News & Commentary

I have often been asked two questions. One is: What was the most surprising incident when you served in the Chinese People’s Army? The other: What surprised you most in America? To both questions my answers are rather personal and internal. I served in the Chinese army for

Tondalao Hall spent her 13th New Year’s Day inside a prison cell this month. The man who abused her and her young children never served a single day in prison. The details of Hall’s story speak volumes about criminal injustice in the nation today.Thirteen years ago, Tondalao Hall’s ex-boyfriend and abuser, Robert Braxton Jr., pleaded guilty to breaking the ribs and femur of their 3-month-old daughter. Hall had not abused her children. She herself was also a victim of her ex’s violence. Prosecutors presented no evidence that Hall, then 19 years old, knew of any abuse against her children. On the advice of her original attorney, Hall signed a “blind” guilty plea — meaning, a plea without any deal with the prosecutor promising leniency. That plea resulted in a 30-year sentence for “failing to protect” her children from abuse. Hall’s sentence violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the government f

Moments before his State of the Union speech last night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep open the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The order describes the prison's operations as “legal, safe, humane, and conducted consistent with United States and international law.” This does more than undo Barack Obama’s order to close the prison, signed on his third day in office. It also rewrites the plain, sordid facts of its history. The moral and legal stain of Guantánamo started with the fact of its existence. The Bush administration opened the prison in 2002

Learn about what's happening across the most pressing civil liberties issues of our time, and what you can do.

The

Across the country, a growing number of immigrants’ rights advocates and outspoken members of the immigrant community are ending up in immigration detention, facing deportation, or being threatened with criminal charges. In New York, Jean Montrevil and Ravi Ragbir — both prominent immigrants’ rights activists and leaders of th

Indiana has one of the most expansive private school voucher programs in the country, courtesy of Mike Pence. During his time as governor, Pence “removed the cap on the number of students who could qualify for a voucher to a private school, increased the limits on qualifying family income, and removed [a] stipulation that the student had to try the public school first,” according to a searing analysis of the state’s school choice failures by The Washington Post yesterday.The result?Last year alone, Indiana taxpayers financed private school education — nearly all religious — to the tune of $146.1 million “with most of it going to families who would have sent their children to private school anyway.” Oh, and by the way, a 2017 study of Indiana students in grades 3-8 who actually did use the voucher to transfer from a public to a private school showed that the voucher program had a negative impact on students’ academic achievement. Those are the type of important details you didn’t hear or read last week from voucher

In 1936, Ann Cooper Hewitt filed a lawsuit against her mother — and with good reason. At the age of 20, her mother Ann had sterilized her against her will. Having succeeded in classifying her as having an intellectual disability, Ann’s mother was legally allowed to authorize the operation over Ann’s objections. Her mother’s lawyer responded by claiming that Ann’s sterilization had been “for society’s sake” due to the girl’s “erotic tendencies.”Even in the age of the eugenics movement, where tens of thousands were involuntarily sterilized by state governments who sought to breed “better” human beings by removing disability from the gene pool, the Hewitt case attracted nationwide attention. Could a diagnosis of disability allow parents to control their child’s reproductive future against his or her will?Ann believed it could not, summarizing her fate matter-of-factly. “I had no dolls when I was little, and I'll have no children when I'm old,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.” We’ve come a long way since the age of the eugenics movement, particularly when it comes to mat

In 1936, Ann Cooper Hewitt filed a lawsuit against her mother — and with good reason. At the age of 20, her mother Ann had sterilized her against her will. Having succeeded in classifying her as having an intellectual disability, Ann’s mother was legally allowed to authorize the operation over Ann’s objections. Her mother’s lawyer responded by claiming that Ann’s sterilization had been “for society’s sake” due to the girl’s “erotic tendencies.”Even in the age of the eugenics movement, where tens of thousands were involuntarily sterilized by state governments who sought to breed “better” human beings by removing disability from the gene pool, the Hewitt case attracted nationwide attention. Could a diagnosis of disability allow parents to control their child’s reproductive future against his or her will?Ann believed it could not, summarizing her fate matter-of-factly. “I had no dolls when I was little, and I'll have no children when I'm old,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.” We’ve come a long way since the age of the eugenics movement, particularly when it comes to mat