Jonathan P. Baird

Probably there is no more famous novel in American literature than Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. So it is an event that there is an audacious new novel, James, by Percival Everett, that recreates Huck’s story from the point of view of Jim, the slave.

James forces a reckoning with perspective. Who is telling the story can be a game-changer and James does not disappoint. The novel seems especially pertinent now as America faces its illiberal tradition in the form of the MAGA movement.

In reading James, I was struck by how we have buried the story of early American history. Sure, we know about George Washington, the Founders, the revolutionary war and the Constitution but what about those who were out of the limelight? How did the slaves in New England fare? What was it like to live in New England as an enslaved person before there was an abolitionist movement?

Research quickly led me to the name, Quock Walker, a name that was entirely unfamiliar to me. Walker was born in Massachusetts in 1753. His parents were believed to be Ghanian.

African slaves had first arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630’s and slavery was legally sanctioned in 1641. Massachusetts was the first colony in New England to formally authorize the enslavement of kidnapped Africans and slavery remained legal for over 140 years. Boston’s wealthy white elite was thoroughly integrated into the lucrative enslavement-based economy.

Enslavers trafficked indigenous people abducted from the Massachusetts area, sold them into slavery in the Caribbean and returned with kidnapped Africans. Boston was a major site of trafficking. The city’s engagement with the slave trade peaked between 1760 and 1775.

Even early in American history some colonists recognized the inconsistency of arguing for “freedom” and “rights” while owning slaves. The contradiction was not lost on enslaved African Americans. The slaves themselves helped initiate the first mobilization in the Atlantic world against slavery.

Quock Walker was one of eight enslaved men of African descent who petitioned the Massachusetts General Court in early 1777.

They wrote in the name of “ A Great Number of Blacks detained in a State of Slavery in the Bowels of a free and Christian Country”. They went on to say they had been “unjustly Dragged by the hand of a cruel Power from their Dearest friends and some of them even torn from the Embraces of their tender Parents and brought here either to be sold like Beast of Burden and were then condemned to Slavery for Life”.

Their petition explained that they had sent “petition after petition to the Legislative Body of the State” but their petition had never been considered. They were ignored. In her book, The Slave’s Cause, by Manisha Sinha, the Quock Walker story is told.

In 1781, represented by two prominent attorneys, Quock Walker sued in Worcester County Court for his freedom,. Walker and both his parents had been purchased by James Caldwell. At the time of purchase Walker was an infant. Later in his life, Caldwell promised Quock Walker his freedom at age 25. After Caldwell’s death, his widow remarried and neither the widow nor her new husband, Nathaniel Jennison, wanted to free Walker. They decided to keep him enslaved.

Walker deserted his owners and began working for John and Seth Caldwell, either children or siblings of James Caldwell. Jennison recaptured Walker, severely beat and imprisoned him. Walker then sued Jennison both for his freedom and damages. Walker argued that slavery was contrary to Massachusetts’ newly ratified state constitution. Article One states:

“All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights [including] the right of enjoying their lives and liberties.”

The jury found Walker was “a freeman and not the proper Negro slave” of Jennison and awarded Walker 50 pounds in damages. Jennison appealed and sued the Caldwells. The case went to the Supreme Judicial Court and Jennison lost again.

There was a further case against Jennison for assault and battery. Judge William Cushing who would later serve as one of the first justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, charged the jury that ”the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude and sell and treat them as we do horses and cattle was simply a usage bequeathed by European nations in pursuit of trade and wealth”.

In America, “a different idea has taken place…more favorable to the natural rights of mankind”. Slavery, he declared, was inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution.

Quock Walker’s case is generally credited with abolishing slavery in Massachusetts. It was one of the first times in American history that a written constitution was directly applied as law.

Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, the first state to do so. Rhode Island and Connecticut adopted a plan of gradual emancipation in 1784 although Rhode Island did not ban slavery until 1843. Connecticut followed, banning slavery in 1848. New Hampshire passed an abolition bill in 1857.

Although Congress abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, Boston slave traders surreptitiously trafficked Africans for decades after that. In one well-known episode in 1858, traffickers aboard the ship Crimea departed from Boston to Africa, where they kidnapped 600 people from the mouth of the Congo River and sold them in Guanimar, Cuba. Wealth created by the slave trade and its related industries – rum, timber, shipbuilding, fisheries and agriculture – was foundational to Boston’s economy.

Still, Quock Walker’s case made an important difference. By 1790, the U.S. census recorded no enslaved people living in Massachusetts. Slavery was driven underground. Massachusetts was the first state to achieve that. White Bostonians continued to enforce strict racial segregation and racially discriminatory laws but not in the context of slavery.

In 2022, Massachusetts passed a law declaring July 8 Quock Walker Day. It is also called Massachusetts Emancipation Day. In 2023, it became a statewide holiday.

The collective freakout of the Republican Party leadership after the criminal conviction of their cult leader, Donald Trump, was predictable. They appeared to be in a state of disbelief when a New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The disbelief quickly transformed into anger but it did not change the fact Donald Trump, the Party’s nominee for President, is now a convicted felon.

Still, the reactions have been extreme with Republican leader after Republican leader denouncing the trial as “banana republic” justice. Mike Johnson, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Byron Donalds all performed for their leader. It looked like a requirement in Trump’s vice-presidential sweepstakes was to show a requisite amount of outrage while bizarrely dressing up like the leader when they went to the trial. That was showing fealty to the boss.

