By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on April 8, 2024 In Memoriam to Dr. Levi Watkins, Jr., MD -- June 13, 1944 to April 11, 2015 Sixty years ago, Levi Watkins, Jr., was a candidate for president of the Student Government Association at Tennessee State University (TSU).  Levi campaigned on a platform that demanded the highest levels of "Academic Excellence" at the university. Levi thought the university’s sports teams, band, drama club, and other non-academic groups were receiving national and international publicity, while academically talented students received little to no recognition. Levi won the election! There was jubilation on campus. Levi's campaign team, which included Harold Ford, Sr., who would later become Tennessee’s first black Congressman since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, was ecstatic. President Walter S. Davis responded by establishing the University Honors Program. The first two directors were Drs. McDonald Williams and George Gore, who are pictured below with Levi.  Dr. Gore, founder of Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society, was Dean of Faculty at TSU before becoming the legendary President of Florida A&M University. At last month’s Honors College 60th Anniversary Celebration Convocation at TSU, Levi was recognized for his contribution to the university.  The Levi Watkins Jr. Institute Scholars were present along with over 800 students who were recognized for academic excellence. After his graduation from TSU in 1966, Levi broke ground as the first black student to enter and graduate from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “All my work since the integration of Vanderbilt University has been about inclusion, equity and opportunity,” Levi said in an interview with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose all-white medical school denied him admission in 1966. Levi co-developed and successfully implanted an automatic defibrillator in the first human patient on Feb. 4, 1980, at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.  The device, which detects arrhythmia in the heart and emits an electric charge to correct it, had been developed at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. Modern versions of the defibrillator are implanted in as many as 100,000 patients in the United States every year. Levi was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering work with the defibrillator. Levi and I were together when the first nomination came from Stockholm, Sweden. The two of us quietly celebrated this monumental achievement at Levi's Baltimore home while reminiscing about the racism we had overcome while growing up in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s and 60s. We also reminisced about Levi's unforgettable experiences in desegregating Vanderbilt's medical school and mine in desegregating the University of Alabama's law school. In latter years, Levi served on the Vanderbilt Board of Trust for eight years. He received the Vanderbilt Medal of Honor in 1998 and was Vanderbilt School of Medicine Alumnus of the Year in 2008. On April 11, 2015, Levi died while welcoming new students (in this case fellows) to Johns Hopkins Medical School. The photo below captures Levi's attendance at this event. Today, John Hopkins Medicine honors Levi with his name on its Outpatient Center. Additional information about Levi and his work with the defibrillator is shown in this PBS documentary.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on April 7, 2024 Last Thursday, Rasmussen Reports released a new national poll that showed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden by eight points. According to the poll, Trump has secured the support of 49% of likely voters nationwide, while Biden has 41% voter support. In February, Rasmussen poll found Trump leading Biden by 6 points, 47% for Trump to 41% for Biden. Thursday's poll found that 8% of likely voters will vote for someone other than Trump or Biden, and only 3% are undecided. Interestingly, Trump beats Biden 48 to 37 percent among Hispanics, while Biden’s support among black voters dropped to 66 percent. In 2020, 90% of black voters supported Biden. As we reported on March 27, 2024, Trump is leading Joe Biden in all credible national polls and his lead is greater than the margin of error.  If Biden falls behind Trump by 10 points or greater, it will be impossible for him to overtake Trump's lead to win the presidency in November. The bad news for Biden from the latest Rasmussen poll is exascerbated by the fact that Trump raised $50.5 million on Saturday at a Florida fundraiser. This is the largest amount of campaign cash ever raised at a single fundraising event. Saturday's $250,000-a-ticket bash was held at the Palm Beach home of billionaire Trump supporter John Paulson. The $50.5 million raised by Paulson and his guests is almost double the $26 million raised for Joe Biden at a recent New York City fundraising event that featured the star-power of former Democrat presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Barring divine intervention, it appears that Donald Trump is on track to win the 2024 presidential election.