By Ben Jealous June is Pride month in the United States. In big cities and small communities, LGBTQ+ people and their friends, families, and allies will celebrate freedom and progress toward full equality. All fair-minded Americans can celebrate that progress. But there is a growing shadow over this year’s celebrations. The far-right political movement is aggressively trying to turn back the clock to a time when LGBTQ+ people were not treated equally under the law. Anti-equality legal groups and anti-equality politicians are pushing legal and political attacks on our most vulnerable young people. MAGA movement political operatives are trying to…
Author: Ben Jealous
By Ben Jealous The mass killings at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, 10 days after the white supremacist killings in Buffalo, New York, are further evidence of how deeply our society is broken, and how urgently we need to figure out how to begin fixing it. The slaughter of so many young children and two of their teachers is shocking at a human level. It is absolutely gutting to me as a parent of school-aged children. Millions of us send our kids off to school every day, trying to set aside the knowledge gnawing at our insides that our school…
It is with profound joy that I write these words today: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been nominated to become our nation’s first Black woman Supreme Court Justice. From a pool of outstanding Black women attorneys, jurists and legal scholars, President Biden has chosen Judge Jackson for her stellar credentials and brilliant legal mind. We are overjoyed by this nomination; now the Senate needs to move quickly to confirm her. In the coming weeks we will all get the opportunity to learn more about Judge Jackson’s story and her record. Her legal credentials are outstanding: a double-Harvard alumna, earning both…
By Ben Jealous President Joe Biden could have delivered his recent voting rights message to U.S. senators from the White House just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol. Instead, he and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Atlanta a few days before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It was the perfect place for the president’s powerful message urging senators to be on the right side of history by doing whatever it takes to get voting rights legislation passed and put on the president’s desk. The president and vice president visited King’s church before traveling to Morehouse College, King’s alma mater. They spoke in a place represented long and…
By Ben Jealous It’s been a year since a mob of Trumpists violently attacked the U.S. Capitol. They wanted to stop Congress from affirming President Joe Biden’s victory. Some of them were out for blood. All of them were motivated by the former president’s Big Lie that he won the election but that his victory was stolen from him and his supporters. That lie has been debunked by journalists and election officials—both Republicans and Democrats. It has been rejected by courts. But it has never been abandoned by Trump or his right-wing allies. And so one year after it fueled…
By Ben Jealous One of the most important reasons to vote Donald Trump out of the White House was to stop him from packing our federal courts with even more anti-voting-rights, anti-equality, pro-corporate judges. Stopping the flood of bad Trump judges was a huge accomplishment for every organizer and voter who helped elect Joe Biden as president. And that’s only part of the good news. President Biden is making history with the most diverse set of judicial nominees ever. President Trump’s judicial nominees were overwhelmingly white men, often young and unqualified. They were almost always picked for their commitment to a right-wing judicial…
By Ben JealousElection Day in Virginia was a major defeat for the Democratic Party. It could signal a much bigger disaster in 2022 if Democratic officials do not learn the right lessons and do not deliver on the promises they have made to voters. Every election is complicated. There is no single explanation for Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset victory. But there are plenty of warning signs. Going into the election, it was clear that there was an enthusiasm gap. In other words, Youngkin’s Republican supporters were more excited about voting than former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s Democratic backers. One big reason…
By Ben Jealous Across the country, Republican state legislators have been busy imposing new voting restrictions and devising corrupt redistricting schemes to give their party more power than they could win under a fair system. Republicans in the U.S. Senate protected that wrongdoing again in October by using filibuster rules to stop federal voting rights legislation from coming up for debate. This is political obstruction of justice, and President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats must not allow it to stand. One day before Senate Republicans made it clear that they have no interest in protecting the right to vote or…
By Ben Jealous Republican-controlled state legislatures have imposed new voting restrictions. They are getting ready to create more safe congressional seats for Republicans through abusive partisan redistricting. They are undermining faith in elections with false claims about election fraud and demands for fake “audits.” The good news is that there is new momentum in Congress and a new bill to protect our democracy. We need to get it passed. The new Freedom to Vote Act would protect the right to vote, end unfair partisan gerrymandering, and shine a light on the flood of dark money that allows billionaires to buy…
By Ben Jealous Donald Trump’s defenders are shameless. And that makes them dangerous. It has only been a month since a mob enraged by Trump’s lies about the election being stolen attacked the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s victory. The terrorists killed one police officer and injured more than 100, leaving some with head injuries and one with three fingers missing; two have since died by suicide. The mob wasn’t able to stop the transfer of power and keep Trump in office. And, thank God, they didn’t get their hands on members of Congress or on…