Jonathan P. Baird

In a term featuring multiple precedent-shattering decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a shocker in Snyder v. United States. The Court narrowed the definition of public corruption in a case that centered on the distinction between bribery and gratuities. The Court majority let a grifting public official off the hook.

Because there were so many big cases on the docket this term, this one slid by, escaping attention, even though it is consequential.

The facts in the case were straightforward. James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage Indiana steered business to a local truck dealership. The city purchased five trash trucks from the dealership for a cost of $1.1 million. After the deal, Snyder went to the dealership and told them, “I need money”. He asked for $15,000. The dealership gave him $13,000.

A federal statute prohibits state or local officials from “corruptly” accepting “anything of value from any person intending to be influenced or rewarded for an official act”. The business had to be for a value of at least $5,000. Snyder testified that the $13,000 payment he received was for consulting services although there was no evidence he did any consulting.

After a two week trial, the federal jury disagreed with Snyder and convicted him. They found he had been corruptly rewarded. The judge sentenced him to one year and nine months in prison.

Although it seemed like a Hail Mary pass, Snyder appealed and he argued that the law in question only made bribes illegal, not gratuities. Snyder argued that bribes were, by definition, payments made before an official act. Gratuities were payments made after an official act as a token of appreciation. So bribes influence a future decision and gratuities reward past ones.

Snyder lost at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals but it was a different story at the Supreme Court. In an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court majority reversed Snyder’s conviction. Kavanaugh wrote that it was nearly impossible to figure out what constituted a corrupt gift or gratuity. He puzzled over a situation that was not ambiguous. He cited hypothetical scenarios that were vastly different than the facts of the case to make it seem like this was a difficult case to decide.

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissected the Kavanaugh opinion. To quote her:

“Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.”

That sentence alone spoke volumes. The Court is watering down public corruption law in a way that says it is fine for people with vast money to use it to influence state and local government officials. By almost any standard, $13,000 is not small change but the conservatives on the Court wanted to green light such “gratuities”.

Rather than fighting corruption, the Court imposed a limit on the government’s ability to go after bad actors. It is a “spoils belong to the powerful” jurisprudence.

Snyder’s case has a resonance with the Supreme Court’s current ethical problems as exemplified by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas too has taken “gratuities” although his are in the $4 million range. I think Justice Jackson had Thomas in mind when she wrote about the reading of the statute as one “only today’s Court could love”. That was her polite way of saying Thomas was bought off.

The Snyder case did not come out of nowhere. It needs to be seen as part of a historical pattern in which the Court has defined down what constitutes public corruption so more people can get away with unethical behavior. I would go back to Citizens United. For decades even before the Citizens United decision, a coterie of ultra-rich conservatives wanted to influence American politics by out-sized spending. Citizens United was the vehicle that allowed the ultra-rich to get around campaign finance law.

Other Supreme Court decisions in the last decade like McDonnell v. United States and the Bridgegate case from New Jersey followed the go-easy-on-corruption trend. The Court turned definitions of corruption into paper tigers.

The go-easy-on-crime doesn’t extend to blue collar criminal defendants, ever. But for white collar defendants, venality is in vogue. The implicit message is rewards are waiting for those unafraid to test the limits of public corruption law. Thomas is the Court’s own example and the Chief Justice says nothing.

In the past, a case like Snyder would have been taboo but with this Court both transparency and accountability are out. It is not surprising that a Court which won’t regulate its own ethics would have such a softened and cavalier attitude toward the ethics of public officials.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) calls the Supreme Court a captured court because dark money has re-made the Court, weakened democracy, and consistently favored the billionaire class. Decisions like Snyder are what you can expect from a captured court. “Gratuities” are there for the taking.

As people give the candidacy of convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter Donald Trump a closer look, more eyes have been drawn to Project 2025, a project launched by the Heritage Foundation, a well-endowed far right think tank. Authors affiliated with Heritage crafted the over 900 page volume which lays out the program for a second Trump term.

Because the Project started receiving critical feedback, Trump made a weak attempt to distance himself from its contents. Trump would like to pretend he has no connection but nothing could be more implausible. Trump and his associates plan to implement the plan immediately if he is again inaugurated President. Many of the authors of Project 2025 served in his administration and it is not a small number.

