News & Commentary

President Obama today commuted most of Chelsea Manning’s remaining sentence for disclosing classified information about the impact of America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on innocent civilians. This is an important development both for government transparency and for transgender rights.  With today’s clemency order, she will be released in May 2017 after having served seven years in prison. This isn’t a pardon. Chelsea pled guilty and will face the consequences for many of the charges against her. But the military sentenced her to 35 years in prison, a longer sentence than anyone else in U.S. history has received for disclosing information to the news media.   Chelsea's imprisonment was made far harder by the fact that she is a woman serving a sentence in a men’s prison. For year

In the second piece in the series, “Waking Up in Trump’s America,”  Jason Hernandez discusses his anxiety that clemency will screech to a halt under a Trump administration. Jason, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonviolent drug crime, is one of nearly 1,200 Americans who have had their sentences commuted by President Obama during his time in office.  As someone who was fortunate to have his sentence commuted by President Obama, I am frequently asked, "Do you think Presi

If we take President Donald Trump at his word, his administration will try to implement policies that will be a sustained assault on the constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly its most vulnerable. In the run-up to Inauguration Day, the ACLU is publishing first-person essays by authors from communities who will be affected by President Trump’s policies if he follows through on his promises. The inaugural post in our series, “Waking Up in Trump’s America,” is by DeShawn Taylor, M.D., a women’s health care provider in Phoenix, Arizona, who discusses what’s in store for reproductive rights in Trump’s America. In 2013, I opened my own medical practice in Phoenix, Arizona: Deser

The coincidence of the end of the Obama administration and the celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King invites some reflection on the connection between the election of the first Black president and the life and work of the great civil rights advocate. As always, I tend to view questions of national importance through the filter of my family and the way that it is affected by broader issues.When thinking of President Obama’s presidency, I invariably return to thoughts of the night in 2008 when he was elected. I spent the early part of the evening watching the returns with my now 97-year-old mother. My mother was born in Summerville, South Carolina, and came up to New York at age 9 in 1928 to rejoin her mother, who had moved north to work as a domestic for white families in Pennsylvania and New York. Like so many black families who were part of the great migration, they had moved north to escape discrimination and the lack of opportunity in the South only to face different manifestations of America’s original sin in the North. Her lifetime of facing discrimination great and small had taken a toll on my mother. Despite the ongoing posi

It is now well-known that Jeff Sessions’ record as a senator shows blindness or hostility to the rights of those the attorney general is responsible for protecting — people of color, women, LGBT people, religious minorities, and immigrants. Less well known, but equally disturbing, is his record as a prosecutor. When he last exercised the power of a prosecutor, as attorney general for Alabama in the 1990s, he abused that power.  The biggest case his office handled was thrown out in what the judge called the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he

The Kentucky legislature had hardly been gaveled into session on January 3 when lawmakers rushed to pass the latest offensive abortion restriction into law. HB 2 forces doctors to describe an ultrasound to a women seeking an abortion in detail, even if she objects, even if the doctor believes that forcing the description on the woman would be harmful, and—most absurdly—even if the woman is covering her eyes and ears. Lawmakers then took the extraordinary step of attaching an emergency clause to have the law take effect immediately. Just days after

Dean Westwood arrived at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Oregon in a wheelchair. Prison officials required him to surrender his property, submit to a search, and agree to administrative procedures like finger printing. This is standard practice. But unlike other detainees, Dean is paralyzed below the waist and has limited use of his arms and hands. Staff at the Oregon jail didn’t know how to handle someone with his disability. They rough-handled his limbs and

“If you’re to be called a communist every time you stand up for basic American rights and freedoms, what’s likely to happen? Will you be silent? And if so, is this what the House Committee on Un-American Activities is really after — a silent, submissive, un-protesting America?”

This morning, NBC News reported that Chelsea Manning is on President Obama’s “short list” to receive a commutation of her sentence. Chelsea applied for clemency in November, urging the president to commute her sentence to time served and give her a chance “to live life outside the USDB as the person was born to be.”With nine days left in office, action by Obama may be Chelsea’s last chance for survival. Seven years into her 35-year sentence, Chelsea has already served longer than any person in United States histo