The Dictatorship

Trump needs to keep my father’s name out of his speeches this month, and every month

Published

1 year ago

February 1, 2025

Trump needs to keep my father’s name out of his speeches this month, and every month

The inauguration of the 47th president of the United States coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Daythe federal holiday that should prompt us all to reflect on my late father’s legacy of justice, equity and peace. While I noted President Donald Trump’s acknowledgment of my father and his dreamthe address quickly veered away from those ideals. Rather than offering a message of unity, the president outlined a vision focused on undoing much of the progress we have made since the Civil Rights Movement, progress my father tirelessly fought and ultimately sacrificed his life for.

The president outlined a vision focused on undoing much of the progress my father tirelessly fought and ultimately sacrificed his life for.

Since the inauguration, the president’s actions have made clear that that part of his speech was not simply empty rhetoric. Nothing could be further from my father’s dream than planning to lay off all federal employees in diversity, equity and inclusionroles, announcing more repressive immigration policies, promising more ICE raids and overall targeting vulnerable communities. That is not my father’s dream.

The disconnect between the president’s actions and my father’s values serves as a stark reminder that the legacy we leave behind is not just about what we say; it’s more about what we do — and the lasting impact our actions have on the lives of others.

The challenges facing our nation are significant, and the solutions require collaboration, empathy and an unwavering commitment to justice. Scapegoating vulnerable groups or dismantling programs designed to ensure fairness and opportunity runs counter to the values my father championed. It is a reminder that progress is never guaranteed but instead must be defended at every turn.

As we look to the future, I find myself reflecting on what it means to build a legacy. In my book “What Is My Legacy?” which I wrote with my wife, Arndrea Waters King, and our friends Marc Kielburger and Craig Kielburger, I explore the idea that legacy is defined not by wealth or title but by the impact of our daily actions. My father often said, “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.” It is through service to others that we create a meaningful legacy.

My parents deeply believed in the power of service to advance justice and foster unity. My mother, Coretta Scott Kingspent years advocating for the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday centered on community service.

Recent crises like the wildfires in Los Angeles remind us of the best of humanity — neighbors helping neighborscommunities uniting in the face of adversity. These moments demonstrate that despite our differences, we can come together when it matters most. In these times of crisis, Americans demonstrate the greatest traits of our nation and its people: empathy, unity and resilience.

But just as my father refused to relent in the face of impossible obstacles, I remain steadfastly optimistic about our future. History teaches us that progress often invites resistance. Every major step forward has faced challenges, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Voting Rights Act. Yet, my father’s unwavering belief in the power of love, justice and collective action continues to inspire. His dream is not confined to the past; it is a call to action for each of us today.

The decisions we make now will shape the legacy we leave for future generations. I hope our leaders prioritize unity, justice and opportunity for all Americans.

But leadership is not limited to those in positions of power — it is a responsibility we all share. Together, through our actions and commitments, we can realize my father’s dream and ensure his legacy endures.

Martin Luther King, III

Martin Luther King, III, is a global humanitarian, activist, and the elder son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He is chairman of the board of the Drum Major Institute, the author of “What is My Legacy?” and cohost of the My Legacy podcast alongside his wife, Arndrea Waters King, Marc Kielburger and Craig Kielburger.

The Dictatorship

FBI raids Ohio voting-rights organization

Published

3 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

FBI raids Ohio voting-rights organization

Jun. 11, 2026, 11:49 PM EDT

FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, according to three people briefed on the search.

Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of the group’s leaders and staff members, carrying some subpoenas and seeking information and electronic devices, according to the people, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing investigation. Members of the group had made contact with lawyers on Thursday to determine their legal options, the people said.

Prentiss Haney, a board member for Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told MS NOW Thursday night that agents approached people with connections to Ohio Organizing Collaborative, including some who had performed basic canvassing and volunteer work for the group, and began pressing them for information.

Agents were “basically trying to fish for information,” said Haney.

“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask,” Haney said, adding that agents “asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”

Haney said some of the people said the agents approached without warrants.

“Just straight-up intimidation tactics,” he said.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Thursday night.

Those sources familiar with the investigation said they are concerned this new effort in Ohio is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt and distrust in voting integrity in key swing states ahead of the midterm elections.

Federal agents have in recent months launched inquiries and investigations into voting protocols in Georgia and Wisconsin, have subpoenaed voting records in Arizona and sought reviews of voting machines in Puerto Rico.

According to its website, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative facilitates statewide voter registration through grassroots, community-led programs, including its “Democracy Builders” initiative. This collaborative works in Ohio’s major metropolitan areas, such as Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, to help underrepresented communities register to vote and provides other support.

The group has also joined lawsuits challenging redistricting efforts that it argues reduce Black voters of representation. These lawsuits also “stand your ground” laws that allow a person to shoot someone if they feel threatened.

Haney said the Cleveland raid and harassment of staff are unjustified and that investigators lack any evidence of wrongdoing.

“How can they distract and intimidate civil rights leaders and voters and community leaders who are helping people get registered to vote and create a national spectacle about it?” he said.

“That is the only reason why they would choose to do that, do it now, in the middle of a contested political election in the state. There’s no other reason. They have no evidence of that.”

Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.

Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.

Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.

Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s attempt to conduct nitrogen gas execution

Published

3 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s attempt to conduct nitrogen gas execution

The Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s attempt to execute Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas after lower courts stopped the state from executing him with that method.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch voted to side with the state, according to the court’s unexplained order on Thursday night denying the state’s emergency application.