Nothing changes the fact that Judge Juan Merchan was an eminently fair jurist. He made evidentiary rulings that went both ways. He conducted the trial in a dignified and restrained way. Although he was repeatedly challenged by behavior that elicited 10 contempts, the judge’s demeanor remained impeccable throughout the trial.

No one knows in advance what a jury will find. Before the verdict, many commentators predicted a hung jury. They repeatedly said all it takes is one juror to hold out. It would appear the jury was persuaded by the strength of the prosecution’s case. They presented over 20 witnesses and they bolstered the case with a wealth of documentary evidence.

The defense presented one witness who failed to help Trump’s side of the case. As was his right, defendant Trump decided not to testify but he had every opportunity to do so. Back in April, he had said he “absolutely” would testify. It is a safe bet that his lawyers wisely advised him not to risk cross-examination and, for once, he listened. Still, the deeper problem for the defense was that it had no coherent theory of the case. It ended up taking pot shots at weaknesses in the prosecution case.

Without evidence, Trump said the trial was “corrupt”, the judge was “conflicted”, the jury was “rigged” and he called it a “disgrace”. He claimed President Biden was responsible for his prosecution. It needs to be pointed out that state prosecutors like Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor in this case, are not appointed by anyone connected to the federal government. New York elects attorney generals and Bragg was elected Manhattan DA in 2021. Biden had nothing to do with the New York state prosecution.

Convicted felon Trump trafficks in empty hyperbole where everything is a “scam”, a “hoax”, or a “witchhunt”. It is a tired playbook. Behind the verbiage is no evidence supporting his claims. Notice that when Trump talks about his trial being rigged, he never offers specifics. He has frequently been comparing himself to Al Capone which is telling. When Trump says the trial was election interference, he moves to a rhetorical level beyond the facts of his case.

What has been shocking in the aftermath of Trump’s conviction has been the Republican all-out attack on the legitimacy of the courts. They have moved from the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen to a Big Lie about the justice system being rigged. They can’t handle the truth that Trump was fairly convicted by a jury of his peers, twelve independent private citizens.

The danger in discrediting courts cuts deep. Republicans are undermining the rule of law.

Since the verdict, many responses on the Republican side have been unhinged. Trump initially reacted, saying Judge Merchan was from Colombia, as if that meant anything. He didn’t point out that his favorite judge, Aileen Cannon, was also born in Colombia. House Speaker Johnson called on the Supreme Court, even without jurisdiction, to “step in” and overturn the jury verdict. Former Trump aides Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon (also heading to prison) have argued for revenge prosecutions against Democrats.

Far right influencer and close Trump ally Laura Loomer has called for executing Democrats, not just locking them up. Trump himself has demanded that members of the January 6 Committee be prosecuted.

Part of the transformation of the Republican Party into an intolerant amalgam of authoritarians is their escalation of reaction. They are saying Trump can never be found guilty of any crime and that a trial is only fair if Trump wins. That is like the definition of being unassailable. Not surprisingly, Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist who is touted as a potential Trump chief of staff, talks about post-constitutional government..

They are not simply disagreeing with Judge Merchan or the jury. There was a reason for jury anonymity. Too many Republicans are resorting to threatening perceived opponents. Think about the pattern of harassment against Ruby Freeman, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Jon Tester. There has been a tidal wave of threats against public servants in the last few years.

In appreciating the New York trial, it must be noted that this looks like the only case that will be heard before the November election and that is too bad. The New York case had been widely seen as the weakest case of the four pending against Trump. The American people deserve to know the outcome of all these cases before the election. They are relevant to whether Trump’s candidacy should even continue.

Rachel Maddow, in her book Prequel, compares the effort to prosecute Trump to the Great Sedition Trial of 1944. Back then, a number of Republican congressmen were allowing Nazi propaganda to be disseminated through their offices. They worked closely with George Sylvester Viereck, a German-American Nazi propagandist and agent. Viereck used congressional franking privileges of two senators.

The federal government tried 30 defendants for sedition. Maddow shows how political pressure from powerful people undermined the prosecution. During the course of the case, two very effective prosecutors were removed from pursuing the cases by their superiors.

Tha parallel to the multi-pronged effort by Georgia Republicans to remove prosecutor Fani Willis from Trump’s Georgia prosecution could not be clearer. The Georgia case is strong so it has to be stopped. The two federal cases are also strong so they also must at least be delayed. A helping hand from the Supreme Court majority and a Trump-appointed, in-the-bag judge make bad things go away and advances Trump’s re-election possibilities.

Saying the trial was a lie is consistent with Trump saying the election was a lie. In Trump mythology, he cannot lose. Do not be surprised if soon you will hear Trump say he did not lose the New York trial. In Trump world, truth is whatever he says it is.

No one had expected the Supreme Court would decide the 2024 presidential race. Joe Biden had won the popular vote by over 10 million votes but the tally in the key battleground states made the race too close to call. Trump held a slight lead in the Electoral College. Trump lawyers had argued that vote counts had to be stopped in the swing states because of questions around the validity of mail-in ballots.

To the surprise of everyone, the Supreme Court stopped the vote count, handing the election to Trump. He thanked “his justices”. Again, like they did in Bush v Gore in 2000, the Court majority said its opinion in Trump v Biden had no precedental value.

Trump watchers were surprised by his first moves. Although revenge and victimhood were his constant campaign themes, ordering the arrest of Joe Biden wasn’t written down in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Trump said that Biden had ordered his murder in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago for national security documents.

Trump also ordered his Department of Justice to prosecute Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis and Judge Juan Merchan. He further ordered the arrest and prosecution of leading liberal and progressive activists and legislators who had opposed him. He described them as “Antifa”.

