Stephen Miller spoke at an April event in Warren, Mich., marking President Trump’s first 100 days in office.Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images
Stephen Miller wanted to keep the planes in the air—and that is where they stayed.
When a federal judge in March told the Trump administration to turn around flights of deported migrants headed to El Salvador, senior officials hastily convened a Saturday evening conference call to figure out what to do.
If they didn’t return the passengers, they would be defying a court order, some administration officials worried. Miller, who is President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, pushed for the planes to keep flying, which they ultimately did. The judge would later say that allowing officials to defy court judgments would make a “solemn mockery” of the Constitution.
The 39-year-old immigration hawk, who has been by Trump’s side since the 2016 campaign, has emerged as a singular figure in the second Trump administration, wielding more power than almost any other White House staffer in recent memory—and eager to circumvent legal limitations on his agenda.
He has his own staff of about 30 and a Secret Service detail, which White House officials said was because he had received death threats and serves as homeland security adviser. He has been responsible for the administration’s broadsides against universities, law firms and even museums. He has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.
Miller had considerable sway in Trump’s first term. But when aides at the time suggested promoting Miller to a leadership role at the Department of Homeland Security, Trump declined, according to a former administration official, telling aides he thought Miller wasn’t leader material.
His influence has expanded sharply since, thanks largely to his steadfast loyalty to Trump. This account of Miller’s tenure is based on interviews with current and former White House officials, Trump advisers and other prominent Republicans.
Some of Miller’s colleagues said they were alarmed by some of the legal maneuvers that Miller has proposed for executing the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, and Trump has gently ribbed him for being too “happy” about deportations.
Miller, who has written or edited every executive order signed by Trump in his second term, attended a May event of the Make America Healthy Again Commission.Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
Miller, who isn’t a lawyer, is the official who first suggested using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, which the Justice Department pursued. He also privately, then publicly, floated suspending habeas corpus, or the right for prisoners to challenge their detention in court, which the administration hasn’t tried. That prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials.
His orders to increase arrests regardless of migrants’ criminal histories set off days of protests in Los Angeles. Miller coordinated the federal government’s response, giving orders to agencies including the Pentagon, when Trump sent in the Marines and the National Guard, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Miller’s portfolio covers almost every issue Trump is interested in. In recent months, he talked to CEOs about a coming tariff announcement; joined a meeting between Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Trump about the company’s antitrust case; and met with other tech companies on artificial intelligence.
Even some posts at cabinet agencies have been described by administration officials as reporting directly to Miller, effectively bypassing cabinet secretaries.
There are some limits to his influence. He was supportive of Meta’s push to settle its antitrust case, which fell flat. Trump last week signaled concerns that the administration’s deportation policies were too aggressive, calling for a pause in some deportations that he has since rolled back. Trump, asked how Miller’s directives on deportations squared with his own, declined to put distance between the two of them. “We have a great understanding,” Trump said.
The aggressive posture has started to spark some voter backlash, with polls showing Trump’s approval rating on immigration and deportations has turned negative.
Several White House staffers said Miller always takes the most “extreme” view of any issue, and his positions have cost the administration in court. In Trump’s first 100 days back in office, courts issued nationwide injunctions in 25 cases against the federal government, compared with six in his entire first term and four during the Biden administration, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Several cases have already reached the Supreme Court, which has ruled against Trump on some immigration cases.
“I think the administration has miscalculated and overstepped,” said Skye Perryman, who leads Democracy Forward, an organization that has repeatedly sued Trump.
Miller has responded to the courts’ intervention by denouncing it as “judicial tyranny.” His allies argue illegal border crossings are down to almost zero because his aggressive proposals are deterring migrants.
“Stephen Miller is one of President Trump’s most trusted and longest serving aides for a reason—he delivers,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
In the wilderness
Miller stuck by Trump when many staffers quit their jobs after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had helped draft Trump’s speech that morning, and worked until 12 p.m. on Jan. 20—the day Trump’s first term ended—telling the officer taking his badge he would be back in four years.
