Dear friends,
I thought I would start with something small and beautiful: members of the women’s national soccer team talk about books. If you’re curious, follow the link to find out what they’re reading. I can’t help wonder if professional teams of men read and discuss books. I hope so.
For the last few months, I’ve been facilitating discussions of The Phantom Tollbooth with a wonderful group of adults who Zoom in to the Brooklyn Public Library from the Lands Beyond to practice their English conversation skills.
Talking about stories gives us the opportunity to talk about characters — and ourselves — and the themes that shape our lives.
President Biden has acknowledged his seventh grandchild, Hunter’s daughter Navy. He was taken to task by Maureen Dowd last month for his outdated view of family, inconsistent with his unconditional love for those in his circle of care.
The president’s openness to a relationship with a child that his son doesn’t recall conceiving is a personal matter, not a political one AND it is a sign of growth for an old man. I have a lot of respect for people who continue to reflect on their behavior, to admit when they’re wrong, and to change.
Should we reach the point where the current president debates the former president, I hope each man will be asked about mistakes — personal and political — that they’ve made and learned from. I would like to hear them talk about growing and changing.
I wrote all of that earlier today, before I headed out to meet a friend for tea. While I was out, Trump was indicted for the third time.
It’s a doozy of an indictment. As you’ve probably seen by now, there are four counts and six as-yet-unnamed co-conspirators. Like Individual 1, as Trump was referred to prior to his first criminal indictment, it isn’t hard to identify the likely co-conspirators, since
the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.
This cohort of rogues, led by Rogue 1, is alleged to have conspired to keep Trump in office by denying the civil rights of voters, who chose Biden, and to defraud the nation and to obstruct an official proceeding. A fourth count is that Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the charges, has urged us to read the indictment in full. I intend to.
I read enough on the train to understand that lying about having won was not in itself a crime, since liars are protected by the First Amendment. This case is about the nefarious shit that Trump and his associates did after their lies were laughed out of court.
The rest of this post was written before the indictment was announced. In light of the fact that Trump was charged with conspiring to deny people voting rights, there’s a nice parallel below.
The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) is suing Ron DeSantis for his administration’s efforts to deny formerly incarcerated citizens their voting rights. A 2018 referendum lifted Florida’s lifetime ban on voting for people with felony convictions.
FRRC’s lawsuit alleges that the DeSantis administration
created a maze of bureaucratic and sometimes violent obstacles to discourage formerly incarcerated citizens from exercising their right to vote.
The state requires folks to pay outstanding debt prior to having their voting rights restored, but the mechanism for determining what an individual owes is a mess.
“So you’re telling people that you have to pay your debt before you’re able to vote. But there’s no guarantee that the state could even tell them exactly what they owe?”
Like Kafka’s character, Josef K, the folks in Florida are stymied by absurd obstacles in their quest for justice. FRRC is fighting the good fight.
Donate to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which is committed to ending disenfranchisement and voter discrimination.
DeSantis is a loathsome and mewling character. His pathetic response to the news of today’s indictment was to complain that voters in Washington DC would not give Trump a fair trial.
He promised to further disenfranchise citizens in the capital by making reforms to facilitate the removal of cases from that jurisdiction to defendants’ home districts. DeSantis will have to be written out of the story soon.
It is both hopeful and heartbreaking. These folks talk about caring for other people as a means to their own growth.
A few more states (in addition to the six with second-look laws) are beginning to reexamine the policy of caging people who committed serious crimes as young people for their whole lives.
The bipartisan US Sentencing Commission in January issued draft guidelines that would give judges more flexibility to consider releasing elderly inmates.
This spring, the Biden Administration filled empty seats on the Commission, which had not had a quorum since 2018. The Commission sent final amendments to Congress at the beginning of May. Apparently, unless Congress takes action to reject the second-look amendment, it will take effect on November 1, 2023.
Let your Congressional representative know that you support the second-look amendment to federal sentencing guidelines.
HeLa cells went on to become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines.
Despite that incalculable impact, the Lacks family had never been compensated.
The Lacks family brought the suit to highlight persistent racism inside the American medical system. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer when she was just 31. Today would have been her 103rd birthday.
with love,
L