According to Judd Legum’s Popular Information, of the 38 people who wrote and edited Project 2025, 31 had been appointed or nominated to positions in the Trump administration. The distancing of Trump by himself from Project 2025 is hilarious. But this is a person with less than zero regard for the truth. If he sees any political advantage, he would be embracing it to the max.

Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation, has acknowledged that there is “tremendous overlap” between the RNC platform Agenda 47 and Project 2025. So what is the big deal with Project 2025?

I would argue it is a reactionary blueprint, opposing all the positive changes made in America since the 1960’s. It is an effort to turn back the clock. The Project wants to return to white supremacist dominance like existed in the Jim Crow era. Instead of multi-racial democracy, Project 2025 envisions a Christian nationalist dictatorship run by wealthy white men.

Since there are many aspects to Project 2025, I will zero in on a few aspects I find most pernicious.

Project 2025 is anti-woman and the mentality behind it is misogynist. They believe life begins at conception, a view that absolutely prioritizes fetal personhood over the life of the mother. A major focus is further whittling away women’s reproductive rights.

The plan says,”Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children”. They want the FDA to withdraw approval from Mifepristone and Misopristol, two drugs safely used in abortions that have been approved for over 20 years. They want the DOJ to resuscitate the long-moribund 1873 Comstock Act as a vehicle for prosecuting anyone sending or receiving abortion pills.

They also want rules requiring confidentiality of medical records lifted so that states can pursue criminal investigation of women who cross state lines to get an abortion. Punishing women for exercising their rights is a Project 2025 theme

Project 2025 is also anti-immigrant. Even though we saw the horror that was family separation during the Trump years in office, the Project wants to create a new border patrol and immigration agency that would build camps to detain children and families at the border. They intend to enlist the military to round up and deport millions of people who are already in the country, including Dreamers.

The level of cruelty reflected in the immigration chapter is not surprising considering that Trump calls immigrants “vermin” who “poison the blood of America”. You have to ask if this project comes to fruition, who will perform the jobs in agriculture, construction and care-taking? Trump and Project 2025 fail to consider the economic fallout of this unprecedented deportation scheme. It will result in massive worker shortage in the harsh jobs most Americans will not do.

I would also mention the Project’s sexist position on T and U visas. The Project wants to eliminate T and U visas. These have been used to protect victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and female genital mutilation. The disregard for the lives of women could not be more apparent.

Project 2025 is anti-science and it is opposed to efforts to address climate change. These people actually want to double down on fossil fuel production. They plan to close the EPA’s climate change departments and they want to shut down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , the government agency which forecasts weather and tracks climate change.

This is far right wing la-la land where if they close their eyes to reality, it won’t happen. It is not surprising that millions in dark money from the oil and gas industry (eg Koch Industries) are funding this effort. The fossil industry campaign to mystify the public about climate change is a continuing corporate crime. NOAA Chief Scientist Dr Sarak Kapnick just said,

“After seeing the 2023 climate analysis, I have to pause and say that the findings are astounding. Not only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA’s 174-year climate record – it was the warmest by far…We will continue to see records broken and extreme events grow until emissions go to zero.”

I would be remiss if I did not mention the central authoritarian strand of Project 2025. It is about vastly increasing the power of the Executive Branch, including exerting political control over the Department of Justice. This would allow the President to use the DOJ to prosecute those Trump deems “enemies”. Project 2025 is welcoming a dictatorship.

They want to infuse Christian nationalism into every facet of government policy. If they prevail, there will be no more separation of church and state. Government will be promoting evangelical Christianity.

Stepping back, one point that gets lost is that while Donald Trump would like to appear as a rebel, Project 2025 shows he is just a spokesman for the interests of the billionaire class. The policies outlined in Project 2025 are detrimental to democracy and all working people.

Trump is a convicted criminal surrounded by other convicted criminals. His candidacy is fundamentally a vehicle for staying out of jail. Making money for himself remains his greatest obsession. Project 2025 is a combination of Margaret Atwood and George Orwell.

During years working at New Hampshire Legal Assistance, I represented many homeless individuals. The reasons for homelessness were varied: eviction, job loss, divorce, domestic violence and disability, among others. Lack of income always figured in. Circumstances were often beyond the control of the individual.