“Sixteen Hundred Pennsylvania Avenue is the greatest address in the world, and though we now leave these gates, rest assured, this is not goodbye,” he wrote to colleagues.
Three months later, Miller launched a nonprofit, America First Legal, aimed at countering what Miller described as a “years-long, one-sided legal assault” by the left. “Now, we must turn the tables,” he said at the time.
Over the next four years, it filed dozens of lawsuits, many of which are ongoing, categorized on its website under topics including “DEI,” “Woke Corporations” and “Women’s Sports.” The group’s targets are now under fire from the Trump administration, too.
Miller speaking with reporters outside the White House in January.Photo: Francis Chung/Press Pool
In 2022, the group called on the Education Department to stop distributing federal funds to universities where it alleged antisemitism was festering. Three years later, the Trump administration would do just that at universities including Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern.
In 2024, Miller’s group helped 16 Republican-led states sue the Biden administration over a policy that protected illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens from deportation. A judge ruled in the states’ favor, and the Trump administration overturned the policy this year.
By the time Trump returned to the White House, the group had about two dozen lawyers on staff and had raised more than $60 million from donors, whose identities it doesn’t disclose. The group paid Miller more than $500,000 last year, according to his financial disclosure.
Meanwhile, Miller continued to play an active role across the Republican Party, even if his outreach wasn’t always welcome.
Congressional aides fielded lengthy calls from Miller about illegal immigration, often without any specific requests. One likened him to a grandmother who wouldn’t stop talking and said his calls were akin to listening to a podcast. Others said he would call to scold aides about how they had framed a social-media post on a particular issue or criticizing the way they had worded a press release.
As a House committee prepared for then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to testify, Miller came to the Hill to play the role of Mayorkas, aides said. During the prep, he answered questions as the secretary—but also chimed in to give lawmakers advice on questions.
Miller was determined to kill a bipartisan bill pushed by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma in 2024 on the border and regularly called House Speaker Mike Johnson.
He also called the Republican National Committee to offer his advice on how the party should communicate on immigration, sometimes offering his thoughts on what the RNC chairman could tweet, people familiar with the discussions said.
He was a regular visitor to Mar-a-Lago during the campaign, meeting with Trump above his ballroom. Campaign aides say Miller always wanted to talk more about immigration. Trump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and his other aides wanted to keep the message on the economy. Trump staffers started displaying ominous photos of migrants at his events.
Some posts at cabinet agencies have been described by administration officials as reporting directly to Miller.Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Hundreds of orders
In the first term, Trump was largely unprepared to govern. Miller regularly complained then that others in the administration tried to block his immigration decisions, and outside lawyers would stymie their efforts. This time, Miller came in determined to correct that.
He brought hundreds of proposed orders to the White House as well as his own staff. Russell Vought, the onetime treasurer of America First Legal, is now the White House budget chief. Reed Rubinstein, the group’s senior vice president, was nominated as legal adviser of the State Department. Matt Whitaker, a board member, is the U.S. permanent representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
He now tells other staffers how to behave around Trump, people who have heard his comments say, and upgraded his office from one on a different floor to one steps from the Oval Office.
During the first term, Miller would push for hard-line policies that others blanched at, including advocating for several dozen countries to be added to the travel ban list of seven, a former administration official said. People laughed, but he was serious, the official said. This time, Trump announced a ban that covered a dozen countries.
He keeps in Trump’s good graces by giving Trump ideas—but more importantly, helping the president carry his own out.
Administration officials noted how Miller shut down discussion about whether the U.S. should bomb Houthi targets in a Signal chat that was accidentally shared with The Atlantic’s editor in chief. As the vice president and top national security officials discussed options, Miller weighed in.
“As I heard it, the president was clear,” Miller said. “Green light,” he added.
