News & Commentary

It’s been over half a century since the Supreme Court first ruled that public schools cannot impose prayer on students. But in the Webster Parish School District in Louisiana, it might as well be the 1950s because school officials at Lakeside Junior/Senior High School and other district schools start every morning with a prayer delivered over the school’s public-address system. Student “volunteers” may read Bible verses, or they may read the Lord’s Prayer, the text of which is conveniently taped near the microphone. But the school district’s backward time travel doesn’t end there. School officials are imposing religi

This week, the watchdog agency for the Department of Homeland Security issued a damning new report examining Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s operation of five immigration jails across the country. The Office of the Inspector General concluded that the serious problems it found “undermine the protection of detainees’ rights, their humane treatment, and the provision of a safe and healthy environment.” The report was based on unannounced inspections and direct reports from peopl

On Tuesday, the New York City Council will vote on two police accountability bills. One represents real reform that will protect New Yorkers' privacy rights when police ask to search them without probable cause. The other is faux reform that is the result of a backroom deal between powerful politicians and the New York Police Department. For more than five years, the two bills were collectively known as the Right to Know Act.

A new report from The Sarasota-Herald Tribune has found that drug enforcement in Florida treats Black people much more severely than white people. This follows a Tribune report in 2015 exposing prejudice in Florida’s sentencing practices, showing that Blacks are punished with significantly longer prison sentences than whites convicted of the same crimes with similar facts. Disturbing? Absolutely. Unjust? Completely. Surprising? Not at all. The results of the Tribune’s investigation ar

Earlier this week, media reports incorrectly reported that the Pentagon would begin allowing transgender people to enlist in the military despite President Trump’s opposition. First, in a misleadin

Some 1.3 million Alabamians – more than twice as many who voted in the primary – turned out to vote in Tuesday’s special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The turnout was extraordinary because it took place in a state that has a well-documented history of trying to suppress the vote of the very group that helped propel Doug Jones to victory. Alabama has a long record of suppressing the African-American vote. In the Jim Crow era, state authorities made

By the third time Sherese Crawford got pulled over, she knew it was no matter of coincidence. Crawford is a 38-year-old African-American Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent recently on temporary a

The Ferguson-Florissant School District was born out of a 1975 federal desegregation order, intended to remedy effects of historical discrimination against African-American students. Yet,

Invisible algorithms increasingly shape the world we live in, and not always for the better. Unfortunately, few mechanisms are in place to ensure they’re not causing more harm than good. That might finally be changing: A first-in-the-nation