It was not unusual for the homelessness crisis to cause a mental health breakdown which compounded the depression and anxiety already being experienced. A shredded safety net often failed to provide needed assistance. Unless they could get counsel, a condition that many could not get because need outstripped capacity, people were on their own to sink or swim. Even with counsel, buying time might often be the best a lawyer could do.

Homelessness has been on the rise nationally. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, roughly 653,100 experience homelessness on any given night, with a 12% increase between 2022 and 2023. Nearly half of those homeless are sleeping outside.

So when the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in at the end of June on the matter of homelessness in the case of Grants Pass v Johnson it was a pivotal moment for homelessness advocates and all who care about homelessness in America. Unfortunately, as has been its pattern, the Supreme Court majority failed, by rendering a callous decision devoid of humanity.

By a 6-3 margin, the conservatives on the Court enforced a camping ban against involuntarily unsheltered residents. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon had passed two ordinances that prohibited camping on public property and camping in a car. “Camping” in the ordinances was defined to include remaining in a place where material used for bedding is placed to maintain a temporary place to live.

The ordinances made it a crime to be homeless. If you are homeless and sleeping within city limits and you use blankets, pillows and cardboard boxes for protection against the elements, you can be fined $295 for a first violation which escalates to $537 if it is not paid. After a second citation, you can get an order that is a ban from city property. You can also get 30 days in jail for criminal trespass and a $1250 fine.

Homeless plaintiffs in Grants Pass had argued that the camping ban violated the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth Circuit, which covers Western states, including Oregon and California, had previously ruled that cities cannot punish people for sleeping outside without providing shelter options.

Grants Pass, a city of just under 40,000 people, has no public shelter. It only had a Christian mission that imposed a number of restrictions and required people to attend two religious services a day, a condition problematic for those not subscribing to that religious belief.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the Court majority, found no cruel and unusual punishment in the Grants Pass ordinances. His decision focused on the needs of cities, not the homeless. The justices found state and local officials can clear and punish homeless people for camping on public spaces even if shelter beds are full.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that “criminalizing homelessness can cause a destabilizing cascade of harm”. She wrote “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime. For some people, sleeping outside is their only option”. She goes on that punishing people for being homeless is “unconscionable” and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

The Court result makes it illegal for someone without a home to exist in a locale. No solution is offered. Overburdened cities and towns will be able to sweep people up and drop them elsewhere, out of sight and out of mind. Cities and town officials just want homeless people to go away and hide the visibility of poverty. They want a quick fix, using police. In this approach, the appearance of public order is the goal – not reducing the number of people without shelter.

As Peter Edelman has written, “the opposite of criminalizing poverty is ending homelessness”. Fines, arrests and jail time are costly and do nothing to solve homelessness. They have never helped one person out of homelessness.

In so many discussions I have had about homelessness, whether it is with liberals or conservatives, I have seen the tendency to blame the homeless for being in that situation, like they are guilty of some moral failing. Both liberals and conservatives maintain a Not in My Back Yard attitude.

The prevailing attitude is to make it so uncomfortable for the homeless that they will voluntarily vacate and move on down the road. I see no difference between liberals and conservatives on this. As a society we have normalized seeing thousands sleeping on the street. Too often our collective response is indifference to human suffering.

We need the political will to make safe and affordable housing a national priority. Two profound factors frame the current picture: a severe housing shortage and unaffordable rents. Any serious plan that tackles housing in America must address both.

The Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass moves things in the wrong direction. The Court demonstrates no sense of obligation to the neediest. We can expect more cities and towns will follow what Grants Pass did. In New Hampshire, Manchester just passed an encampment ban. Public order, not mercy and justice, define our High Court’s jurisprudence.

Back in 2017, in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 at a music festival held on the Las Vegas Strip. The gunman who was perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel had 14 rifles outfitted with bump stocks. He had smuggled them into his hotel room. He knocked out windows and started firing. Bump stocks can allow rifles to fire up to 800 rounds per minute..

The Las Vegas shooter rattled off over 1000 bullets in the eleven minutes of his deadly shooting spree before he killed himself. The motive for the shooting remains undetermined.