Earlier this month, Leavitt, the press secretary, interviewed Miller at a private event for Republican donors at the Four Seasons in Washington.
Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., said large swaths of Los Angeles were engaged in a “rebellion,” according to people present.
Los Angeles had become like Cancún, he said—it was fine to visit, but not good for its own citizens. To conclude the event, Leavitt told the crowd that Miller needed to return to his work of deportations.
Miller smiled in response, and then left to return to the White House.
I got a lot from reading and re-reading this. I tried to comment there, but WordPress sigh. Anyway, as a show of respect, here is this. Very good info and commentary
The transgender flags that usually adorn the Stonewall National Monument in New York City during Pride Month were missing this year, so some New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands.
During June, Pride flags are placed around the park’s fence. They usually include a mixture of rainbow LGBTQ+ flags, transgender flags and progress flags, which have stripes to include communities of color.
Photographer and advocate Steven Love Menendez said he created and won federal approval for the installation nine years ago. Within a few years, the National Park Service was picking up the tab, buying and installing flags, including trans ones.
Pride flags fly in the wind at the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan’s West Village on June 19, 2023 in New York City.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
This year, however, Menendez said the National Park Service told him to change the protocol.
“I was told … only the traditional rainbow flag would be displayed this year,” he said.
Now, no transgender or progress flags are among the 250 rainbow flags installed around the park.
“It’s a terrible action for them to take,” Menendez said.
“I used to be listed as an LGBTQ activist, and now it says ‘Steven Menendez, LGB activist,'” Menendez said. “They took out the Q and the T.”
“I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history”
Many visiting the monument said they are opposed to the change.
“I think it’s absurd. I think it’s petty,” said Willa Kingsford, a tourist from Portland.
“It’s horrible. They’re changing all of our history,” Los Angeles resident Patty Carter said.
Jay Edinin, of Queens, brought his own transgender flag to the monument.
“I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history, from our own communities, and from the visibility that we desperately need right now,” he said.
The transgender flags that usually adorn the Stonewall National Monument in New York City during Pride Month were missing this year, so some New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands.CBS News New York
He is not the only one bringing unauthorized flags to the park. A number of trans flags were seen planted in the soil.
National Park Service workers at the park told CBS News New York they are not authorized to speak on this subject. CBS News New York reached out by phone and email to the National Park Service and has not yet heard back.
Dave Carlin has covered major national news stories and events in the past four decades including Superstorm Sandy and its tri-state impacts, Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina and Iniki on Kauai, Hawaii. He also covered the Space Shuttle Program, 1989 San Francisco Earthquake, numerous Southern California wildfires, the trial and execution of serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida, the 1994 police shooting death of Tyke the eacaped Cirus Elephant on the streets of Honolulu, 2009’s Miracle on the Hudson, the NYC Mayoral administrations of Bloomberg through Adams and more.
My wife and I recently returned from a Danube River cruise — no, it’s not blue, the waltz notwithstanding — and we had a wonderful time.
One of the many pleasures of these relatively small river cruises is all the interesting people you get to meet from around the world. This time around, we spent most of our time with Canadians and Australians, who seemed to enjoy our company once they determined we shared their low opinion of our president.
When one of the Canadians we dined with several times learned that we had signed on for a “Sound of Music” tour of Salzburg, Austria — featuring fountains, mountains, cityscapes, trees, a church and other locations from the movie — he told a nice story about an Austrian who emotionally described to him his love for their traditional folk song, “Edelweiss.”
I had read that the song actually was written just for the movie and had no significance for Austrians, which our guide confirmed the next day. So when our new friend repeated his story at dinner that evening, I politely corrected him, explaining that although some Austrians may have embraced the song — the Edelweiss is their national flower — it was a Rodgers and Hammerstein creation.
I won’t say our friend was crestfallen, but he did seem disappointed. I should add that I have a long tradition of spoiling people’s favorite stories, in part through the urban legend columns I used to write semiregularly.