On Tuesday, a Trump-appointed judge in Alabama blocked the state from executing Lee under its nitrogen-hypoxia protocol. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks found that Lee proved the state’s method violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

She emphasized that although she was issuing a permanent injunction against the nitrogen method, she wasn’t banning the state from executing Lee. She said the record showed his alternative proposal of the firing squad “significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain as compared to nitrogen-hypoxia.”

Under precedent adopted by the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority, an inmate who challenges an execution method as unconstitutional must propose an alternative method that is feasible, readily implemented and significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain.

Having scheduled Lee’s execution for Thursday, Alabama officials moved to lift Marks’ injunction in an effort to proceed as planned. Procedurally, they first had to ask Marks herself for relief. In their motion to the judge, they said she downplayed the risks of the firing squad, as well as the state’s concern about finding willing and able executioners for the shooting method.

State officials further said the fact that they scheduled Lee’s execution for Thursday “should have sunk his claim.” They said that “however easy or hard it would be to implement a firing squad in the abstract, there’s no support for the view that it could be done two days from the Court’s decision that it satisfies the Eighth Amendment test.”

Marks rejected the motion to lift her injunction, noting that the state’s urgent motion did “little more than repeat the arguments it made previously,” which she also had rejected. She added that the state had no right to complain about the timing because it was the state that set Lee’s execution while litigation was pending.

A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declined to disturb Marks’ ruling. The panel’s majority recounted that a judge’s permanent injunction like the one Marks issued is entitled to deference and can be overturned only if the judge abused her discretion. With that in mind, the majority said her findings were “amply supported by the evidence presented.”

And noting that courts reviewing motions for urgent relief consider the “irreparable harm” at stake, the majority observed: “It goes without saying that Mr. Lee would suffer irreparable harm if he were executed pursuant to a method that the district court has found unconstitutional.”

On the other hand, the majority said the state’s preferred Thursday execution timing “is not a magical date” and that “the injury to the State caused by a delay would not be irreparable because the district court’s injunction allows it to execute Mr. Lee by any other authorized method (including lethal injection or the electric chair).”

Trump-appointed Judge Robert Luck was the panel dissenter. He began by recalling that Lee was sentenced to die for robbing and murdering Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson 26 years ago. “Unlike his victims, Lee was allowed to choose his method of execution,” he added, referring to Lee’s initial choice of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injection during a previous round of litigation.

“For as long as we’ve had an Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court has never held that a state’s method of execution qualifies as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment,” Luck wrote. “Because we shouldn’t do so here, I would grant the state’s motion to stay the injunction.”

Lee’s jury had recommended a life sentence, but the judge sentenced him to death under Alabama’s “judicial override” option, which has since been abolished.

The state cited Luck’s dissent in seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court on Thursday. Officials told the high court that if the lower court ruling in Lee’s favor stands, it would be “unprecedented in American history.” The state said it would not only “portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method” but would also “expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment.”

Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, an expert on the Supreme Court’s so-called shadow docketsubmitted an amicus brief opposing the state. He said Alabama was trying to do something procedurally that it shouldn’t be allowed to do. He explained that unlike in other emergency challenges that states have brought to the justices, Alabama wasn’t challenging a temporary execution stay issued by a lower court, but rather a permanent injunction.

“After all,” Vladeck said in the brief, “allowing Alabama to execute Mr. Lee through a grant of emergency relief would necessarily frustrate this Court’s ability to conduct plenary review of the district court’s final, permanent injunction.”

Highlighting that point, Lee’s lawyers told the justices that the case was “in a procedural posture unlike every previous method of execution challenge that this Court has considered.” They noted that unlike other emergency litigation in capital cases, “this case comes to the Court following a full three-day bench trial on the merits — the first such trial anywhere on the constitutionality of nitrogen asphyxiation.”

They said Lee wasn’t challenging his death sentence or the state’s ability to execute him but rather “only the method that Alabama intends to employ.” They said the state wanted to make the case moot by executing Lee “using an unconstitutional and permanently enjoined method,” but that the state hadn’t “cited a single case in which this Court has intervened in a capital case in such an extraordinary way.”

Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.

Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.

The Dictatorship

Kennedy Center board seeks delay of ruling on removal of Trump’s name by Friday deadline

Published

3 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Kennedy Center board seeks delay of ruling on removal of Trump’s name by Friday deadline

Jun. 11, 2026, 9:34 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’shandpicked board at the Kennedy Center is mounting a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the iconic performing arts facility before a court-ordered deadline to remove it by Friday.

The board voted on Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May 29 ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The formal stay will be filed on Friday, the person said.

Cooper ruled that only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center’s name and ordered references to Trump be removed by Friday. He also blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations that had been planned to start in July and last for two years.

The board move marks a shiftfrom a June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel saying email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”

The Kennedy Center’s website has dropped the president’s name. And an email earlier this week sent to membersoffering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump’s name.

After ignoring the Kennedy Center for much of his first term, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his return to office. Just a month into his second term, he oustedthe center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a hand-picked board of trustees that named him chairman. He brought in Richard Grenell to serve as president, a position he held until March when Matt Floca assumed the role.

The center’s lineup has included more Trump-friendly programming, serving as the venue for events such as the premiere of first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, “Melania.”

The board also announced it had renamed the facility the Trump Kennedy Center, a change scholars and lawmakers say must be initiated by Congress, and physically added the president’s name to the building’s facade.

The fallout from the arts community was swift and intense. Actor Daddy Rae,musician Bela Fleck and author Louise Penny were among the numerous artists who withdrew from appearances, while consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming resigned. Earlier this month, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Jean Davidson, left to head the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition to voting on the stay on Thursday, the board backed a resolution recognizing Trump’s “commitment to uphold this cherished American institution.”