In June, we had the U.S. Supreme Court rule 6-3 in Garland v Cargill that regulations put in place to protect the public from these lethal killing machines could not stand. This was not a Second Amendment case. It was rather a question of statutory interpretation of the regulation drafted after careful study by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

After the Las Vegas shooting, former President Donald Trump had asked the ATF to propose the new regulation banning bump stocks. In December 2018, the ATF presented the regulation which went into effect in March 2019. The legal question in the case was whether rifles with bump stock attachments are machine guns.

Machine guns are banned under the 1934 National Firearms Act. The law goes back to a time when the government concern was stopping Mafia gangsters who were using machine guns in the commission of their crimes.

A bump stock is a replacement shoulder attachment for semiautomatic rifles especially AR and AK-style rifles that harness the recoil from firing to allow a shooter to fire shots in rapid succession. The federal government which had promoted the regulations argued that accessories like bump stocks convert semiautomatic rifles into machine guns.

It is easy to get lost in the intricacies of guns when looking at this case and that is what Justice Clarence Thomas does in his majority opinion. He put in pictures of firing mechanisms in his opinion. Thomas, however, along with the Court majority, entirely misses the forest for the trees.

Classifying bump stocks as not machine guns is obviously wrong. Look at the Las Vegas shooter. The reason he could kill so many so quickly was because of the bump stocks. The Supreme Court majority misses the purpose of the law which was to keep such guns out of the hands of people like that shooter. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the dissent, was not buying the majority reasoning. To quote her:

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

There is an absolute out-of-touchness about this Supreme Court. It is like justices are cocooned in their privileged world far removed from common people. As you read this, Justice Thomas may be on a yacht provided by his billionaire buddy and benefactor Harlan Crow. The justices are so insulated from gun violence and the consequences of their decision.

In this last week, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, issued a public health advisory on gun violence. He said:

“Firearm violence is an urgent public health issue that has led to loss of life, unimaginable pain and profound grief for far too many Americans.”

In 2020, gun violence became the leading cause of death among U.S. children and adolescents. The firearm mortality rate among youths in the U.S. is 11 times higher than in France, 36 times higher than in Germany and 121 times higher than in Japan. The rate of firearm-related deaths have been steadily rising. Whether in a school, a movie theater or any place where people are congregating, gun violence is far too-often a surprise unwanted intruder.

What is crazy about the Court’s bump stock decision is that the regulation at issue could not be more common sense. It was a response to the Las Vegas shooting. It should have been an easy lay-up.

Justice Thomas’s opinion is a ridiculous result. The law is already far too lax on any gun control reform but the Court evinces no concern about the toll taken. Such opinions will only create disrespect for the Supreme Court because they are undermining public safety. The Court is making it easier for deranged people to gain access to weapons that have no purpose beyond mass murder. Why does any civilian need a bump stock?

It is likely that the Court’s decision will open the door to other gun accessories like forced-reset triggers that allow shooters to fire more than 900 rounds in a minute.with one continuous trigger squeeze. The result is very in keeping with the Court’s posture around administrative agencies. ATF’s regulation got no deference. The Court is replacing agency expertise with a judicial power grab.

While the American public is focused on the presidential race, the big wildly undercovered story is how the Supreme Court has been usurping power for itself at the expense of the other two branches of government. It is the far right project of deconstructing the administrative state. Not allowing the regulation of bump stocks is part of that story.

Whoever the president is, the Court is making itself an obstacle to any progressive change whether it is guns, voting rights, the environment, women’s rights, consumer rights or health care. For many years conservatives whined about the activism of the Warren Court. What is going on with the Roberts court is of an entirely different dimension. Forget stare decisis, forget any effort to achieve the narrowest rulings: this Court is results-driven to achieve the maximum far right Federalist Society vision.

If I was going to offer a motto for the Roberts court it would be “Love the billionaire, hate the homeless”.

For any critic of the Supreme Court, there are too many major cases to respond to substantively which are piled up at the end of the term. The bump stock case is representative of the lack of concern for the public interest evinced by the Court majority. The Court belittles an urgent threat to the American public. Their decision will end up costing many lives.

We just passed the Juneteenth holiday and although it may be the holiday with the coolest name I don’t think the history behind the holiday is well known or well understood. I would argue it is one of our most important holidays because it is a celebration of freedom for all Americans. It represents a turning point in the historical battle to transform America into a place where slavery and its residual legacy are not acceptable.