So here’s the question. Is the truth really that important, if it spoils a good narrative?
After all, we’re in what some people have characterized as the Post-Truth Era, ushered in most recently by Donald Trump, his congressional lapdogs and Fox News but immortalized much earlier by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Falsehoods abound, not just in the White House but all over social media.
Here’s how the European Center for Populism Studies explained the Big Lie technique.
The big lie is the name of a propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” who says “The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one,” and denotes where a known falsehood is stated and repeated and treated as if it is self-evidently true, in hopes of swaying the course of an argument in a direction that takes the big lie for granted rather than critically questioning it or ignoring it.
Pssst. If that doesn’t sound familiar, wake up.
Hitler used it to blame his country’s problems on his best available scapegoat, Jewish people. Trump and company have broadened this approach to encompass multiple scapegoats — immigrants, foreigners, transgender people, people who are “woke” because they encourage social justice and care about the future health of our planet — and to big lies involving the 2020 election and so many other subjects that we’re numb to it. He lies about everything, and his supporters don’t seem to know or care.
I remember when the idea of act checking first emerged in political coverage. Instead of just quoting politicians who were fudging the truth, the fact-checkers would point out when they were lying or exaggerating, in the case of The Washington Post by assigning up to four Pinocchios for the most egregious falsehoods.
Some politicians would correct themselves in future pronouncements. Others wouldn’t bother.
Trump, the ultimate Pinocchio, is oblivious to Fact Checking. He just plows ahead — “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!” — repeating the same misinformation over and over at rallies, news conferences, debates. Facts are irrelevant.
Perhaps most amazingly, his long-since-debunked fraud allegations regarding the 2020 election are being incorporated into Oklahoma’s public-school curriculum. Elsewhere, facts about racial injustice, climate change and our nation’s history have been altered or eliminated from public school curricula to suit the MAGA agenda. Kinglike, Trump even is punishing colleges, states and others who won’t go along with his determination to impose “1984”-style Newspeak.
I think at least some Trump followers — particularly Republican elected leaders — know he is lying. But because it suits their preferred narrative, they go along. That’s frightening enough. Even scarier, though, are the people who are too dim, lazy or Foxcentric to figure out that we’re not being overrun by bloodthirsty killer immigrants or that non-straight men and women aren’t a threat to our military, our children or anything else, not to mention that Trump really lost the 2020 election, that the rioters storming the Capitol weren’t the true victims of Jan. 6, that indiscriminate ICE goon squads aren’t the best solution to illegal immigration and that vaccinating our children continues to be a very good idea.
They don’t just accept the lies. They spread them. That’s why we must be advocates for the truth, correcting and even confronting falsehoods, at rallies, on social media, in conversations. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s fueling our country’s descent into unrecognizable autocratic chaos.
“Eidelweiss” may be trivial. But innocent people being demonized? Trust in our elections destroyed? Our constitutional guarantees shredded? Our planet’s climate threatened? Long-dead diseases given new life?History rewritten?
Speak up. The truth is worth defending.
This is a contributed opinion column. Bill White can be reached at whitebil1974@gmail.com. His Threads handle is whitebil2000. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at themorningcall.com/opinions.