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on April 6, 2024 My Google analytical dashboard for this website documents an explosive growth in our viewership. There have been over 1,215,000 views of this news media website during the last five months, alone. A breakdown of Google’s documented viewership for this website since November is as follows: March 2024 - 263,000 February 2024 – 243,000 January 2024 – 208,000 December 2023 – 235,000 November 2023 – 266,000 Since January 2024, I have been flooded with unsolicited offers to: (a) place ads on my website, (b) implement and manage subscription fees for access to content, and (c) publish third-party articles for a fee. All three revenue-generating offers were summarily rejected. The news stories on this website are provided as a free public service. The content of my articles is driven by the truth that is contained within them and not by the receipt of money from those who seek to spin them. Nothing is more irritating to viewers than trying to read a news article in digital format that is riddled with “click bait” ads. Additionally, our readers are thirsty for the truth. All they are getting from outdated legacy news media outlets in the United States is "bought and paid for" public relations spin. I started my digital media news service on July 14, 2013, with an article published on Facebook about the Trayvon Martin wrongful death case in Florida. This article, which was shared 44 times, had less than 300 views. On October 19, 2013, I published an article titled, “Facebook: The Ultimate Empowerment Tool for Black Voices.” In that article, I observed: “I know Facebook was conceived as a tool for social media and private networking. To a large extent, it still is. Over the past few months, however, I have discovered that Facebook has another, perhaps even more important use. What I have learned is that Facebook can be the ultimate tool for blacks wanting to write, publish and distribute articles about issues of importance to us. Never before have blacks had the means to get important socio-economic messages out to the world at-large. Facebook is today’s media voice for those who want to be heard on an unfiltered, unedited basis. Finally, blacks in America can paint a true self-portrait through articles and stories authored by us and published for the world to read and appreciate. It has been a long time coming, but our voices can finally be heard, thanks to Facebook.” Today, we have published over 1,000 articles across four digital media platforms, including Facebook. These articles satisfy the thirst of a sophisticated audience of global viewers that is very diverse, but mostly Caucasian in ethnicity. The majority of these viewers are located in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Because of my long and effective record of advancing and protecting civil rights in Alabama, leading members of the state’s ultra-conservative and regressive political establishment, law enforcement community, captive and controlled in-state legacy media, and Republican-controlled state and federal judiciary have gone to great lengths to falsely portray me in a negative light on various Internet platforms.  This concerted effort is an unofficial continuation of Alabama's long, notorious, and aggressive role in the original COINTELPRO program to neutralize and marginalize strong black leaders. This effort has obviously failed in my case. With over 1.2 million views of my website in the last five months, it is evident that the public’s desire for the cold, hard truth on a wide range of quality-of-life issues is race-neutral and surging. Media organizations that deliver the unfiltered truth on important issues of global concern will likely experience explosive grow in their digital media platforms. Those that do not will experience a long, slow, painful death.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on April 5, 2024 An Editorial Opinion Thursday, Joe Biden called Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and issued a so-called "ultimatum" to Israel that U.S. support in the Gaza war depends on "immediate" steps to protect Palestinian civilians and aid workers in Gaza. Biden’s ultimatum was too vague, too little, and too late.  It was a lightweight public relations move for Thursday's news media cycles. The United States has aided and abetted Israel’s genocide against more than 30,000 innocent Palestinian babies, infants, children, women, and men since the war started on October 7, 2023. Joe Biden and other American politicians have given Israel a license to kill these innocent genocide victims as long as they can get campaign contributions from the Jewish community in the U.S. for the elections this fall. Israel is no longer engaging in a "war against Hamas."  It is systematically targeting and exterminating the civilian population in Gaza because of their color, nationality, and religion. What is worse, Israel's campaign of genocide evidences an official government policy of punishing innocent Palestinians with death for the October 7th Hamas attack. The descendants of the Nazi holocaust during World War II are now perpetrating a holocaust of their own in Gaza. America supplies the bombs, weapons, and aircraft that Israel uses to implement its non-stop campaign of genocide against the Palestinians. As such, America is complicit in these war crimes. The international community and many Jews inside of Israel view Benjamin Netanyahu as a ruthless, corrupt, “thug.”  