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Seven years. That is all it took for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to decide that Amber Guyger was ready to walk free. Guyger is the former Dallas police officer who shot and killed Botham Jean inside his own apartment. On Thursday, the board granted her parole, a painful reminder of how little a Black man's life can seem to weigh in the scales of justice. Jean was a 26-year-old accountant. On the night of Sept. 6, 2018, he was "sitting on his couch, eating a bowl of

When Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother, was shot dead in the driver's seat of her SUV on January 7, she became a symbol of what critics see as immigration enforcement operating without restraint. Her family has now filed two federal lawsuits alleging wrongful death and excessive force, and her partner, Becca Good, has spoken publicly for the first time. "She was pure love, and she was funny, and she was smart," Becca said. She described attending back-to-school nig

Fort Worth's city council voted unanimously earlier this month to approve an $11.25 million settlement for the family of Atatiana Jefferson, the 28-year-old Black woman fatally shot in her own home by police officer Aaron Dean in October 2019, a resolution that stands out precisely because accountability for police violence so rarely comes at all, let alone twice. Under the agreement, Jefferson's two minor nephews will have their shares placed in trust until they turn 18, wi

A UN report has confirmed what many climate scientists feared: it's already too late to keep global warming under the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement, and that should alarm everyone. According to the UN Environment Programme, Earth; currently at 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels; will cross that line "in the next few years," locking in decades of intensifying disasters, rising seas, and species loss no matter what happens next. The tone from officials is stark. UN

Federal immigration agents in Evanston, Ill., "mistakenly detained a U.S. citizen, who suffered injuries to his head, neck and teeth in the confrontation," according to local police. The incident shows why ICE cannot be reformed. An agency built for mass deportation treats anyone who fits a loose description as a suspect, and citizens pay the price. The agents said they held a warrant for a person with Chicago-area addresses, and the man they seized "resembled the person soug

ICE's plan to spend up to $2 million on Boston Dynamics' robot "SPOT" dogs raises a simple question: is this really where taxpayer money is needed most? According to the federal procurement notice, the robots would provide "inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment in environments that may pose risks to personnel." The notice adds they will "improve officer safety" and "enhance DHS's ability to respond to incidents involving dangerous, confined, unstable, or di

A grand jury has cleared everyone involved in the death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, and if this is what passes for justice, it's hard not to feel sick about it. District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath announced the "no true bill" decision Monday, flatly declaring "there is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan's disappearance and death were racially motivated." She went further, taking aim at the family's own attorney, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, accu

Terri McGuire Mollica's decade-long wait for surgery on a uterine fibroid, one that grew to the size of a grapefruit while prison officials did nothing, shows why the federal grievance system, and the human rights logic behind it, has to change. Prisons can strip people of liberty, but they cannot strip them of the right to basic medical care and a functioning avenue for redress. Yet the Bureau of Prisons' grievance system has become, in practice, a wall rather than a door. T

The UN General Assembly voted 164 to one, with six abstentions, to adopt the "Correct the Map" resolution, an effort to change how Africa and other regions appear on world maps. The United States cast the lone vote against it. Introduced by Togo on behalf of the African Group and backed by the African Union, the measure isn't legally binding and doesn't force anyone to abandon the Mercator projection. Instead, it's the right first step: a nudge toward equal-area alternatives

The F.B.I. has quietly told agents around the country that it will stop investigating confrontations with immigration officers, a move that strips away one of the few remaining checks on federal agents who use lethal force against American citizens and residents. According to people briefed on the internal notice sent Thursday, the bureau will no longer probe claims of assaults on Department of Homeland Security agents, even though those investigations "can provide a crucial

Data centers built to power artificial intelligence are sweeping into Native American lands across Oklahoma and beyond, and tribal communities are being forced to weigh short-term revenue against long-term sovereignty over their water, land, and cultural survival. For the Caddo Nation, whose casino closed in 2017, the pressure is stark. "We're not poor," said chairman Bobby Gonzalez. "We're broke." But former tribal council member Tracy Newkumet pushed back on ceding the futu

The Trump administration's latest broadside against the Smithsonian reads as another chapter in its campaign to reshape how the country tells its own history, this time targeting the National Museum of American History. A 162-page report from the White House Domestic Policy Council, titled "Saving America's Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage," accuses the museum of "institutional capture by

For decades, Indigenous boarding school survivors carried their trauma in silence, and their testimonies now show why continued support for healing matters. An oral history project by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, wrapping up in Tulsa, has collected video testimony from over 360 survivors across 19 states, work to be preserved in the Library of Congress. The stories reveal both the weight of unresolved trauma and the relief that comes from f

Colin is heading out on tour this fall for his forthcoming new book, The Perilous Fight. Join him for thoughtful, candid conversations moderated by some of your favorite Black authors, journalists, and community leaders. Find your city below and reserve your seat. See the tour dates here.

New York, NY (April 7, 2026) — Renowned Civil Rights Activist and Super Bowl quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, announced plans today to publish THE PERILOUS FIGHT, a new memoir acquired by Legacy Lit Editor, Amina Iro. Iro acquired World Rights from Creative Artists Agency, LLC. Legacy Lit will publish in hardcover and eBook editions on September 15, 2026. The audiobook, narrated by Kaepernick, is produced by and will be available exclusively from Audible to coincide with the ha

A federal court has restored $127 million in USDA grants that had been stripped from Black farmer organizations earlier this year, offering relief to groups like Sharon Mallory's 2020 Farmers Cooperative. In March, the USDA terminated the funding, claiming the awards were "discriminatory based on diversity, equity and inclusion and wasteful spending." The money came from the Biden-era Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program, which awarded $300 million to 50 projec

Every license plate on the road feeds into a database that any officer can search, and there's no warrant required before they do. That's the core of a new Institute for Justice review: at least 24 cases nationwide of police using automated license plate readers (ALPR), like Flock Safety cameras, to stalk romantic partners, exes, coworkers, and even strangers. "The fundamental problem with these systems is that they place private information about people's movements over time

In another attempt to reshape how slavery is remembered, federal agents overnight removed newly restored panels at Philadelphia's President's House site and quietly installed replacements that critics say sanitize George Washington's role as an enslaver. Attorney Michael Coard of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition didn't mince words: "To say that we're outraged is an understatement." Speaking near the Liberty Bell on Wednesday, Coard said the new panels "completely whitewas

Evanston, Illinois — the only city in America to have actually distributed reparations, is now fighting to defend its landmark program after the federal government joined a lawsuit seeking to shut it down. Launched in 2021, Evanston's program allocated $20 million to Black residents who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 and suffered housing discrimination through city-sanctioned redlining policies. Over $7 million has already been distributed in $25,000 increments, fun

The modern job market is already brutal for new graduates, but for Black applicants, an invisible force is quietly making things worse. A landmark study tracking 3.4 million people submitting 4 million applications across 150 employers has pulled back the curtain on how AI hiring tools systematically disadvantage Black candidates before a human ever reviews their resume. Ninety percent of U.S. employers now rely on AI screening tools to sort applicants, with most using the sa