By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 21, 2025 Caleb Crosby News Update --- On December 1, 2023, I published an article titled, “ Alabama Policy Institute’s Caleb Crosby Named as a Participant in a FEC Money Laundering Complaint .” A copy of the complaint was hyperlinked in the article.   A check of the Docket Sheet in this Federal Election Commission (FEC) case today shows that Crosby's case is closed, as the Commission did not muster the four votes necessary to pursue an investigation into the allegations raised in the complaint. All actions taken by the Commission are reflected on the Docket Sheet.   The complaint alleged that three political consultants illegally funneled at least $1.27 million in potentially illegal corporate contributions to federal and state political committees through a series of conduit corporations.  The complaint’s allegations were primarily based on in-depth investigative reporting by the Orlando Sentinel -- a newspaper founded in 1876 and the recipient of multiple Pulitzer Prizes, including one for investigative reporting.  The Sentinel’s reporting on this scheme was detailed and well-sourced, with the paper having internal emails and memoranda from the political consultants discussing the scheme in its possession.   Two FEC Commissioners stated that the Sentinel’s reporting provided a credible allegation of a significant violation that the conduit corporations made contributions in the name of another, warranting further investigation into the true source of the funds. However, these Commissioners could not muster the four votes needed to pursue that investigation.   In April 2024, a motion to dismiss the complaint failed on a 3-3 vote.  The Commission also failed , on a 2-3 vote, to dismiss the allegation that Caleb Crosby violated 52 U.S.C. § 30122 and 11 C.F.R. § 110.4(b) by making contributions in the name of another.   By a vote of 3-2, the Commission decided to take no further action against Caleb Crosby in his official capacity as treasurer of the Senate Leadership Fund and in his personal capacity   A motion to close the file passed on a 6-0 vote.  This FEC case now sits in the bizarre procedural posture of having an uninvestigated, active complaint against Caleb Crosby and the other named Respondents tucked away in a closed file.

By : Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 19, 2025 Victorious Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945. An Editorial Opinion This year, America re-entered the old paradigm where the lives and history of Blacks, women, and Native Americans were devalued, along with their invaluable contributions to American society. This is U.S. policy, once again. Last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the least qualified presidential appointee to hold this position in the modern era, scrubbed the valiant contributions of a trailblazing female pilot and two military icons of color from the Pentagon's website. These heroes included Brigadier General Charles Rogers, a Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient , and Major General Jeannie Marie Leavitt, a Military Hall of Honor inductee. Army Brigadier General Charles Rogers Air Force Major General Jeannie Marie Leavitt The Pentagon also deleted the iconic photo of Marines hoisting an American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945 solely because one of the Marines in the photo was Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Native American from the Pima Tribe. Marine Pfc. Ira Hayes Additionally, the Pentagon ordered Arlington Cemetery's website to drop links for deceased Blacks, women, and Hispanic military heroes. In January, the Air Force's " Breaking Barriers " recruitment video was scrubbed from the Pentagon's websiite solely because it featured the famed Tuskegee Airman, who were World War II aviation heroes and America's first Top Gun winners in 1949 . The Pentagon's Purge of Non-White Male Military Heroes Has Been Met with Public Outrage The purge of Blacks, women, and Native American military heroes was ordered by President Donald Trump, whom many Americans view as a Vietnam War draft dodger. When Trump had his chance to show wartime valor, his father bought Trump's way out of military service via a private doctor's medical examination and bone spur medical excuse. These deliberate Pentagon erasures of this military history, along with others of a similar nature, have been met with public outrage. President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are literally attempting to whitewash American military history. They want to make it all-white, again. Due to the public outrage, the "Breaking Barriers" video has been restored. Gen. Rogers' website link has been reactivated , albeit with disparaging press statement by Hegseth, who never rose above the rank of major. Epilogue America has been here before -- many times. Throughout our nation's existence, there have been those in power who have sought to reimage, erase, and/or sanitize various chapters of American history to perpetuate a false narrative that portrayed White males soldiers in the most favorable light posssible. What is more, the Declaration of Independence designates Native Americans as “ merciless Indian savages . ” Additionally, between 1770 and1870, the U.S. government broke every treaty executed with 374 Native American Tribes . Yet, it was the brilliance of Navajo Code Talkers that broke the Japanese military codes. This seminal event helped America win World War II in the Pacific theater. The "thank you" that Native Americans got last week from President Trump and Secretary Hegseth for their wartime valor was the cold and callous removal of the flag-raising photo solely because Pfc. Hayes was one of the Marines featured in the flag-raising. The irony in today's new age bigotry is this: The people who were erased from our military history were true military heroes and icons, while the ones who erased them were not.

Reprinted from the January 17, 2020 edition of The New York Times From mass incarceration to mass deportation, our nation remains in deep denial. By: Michelle Alexander Opinion Columnist White supremacists marched across the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has changed. When I was researching and writing the book, Barack Obama had not yet been elected president of the United States. I was in disbelief that our country would actually elect a black man to be the leader of the so-called free world. As the election approached, I felt an odd sense of hope and dread. I hoped against all reason that we would actually do it. But I also knew that, if we did, there would be a price to pay. Everything I knew through experience and study told me that we as a nation did not fully understand the nature of the moment we were in. We had recently birthed another caste system — a system of mass incarceration — that locked millions of poor people and people of color in literal and virtual cages. Our nation’s prison and jail population had quintupled in 30 years, leaving us with the highest incarceration rate in the world. A third of black men had felony records — due in large part to a racially biased, brutal drug war — and were relegated to a permanent second-class status. Tens of millions of people in the United States had been stripped of basic civil and human rights, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, education and basic public benefits. Nevertheless, our nation remained in deep denial that a new caste system even existed, and most of us — even those who cared deeply about racial justice — did not seem to understand that powerful racial dynamics and political forces were at play that made much of our racial progress illusory. We had not faced our racial history and could not tell the truth about our racial present, yet growing numbers of Americans wanted to elect a black president and leap into a “colorblind” future. I was right to worry about the aftermath of Obama’s election. After he was inaugurated, our nation was awash in “post-racialism.” Black History Month events revolved around “how far we’ve come.” Many in the black community and beyond felt that, if Obama could win the presidency, anything was possible. Few people wanted to hear the message I felt desperate to convey: Despite appearances, our nation remains trapped in a cycle of racial reform, backlash and re-formation of systems of racial and social control. Things have changed since then. Donald Trump is president of the United States. For many, this feels like whiplash. After eight years of Barack Obama — a man who embraced the rhetoric (though not the politics) of the civil rights movement — we now have a president who embraces the rhetoric and the politics of white nationalism. This is a president who openly stokes racial animosity and even racial violence, who praises dictators (and likely aspires to be one), who behaves like a petulant toddler on Twitter, and who has a passionate, devoted following of millions of people who proudly say they want to “make America great again” by taking us back to a time that we’ve left behind. We are now living in an era not of post-racialism but of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required. Racial bigotry, fear mongering and scapegoating are no longer subterranean in our political discourse; the dog whistles have been replaced by bullhorns. White nationalist movements are operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re celebrating mass killings and recruiting thousands into their ranks. White nationalism has been emboldened by our president, who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people — calling Mexican migrants criminals, “rapists” and “bad people,” referring to developing African nations as “shithole countries” and smearing a district of the majority-black city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Millions of Americans are cheering, or at least tolerating, these racial hostilities. Contrary to what many people would have us believe, what our nation is experiencing is not an “aberration.” The politics of “Trumpism” and “fake news” are not new; they are as old as the nation itself. The very same playbook has been used over and over in this country by those who seek to preserve racial hierarchy, or to exploit racial resentments and anxieties for political gain, each time with similar results. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, Democratic and Republican politicians leaned heavily on the racial stereotypes of “crack heads,” “crack babies,” “superpredators” and “welfare queens” to mobilize public support for the War on Drugs, a get-tough movement and a prison-building boom — a political strategy that was traceable in large part to the desire to appeal to poor and working-class white voters who had defected from the Democratic Party in the wake of the civil rights movement. Today, the rhetoric has changed, but the game remains the same. Public enemy No. 1 in the 2016 election was a brown-skinned immigrant, an “illegal,” a “terrorist” or an influx of people who want to take your job or rape your daughter. As Trump put it : “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” He promised to solve this imaginary crisis through mass deportation and building a wall between the United States and Mexico. He also insisted that his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, wanted “millions of illegal immigrants to come in and take everybody’s jobs.” And he blamed domestic terroristic attacks in New Jersey and New York on “our extremely open immigration system,” which, he argued, allows Muslim terrorists into our country. The fact that Trump’s claims were demonstrably false did not impede his rise, just as facts were largely irrelevant at the outset of the War on Drugs. It didn’t matter back then that studies consistently found that whites were equally likely, if not more likely, than people of color to use and sell illegal drugs. Black people were still labeled the enemy. Nor did it matter, when the drug war was taking off, that nearly all of the sensationalized claims that crack cocaine was some kind of “demon drug,” drastically more harmful than powder cocaine, were false or misleading. Black people charged with possession of crack in inner cities were still punished far more harshly than white people in possession of powder cocaine in the suburbs. And it didn’t matter that African-Americans weren’t actually taking white people’s jobs or college educations in significant numbers through affirmative action programs. Getting tough on “them” — the racially defined “others” who could easily be used as scapegoats and cast as the enemy — was all that mattered. Facts were treated as largely irrelevant then. As they are now. Fortunately, a growing number of scholars and activists have begun to connect the dots between mass incarceration and mass deportation in our nation’s history and current politics. The historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, in her essay “ Amnesty or Abolition : Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” chronicles how these systems have emerged as interlocking forms of social control that relegate “aliens” and “felons” to a racialized caste of outsiders. In recent decades, the system of mass incarceration has stripped away from millions of U.S. citizens basic civil and human rights until their status mirrors (or dips below) that of noncitizen immigrants within the United States. This development has coincided with the criminalization of immigration in the United States, resulting in a new class of “illegal immigrants” and “aliens” who are viewed and treated like “felons” or “criminals.” Immigration violations that were once treated as minor civil infractions are now crimes. And minor legal infractions, ranging from shoplifting to marijuana possession to traffic violations, now routinely prompt one of the nation’s most devastating sanctions — deportation. The story of how our “nation of immigrants” came to deport and incarcerate so many for so little, Hernández explains, is a story of race and unfreedom reaching back to the era of emancipation. If we fail to understand the historical relationship between these systems, especially the racial politics that enabled them, we will be unable to build a truly united front that will prevent the continual re-formation of systems of racial and social control. In my experience, those who argue that the systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation simply reflect sincere (but misguided) efforts to address the real harms caused by crime, or the real challenges created by surges in immigration, tend to underestimate the corrupting influence of white supremacy whenever black and brown people are perceived to be the problem. “Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question,” W.E.B. Du Bois famously said back in 1897: “How does it feel to be a problem?” White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they’ve historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color — in this “land of the free” forged through slavery and genocide — are regularly viewed and treated as the problem. This distinction has made all the difference. Once human beings are defined as the problem in the public consciousness, their elimination through deportation, incarceration or even genocide becomes nearly inevitable. White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation’s problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled. In short, mass incarceration and mass deportation have less to do with crime and immigration than the ways we’ve chosen to respond to those issues when black and brown people are framed as the problem. As Khalil Gibran Muhammad points out in “The Condemnation of Blackness,” throughout our nation’s history, when crime and immigration have been perceived as white, our nation’s response has been radically different from when those phenomena have been defined as black or brown. The systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation may seem entirely unrelated at first glance, but they are both deeply rooted in our racial history, and they both have expanded in part because of the enormous profits to be made in controlling, exploiting and eliminating vulnerable human beings. It is tempting to imagine that electing a Democratic president or more Democratic politicians will fix the crises in our justice systems and our democracy. To be clear, removing Trump from office is necessary and urgent; but simply electing more Democrats to office is no guarantee that our nation will break its habit of birthing enormous systems of racial and social control. Indeed, one of the lessons of recent decades is these systems can grow and thrive even when our elected leaders claim to be progressive and espouse the rhetoric of equality, inclusion and civil rights. President Bill Clinton, who publicly aligned himself with the black community and black leaders, escalated a racially discriminatory drug war in part to avoid being cast by conservatives as “soft on crime.” Similarly, President Obama publicly preached values of inclusion and compassion toward immigrants, yet he escalated the mass detention and deportation of noncitizens. Obama claimed that his administration was focused on deporting: “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” However, reports by The New York Times and the Marshall Project revealed that, despite Obama’s rhetoric, a clear majority of immigrants detained and deported during his administration had no criminal records, except minor infractions, including traffic violations, and posed no threat. Equally important is the reality that “felons” have families. And “criminals” are often children or teenagers. The notion that, if you’ve ever committed a crime, you’re permanently disposable is the very idea that has rationalized mass incarceration in the United States. None of this is to minimize the real progress that has occurred on many issues of race and criminal justice during the past decade. Today, there is bipartisan support for some prison downsizing, and hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars have begun to flow toward criminal justice reform. A vibrant movement led by formerly incarcerated and convicted people is on the rise — a movement that has challenged or repealed disenfranchisement laws in several states, mobilized support of sentencing reform and successfully organized to “ban the box” on employment applications that discriminate against those with criminal records by asking the dreaded question: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Activism challenging police violence has swept the nation — inspired by the courageous uprisings in Ferguson, Mo., the viral videos of police killings of unarmed black people, and #BlackLivesMatter . Promising movements for restorative and transformative justice have taken hold in numerous cities. Campaigns against cash bail have gained steam. Marijuana legalization has sped across the nation, with more than 25 states having partly or fully decriminalized cannabis since 2012. And “The New Jim Crow,” which some predicted would never get an audience, wound up spending nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and has been used widely by faith groups, activists, educators and people directly affected by mass incarceration inside and outside prisons. Over the past 10 years, I’ve received thousands of letters — and tens of thousands of emails — from people in all walks of life who have written to share how the book changed their lives or how they have used it to support consciousness-raising or activism in countless ways. Everything has changed. And yet nothing has. The politics of white supremacy, which defined our original constitution, have continued unabated — repeatedly and predictably engendering new systems of racial and social control. Just a few decades ago, politicians vowed to build more prison walls. Today, they promise border walls. The political strategy of divide, demonize and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States — since the days of slavery — to keep poor and working people angry at (and fearful of) one another rather than uniting to challenge unjust political and economic systems. At times, the tactics of white supremacy have led to open