June 21, 1877 The Molly Maguires Four members of the Molly Maguires were hung for murder in what was then Mauch Chunk, and in Pottsville, towns in Pennsylvania’s Carbon County. The Molly Maguires was a secret and violent Irish-Catholic organization of coal miners formed to combat the oppressive working and living conditions in the anthracite coal region of the state. Readmore (2 links)
June 21, 1908 A Women’s Sunday Suffrage rally, supporting the right of women to vote, drew several hundred thousand to London’s Hyde Park from all over the country. Women were encouraged to wear “the colours” – white (for purity), green (hope) and purple (dignity) – and in “as fetching, charming and ladylike a manner as possible.” As the Yorkshire Daily Post put it: “At least one half of the crowd was composed of the sort of people you would expect to see at a suburban garden party.” The women’s suffrage movement
June 21, 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three young Freedom Summer workers, disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi, while registering negroes to vote. Their bodies were found six weeks later, having been shot and then buried in an earthen dam. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan eventually went to prison on federal conspiracy charges related to the disappearance; none served more than six years. Schwerner and Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined CORE in 1963. Read more and hear versions of Pete Seeger’s song, “Those Three are On My Mind” More on Chaney Read about the movie
June 21, 1997 100,000 marched in solidarity with striking newspaper workers in Detroit after nearly two years on the picket line. support rally march 1, 1997 photo: Paul Felton The Detroit Newspaper Agency (DNA) had refused to bargain in good faith (later confirmed by a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board), even after the union members had worked for months without a contract, and the DNA, which ran both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, had begun to impose the changes they had been insisting on at the bargaining table.
I admit this is long at 44 minutes. I found it worth the watch even though at times Gagnon tries to get technical and uses a circular argument in favor of his predetermined view of homosexuality and the LGBTQ+ spectrum. He is not using the bible to inform him as Reverend Trevors says but instead using it as a weapon for his dislike / hate for anything not superior male inferior female relationships. I find McClellan easy to follow and understand and I like that he leaves his feelings at the door when he tries to understand the texts of that time. He points how Gagnon is using his biases to inform his religion and not his religion forming his biases. The other interesting thing to me is that McClellan seems to have researched the times and cultures of the different passages to see the context they were written in, whereas Gagnon seems to simply impose his modern standards on the words. Hugs
The Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing Wednesday digging into the cognitive abilities of former President Joe Biden and claims of whether his aides helped what they say was a cover up of his alleged mental decline — claims the former president and many on his staff have denied.
The probe didn’t uncover any new information on the former president — with Democratic members of the subcommittee boycotting the hearing.
Democratic senators on the committee walked out of the hearing shortly after it began, with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin blasting the panel for even holding the hearing, while he says a number of timely investigations should be going on related to President Donald Trump’s current actions.
“So far this year, the Republican majority on this committee has not held a single oversight hearing, despite numerous critical challenges facing the nation that are under our jurisdiction,” Durbin said.
The GOP panel repeatedly accused Democrats — and the media — of concealing the former president’s alleged real health conditions in order to prevent Trump’s 2024 victory.
“Today’s hearing is about competency, corruption and cover up within the Biden administration. Simply put, the last administration was rudderless from one crisis to another. The Biden Administration failed and folded. The partisan media did their best to cover up those failures,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley claimed.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer listens to questioning during Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearings on how the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution in the Dirksen Senate office building in Washington, DC, June 18, 2025.
Mattie Neretin/Sipa USA via AP
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who was among the witnesses, compared his time working under Trump in his first term to his observations of Biden, praising Trump’s energy and mental focus. Spicer never worked for the Biden administration.
Spicer also criticized “legacy media” for questions raised about Trump’s fitness for office in his first term, while he claims they were not questioning Biden the same way.
“Many, rightly so, believe the media in this country is culpable in covering up the obvious decline of the 46th president and leaders of the free world — the president of the United States. The scrutiny that was baselessly directed at President Trump during his first term was wholly absent from the media coverage of the Biden White House,” Spicer claimed.
Republicans on the committee also focused on Trump — saying he is in command and makes skillful decisions.
“The public is counting on us to ensure this never happens again, because we won’t always be fortunate enough to have a leader like President Trump, who is so unmistakably in command,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said.
Joe Biden speaks during a conference of the Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled (ACRD) at the Sofitel Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, on April 15, 2025.
Tannen Maury/AFP via Getty Images
In May, Senate Republicans announced their plans to launch the probe into Biden’s mental fitness while in office — including his use of autopen, a mechanical device to automatically add a signature to a document that’s been utilized by several past presidents, including Trump in his first term.