Back on June 19, 1865, news of emancipation reached the enslaved people in Texas. Union general Gordon Granger stood on a balcony in Galveston, Texas and read the order that announced slavery was over. All slaves were free. This was more than two years after President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Confederate soldiers in Texas actually continued to fight in May 1865 even after General Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia in April.

You might wonder: how come there were so many enslaved people in Texas and how come they did not know about the Emancipation Proclamation? Texas was one of the eleven Confederate states and it was a slave state.

Settlers brought enslaved people to Texas to exploit them. They wanted to create a cotton-based slave economy like those in the other Southern states that had proved to be enormously profitable. After taking land from Native Americans, the settlers needed the labor of slaves to clear forests, tend the land and plant crops. That work was seen to be too onerous for the settlers but appropriate for the enslaved.

Texas had ignored the Emancipation Proclamation which applied to all the Confederate states. Even after the Confederacy lost the Civil War, slave owners didn’t share that news with their slaves. They tried to keep the exploitation going as long as possible.

In spite of Texans’ braggadocio and their tendency toward self-praise because of its size, Texas has a dark history. During the Civil War, slaveowners who feared the advance of Union troops, moved west to Texas with their slaves to what they perceived as a relative safe zone for slavery. Historians have estimated 150,000 as the number of slaves removed to Texas from Louisiana and Mississippi. Ishmael Reed writes:

“After the invasion of Pennsylvania in the American Civil War, the Confederates, mounted on horseback, marched children and their parents back to slavery, whether they were free or fugitive slaves.”

Maybe no war in American history needs more re-interpretation than the U.S. intervention in Mexico in the 1840’s. Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829 when Texas was still part of that country. White slaveholding immigrants fought for independence and formed the Republic of Texas in 1836. They made slavery legal and it continued to be legal when Texas became a state in 1845.

The Texas Constitution actually forbid the immigration of free Black people and no free person of African descent was permitted to reside permanently in Texas.

The battle of the Alamo in 1836 played a prominent role in Texas history. It is part of Texans’ heroic origin story but critical facts are avoided. Although Mexican General Santa Anna is depicted as a villain, it was the Mexicans who opposed slavery – not the defenders of the Alamo.

The U.S. invasion of Mexico was essentially an imperialist land grab. Many future Confederate leaders and generals including Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were part of the invasion force. The U.S. President James Polk, our 11th president, was a slaveowner who sought the annexation of Texas and he wanted to expand slavery to Mexico. While he was president, Polk bought 19 enslaved people (13 were children) and he sent them to work on his Mississippi plantation.

It is little known that there was an Underground Railroad that went south to Mexico. Almost all accounts described the Underground Railroad as a northern trek to free states or Canada but there was a Southern route too that went to Mexico.

An estimated 5000 to 10000 enslaved people escaped from bondage into Mexico. Researchers say some went on foot, others rode horses and others snuck aboard ferries bound for Mexican ports. Because Mexico didn’t recognize slavery, it refused to return escaped slaves. Maria Hammock, a historian who is writing a dissertation on the southern route Underground Railroad writes:

“There were clandestine routes and if you got caught you would be killed and lynched, so most people didn’t leave a lot of records.”

Juneteenth needs to be understood in the context of the continuing battle not just against slavery but for equality. When General Gordon Granger stated in his order “all slaves are free”, he also stated:

“This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves…”

Nothing could have been more antithetical to the Confederate vision which was rooted in white supremacy. In spite of Juneteenth and the passage of the 13th Amendment, some enslavers remained unreconciled to the change and they continued to make their former slaves work for no pay. They used threats of violence as enforcement.

Former Confederates did not stop resisting after the Civil War. They tried to glamorize their history with the Lost Cause mythology and then they created a monstrous Jim Crow system. Donald Trump has kind words for General Robert E. Lee and Confederate monuments but that sympathy is entirely undeserved.

Juneteenth is about a vision of freedom for all Americans. It is a recognition of genuine progress and, as such, it is one of our most worthy holidays. Many holidays now seem like only an excuse for a three day weekend. That is not the case with Juneteenth.

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.