With an assist from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, he shot his opponents into space to live in a new space station prison colony. Musk had started a new business focusing on incarceration of “high value” inmates. The Trump-Musk alliance was mutually beneficial.

Trump created a new cabinet position for the Department of Billionaire Well-Being premised on the idea that if billionaires are doing well, we all are. Following their recommendations, Trump gutted the IRS and entirely removed any tax burden on billionaires and large corporations. Wall Street was ecstatic.

Less surprisingly, Trump pardoned all of the January 6 insurrectionists who had been convicted during the Biden presidency. Trump called them “patriots who had been wrongly prosecuted”. He got Congress to create a new national holiday on January 6 to honor the memory of Ashli Babbitt.

He also dismissed all remaining criminal and civil charges lodged against him and granted himself a complete pardon from all crimes. The Supreme Court concurred with his assertion of presidential power.

A flurry of Executive Orders accompanied Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Even though the Fourteenth Amendment had protected birthright citizenship, Trump issued an Executive Order to reverse that. He imposed a new Muslim ban and he re-instituted his family separation policy; he removed protection from DACA recipients allowing for their immediate deportation and he closed the Southern border.

Many people had thought deporting eleven million undocumented immigrants was a logistical impossibility. Trump had promised he would pursue “the largest domestic deportation operation in history”. Requisitioning National Guard troops from red states and deploying them in blue states to round up immigrants was at first seen as an outrage until the Supreme Court gave its okay.

It was shocking to see people in big Democratic-leaning cities like Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles dragged out of their homes after their doors were battered down. Even more shocking was to see those people removed to detention camps.

There were so many people detained that warehouses and abandoned malls were used to hold those rounded-up. There were many reports that among those rounded-up were black and brown-skinned Latinos who claimed to be U.S. citizens. That could not be verified but it was very similar to what happened in the Eisenhower Administration’s Operation Wetback in the 1950’s.

The Trump administration built large-scale staging areas near the Southern border in Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott helped out providing endless amounts of razor wire. Using near-constant flights, the administration flew millions out of the United States. Under new expedited rules that made asylum claims impossible, masses of people were removed from the United States quickly. Due process no longer required any hearing before an immigration judge.

With so many of his former foes incarcerated in space or living in fear of arrest, Trump followed through on a range of domestic goals. Reviving the 19th century Comstock Act, his administration was able to get the High Court to outlaw abortion nation-wide with no exceptions. They also passed federal legislation applying the death penalty to abortion providers and abortion patients who sought to terminate their pregnancies.

In 2026, the Supreme Court majority reversed the decision legalizing gay marriage. In an opinion by Justice Alito, the Court noted that the Founding Fathers included no mention of gay marriage in the Constitution. Rolling back LGBTQ rights and trying to push people back into the closet remained a continuing Christian Right goal as they believed homosexuals were diseased and could be cured by a combination of religious indoctrination and psychological counseling,

Trump’s Christian Right supporters were thrilled when Trump used an Executive Order in 2027 to declare America a Christian nation. Trump declared that the Founders never intended a separation of church and state. It was something to see pictures of a white Jesus on postage stamps and to see the 10 Commandments mandated on the walls of public schools and colleges.

A national book ban was promulgated for schools. Books deemed “unpatriotic” or “lewd” were removed from school libraries and burned before crowds of cheering MAGA supporters. No more teaching of, among others, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, A Handmaid’s Tale and Gender Queer. An effort was successfully undertaken to restore Confederate monuments in the South.

The federal government removed all mention of the words diversity, equity and inclusion as part of its anti-wokeness campaign. Also the Environmental Protection Agency purged all mention of the words “climate change” and “global warming” from its website and publications. The administration’s mantra was “Drill baby drill” and every effort was undertaken to promote fossil fuels and to discourage alternative energy. The years 2027 and 2028 were the hottest in recorded history.

Male supremacists in the Trump administration advanced an understanding that a central problem in American life was the women’s liberation movement and they advocated that women’s role is to be a wife and mother. They discouraged careers for women and pushed to take away women’s right to vote which had been guaranteed under the 19th amendment.

On foreign policy, Trump withdrew the United States from NATO and formed a new alliance of autocrats popularly known as the Fascist International. It included Trump and his allies Putin, Kim Jong Un, Orban, Erdogan and Modi. In a major change of nuclear policy, Trump moved to support the use of what he called “low-yield” nuclear weapons. After Trump’s election and with his support, Putin used a “small” nuke in Ukraine and it quickly brought the Ukrainians to the bargaining table.

Back in 2024, people said that the presidential election would be the most important election ever. Most did not pay attention. Trump had joked for years about running for a third term. In 2027 he announced he was running again even though the 22nd amendment forbid it. Having arrested all the most likely Democratic candidates, Trump’s odds looked better and better. In 2028, Trump announced that he planned to run again in 2032.

The current round of student protest brings back memories. I started at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in the fall of 1968. One of my early college memories is demonstrating against then-Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon. Nixon had falsely claimed he had a secret plan to end the much-hated, racist and imperialist Vietnam War. With my Trinity chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, we conducted an evening march through downtown Hartford to the rally. There was no violence that night.

In the spring of 1968, before I arrived at Trinity, 168 students occupied the Trinity administration buildings to force consideration of a scholarship program for Black students. This happened in the aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination. College trustees agreed to the student demands. The situation resolved peacefully.