The hearing also comes after Trump earlier this month ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Biden’s administration sought to conspire to cover up his alleged mental state while in office. The move by the White House represents a significant escalation, as it is a directive to the Justice Department to formally investigate.
Biden responded to the Trump order, saying “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency.”
“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said in a statement.
In May, House Oversight Chairman James Comer requested Biden’s White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, appear for a transcribed interview as part of an investigation into Biden’s mental fitness and use of a presidential autopen while in office. Comer asked O’Connor to sit for an interview on June 25.
Sean Spicer, Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow for Law and Technology Theodore Wold, and University of Virginia Law Professor John Harrison testify during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the alleged cover up of former President Joe Biden’s alleged incapacity to serve on Capitol Hill June 18, 2025.
In response to the book’s release, a Biden spokesman said “there is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover up or conspiracy.”
On Wednesday morning, Trump — who often criticizes Biden — lambasted the former president’s use of autopen and claimed that Biden didn’t have control while leading the country.
“All these people, all the scum that was around the Oval, you know, the Oval Office, or around the beautiful Resolute desk, telling this guy here, ‘Do this,’ ‘Do that,’ and not even tell him. They just go over to the autopen and sign whatever the hell they wanted to sign,” he said.
Trump claimed that it was aides who were making decisions for Biden — employing the autopen to carry out an agenda.
“He wasn’t for open borders, he wasn’t for transgender for everybody. He wasn’t for men playing in women’s sports. But he has no idea what the hell — he has no idea,” Trump claimed.
June 20, 1960 Nobel Prize-winner in Chemistry Linus Pauling [for study of the nature of the chemical bond and the determination of the structure of molecules and crystals] defied the U.S. Congress by refusing to name circulators of petitions calling for the total halt of nuclear weapons testing. Pauling later won a second Nobel, a Peace Prize, for his work championing nuclear disarmament. Linus Pauling Interview with Linus Pauling on the peace movement, 1983
June 20, 1965 Hundreds protested following a military coup in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. The military, under chief of the armed forces Colonel Houari Boumedienne and his National Revolutionary Council, had deposed President Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of an independent Algeria (following the withdrawal of French colonial control). On the news at the time
June 20, 1967 Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston, Texas, of violating the Selective Service law by refusing induction into the U.S. Army (during the Vietnam War). The World Heavyweight Champion had claimed conscientious objector status on the basis that he was a Muslim minister. The conviction, for which Ali was sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, was later overturned by the Supreme Court. “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”
June 20, 1982 2500 were arrested during a two-day blockade of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about 50 miles east of San Francisco, the principal American nuclear weapons research facility, operated by the University of California.
June 20, 1995 Shell Oil gave in to international pressure and abandoned its plans to dispose of the Brent Spar oil-drilling platform and its contents into the North Atlantic. The environmental group Greenpeace spearheaded the effort to prevent Shell from sinking the rig, its members boarding and occupying it as a tactic to stop the deep sea disposal, and to call attention to the issue peacefully. Shell’s plan would have dumped toxic and radioactive sludge into the ocean just west of the British Isles. A month later, at the Oslo and Paris Commission (OSPARCOM) meeting, 11 out of 13 countries agreed to a moratorium on the “dumping” of offshore installations, pending agreement on an outright ban. Greenpeace climbers on Brent Spar platform Shell ships use water cannons against Greenpeace activists on board the rig. Read more about Greenpeace and Brent Spar
June 20, 2002 The U.S. Supreme Court declared executing mentally retarded individuals convicted of capital crimes to be unconstitutionally cruel [Atkins v. Virginia]. Besides being in line with a consensus among state legislatures, the court found that “Their deficiencies [the mentally retarded] do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but diminish their personal culpability.”