warfare. Other times, the divisions and conflicts are less visible, lurking beneath the surface. The stakes now are as high as they’ve ever been. Nearly everyone seems aware that our democracy is in crisis, yet few seem prepared to reckon with the reality that removing Trump from office will not rid our nation of the social and political dynamics that made his election possible. No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy — a form of politics that not only led to an actual civil war but that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy. We find ourselves in this dangerous place not because something radically different has occurred in our nation’s politics, but because so much has remained the same. The inconvenient truth is that racial progress in this country is always more complex and frequently more illusory than it appears at first glance. The past 10 years has been a case in point. Our nation has swung sharply from what Marc Mauer memorably termed “a race to incarcerate” — propelled by bipartisan wars on “drugs” and “crime” — to a bipartisan commitment to criminal justice reform, particularly in the area of drug policy. And yet, it must be acknowledged that much of the progress occurred not because of newfound concern for people of color who have been the primary targets of the drug war, but because drug addiction, due to the opioid crisis, became perceived as a white problem, and wealthy white investors became interested in profiting from the emerging legal cannabis industry. Some of the reversals in political opinion have been striking. For example, John Boehner, a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, stated in 2011 that he was “unalterably opposed to decriminalizing marijuana,” but by the spring of 2018 he had joined the board of a cannabis company. Growing sympathy for illegal drug users among whites and conservatives, and concern regarding the expense of mass imprisonment, helped to make possible a bipartisan consensus in support of the Trump administration’s First Step Act — leading to the early release of more than 3,000 people from federal prisons for drug offenses. This development, which benefits people of color subject to harsh and biased drug sentencing laws, is difficult to characterize as major progress toward ending mass incarceration, given that Trump continued to unleash racially hostile tirades against communities of color and his administration vowed to reinstate the federal death penalty. He also rescinded a number of significant reforms adopted by Obama and expanded the use of private prisons. Obama also has a complicated legacy with respect to criminal justice reform. Obama was the first sitting president to visit a federal correctional facility, the first to oversee a drop in the federal prison population in more than 30 years, and he granted clemency to nearly 2,000 people behind bars — the highest total for any president since Harry Truman. His administration enacted significant policy changes, including legislation reducing sentencing disparities involving crack and powder cocaine, a phasing out of federal contracts with private prisons, and limitations on the transfer of military equipment to local police departments. And yet it sometimes appeared that Obama was reluctant to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the structural changes required to address police violence and the prevailing systems of racial and social control. For example, when black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested in his own home for no reason, Obama responded to the national furor and media frenzy by inviting Gates and the arresting officer to a “beer summit” at the White House to work things out over drinks and peanuts, as though racial profiling is little more than an interpersonal dispute that can be resolved through friendly dialogue. Most troubling, the modest criminal justice reforms that were achieved during the Obama administration coincided with the expansion of the system of mass deportation. Although the administration agreed to phase out federal contracts for private prisons, it made enormous investments in private detention centers for immigrants, including the granting of a $1 billion contract to Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison company, to build a detention facility for women and children asylum seekers from Central America. Immigrant detention centers were exempted from the phaseout plan for private prisons, which meant that only about a quarter of the population held in private facilities in the United States was affected by the plan. The caging of immigrants for profit was allowed to continue without restraint. The reality is that, during both the Obama and Clinton years, highly racialized and punitive systems thrived under liberal presidents who were given the benefit of the doubt by those who might otherwise have been critics. Obama and Clinton’s public displays of affection for communities of color, the egalitarian values they preached and their liberal or progressive stances on other issues helped to shield these vast systems of control from close scrutiny. Many of us saw these presidents as “good people” with our best interests at heart, doing what they could to navigate a political environment in which only limited justice is possible. All of these factors played a role, but one was key: These systems grew with relatively little political resistance because people of all colors were willing to tolerate the disposal of millions of individuals once they had been labeled criminals in the media and political discourse. This painful reality suggests that ending our nation’s habit of creating enormous systems of racial and social control requires us to expand our sphere of moral concern so widely that none of us, not even those branded criminals, can be viewed or treated as disposable. If there is any silver lining to be found in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, it is that millions of people have been inspired to demonstrate solidarity on a large scale across the lines of gender, race, religion and class in defense of those who have been demonized and targeted for elimination. Trump’s blatant racial demagogy has awakened many from their “colorblind” slumber and spurred collective action to oppose the Muslim ban and the border wall, and to create sanctuaries for immigrants in their places of worship and local communities. Many who are engaged in this work are also deeply involved in, or supportive of, movements to end police violence and mass incarceration. Growing numbers of people are beginning to see how the politics of white supremacy have resurfaced again and again, leading to the creation and maintenance of new systems of racial and social control. A politics of deep solidarity is beginning to emerge — the only form of politics that holds any hope for our collective liberation. The centuries-long struggle to birth a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy — a nation in which every voice and every life truly matters — did not begin with us, and it will not end with us. The struggle is as old as the nation itself and the birth process has been painful, to say the least. My greatest hope and prayer is that we will serve as faithful midwives in our lifetimes and do what we can to make America, finally, what it must become.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 16, 2025 President Donald Trump released a rendition of a golden statue of himself, which he expects to be placed in the center of his planned Trump Gaza luxury resort community in Gaza after two million Palestinians are moved from their ancestral homeland and resettled to other countries. An Editorial Opinion After seven weeks of the Donald Trump presidency, MAGA World is basking in the Golden Age of Trumpism.  Here are 25 societal values and key actions that define Trumpism: Black, Hispanic, and women war heroes are no longer highlighted at Arlington National Cemetery.   “First Buddy” Elon Musk, a South African apartheid supporter, has questioned the IQ of black military and civil pilots , despite the Tuskegee Airmen’s outstanding record of success during and after World War II.  Today, the Tuskegee Airmen's wartime valor is viewed as a DEI experiment that never would have happened if far-left radical Eleanor Roosevelt had not been First Lady.   “ Competent white men must be in charge if we want things to work ," proclaimed Trump-appointed State Department executive services employee Darren J. Beattie.   White people who supported DEI in 1961 were considered to be mentally il l and are deemed leftists today .   The federal government is investigating 45 colleges and universities that teach courses on the black experience in America from 1619 to the present.   Up to 127,300 federal employees have been fired since Trump assumed office.   The U.S government is rounding up and deporting hundreds of thousands undocumented immigrants of color just like America did during “ Operation Wetback ” in 1954.   Through a framework of Presidential Executive Orders, the White House is shepherding African-Americans back into the pre-Civil Rights Act of 1964 era of so-called “ black jobs .”   Interracial adoptions are attacked by MAGA loyalists like Laura Loomer and Jack Poso as a deplorable form of DEI. Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Republican, is the poster child for these attacks. The Civil War has been re-imagined. Under Trumpism, the war was fought over the issue of states rights and not slavery, even though slavery is explicitly referenced as the cause for seceding from the Union 154 times in the secession documents of eight Confederate states.   The “ Negro National Anthem ” is now deemed to be inappropriate, even though it existed 13 years before " The Star Spangled Banner " was adopted by Congress in 1931 as the " National Anthem ."   Americans with ancestral roots in India like Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Bobby Jindal are not "Caucasian."  No matter how hard they try to pass for “white,” they are “Colored .”   An African multibillionaire has bought the shipping ports at the Panama Canal .   