In May 1970, there was a national student strike after the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State University. Many colleges, Trinity included, cancelled classes. I remember watching the Kent State news with many shocked classmates. Students were livid. For over a week, normal classes were largely suspended and replaced by workshops on the Vietnam War, imperialism, racism and poverty.

Many of the workshops were held on the green near Trinity’s Long Walk. There was no encampment but the students were not met by riot police and there were no charges of criminal trespass. As a private college, Trinity could have responded that way but the administration’s response was peaceful, even gentle. Of course there were counter-examples like Columbia and Jackson State but I think in the campus world, violent responses were more the exception than the norm.

While Trinity was only one small private college, it is hard not to compare the college and university response, then and now. Now colleges and universities opt quickly for more aggressive policing and stiffer penalties. Across the country, college presidents invite riot police onto campuses to break up encampments. The police often come in riot gear, behave brutally, zip-tie students and arrest them.

We saw this happen in New Hampshire with the treatment of Annelise Orleck, a 65 year old history professor who has taught at Dartmouth for many years. Professor Orleck was at a peaceful protest for Palestinians in Gaza on the Dartmouth Green. She was knocked to the ground and arrested. She described elderly women professors being struck in their ribs by truncheons. 90 people were arrested at Dartmouth for criminal trespass and resisting arrest.

Reporting from the Concord Monitor has shown that a punitive response was planned in advance by college administrators at Dartmouth and UNH. It was coordinated with Gov. Sununu. Their game plan was to present the protest as organized by violent antisemitic outside agitators.

The truth could not have been more different, both in New Hampshire and elsewhere. Violence came entirely from the police. To quote Sandy Tolan from Slate:

“With few exceptions, the encampments have been overwhelmingly peaceful, well-organized microsocieties with posted community rules, medical and food tents, yoga and meditation, kite making workshops, teach-ins and Shabbat Services and Passover seders. These students and supporting faculty form a multi-racial interfaith community. They are united by their outrage at the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza by Israeli bombs supplied by U.S. taxpayers. They share a vision for freedom and justice for Palestine.”

There has been an effort to vilify protesters and to present constitutionally protected activity as crimes. This went on during the Vietnam War protest too but in comparing the two times, now it is worse. Crackdowns happen faster in 2024. Since 2017, nearly 300 anti-protest bills have been introduced in state legislatures, with 41 passing.

Five states have enacted laws that impose harsh penalties for individuals who block traffic or even sidewalks. Nine other states have such legislation pending. Some states have added laws that grant immunity to drivers who strike protesters. More than 2950 people have been arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on at least 61 college campuses in recent weeks.

How did it come about that a nation that talks so much about loving liberty has evolved to have such a reduced notion of the First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly? At the appearance of a protest at a public university, riot police must be called in immediately to squash dissent. It is like the fantasy of dangerous student radicals must be created to justify the repression.

Dissenting college students were a convenient foil for Nixon and now they serve that purpose for MAGA Republicans and Trump who indulges in unhinged rants about “radical left lunatics”. Trump called the police sweep at Columbia University “a beautiful thing to see”.

His demonizing student protesters and his verbal support for violence offers a window into how a second Trump administration would treat dissent. Trump has already talked about invoking the Insurrection Act if he regains power. There can be little doubt he would use the military against protesters. That would be crossing a line never crossed before.

While it is true the First Amendment allows for “time, place, and manner” restrictions , progressives and liberals should be worrying about something far worse. The use of repressive state tools against progressives and liberals is very likely if Trump regains power. Revenge against his enemies has been a constant theme. On his social media, Trump has written:

“Republicans are already thinking about what we are going to do to Biden and the communists when it’s our time.”

In assessing why student protest has been repressed so aggressively this spring, I would attribute primary blame to MAGA Republicans and Trump. The hateful and fascist-type rhetoric coming from that world promotes police state reaction. While Biden’s response has been weak and his support for academic freedom has been inadequate, Team Trump could not be doing more to chill First Amendment rights.

When it comes to the rights of free speech and assembly, the United States has been moving backwards. The harsh response to student protest is a bad sign. As was true of student protesters during the Vietnam war, today’s student protesters are acting as the conscience of the nation.

Last week I saw a letter to the editor in the Concord Monitor about Republicans. The letter said we are inundated with misinformation and name-calling. The writer explained that Republicans believe in God, America, families, safe streets, and an effective justice system. He left off puppies and rainbows.

Unfortunately, we now live in split-screen realities. The Republican Party I experience is a cult subservient to the whims of Donald Trump, an adjudicated sexual assaulter, who is currently on trial for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Those records were about hush money payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about their one-night-stand.

Trump was extremely worried that publicity about the affair with Stormy (and another affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal) could have sunk his 2016 presidential run. The stories might have surfaced in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood “grab them by the genitals” tape. The effect could have been a knockout blow and it might have changed the ultimate outcome of the 2016 race.

One irony that has been insufficiently appreciated is Trump screaming “Stop the Steal” about the 2020 race against Biden while his action to catch and kill the Stormy and McDougal stories were the real steal. The 2020 race, as shown by over 60 court decisions, was a fair election. At a critical time, Americans were deprived of relevant information that shed light on the character of the 2016 Republican nominee. Whatever the jury decides, this was most certainly election interference.

In 2016, I was not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire primary but it must be acknowledged she was the candidate who was cheated in the general election. The Democrats haven’t screamed about that but maybe they should have. The slogan “Stop the Steal” has more relevance for 2016 than 2020.

Contrary to the Monitor letter writer, I would argue that what now defines the Republican Party, at least the dominant MAGA wing, is identification with the January 6 insurrection. Trump has persisted with his election denialism, still maintaining the fiction he won that election. He says, if elected, he intends to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists.

