News & Commentary

Today, as women across the world celebrate International Women’s Day, many here in the U.S. will be participating in “A Day Without a Woman,” a follow-on to the Women’s March on inauguration weekend that drew millions to rally in Washington, D.C., as well as in cities around the country and around the world. For many of us who work every day in the trenches to secure women’s rights, the march was profoundly energizing — a powerful demonstration of the renewed momentum in the struggle for women’s equality and its increasingly intersectional focus. A Day Without a Woman gives us another concrete way to make our strength visible: Orga

Racial profiling in Milwaukee is as common to Black men as manhood itself. I’m a lifelong Milwaukeean and a Black man. Born at the old Mount Sinai, raised in the R

When I was 20 years old, I sued the largest police force in the country over its blanket surveillance of countless New York Muslims — me among them. The decision to join the lawsuit was a difficult one, to say the least. I was terrified that going public

Sometimes you’re reminded of why you do the work you do. I received that reminder recently when a friend of mine pas

Today President Trump signed a new Muslim ban. The new executive order is a major retreat by the administration, reflecting that, as courts around the country have recognized, the original order was deeply flawed and totally unjustified. But the fundamental truth of this new order, like the old one, remains unchanged: The president promised to ban Muslims from the United States, and the ban is his attempt to make good on that unconstitutional and indefensible goal.President Trump’s intentions regarding the Muslim ban have been clear. In a statement “ON PREVENTING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION” posted to his campaign website — and still available on it as I write — then-candidate Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Again and again, he refused to disown this proposal, expressing his opinion that “Islam hates us” and that there are “problems with Muslims coming into the country.”Instead of abandoning this odious idea in response to widespread criticism and outrage, Mr. Trump candidly explained that he would change the wording of his proposal but not its substance. “I’m looking now at territories,” he said. “People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you can’t use the word ‘Muslim.’ Remember this. And I’m okay with that, because I’m talking ‘territory’ instead of ‘Muslim.’” Asked about the Muslim ban, he said, “all it whatever you want. We'll call it territories, okay?” Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and advisor to the president, explained that Trump asked him to figure out “the right way” to establish the Muslim ban “legally” and that he and others settled on using the word “countries” to achieve Trump’s goal.

This piece originally appeared at Just Security.  If a Muslim Ban is cleaned up to exclude Iraq, exempt lawful permanent residents and other

As religious bigotry rises to a fever pitch nationwide, New York City is leading by example against it. Today, a revised settlement announced in a pair of c