Today, President Trump believes he must seize control of the canal by military force, if necessary.   An African multibillionaire in Nigeria built and operates the largest oil refinery in Africa making him the 85th-wealthiest person in the world. The U.S. appears to be frustrated by this milestone achievement and has scrapped foreign aid to all African countries.   At his request, the Department of Homeland Security has spent $200 million on an ad campaign to “thank” Donald Trump for being president .  Meanwhile, Elon Musk is looking for fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending at other federal agencies.   President Trump rolled out a promotional video of the giant golden statue of himself that he thinks would be great to place at his planned "Trump Gaza" luxury resort community in the Palestinian city of Gaza.   The Donald J. Trump Commemorative $5,000 Gold Dollar Bills being sold on Amazon and eBay are fake currency. Yet, some of Trump's supporters have tried to cash them at banks.   After President Trump attended a church service at the National Cathedral in Washington in January, he excoriated Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde for preaching the Beatitudes in his presence .   Russia is our new trusted friend . NATO is now our enemy.   America loves Israel as long as Jewish political action committees fully fund our presidential and congressional races. President Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, warned us about the situation with Israel .   Today, industrial-scale manufacturing and production plants that poison the air, land, and water are good for business.   Federal regulations that seek to curtail the toxins they spew in the air, ground, and water are bad for business and must be cut.   Electric vehicles (EVs) are bad, except for the one Tesla car that Donald Trump bought from Elon Musk on the White House lawn last week. Today, Americans are being sold on the pitch that they don't need EVs in the Golden Age of " drill, baby, drill ."   Moral fitness, character, and empathy have no place in the Golden Age of Trumpism.  Every situation with everbody in the Trump era is purely transactional. The poor, disabled, and elderly must fend for themselves. President Ronald Reagan's " safety net for the truly needy " is gone. Truth Social , X (formerly known as Twitter), and Fox News are the trusted news sources that will tell Americans what is good for the country. Every other major media organization is fake news. The Imperial drum major in the Golden Age of Trumpism is President Trump. His presidential and personal actions define who he is. I give no credence to Trump's campaign speeches, State of the Union addresses, and White House press statements because most Americans know that Trump's reputation for truth and veracity is sorely lacking.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 13, 2025 Air Force Capt. Alva Temple, 1st Lt. James Harvey III, 1st Lt. Harry Stewart and 1st Lt. Halbert Alexander pose with their "Top Gun" trophy in May 1949 at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. The trophy, which went missing for 55 years, is now displayed at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. (Air Force photo) An Editorial Opinion Some fights against racism never seem to end.   On January 9, 2024, "First Buddy" Elon Musk, a longtime beneficiary of brutally enforced white privilege under South Africa’s racial apartheid system, embraced a tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter) that questioned the IQ of black USAF pilots and insinuated these aviators are intellectually inferior to white pilots.  According to Musk, black HBCH graduates are entering the aviation profession as pilots because of "crazy" DEI policies.   Here is the original January 9th tweet from io@eyeslasho:   “The average IQ of USAF pilots is about 120, and the figures I've seen for major airline pilots range from 115 to 130. By contrast, the mean IQ of grads from two of those United Airline HBCU "partners" is about 85 to 90, based on the average SATs at those schools. (The SAT correlates reasonably well with IQ.) To put this into context, the HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered "borderline intellectual impairment," while the pilots IQ averages are within 10 points of what is considered "intellectually gifted. I'll add that IQ is a well-studied and well-known predictor of job performance, especially for quick-processing and mentally demanding occupations like major airline pilot.”   Elon Musk embraced the concept expressed in this tweet and retweeted it with this comment, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE.”  Obviously, Musk was referring to “DEI” policies, which he sarcastically labels as “this crazy policy of DIE.” The point that io@eyeslaso and Musk were making is simple: Black pilots who graduate from HBCUs are inferior.   The full text of io@eyeslasho’s post has since been made "unavailable," but not before we captured the entire quote and reprinted it above.   Are Black Pilots from HBCUs Close to “Borderline Intellectually Impaired"?   Musk's tweet resurrects the pre-World War II debate about the intelligence of black HBCU graduates who become military and commercial pilots. I thought that debate ended when the war ended in 1945. I will let the accomplishments of the famed Tuskegee Airmen speak to the IQ, aptitude, training, ability to performance flight missions, success, and courage of black pilots.  Here is the record :   During World War II, Tuskegee University , a distinguished HBCU, was awarded the U.S. Army Air Corps contract to help train America's first black military aviators.  Tuskegee had already invested in the development of an airfield, had a proven civilian pilot training program, and its graduates performed at the highest levels on flight aptitude exams. The all-Black, 332nd Fighter Group consisted originally of four fighter squadrons, the 99th, the 100th, the 301st and the 302nd. From 1941-1946, some 1,000 Black pilots were trained at Tuskegee . The Airmen's success in escorting bombers during World War II – having one of the lowest loss records of all the escort fighter groups and being in constant demand for their services by the allied bomber units piloted by white aviators -- is a record unmatched by any other fighter group . The 99th Squadron distinguished itself by being awarded two Presidential Unit Citations (June-July 1943 and May 1944) for outstanding tactical air support and aerial combat in the 12th Air Force in Italy, before joining the 332nd Fighter Group. The 332nd Fighter group was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its' longest bomber escort mission to Berlin, Germany on March 24, 1945. During this mission, the Tuskegee Airmen (then known as the 'Red Tails') destroyed three German ME-262 jet fighters and damaged five additional jet fighters. The 332nd Fighter Group had also distinguished itself in June 1944 when two of its pilots flying P-47 Thunderbolts discovered a German destroyer in the harbor of Trieste, Italy. On March 29, 2007, President George W. Bush and members of Congress awarded the Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal , the highest civilian award given by Congress.   The apartheid rulers in South Africa obviously did not make this aviation history known to the white beneficiaries of apartheid like Elon Musk and his family. Musk fled South Africa for Canada as the country's apartheid system was beginning to crumble in 1989. South Africa gained its independence in 1992. The nation elected human rights activist Nelson Mandela as its first black president in 1994.   The First "Top Gun" Winners were Tuskegee Airmen   The Tuskegee Airmen’s list of accomplishments did not stop with their brilliance and bravery in the European theater during World War II.    The first "Top Gun" competition, which is depicted in Tom Cruise’s 1986 and 2022 "Top Gun" movies, took place in May 1949 at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The competition included white and black combat pilots. The white pilots in the Top Gun competition flew in state-of-the-art F-51 and F-82 airplanes. A team of four Tuskegee Airmen pilots, consisting of Captain Alva Temple , 1st Lieutenant Harry Stewart , 1st Lieutenant James Harvey , and 1st Lieutenant Halbert Alexander (alternate) , competed with their propeller-driven Republic F-47N fighters, which were older, obsolete planes. The Tuskegee Airmen team in the first Top Gun competition at Nellis Africa Base in Nevada in May 1949. For 10 days, the Tuskegee Airmen team squared off against the other pilots on aerial gunnery at 12,000 and 20,000 feet, skip bombing, rocket firing, strafing, and dive bombing. Notching perfect scores , the Tuskegee Airmen dominated the competition and held first place all the way from the first day.   When the Tuskegee Airmen team was announced as the "Top Gun" winners, there was dead silence in the room. Not one of their white colleagues applauded this remarkable accomplishment. The Tuskegee Airmen team was presented their victory trophy and posed for a photograph with it. The victory, however, was quickly erased from history. Somehow, the trophy vanished and was not seen again for 55 years. For decades, the Air Force Association’s annual almanac listed the winners of the 1949 "Top Gun" competition as “ unknown. ” In the 1990s, the records of the first "Top Gun" competition were uncovered at Nellis AFB, and the Tuskegee Airmen team’s victory was officially acknowledged by the Air Force as the winners.   The "Top Gun" trophy was found in 2004, some 55 years after the Tuskegee Airmen team won it. Zellie Rainey Orr, historian and president of the Atlanta chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., uncovered the trophy in a storage area at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio.  It is now on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB.   Epilogue   Elon Musk needs to focus his attention on (a) making Tesla cars better products in the EV marketplace and (b) keeping his SpaceX Starship rockets from exploding after their launch.  His record of achievement on these two fronts is sorely lacking.   