Trump refuses to commit to accepting the 2024 election result. All the Republican candidates auditioning for Vice-President engage in the humiliating ritual of mimicking Trump on not committing to democracy and abiding by election results. They hope slavish devotion to the would-be dictator will give them the inside track to the vice-presidency.

I would have said opposing democracy is the worst thing about the MAGA Republicans until I heard a little reported story that appeared in the Washington Post on May 9. At a Mar-a-Lago meeting with fossil fuel executives from Exxon, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, Trump promised to gut environmental regulations if the oil and gas industry raised $1 billion for his 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump promised to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, remove hurdles to drilling in the Alaskan Arctic and reverse new rules designed to cut car pollution. He also promised to scuttle a Biden administration decision in January to pause new natural gas export permits which have been denounced as “climate bombs”. He promises “Drill baby drill” from day one if he is elected.

As described by Christina Polizzi from Climate Power, Trump was “putting the future of the planet up for sale”. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “Trump is willing to literally destroy the planet for $1 billion”.

Talk about a Faustian bargain. Trump thinks climate change is “a hoax” but it is hard to wrap your head around the perversity of his advocacy. To restate the obvious, human beings depend on a habitable planet. There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists about the climate emergency and the need for immediate environmental protection. It is far worse than most people realize but somehow it is not taken seriously.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offers the gold standard assessment of the state of the planet. In its most recent 2023 report, it detailed the devastating consequences of rising greenhouse gas emissions around the world. We see it in rising sea levels, more extreme weather events and rapidly disappearing sea ice. We also see it in heat waves, wildfires, ocean warming and coral bleaching, biodiversity loss, droughts, flooding and permafrost melting.

The world, the United States included, cannot afford a business-as-usual approach to climate. The unwillingness to eliminate fossil fuels as quickly as is feasible creates more dire climate scenarios that will plague our collective future.

The tragic reality is that Trump is not a Republican outlier. His anti-science views are mirrored in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 which eviscerates climate programs and increases reliance on fossil fuels.

Whether or not Trump’s pay-to-play billion dollar scheme is criminal, it is a species of moral depravity. At a time when the planet cries for a long-term perspective, the Republicans are ready to sell out our future for cash.

The Iroquois have a Seventh Generation Principle that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future. Our Republicans are the polar opposite.

May 6 was Holocaust Remembrance Day. The world failed the Jewish people both before and during the years of World War 2, with catastrophic consequences. Six million Jews ended up dying in the concentration camps. As early as 1933, the Western press had reported on a national boycott of Jews in Germany carried out by Nazis. In November 1938, mobs of Nazis attacked hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish-owned stores in events that came to be known as, Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.

In December 1942, the New Republic ran a feature story entitled “The Massacre of the Jews”. The article by Varian Fry depicted the Nazis’ genocidal project as well as how it was being carried out. News of the genocide got out but the United States and the other allied powers didn’t take it seriously, denied it, and largely looked the other way. There was minimal accountability for this most massive human rights cataclysm.

After the war, the scale of the industrialized killing became more widely known. The phrase “Never Again” became a popular response to the Holocaust.

But “Never Again” has not been equally applied to everyone. You might think “Never Again” would mean “Never Again To Anyone”. That is not the case.

There is no denying the traumatic and despicable Hamas attack of October 7 but we all have been witness to Israel’s disproportionate counter-attack. Whether you call it ethnic cleansing or genocide, Israel, in its military operations, has utterly failed to safeguard the civilian population in Gaza.

Since October 7, at least 34,943 Palestinians have been killed and 78,572 have been injured. The death toll in Israel from the Hamas attack is 1139 with an estimated 132 hostages still being held by Hamas. Over 14,500 of the Gaza victims are children and 9,500 are women. UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres has described Gaza as a “graveyard for children”. More than 1000 children in Gaza have lost one or both of their legs, often undergoing amputation without anesthesia.

Vast swaths of Gaza have been devastated and lay in ruins. An unknown number lay under the rubble. According to the UN, 69,000 housing units have been destroyed and another 290,000 damaged. 75% of the Gaza population have been displaced.

Israel has enforced a blockade of food, clean water and medicine. The UN says there’s a full-blown famine in northern Gaza. Human Rights Watch says Israel has used starvation as a weapon of war. Many hospitals in Gaza have been blown up and only 10 of 36 hospitals are even partially functional. All 12 Gaza universities have also been bombed by the Israelis and destroyed and 80% of Gaza schools have been either damaged or reduced to ruin.

Israel’s military actions have forced Gaza civilians south. Now one million civilian refugees are in Rafah and they are being told they must leave due to Israel’s imminent military action. There would appear to be no safe place for civilians to go. It is not clear if Israel’s end game is removing and forcing out all Palestinians in Gaza.

On the West Bank, messianic far right Jewish settlers have been carrying out pogroms against Palestinians, forcing people out of their homes.These settler Jews, like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich are both ideologically racist and fascist. They follow in the tradition of Meir Kahane.

The world is a complicated place and not all Israeli governments are the same. The Netanyahu government is, far and way, the worst government in Israel’s history. Its leaders deserve to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for the war crimes the Israeli state has carried out against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This has nothing to do with antisemitism. Tragically, any state, Israel included, can commit war crimes. Conflating criticism of war crimes and antisemitism is a dishonest dodge.