June 19, 1865 Known among African Americans as Juneteenth (also Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, or Emancipation Day), this is the day enslaved people in Texas and parts of Louisiana learned they had been freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. U.S. Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas, and announced the order that the slaves had been freed. This was two-and-a-half years after the Proclamation had taken effect January 1, 1863. It had stated, “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious (Confederate) states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” This had been kept from the slaves so the slaveowners could reap additional harvests, or because there weren’t enough Union soldiers to enforce the order until Granger arrived, but Juneteenth is the celebration of that day…. A Junetheenth celebration Richmond. Photo from Library of Congress (maybe 1921) Learn More About Juneteenth?New York Times “Black Joy—Not Corporate Acknowledgment—Is the Heart of Juneteenth”The Atlantic
June 19, 1964 Two hundred college students left Oxford, Ohio’s Western College for Women to join hundreds of other civil rights volunteers in Mississippi as part of “Freedom Summer.” Under the umbrella organization of COFO(Council of Federated Organizations) they worked on projects across the state.Led by SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) field secretaries, they helped Negroes try to register to vote, they taught in Freedom Schools, participated in community organizing and, in doing so, endured the hostility toward civil rights work among whites in the deep South. “If we can crack Mississippi,” the students said, “we can crack segregation anywhere.” Mississippi Freedom Summer Volunteers singing We Shall Overcome, 1964< Student protestors are photographed by a policeman on Freedom Day in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1964. ROBERT MOSES, director of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project and leader of the training program in Oxford, is shown here during a break in a session which he conducted in Jackson, Mississippi, to prepare African-Americans for politically effective action. more photos Good background on the need for a “Freedom Summer”
June 19, 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. The new law, initiated and passed through the determination of President Lyndon Johnson and Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, guaranteed for the first time equal access to public accommodations “without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.” Massive demonstrations a year earlier ensured passage of the Acts The Senate had never before voted to end the filibuster of a civil rights bill, all of which were consistently opposed by the bloc of senators from the South. Following Senator Robert Byrd’s (D-West Virginia) 14+ hour-long speech, Senator Dirksen rose to speak, “We dare not temporize with the issue which is before us. It is essentially moral in character. It must be resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come.” About the Civil Rights Act
June 19, 1982 One thousand landowners occupied key islands in protest against French nuclear weapons tests at Kwajalein Atoll.The atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, is about 2100 miles [3400 km] southwest of Hawaii and 1400 miles [2250 km] east of Guam. The island is now home to USAKA (United States Army Kwajalein Atoll), the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, and about 2000 support personnel and family members on Kwajalein and the islands Roi and Namur. Kwajalein Atoll Struggles of Pacific Islanders to stop nuclear testing
June 19, 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruled teaching of creationism in public schools to be a violation of the U.S. constitution’s prohibition on establishment of religion by the government [Edwards v. Aguillard]. Students, parents and teachers had contested the Louisiana “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction” law (Creationism Act). It required schools that taught evolution to also teach creation science. “The preeminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind,” concluded Justice William Brennan in his majority opinion.
(I’m inserting this, because it’s not yet made it into the newsletter. -A) June 17, 2021 (for June 19) President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a national holiday. Read a bit about the significance here, from the National Museum of African American History & Culture: “This year marks the second anniversary since President Joe Biden named Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021. “As more Americans celebrate Juneteenth with family and community, it is vital to share the important historical legacy behind Juneteenth and recognize the long struggle to make it an officially recognized holiday. It is an opportunity to honor our country’s second Independence Day and reflect on our shared history and future. “The origins of Juneteenth date to June 1865. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and the Confederate army surrendered to the Union army in April 1865, enslaved people in Texas — the westernmost Confederate state — could not exercise their freedom until June 19, 1865. ‘On that date, Union General Gordon Granger led some 2,000 Union troops, many of whom were Black, into Galveston Bay, where they announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as ‘Juneteenth,’ deriving its name from combining ‘June’ and ‘nineteenth.’” Read More
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