Furthermore, Musk embraces and amplifies the old apartheid beliefs about blacks and other people of color.  Additionally, The Wall Street Journal has reported that Elon Musk exhibits a passion for using hallucinogenic drugs , both legal and illegal. In public, Musk acts weird a lot of the time.   Finally, Elon Musk is the " immigrant " who is taking away jobs from middle-class Americans. According to my sources in Washington, nobody likes Musk, except President Donald Trump and the handful of young, personality-deprived, cold-hearted nerds on his DOGE team.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on August 22, 2021 "Operation Wetback" detainees (left) and Trump undocumented detainees (right). On April 15, 2019, I published an investigative article titled, " The Uncomfortable Truth About America's Immigration Laws. " The article examined the birth of white entitlement in America and documented the widespread white racism that is embedded in the nation's immigration and naturalization laws. In his book, Mein Kampf, Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler praised America as the "global leader in racist immigration laws." Hitler openly praised America as the only nation that had "made progress toward the creation of a healthy racist order of the kind the Nuremberg Laws were intended to establish." One of the ugliest episodes of racism was carried out in 1954 by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service against Hispanic migrants. Code named "Operation Wetback," this operation rounded up and deported undocumented Hispanic immigrants in select areas of California, Arizona, and Texas along the southern border. The U.S. Border Patrol later reported to Congress that more than 1.3 million people were deported to Mexico or had left the United States under the threat of deportation. Of course, "Wetback" was then and is now a racially derogatory term for a person of Hispanic descent. Undocumented white migrants from Central and South America who entered the United States from Mexico were exempt from "Operation Wetback's" mass roundup and deportation. The same is true for undocumented white migrants from Europe who entered the country from Canada. Today, undocumented migrants of color from Central and South America are crossing the southern border in surging numbers not seen in over 20 years. This surge has brought "Operation Wetback" back in full force, albeit under the politically correct name of "immigration reform." Changing Demographics Drives America's Immigration Policies America's immigration laws and policies have always favored letting white migrants come into the country, with very few restrictions, while limiting the number of migrants of color from all countries. For example, between 1862 and 1986, America placed advertisements in European newspapers that recruited white peasants throughout Europe to come to America. The new immigrants were given 160 acres of land -- for free -- if they located on land west of the Mississippi River that extended all the way to the California and Alaskan coastlines. In total, 270 million acres of free land was awarded to nearly three million white European migrants under the Homestead Act of 1862. This land was part of the 1.5 billion acres of territorial lands taken from Native Americans by force between 1830 and 1907. To this day, the Homestead Act facilitated the greatest and longest government-sponsored wealth transfer program in U.S. history. It is also the single biggest factor in the creation of the wealth gap between blacks and whites in America today. No other ethnic group in the U.S. population has experienced anything like the 124-year wealth transfer that occurred under the Homestead Act. In America, the accumulation of wealth confers upon its holder an important socio-economic standing in the community and a privileged lifestyle. Wealth derived from property ownership largely belongs to white Americans. The nation's political, legal, government, and financial institutions serve, grow, and protect this wealth. Whites have long used their majority status in the population to monopolize and perpetuate it. A Historic Decline in the White Population For the first time in U.S. history, the total white population numbers shrank below 60%, according to 2020 census data released last week. In 1980, 75% of the U.S. population was white. Falling birth-rates and rising deaths have produced a unique situation where the white population has had more deaths than births in the last decade. Overall, the U.S. population grew by 7.4% over the last decade to 331 million Americans. Hispanics accounted for 51% of this ten-year population growth. Those under the age of 18 totaled 73.1 million people, or 22.1% of the population in 2020. More than 47% of the under 18 population are non-white children and teenagers. This figure is up from the 35% reported in 2010. Today, Hispanics represent the dominant ethnic minority group, with 62 million people or 18.7% of the U.S. population. African-Americans account for 41 million people, which represents 12.4% of the population. Americans who claim two or more races in any combination (a/k/a the multiracial U.S. population) account for 33.8 million people. Additionally, there are 20 million Asian-Americans, which represent 6% of the population. Finally, there are 3.7 million Native-Americans, which represent 1.1% of the population. At its current rate of decline, the white population will drop below 50% by the 2040 census. Political efforts in recent years to stop or slow the "browning of America" have failed. These efforts have included, among other things: (a) banning abortions in the hope of boosting the white birth rate; (b) building a 2,000-mile wall along the southern border to prevent migrants of color from Central and South America from entering the country; (c) separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border; (d) curbing applications for political asylum from migrants of color; (e) increasing the incarceration of Americans of color while liberally exercising prosecutorial discretion to disproportionately benefit white non-violent criminal suspects; and (f) ramping up the execution of death sentences in capital cases, which impacts defendants of color in a disparate manner when compared to white defendants. "Hell" is on the Horizon for Hispanics Based upon past history and the perpetual negative attitude many whites hold about people of color, Hispanics in America are expected to catch pure hell from whites over the next two decades. They need only look at the experiences of Native-Americans to understand the kind of atrocities misguided whites are capable of committing in the name of "God," "Manifest Destiny," and "self-preservation." The Native American population, which was estimated to be 60 million First Americans in the 1500s, has been reduced to less 3.7 million people today. This reduction is a direct result of the slaughter, forced relocation, and starvation of millions of Native-Americans over this five-hundred-year period. The Founding Fathers actually labeled Native-Americans "merciless Indian savages" in the Declaration of Independence. If Hispanics need further proof of what whites may have in store for them on the horizon, they can study the history of African-Americans in the U.S. Noted historian and legal scholar James Q. Whitman investigated Adolf Hitler's institutional discrimination against the Jews in 1930s Germany and America's violence against people of color throughout U.S. history. Hitler concluded that America "was the leading racist jurisdiction" in the 1930s. Both the United States and Nazi Germany assaulted and killed their own citizens. As Whitman explains it, "Jews of Germany were hounded, beaten, and sometimes murdered by mobs and by the state alike. In the same years, the blacks of the American South were hounded, beaten, and murdered as well." For more than 200 years, migrants of Asian descent were banned by law from entering the country, or were imprisoned and deported when found in America, and/or were placed in concentration camps during times of war. Many Asians were simply killed on sight by white racists who hated them. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Asian-Americans had all of their property and possessions taken from them by the U.S. government by force. Today, most whites are uncomfortable with a close socio-economic relationship with the growing Hispanic population for several reasons. First, most whites do not speak Spanish and they dislike not knowing what Hispanics are saying in their native language. Second, many whites only know Hispanics based on the way they are portrayed by demagogues, opportunistic politicians, and Hollywood movie producers as drug dealers, gang members, domestics, day laborers, and unworthy migrants who want to rape white women, steal personal property, peddle illegal drugs, and/or take jobs traditionally held by whites. Third, the birth rate of Hispanics vastly exceeds the birth rate of other ethnic groups primarily because the overwhelming majority of Hispanics are Catholics who believe that children are a gift from God. Historically, every ethnic group that has been viewed by whites as a threat to their socio-economic security and privileged way of life in America has been demonized and decimated psychologically, economically, and physically by U.S. government policies and federal, state, and local law enforcement actions. Hispanics now have their turn on this "hot seat." Epilogue Unlike most African-Americans, Hispanics are not conditioned to be docile and subservient to white authority. They are unwilling to accept abusive behavior from a declining white majority. Furthermore, they are very cohesive as an ethnic group. They also believe in the healthy exercise of economic and political empowerment. They vote in large numbers, work hard, and save their money. They also take care of their families and communities first. For these reasons, they are emerging into a major political force to be reckoned with. In the 2020s, I expect to see a progressive political alliance formed on the national scene among Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans, and whites of interracial goodwill. This alliance likely represents the new "majority" group in American politics. I am actively working every day to usher in this new political alliance of historically despised and abused ethnic minority groups. In my view, this is the only way to end systemic racism and longstanding white privilege in America's core institutions. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By Donald V. Watkins ©Copyrighted and Published on January 20, 2019; Republished on May 4, 2020 and November 4, 2022 The young Watkins siblings at the State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama in 1953. I am the second boy from the left on the front row. [Author's Note: On November 8, 2022, Americans across the nation will cast their votes for a host of elections, from state and local races to seats in the U.S. Congress. The elections come at a time when our nation is deeply divided. Civility in campaigns is gone. Violence against public officials and their family members is now cheered. I am republishing this story about a caring white woman who put herself at-risk of being arrested and ridiculed as a "nigger lover" when she gave a thirsty little 5-year-old black boy named Donald V. Watkins a drink of water from a "Whites Only" water fountain on a hot and muggy day in racially segregated Montgomery, Alabama in 1953. Her extraordinary act of bravery and kindness in breaking the rigidly enforced color barrier that day impacted me for the rest of my life. I never knew her name. Yet, I have carried her spirit of compassion and courage with me every day of my life. I have always tried to give to others what this woman gave to me in 1953 -- dignity and respect for humanity when it mattered. I hope voters make the character and moral values (or lack thereof) of the candidates for political office two important considerations when casting their votes on November 8th.] I never knew her name, but I never forgot my chance encounter with her. It is as fresh in my mind today as it was when I was a young child. By today’s standards, what she did would be considered “ordinary” and polite. In the early 1950s, she could have been jailed for what she did. Here is her story: It was a hot and muggy summer day in Montgomery, Alabama. My mother gathered her six children for a Saturday shopping trip downtown. She made sure all of us went to the bathroom before we left the house. She also gave each one of us a peppermint to put in our pocket. This was her routine for our trips away from home. The peppermint had a specific purpose that had nothing to do with keeping our breaths fresh. If the “Colored Only” water fountain from which we could drink was not working, the peppermint would keep our mouths moist long enough for my mother to find a “Colored Only” water fountain that was working. We had been walking downtown from store-to-store and it was extremely hot and humid. I became thirsty and asked my mother to show me where the water fountain was located in a store called Gayfers. When we got to the "Colored Only" water fountain, it was not working. My mother told me to suck on my peppermint until we could get to the next store. This is when I discovered that I had forgotten to bring my peppermint. I begged my mother to let me drink out of the adjacent “White Only” water fountain that was working. At 5-years-old, I didn’t know what the signs meant anyway. A white woman was standing there drinking from the “White Only” water fountain. She heard me pleading with my mother for a drink of water. My mother tried to calm me down and then looked at her. The two women never spoke a word to each other. After the white woman finished drinking from the fountain, she kept the water flowing. With her inviting eyes and body language, she gestured for me to come drink out of the “White Only” water fountain. My mother stared at her and she stared back with a smile that only another mother could give. I slowly walked over to the fountain and started drinking the “White Only” water. To me, it tasted just like the “Colored Only” water. I drank and drank for what seemed like an eternity because I was very thirsty. After I finished drinking the water, the woman smiled, nodded her head in a farewell gesture, and slowly walked away. At that moment, two adults and one child had broken Alabama’s strictly enforced laws on racial segregation in public accommodations. We became criminals that day because a young black child in the custody of his loving mother needed water and a caring white woman, who was a stranger to us, gave it me from the “White Only” water fountain. What made her do it? Why did she care enough about me to risk being arrested and ridiculed as a “nigger lover” by local police? Why did I matter to her? In that moment, the bravery and kindness of this unknown white woman triumphed over the arcane social mores and Jim Crow legal code of the day. Simply put, I was an innocent young child who was thirsty and she gave me water. What is more, she broke the law to do it. I never saw this woman again, but what she did that day helped to shape my view of humanity. Because of her, and tens of millions of Americans like her, I was eventually able to: (a) drink from any public water fountain that worked; (b) use any public toilet that was available; (c) eat at any public lunch counter that served food I could afford to buy; (d) work as the first black cashier for the Delchamps grocery store chain in Alabama; (e) attend the college of my choice; (f) desegregate The University of Alabama’s School of Law; (g) take and pass the bar exam without fear of sabotage in the scoring of my exam results; (h) practice law throughout Alabama’s 67counties and around the nation; (i) apply for and receive the first bank charter issued to an African-American owner by the Alabama Banking Department; (j) own and manage international energy services companies; and (k) participate fully and freely in the political process across America. When I started practicing law in Alabama in 1973, many white state court judges openly addressed me as the “nigger lawyer from Montgomery” (as opposed to “Mr. Watkins”) in front of the all-white jurors who were trying my cases. When this dehumanizing conduct occurred, I saw her spirit emerge again and again in the eyes and faces of the jurors. I did not know them and they did not know me. Yet, they almost always rose above this demeaning judicial bias and did the right thing out of a sense of personal honor and integrity. I never knew her name, but her spirit has always been with me. She showed compassion to me as a child and treated me with respect as a human being. That fateful day, she gave me more than water. In her own way, she gave me enduring hope for a better world. Throughout my life, I have embraced her spirit by trying to give as much love for humanity as I have received from the kindness of strangers.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 11, 2025 A January 9, 2025, racist cartoon that was posted on X.(formerly known as Twitter). An Editorial Opinion On March 8, 2025, I published an article outing Internet blogger Laura Loomer , a MAGA loyalist and unofficial advisor to President Donald Trump, for her “DEI” attack on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett for adopting two black Haitian-born children.  Loomer's attack, while disgusting, was not an isolated incident of overt white racism.   It appears that overt white racism is surging in America, again.  Recent postings on X (formerly known as Twitter), document the spread of this cancer on the soul of America. Of course, X is owned by First Buddy Elon Musk, who practices his childhood version of South African racial apartheid in America. Like President Trump, "Chainsaw" Musk is a darling of the MAGA Movement. Once again, Black Americans are being intentionally, systematically, and overtly demeaned and devalued in American society. There seems to be a national emphasis today on "putting blacks in their place," whatever that means.   The posts below, which are platformed on X, speak for themselves. They may be the “best evidence” of America's current "state of mind" on racial matters. Only white men are deemed to be "competent," according to the X post below. "DEI" is the new code word for women and racial minorities who, as historically disadvantged groups, are deemed to be "incompetent" and "less qualified" for leadership roles than white men. Award-winning black entertainers like Kendrick Lamar Duckworth might top the charts on musical performances and song downloads, but they are viewed by many whites as modern-day minstrels who are not suitable for halftime shows at major sporting events that have predominantly white audiences. The use of the racial slur "nigger" is on the rise and trending well in the U.S. Whites have called black Americans "niggers" since our ancestors disembarked from the first slave ship that reached American soil in 1619. For the first 3 years of my law practice, many state and federal judges in Alabama addressed me in open court as the "nigger lawyer from Montgomery," rather than by my proper name. Posts like the one below deliberately denigrate the physical characterists of millions of black and brown American women. Today, the standard of"beauty" in American women appears to be measured by the features of white women. The photo below is an example of true beauty, which starts with a woman's inner beauty. All men desire this kind of true beauty, which is NEVER based on skin color or hair texture. True beauty is God's gift to humanity and not a plastic surgeon's alterations to a woman's original body parts. I constantly remind Indian-Americans (from India) that whites see them as " colored , " a view that was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in   United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind in 1923. Regardless of their political party affiliation and wealth, Indian-Americans will NEVER be accepted as "Caucasians." The post below, which bashes former 2020 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and other "brown people," proves my point. In January 2025, Elon Musk reportedly forced Ramaswamy's exit from DOGE. As you can see in the X post below, there is a proud and privileged feeling of "whiteness" in the air. Of course, this self-imposed sense of white privilege is nothing but a superficial "sugar-high." In fairness to the X social media platform, they eventually banned the " Fuck you. Dirty nigger " post by "Lilly." However, "Lilly," who "love[s] being white," found a workaround approach that allowed her to resurrect and republish her racist post, which is filled with grammatical mistakes and punctuation errors. Interestingly, X has not banned "Lilly's" resurrected post (as of March 11, 2025). I can't wait to see how self-proclaimed " House Nigger " Bill Maher responds to the examples of overt racism presented in this article now that he has transmorgrified himself into an "anti-DEI" TV personality. Meanwhile, I am still waiting on the first MAGA political leader in Washington and/or in state capitols around the U.S. to publicly denounce and condemn this kind of overtly racist conduct with the same vigor they display when railing against DEI. I have a feeling that this will never happen.