Under international law, Israel has a duty to mitigate civilian harm in its military operations. This it has obviously failed to do. Saying that Hamas is hiding behind civilians in no way justifies the extreme brutality in how Israel has conducted this war. Dropping 2000 pound bombs combined with relentless artillery fire in densely populated areas is guaranteed to cause high casualty events and it has.

Usually perpetrators of genocide don’t express their intentions explicitly but Israelis with command authority have repeatedly made genocidal statements. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has described Palestinians as “human animals”. Netanyahu has compared the Palestinians to the Biblical people of Amalek. Smotrich has called for “total annihilation” of Gaza.

A Palestinian lawyer living in Haifa Diana Buttu describes a genocide fever in Israel. She writes:

“For seven months, Israeli politicians and pundits have spewed genocidal statements on Israeli television and social media on a daily basis. Israeli far-right heritage minister, a man who early in the war called nuking Gaza an option, recently said that Israel “must find ways [to deal with] Gazans that are more painful than death”.”

Words precede actions and a culture of dehumanization of Palestinians laid the basis for this war. Israelis have proven that they are not exempt from vicious racism. Being the victim of a genocide in one historical period doesn’t preclude transformation into being a perpetrator in another historical period. To modify the words of Albert Camus, “Neither victims nor executioners”, victims can become executioners.

Protesting Israeli war crimes is most certainly not antisemitism. I would submit that college students protesting this war are continuing an honorable anti-war tradition pioneered by my 1960’s generation. Blaming students for protesting is just a way to deflect attention from the horrible crimes the state of Israel is currently committing. The need for an immediate ceasefire has never been more apparent.

Where the U.S. Supreme Court is concerned, the shocks keep coming. While you cannot always tell what a court will decide based on oral argument, it was bracing to watch a former president who tried to overthrow his last election have his attorneys argue for absolute power and lifetime immunity from any criminal prosecution. This was a case the Court didn’t have to hear.

We also had the spectacle of Justice Clarence Thomas sitting on a case in which he was utterly conflicted and should have recused. The silence around Thomas, especially from Chief Justice Roberts, was deafening. Because Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was a January 6 insurrectionist, he had no business being part of the case. Thomas embodies the ethical sleaze of billionaires buying a self-serving brand of justice.

However the Supreme Court ultimately rules on the January 6 case, there is no denying the huge favor they delivered to the Republican candidate for President. Delay is Trump’s agenda and he could not have asked for more from the Republican-appointed justices. Pushing the January 6 trial back until after the November election is all Trump wants. If he wins in November, Trump will dismiss Jack Smith’s January 6 case and all federal cases in which he is a defendant.

As should be clear, the Supreme Court majority wants a Republican president. Whatever they personally feel about Trump and how distasteful he is, they are bought into a Republican winning. They need that to pursue the Federalist Society vision they share.

This term they have done everything they can to make sure Trump can run again, first in Trump v Anderson, the Colorado case about interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment (which allowed Trump to remain on the ballot) and now in delaying the Jack Smith prosecution.

I would contrast the Court’s kid gloves treatment of the overwhelmingly white MAGA January 6 defendants in the Fischer v United States case with the treatment meted out to DeRay McKesson, a Black Lives Matter leader, who helped to organize a Baton Rouge protest after the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. In the protest, someone who remains unknown threw a rock that hit a police officer in the face causing serious injury.

McKesson had nothing to do with throwing the rock but the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. The Court below, the Fifth Circuit, ruled that a protest leader (McKesson) can be held liable for the violent action of a protest participant. Negligence is apparently in the eye of the beholder.

Leaving in place McKesson’s liability provided a crushing blow to the First Amendment rights of Black civil rights protesters in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. In contrast, in any of the January 6 cases, it is like the Court majority is looking beyond the actual insurrection as if it did not happen. As Justice Gorsuch put it at the January 6 oral argument, they are writing a rule “for the ages”, not deciding the facts of a case.

The January 6 case follows in the wake of so many body blows the Court has inflicted on democracy. Citizens United destroyed campaign finance reform; Dobbs eviscerated women’s rights; Shelby County subverted voting rights; Heller and Bruen did in gun control.

And that barely begins to describe how the Republican majority justices have taken it upon themselves to remake America as they see fit. I also think of separation of church and state, partisan gerrymandering, ending affirmative action and obliterating environmental regulation.

Consistent with the Federalist Society desires, the Supreme Court has become an out-of-control super-legislature that operates without restraint. They are the kids in the judicial candy store. They can block any progressive change that emerges from the Executive Branch or Congress. Witness their intrusion into and tubing of Biden’s student debt relief plan. They now operate as an institutional counter-majoritarian break on any change that deviates from current conservative orthodoxy.

The fact that they are wildly unpopular doesn’t appear to faze them or slow them down. A 2023 poll showed only 18% of Americans had a great deal of confidence in the Supreme Court. To call the Court out-of-touch is generous.

Some Democrats have finally begun to realize that a continuation of the Supreme Court’s trajectory is a death knell for any kind of vibrant democracy. It is worse than is generally recognized. A study from last year concluded that unless Democrats expand the Supreme Court, they will not have a majority on it until 2065! Imagine 40 more years of this court doing more of what it is doing.

It is hard not to think they would rubber-stamp fascism. Fascist leaders typically don’t disband supreme courts. They simply get them to do their bidding. Forty more years of MAGA justice would be Jim Crow 2.0. It would not allow Congress or the President to act on climate change in the face of a climate emergency nor would it allow progress on gun control or immigration reform. The Court would likely be comfortable with indefinite one party rule.