He has earned this reputation. At this juncture, it is obvious to everyone that Joe Biden is simply too old, weak, and/or scared to stop Israel’s campaign of genocide.  Biden does not have the strength or courage to cut off American aid and support to Israel if this genocide continues. I do not support Joe Biden or any other world leader who aids and abets genocide against any ethnic or religious group.  Nobody’s financial clout or campaign donations can sanitize genocide. To the world, Joe Biden looks like an impotent, weak-kneed, old man who is masquerading as President of the United States.  Netanyahu is an actual “war criminal” who masquerades as the Prime Minister of Israel. Meanwhile, Israel's genocide against the innocent Palestinians in Gaza continues, unabated.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on April 3, 2024 An Editorial Opinion “White flight” is the elephant in the room that nobody in City Hall, state government, the state’s legacy media, or Birmingham-Southern College (BSC) wants to talk about. In May 2024, BSC, an elite historically white private school founded in 1856, is closing its doors for good.  The college was never able to survive and overcome the “white flight” that changed the character of Birmingham’s Westside in the 1960s and 70s. Whites left the Westside in droves as hardworking and successful black homeowners moved into the middle-class neighborhoods surrounding the college.  Whites abandoned their neighborhood public schools, churches, and businesses on the Westside and headed down Highway 280 and out to the nearby suburbs. By the 1980s, the dramatic transformation of Birmingham’s Westside had reduced BSC to a “white island” in a “sea of black neighborhoods.”  At that point, BSC was doomed. The college was never able to flee the Westside and relocate to a thriving “white” community, even though it tried to do so. Under pressure from white supporters to escape an area of town that was quickly turning black, BSC tried to sell its campus and facilities to Alabama State University in the 1970s, to no avail. Then, under the guise of public safety, BSC walled itself off from the surrounding black neighborhoods. Next, BSC wasted tens of millions of dollars in the 1990s and early 2000s buying up the homes and property abutting its campus.  The goal was to create a buffer zone between BSC and the adjacent black neighborhoods. BSC’s response to “white flight” caused the college to become more isolated from its supporters, the surrounding black neighborhoods, and the world of in-state colleges.  In its truest sense, “white flight,” and BSC’s misguided response to it, were choking the life out of BSC. Its student enrollment tanked.  Alumni financial support for the college crashed. Birmingham’s corporate community placed BSC on a program of benign neglect. The college’s support from the United Methodist Church became strained because of its liberal survivalist policies. Crime in the neighborhoods surrounding BSC is bad, and it is getting increasingly worse.  Last November, there was a wild west-style shootout on I-59 near the Arkadelphia Road exit that leads to the college.  The shootout injured four people and shut down the I-59 for hours. A couple of months earlier, stunning TikTok videos went viral on the Internet when they showed scenes of a nearby Pilot Travel Center that had been abandoned by employees and looted.  The videos showed empty shelves, broken merchandise, and a ransacked ATM inside the travel center, which is located less than a mile away at Finley Boulevard and Bankhead Highway. City officials never provided BSC with a public safety plan that protected its students when they are living, working, and traveling in Birmingham outside the safety of the walled-off and isolated college. Shootings and crime-related deaths are a daily occurrence in Birmingham. Violent crime is out of control in the city. BSC is located in Birmingham, Alabama -- the most depressed city in the state, as ranked by smartasset.com in 2022. Birmingham is the second "most dangerous city in the United States," according to a study released in May 2023 by data site MoneyGeek.com. Birmingham is located in a state that ranks at or near the bottom in many quality-of-life factors. In the end, “white flight,” and the college’s response to it, set off a chain of events that killed Birmingham-Southern College.