News & Commentary

In 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish refugees, were turned away from the port of Miami and sent back to Europe. Of those passengers, 254 were murdered in the Holocaust. The U.S. government turned away those refugees, so heartbreakingly close to safety—and also restricted Jewish immigration and instituted new vetting procedures—because of rampant overblown fears that the Nazis might smuggle spies and saboteurs in among the Jewish refugees. Yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, The White House put out a statement th

Imagine if government agents came to your home and carted away everything you own, without warning and without telling you how to get back whatever they didn’t throw out. For Lisa Hooper, who lives with her partner outdoors near Interstate 90 in Seattle, this is an ever-present thre

This piece originally appeared at The Guardian.As a teenager, I made some bad decisions. I got into trouble with the law. When I was 15, I was sentenced to a year at the Lincoln Hill School for Boys, a juvenile prison. I didn’t have a great idea what that meant at the time. I didn’t know they’d be sending me four hours away to Irma, Wisconsin, where I would be surrounded by guards who treat the kids there like dogs. They put us in cages, causing us more trauma. I ended up spending two years there after my sentence was extended. There are about 160 kids aged 14-17 at Lincoln Hills. A lot of drama happened there with guards beating k

STANDING ROCK INDIAN RESERVATION, N.D. — On his fourth day in office, President Trump took executive action that signaled his desire to complete the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. He signed a memorandum ordering the Army secretary and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “review and approve in an expedited manner…requests for approval to construct and operate the DAPL” as well as an executive order to “streamline and expedite” the environmental review and approval process for so-called “high priority infrastructure projects.” Trump’s outrageous and provocative executive actions took many people by surprise — even the new Re

In the midst of widespread reports of a clampdown on federal agencies’ public communications by the Trump administration, lots of people are asking about what rights federal government employees have to continue speaking to the public. The short answer? It depends. The new administration is entitled to use the official channe

I have a spinal cord injury in my neck, which rendered me paralyzed from the collarbone down. When I was sentenced to prison, my physical disability should have been taken into account by the corrections officers and staff. But it wasn’t. Instead I was deprived basic care and necessary services, which put my health at risk and caused me great harm. While incarcerated with the Oregon Department of Corrections, I was needlessl