Democrats need to move up expanding the Supreme Court on their list of priorities. Right now it is down the laundry list of demands. There is no constitutional prohibition against adding justices to the Court and it has been done many times before. After Mitch McConnell’s games keeping Merrick Garland off the Court and then the Coney Barrett eleventh hour jam, Republicans have no right to complain. They stole the Court and expansion is the only way to restore a semblance of fairness and democracy.

Last May Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass), Tina Smith (D.-Minn) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D.-Ga) introduced the Judiciary Act of 2023 that would expand the high court by adding four seats to create a 13-justice bench. The bill is unlikely to pass any time soon but Democrats did take a step forward in introducing the bill.

What is going on now is a democracy emergency. Fascism is waiting in the wings. The rule of law matters and expanding the Supreme Court is the single reform with the most potential to revitalize democracy and stymie voter suppression, partisan gerrymandering and billionaires buying elections. While it is true the Republicans would further pack the Court if they gained the presidency, there is no other reform that could disempower the MAGA justices.

Failing to respond to a system rigged in favor of the Court’s billionaire donors is not an option. Expanding the Court is doable and it is the most effective judicial reform to cure what is ailing us.

It has now been 14 years since Howard Zinn died. A historian, Zinn is mostly remembered for writing A People’s History of the United States, a controversial recounting of the American story. Zinn focused on the stories of workers, minorities and fighters for justice – not Presidents, Supreme Court justices and courtiers of power,

His book showcases the narrative battle over U.S. history with Zinn presenting a bottom-up view devoid of nationalist glorification. He shows the dark side from the perspective of the oppressed and marginalized. Because of Zinn’s importance, I wanted to share a couple memories of my own about him.

Zinn was a professor at Boston University. I lived in the Boston area in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Back then, BU had a radical film series that featured off-beat and lesser-known movies. One movie that was shown was Burn, a 1969 film made by Italian film director Gillo Pontecorvo, who made the Battle of Algiers. I saw Zinn give a talk about Burn.

The film starred Marlon Brando who played an English intelligence agent, William Walker, sent to a Portuguese-controlled island to foment a native revolution.The film takes place in the 1840’s.

Brando’s William Walker sought to replace the Portuguese with British imperialism. He succeeded in fomenting revolution among the slaves while pursuing a goal of colonial manipulation to advance British interests. Pontecorvo shows the history of slavery underlying the slave revolt. In the film, the Portuguese killed off all the native inhabitants and replaced them with imported African slaves who worked in the sugar cane fields.

Burn was made during the time of the Vietnam War and it evoked the story of a revolution against imperialism. In the movie, Brando installs a native leader who was intended to be a puppet for the British although it does not turn out that way. The story was not far off from the example of Ngo Dinh Diem’s role with the Americans in Vietnam.

Zinn’s talk preceded the showing of the movie. He was charming, self-deprecating and with wit and humor he provided a historical background on the movie that was definitely not available elsewhere. The movie was quite expensive to make. It cost $3 million (a lot then), featured a major star (Brando), had beautiful color cinematography, great attention to costumes and a cool score.

Zinn said movie companies suppressed the movie after its release because of its politics. The version shown in America was cut and twenty minutes were edited out. Pontecorvo was very unhappy and United Artists almost fired Pontecorvo.

Burn remains one of the strongest movie statements against colonialism and imperialism ever made. The only other movie I could think of that might be comparable is Raoul Peck’s mini-series Exterminate All the Brutes.

In the original script of the movie, the island in the story was a Spanish protectorate. Spain’s Franco regime pressured the filmmakers to alter the script. Portugal substituted as the main colonial villain. I think it is fair to say there has been massive resistance to appreciating the role of both European colonialism and American imperialism in understanding the modern world.

I saw Zinn give a number of speeches against the Vietnam War on Boston Common. He was a powerful voice for peace. His book, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, published in 1967, was the first book on the war to call for immediate withdrawal. It had a big impact.

This was a time when the U.S. government was telling the American public that if Vietnam became communist, there would be a threat to the United States. Maybe now we can look back and see the absurdity of that claim.

Zinn had an earlier history in the Army Air Corps, doing bombing runs against the Germans near the end of World War 2. In his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral of a Moving Train, Zinn wrote that it was John Hersey’s postwar report, Hiroshima, that made him more aware of the horrors of war. He wrote:

“I had been an eager bombardier in the war, caught up in a fanaticism which let me participate unquestioningly in atrocious acts. After the war, I slowly came to question whether war, however noble “the cause”, solves anything, given the warping of moral sensibility, of rational thought, that always accompanies it.”

After the war, Zinn worked loading trucks in a warehouse on the four to midnight shift for 3 years. He was from a poor background and he saw his parents work hard their whole lives without gain. He had worked as a waiter, a ditch-digger, a shipyard worker, a brewery worker and he also had periods of unemployment where he needed unemployment benefits.

He was able to go to NYU and Columbia on the GI Bill earning a Ph.D. in history. In 1956, he got a job teaching and being chair of the History Department at Spelman College in Atlanta. Zinn landed in the middle of the early civil rights movement. He immediately connected to the movement. He wrote that he nurtured an indignation against bullies. He hated to see human beings being treated as inferior beings because of the accident of their skin color.

Zinn was a teacher to, among others, Marion Wright Edelman and Alice Walker. He traveled to Selma in October 1963 as an advisor to SNCC to observe its voter registration campaign. Zinn was part of Freedom Summer in Mississippi. His activism eventually cost him his job at Spelman. It also led to later conflicts at BU.