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on December 29, 2023 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Dear Nikki Haley,   In case you did not know it, you are not "white. "  You are "colored. " You are an American citizen, whose parents -- Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa -- were Sikh immigrants from Amritsar, Punjab, India .  Your birth name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.     Nikki is your middle name.  Haley is your married name.  The name “ Nikki Haley ” sounds " white " but it does not make you " white ." In the minds of most Americans, your bloodline determines your race. If you have a drop of "colored" blood in your veins, most Americans view you as "colored." Until the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia , the "one-drop rule" was backed by the force of law in America.   Your parents immigrated from India to Canada in 1964 after your father received a scholarship offer from the University of British Columbia.  After he received his PhD degree in 1969, your father moved his family to South Carolina to become a professor of biology at Voorhees College, a historically black institution in Denmark, South Carolina. Your father retired from teaching in 1998. Nikki Haley (top row left in blue shirt) with her Sikh Indian family. Despite listing herself as "white" on her voter registration records, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1923 that Sikh Indian immigrants are not "white." Despite a long history of claiming to be " Aryan " or " white ," the U.S. States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind , 261 U.S. 204 (1923) that Sikh Indians like you are not "white ."  Read the court case for yourself.  You are “ colored, ” just like me.  Within the " colored " world, I am a mixture of African descendants, Native-American ancestors, and Caucasian immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. You damn sure do not have the “ Aryan racial purity ” that fellow Sikh Bhagat Singh Thind argued in his case , and the Supreme Court soundly rejected.   By the way, a black college gave your Sikh father the ability to feed, clothe, and shelter his family, including you, your two brothers, and your sister.   For this, you should be eternally and publicly grateful. In 1969, rampant racial discrimination against “ colored ” people in South Carolina (and elsewhere in the South) prevented your highly-educated father from working at a historically white college or university.   So, the next time somebody on the campaign trail asks you about the Civil War , please tell them the truth. Tell them you are the child of “colored” immigrants who invaded America by coming across its northern board with Canada.  Tell them a black college was the only place where your "colored" father could teach in 1969.   Tell them that the Civil War was about the enslavement of blacks of African descent .  They were chattel property , just like horses, cows, dogs, and other animals that could be bought and sold at-will, or killed without any criminal consequences. The war was fought because most Americans wanted to end slavery. Tell them the true history of Sikhs from India and how your family was mistreated when they first came to the United States.   Never deny your Sikh heritage and family’s story for anybody, or for any reason.   Barack Obama proved that Americans will elect a president of color, twice .  You don’t have to pretend to be " white " to win the presidency.  If you do, your presidential campaign will " crash and burn" just like former Louisiana governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal’s 2016 presidential campaign.    As you know, Bobby Jindal’s parents were immigrants from the same place in India that your parents came from.  Like you, Jindal pretended he was " white " when, in fact, he is “ colored .”   You and your progeny will always be viewed as “ colored ," especially if you continue pandering to and perpetuating the willful ignorance of American history for selfish and narrow-minded political gain.   In the end, winning is not about election outcomes. It is all about being true to yourself.   Sincerely,   Donald V. Watkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on November 18, 2020 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. On October 26, 2020, Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in as the newest Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. She is the third Justice President Donald Trump has placed on the High Court and his first female appointee. Conservatives are ecstatic about Justice Barrett. They see her as a political hack who will use her seat on the High Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and dismantle Obamacare. They expect Justice Barrett to betray the sacrifices and advances made by women in America just like Justice Clarence Thomas betrayed African-Americans. They also believe that Justice Barrett’s conscience will allow her to snatch away the security of health insurance for 20 million Americans covered under Obamacare while she and her family sleep well each night knowing they enjoy the best health insurance policy money can buy. I like Justice Barrett. She is incredibly gifted, highly intelligent, down-to-earth, classy, hardworking, and inspirational. Throughout her entire life, Justice Barrett has had to fight for all of the benefits that are automatically conferred upon her white male counterparts in school, college, academia, and the legal profession solely because of our society’s obsession with white male privilege. At every turn, Justice Barrett used her turbo-charged brainpower to rise to the number one spot on the playing field of life. She has outworked and outthought all of her male competitors in every venue. Unlike Thomas, Barrett is not a political “fluffer” for Republican males in Washington. I take pride in seeing Justice Barrett dominate her profession and doing it with ease. She should have been Trump’s first Supreme Court pick, not his third one. When compared to Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, Justice Barrett is the class valedictorian. She can outthink them all day long. They were selected first solely because both men are white males. The qualification that won me over is Justice Barrett’s love for children – of all colors. In her world, love sees no color. Two of Barrett’s seven children are Haitian-born orphans whom she and her husband adopted. That’s a special kind of motherly love – the kind that I admire and respect. Most conservatives say they are “prolife”, but what they really mean is they are “pro-forced birth”. Once the baby is born, these conservatives could care less about what happens to the newborn. This is why they do not fight to reduce the high rate of infant mortality in states like Alabama and Mississippi. They work to cut benefits for poor women, infants and children. What is worse, very few of these conservatives would adopt a black child sitting in a state-run children’s ward in Alabama much less an orphanage in Haiti . Amy Coney Barrett is obviously “prolife” and not just “pro-forced birth”. She made a conscious decision to raise someone else’s two children as her own and add two children of color to her family. She is leading the “prolife movement” by showing America what it truly should be. What woman would abort a child of any color if they knew that a loving mother like Amy Barrett was waiting to adopt him/her regardless of the child’s color or national origin? The adoption of two Haitian-born children will help Justice Barrett to see America in a different light. She will now experience what the parents of all black children in America experience – insidious and overt forms of white racism, from strangers and friends. It will impact all seven of her children, her husband and Barrett herself, especially as the two Haitian children grow older. Barrett’s seat on the High Court will not shield her children from being called “niggers”, “nigger lovers”, “coons”, and much worse by classmates in their schools. Membership on the High Court will not shield the Barrett family from the daily grind of dealing with the “polite” white racism that breeds in Washington’s elite power circles. I believe it will help Barrett to understand the role Justice Thurgood Marshall played on the bench in guaranteeing equal equality for all. Barrett may like Justice Thomas, but she will not be led by him. Thomas has been rated by prestigious legal journals as one of the four worst Justices in the history of the High Court. He is ranked alongside Chief Justice Roger B. Taney who authored the 7-2 Dred Scott decision ruling that blacks – freed or slaves – had no rights that the white man is bound to respect. Furthermore, Thomas was an “affirmative action” appointment to the bench. At times, Thomas’s views on laws that prohibit discrimination against women and minorities are so extreme and hostile to these groups that even the Supreme Court’s conservatives have had to abandon him in the voting. I expect Barrett’s protective instincts as a mother to find their way into her rulings on cases that seek to eliminate discrimination against women and racial minorities. If woman are going to be forced to give birth in situations of unwanted pregnancies, Barrett will make sure the law treats them fairly and with the respect and dignity they deserve. Barrett will try to lead America forward, not backwards. Her legacy will be one of inclusion, not exclusion. Her decisions will inspire confidence in the Court, not undermine it. Barrett’s biracial family will eventually emerge as the conscience of the High Court. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 8, 2025 Editorial Opinion   On March 5, 2025, online blogger Laura Loomer, a MAGA loyalist and unoffical advisor to President Donald Trump, placed the lives of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's two black children at risk by posting on X (formerly known as Twitter) a photo of Barrett and her family with the highly provocative headline, “Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee.” Loomer's post was unwarranted and incendiary. It has also unleashed a torrid of racist and hateful comments on X and other right-leaning social media platforms. In my view, Loomer's post exposed Barrett’s two black children to an unacceptable risk of bodily harm or death from fanatics within the MAGA Movement. Barrett is a Conservative Trump Appointee to the Supreme Court   President Donald Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett, a former U.S. appellate court judge and Notre Dame law professor, to a seat on the Supreme Court during his first term in office.  She assumed office on October 27, 2020. I supported Barrett’s appointment to the Court. At the time, I ackowledged that Barrett was a “pro-life” practioner and not just a "pro-forced birth" advocate. Barrett made a conscious decision to adopt two children of Haitian descent and raise them with her five biological children. I found Barrett's adoption of two black children to be admirable. I also made this observation about Amy Barrett's interracial adoption of black children: The adoption of two Haitian-born children will help Justice Barrett to see America in a different light. She will now experience what the parents of all black children in America experience – insidious and overt forms of white racism, from strangers and friends. It will impact all seven of her children, her husband and Barrett herself, especially as the two Haitian children grow older. Barrett’s seat on the High Court will not shield her children from being called “niggers”, “nigger lovers”, “coons”, and much worse by classmates in their schools. Loomer Elevated Barrett's Interracial Adoption of Two Black Children to an Insidious Form of DEI Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has a negative connotation within MAGA World. "DEI" is MAGA's publicly-used code word for a person who is deemed "unqualified", "undesirable," or otherwise "unworthy" of a place in white male-dominated American society because of the individual's race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, or religion. Privately, derrogatory terms like "nigger", "wetback", "bitch", "faggot", and "towelhead" are still used on a regular basis within MAGA World. These words often populate the posts of pro-Trump supporters on X and right-leaning social media platforms. It is clear that Laura Loomer's overt reference to "DEI" in her post on X was not directed at Justice Amy Coney Barrett's qualifications for her job as a Supreme Court Justice. She's overly qualified for the job. Barrett is a perfect example of an overly qualified woman who attained a seat on the Supreme Justice over the lesser qualified male candidates who were under consideration for the position. Furthermore, Barrett’s objective qualifications as a Supreme Court Justice far exceed those of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh, all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents.   Loomer's "DEI" reference was directed at the race of Barrett's two Haitian-born black children.   At the time Loomer made her unwarranted and incendiary post, she was venting over Barrett's vote in a case that restrained Trump’s attempted expansion of executive powers. Barrett's vote against Trump's legal position prompted Loomer to place a "DEI" target on the backs of Barrett's two black children by referring to Barrett as a "DEI appointee." MAGA's Potential for Extreme Acts of Violence Has Been Demonstrated   The question of whether fanatics within the MAGA Movement will engage in acts of extreme violence against members of the federal law enforcement apparatus was answered in the affirmative on January 6, 2021, when MAGA protestors stormed the Capitol and violently attacked scores of police officers. As you see in the photo below, some of these officers were critically injured. Police officer Michael Fanone lies in a hospital bed after a vicious attack on him by MAGA protestors at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. On January 21, 2025, all 1,600 of the January 6th protestors, including the most violent ones, were pardoned by President Trump.  This presidential act of forgiveness signaled a tolerance for extreme acts of violence against members of the federal law enforcement community -- as long as these violent acts are aimed at empowering Trump and furthering his MAGA agenda.  Loomer's Post Opened the Door for MAGA Attacks on Barrett's Two Black Children   Laura Loomer exposed Barrett’s two black children to a cult within the MAGA Movement that sees violence as an acceptable tool for achieving its political goals – the unfettered expansion of presidential power under Donald Trump and the establishment of an Imperial Trump Presidency.  Unfortunately, there are fanatics within the MAGA Movement who may harm the children of their perceived political enemies just to hurt their parents.  As such, Loomer has lit a fire in MAGA World that cannot be controlled.   Thanks to Laura Loomer, the Barretts must now worry about church bombings like the one that killed four young girls during Sunday School services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963.    Thanks to Laura Loomer, the Barretts must also worry about acid being thrown in the faces of their children like I worried after those threats were made against my children because of the police murder and excessive force cases I filed and prosecuted in Alabama between 1974 to 1983.     Finally, it must be noted that President Donald Trump has not condemned or disassociated himself from Laura Loomer's unwarranted and incendiary "DEI" attack on Amy Coney Barrett and her two black children.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 4, 2025 Multimedia mogul and former Howard University trustee Rock Newman has been a source of knowledge and inspiration in my life for many years. Every conversation with Rock Newman is an empowerment experience. This man is a genius. My enduring friendship with Rock Newman is truly a blessing from God. People ask me all the time about who inspired my confidence and growth in life.  I have complied a list of the people who fueled my knowledge and blocked for me on the playing field of life. Many of them are deceased. All of them were/are super smart, progressive, and purpose-driven people.   Beyond my paternal and maternal grandparents, my parents, my siblings, my children and their wonderful spouses, and other close family members, the following individuals inspired my purpose-driven life and nurtured my growth:   DeAndra Y. Watkins, Susan J. Silvernail, Lisa R. Swoboda, my Alabama State College Laboratory High School classmates, Rev. S.A. Owen, Dr. Benjamin Mayes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Juanita Abernathy, Rosa Parks, Dr. E.D. Nixon, Johnnie Carr, Arlam Carr, Sr. and Jr., Dr. Joe L. Reed, Anthony S. Butler (Lisman, Alabama), Ramus Rhodes, Derry and Loretta Johnson, Clarence Norris, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Rev. John Nettles, Maggie Bozeman, Julia Wilder, Mayor Andrew Hayden, Judge Aubrey Ford, Albert Turner, Jr., Kenneth Ward, Mingo Clark, McKinley Bailey, Justice Oscar Adams, Joseph T. Watkins, Dr. Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte, Don Cornelius, Adrian Taylor, Wesley Snipes, Nikki Parks, and Rev. Jessie Jackson.   Joseph L. Cole, Doyal Reed, Harold Ford, Sr., John Ford, Benjamin Hooks, Dr. Lucius Pitts, Mayor Johnny Ford, Fred D. Gray, Solomon S. Seay, Charles Langford, J.L. Chestnut, Billy L. Carter, Karen Neal Knight, Brenda Carter, Karen Ballard, Sidney Williams, Jimmy Evans, Justice Mark Kennedy, Bill Baxley, Milton C. Davis, Rev. Al Dixon, Joe Whatley, Sam Heldman, Andrew C. Allen, Valton Johnson, David Sullivan, Deborah Walker, Connie Parsons, Judge Clyde Jones, Judge Myron Thompson, and Judge U.W. Clemon.   Harvest Mitchell, Charles L. Carter, Walker Alexander, Douglas Pope, Larry Fluker, Simmie Lavender, Ben Greene, Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr., Mayor Emory Folmar, Colonel Stone Johnson, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Antonio Spurling, Ann Bolden, Kimberly Perkins, Sharon Childs-Long, Jessica Findley, Larry Tate, Charlie W. Pollard, Nathan A. Chapman, Jr., Mark Englehart, Jonathan Rose, Charles Wallace, Mark Ritchie, Eric Ramsey, Richard M. Scrushy, Dr. Frank Franklin, Georgia Smith Slade, Richard Burton, Sam Moss, and the multigenerational Delos Yancey family (Rome, Georgia).   Rock Newman, Daryl Harms, Dr. John Johnson, Dr. John Poggio, Juderson Leslie, Judson Yates, Byron Brown, Eboni T. Little, David Minkin, Ralph Malone, Olayinka Arowolo, Nichelle Gainey, Kamar Jones, Chandra Dake, Mayor Mike Schmitz, David Meckley, Harry T. Cullinan, and Cary McKay.   I have written articles about many of these people. They were/are racially diverse and had/have a wide range of political beliefs. My exposure to these people made me realize two very important things about myself. First, I love working with and learning from strong, highly intelligent, community-minded people.  Second, I have zero tolerance for weak-kneed, spineless "airheads" who do nothing but spew malicious gossip all the time.