A

Update 9/14/2021: This week, the House Judiciary Committee will begin markup of immigration provisions in the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. As of Monday morning, the language restores access to diversity visas for people who were selected in the diversity visa lottery but were denied visas due to Muslim, Africa, and immigrant travel bans and COVID-19 related disruption. Now the fight continues to ensure the language stays in the reconciliation bill and becomes law. I