Because of his writing and his activism, Zinn was always a lightning rod for criticism. When John Silber became president of BU, he blocked Zinn getting raises and promotions even though Zinn was one of the most popular professors on campus. Silber denied Zinn teaching assistants even though he was teaching up to 400 students in a semester. Silber hated Zinn. Zinn had to appeal the matter of back pay, an appeal he ultimately won.

Conservatives who hated Zinn’s politics often criticized the quality of his scholarship. When Mitch Daniels was governor of Indiana, he instructed his subordinates to make sure Zinn’s book A People’s History of The United States not be used anywhere in Indiana. This effort ultimately backfired. The book became a hit, selling more than two million copies.

If Zinn was alive today, I have no doubt he would be an anti-war voice, protesting the Gaza war and demanding an immediate ceasefire. He would have opposed college presidents sending in police to campuses to arrest peaceful students for exercising their First Amendment rights. Zinn was always a dissenter in a hopeful way. He wrote:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

There are hardly any people more inspiring and heroic than Howard Zinn.

Polls are omnipresent in America and I admit to deep skepticism about their accuracy. I think of Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton and the failure of the red wave to materialize in 2022 as examples that justify that skepticism.

One poll result that has stood out to me is the view that the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is better for the economy than President Biden. An April Reuters/Ipsos poll gave Trump a 41% to 34% lead on who has a better approach to the economy. Earlier NBC polls favored Republicans handling of the economy by a wider margin.

The result is puzzling. During Trump’s presidency, his major accomplishment was a tax cut that favored big corporations and the super-rich. Overwhelmingly the 1% got most of the benefit but the tax cut fit a long-standing narrative that Republicans are the party of low taxes and low spending. In contrast, Democrats are seen as the tax and spenders. They are seen as weak, giving handouts.

I would suggest that this narrative doesn’t capture our current reality. On a wide range of economic issues, Democrats’ policies are far more favorable to working people than the Republicans. The evidence is right before our eyes.

We are seeing a modern resurgence of the labor movement. There was a hot labor summer in 2023. The writer Anat Shenkar-Osorio says there were 380 labor actions in 2023. Joe Biden joined a picket line along with United Auto Worker (UAW) members, the first time a president has ever done that. Biden has also adopted union-friendly policies. The UAW won a huge contract victory with double-digit percentage raises as well as cost-of-living raises from the Big Three automakers.

Republicans generally align with corporate bosses and Wall Street greed. They consistently oppose the labor movement. The UAW is currently trying to organize 150,000 workers in 36 nonunion plants across the South. This includes Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Nissan, Volvo and Tesla plants. In an April 16 letter, Southern Republican governors in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas announced their opposition to the UAW campaign.

In spite of their opposition, on April 19, workers in a Chattanooga Tennessee Volkswagen plant overwhelmingly voted to join the UAW. This is the first auto plant in the South to organize via election since the 1940’s. A Mercedes plant in Alabama is next. They hold an election May 13 to see if the workers will decide the join the UAW.

Before this year, anti-union sentiment was entrenched in the South. So the Chattanooga victory is historic and it may well set off a chain reaction of union victories. The UAW’s impressive win in 2023 against the Big Three has supercharged their ground game and won over many workers who were previously reluctant to join.

The Biden administration and Democrats also deserve credit for passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The benefits of that law for workers are just beginning to be felt. Tennessee’s BlueOval City electric vehicle battery facility is leading the way in creating clean energy jobs with high pay and full benefit packages. The plant is located in Hayward County, a poor part of Tennessee.

The Inflation Reduction Act has helped to stimulate more than $92 billion investment in the electric vehicle (EV) production, battery and critical mineral industries. So far it has created an estimated 84,000 jobs. This is a major boost both to EV transition and American manufacturing. Next year, Ford will begin production of electric trucks at BlueOval City, This was only possible because of the Inflation Reduction Act. It is not clear if workers appreciate the role of Democrats in making this effort a reality.

Even though unions are increasingly popular among Americans, only 10% of the workforce is unionized. Much of the decline in union membership has to do with Republican hostility to labor. Trump appointees to federal agencies often had a fox-in-the-chicken-coop quality. They opposed the pro-worker mission of the agency whether it was the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).

Trump appointees to the NLRB completely failed to carry out duties. They did nothing to stop the harassment of union organizers, interference in union elections, wage theft that victimized workers and misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Similarly, Trump’s Secretary of Labor, a corporate lawyer, tried to dismantle regulations, especially at OSHA. The Republicans left over 40% of the leadership positions at OSHA vacant during Trump’s tenure.

One other area deserves mention. I had noted Trump’s 2017 tax cuts which saved big corporations and the super-wealthy many millions of dollars. It was his gift to the 1%. Biden got through a 15% minimum tax on corporations. It was the first tax increase on corporations in more than 30 years and he has used that money to fund his climate package.

In 2025, Trump’s tax cuts expire and he is telling billionaires re-elect me and I will again cut your taxes. Companies like Amazon were reporting profits of $11 billion and paying zero taxes. Biden is saying the opposite of Trump. He will raise taxes on billionaires and big corporations. Biden has funded the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats. Trump had deliberately de-funded the IRS so that less rich people would get audited.

When FDR campaigned for President in 1936, he threw down against the robber barons of his day. He said:

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate of me – and I welcome their hatred.”

Messaging from today’s Democrats is far more tepid. The way forward is to follow FDR’s example. Taking the side of working people will get much better electoral results. The Republicans have shown that all they care about is maximizing profits for the people who don’t need more money.

Here is my son, Josh Baird, singing a song by Dawes, A Little Bit of Everything