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on November 12, 2023 An Editorial Opinion The glory days of Birmingham-Southern College (BSC), an elite private school that was founded 1856, have come and gone. BSC is now a financially distressed and dying institution. BSC’s credit rating is so low that any loan to the college would be rated as a "junk bond." Its student enrollment, which is predominantly white, has been shrinking for years. BSC's life expectancy is zero. BSC is located in Birmingham, Alabama -- the most depressed city in state, as ranked by smartasset.com in 2022. Birmingham is the second "most dangerous city in the United States," according to a study released in May 2023 by data site MoneyGeek.com. Crime in the area surrounding BSC is bad and it is getting increasingly worse. Last Friday, there was a wild west-style shootout on I-59 near the Arkadelphia Road exit that leads to the college. The shootout injured four people and shut down the I-59 for hours. A couple of months earlier, stunning TikTok videos went viral on the Internet when they showed scenes of a nearby Pilot Travel Center that had been abandoned by employees and looted. The videos showed empty shelves, broken merchandise, and a ransacked ATM inside the travel center, which is located less than a mile away at Finley Boulevard and Bankhead Highway. Birmingham is located in a state that ranks at or near the bottom in many quality-of-life factors. BSC’s alumni and big-money donors have pretty much given up on the college. Last month, the Alabama State Treasurer refused to give the college a $30 million loan because of its distressed financial condition. It’s impossible for BSC to beat these insurmountable odds. Anyone who continues to peddle the fantasy that BSC can be saved is perpetrating a fraud and rendering a great disservice to the remaining students who need to escape from this sinking ship while they can. Birmingham city officials have promised to pump $5 million into BSC, which is expected to be delivered on or about November 21, 2023, as a Thanksgiving gift. This money will not save BSC, but it will definitely help the college's primary banker -- ServisFirst Bank -- reduce its financial losses on outstanding loans to the college before BSC tanks. In turn, city officials and other supporting Birmingham-area elected officials can pick up some hefty campaign contributions from ServisFirst Bank when they run for re-election to their current positions or campaign for a higher office. What city officials cannot provide to BSC is a public safety plan that protect its students when they are living, working, and traveling in Birmingham outside the safety of the walled-off and isolated college. In fact, these officials do not have an effective public safety plan for any area of Birmingham. As a result, violent crime is out of control in the city. Shootings and crime-related deaths are a daily occurrence in Birmingham. City officials do not have to worry about this skyrocketing violence because they are escorted by taxpayer-funded security details wherever they go. Even high-profile visitors to the city like the presidents of Alabama A&M University and Alabama State University feel the need to bring their own security details when they are in town. Their heavy security details were present everywhere these two presidents went in Birmingham during the Magic City Classic weekend. BSC is on its deathbed. The responsible thing for BSC officials to do at this juncture is wind down the educational and business affairs of the college and assist the remaining students in transferring to other colleges.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on April 2, 2024 An Editorial Opinion Nobody wants to say the quiet part out loud.  I will. Donald Trump’s attacks on the family members of judges are reckless and dangerous.  Sooner or later, these attacks will get somebody hurt or killed, and Trump knows it. Former Alabama Governor George Wallace used similar rhetoric during his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" days in office in the 1960s.  Wallace also labeled political adversaries “punks . . . in diapers.” Trump calls them “dogs”, “pigs”, “rapists”, “criminals”, “lazy”, “fake”, “low IQ”, “mobs”, and “thugs.” Attacking judges was one of Wallace’s favorite political tools.   It inflamed the passions of his racist supporters and got plenty of innocent civil rights activists hurt and killed. However, Wallace never attacked the family members of judges.  Regardless, at least one family member of a federal judge who was under Wallace’s relentless attacks committed suicide.  This family member was the son of Chief U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson in Montgomery, Alabama. Johnson's legal decisions in the 1950s and 1960s desegregated public schools in Alabama, city buses in Montgomery, eliminated the state poll tax, allowed blacks to serve on juries, and authorized the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Judge Johnson’s landmark rulings advanced the civil rights of blacks, women, inmates, and the mentally ill in Alabama and throughout America.  In 1974, he singlehandedly stopped Alabama’s widespread application of compulsory sterilization of poor women and women of color. Wallace called Johnson an “integrating, scallawagging, carpetbagging liar.”  Wallace once declared that Johnson needed “a barbed wire enema.” The Ku Klux Klan called Johnson “the most hated man in Alabama,” and white students burned a cross on his lawn. Judge Johnson and his family received constant death threats.  Johnson’s elderly mother’s house was bombed, but she escaped injury and refused to move.  Johnson and his family required continuous protection by federal agents from 1961 until 1975. Wallace's attacks, as well as the resulting isolation and ostracism from his attacks, took a terrible toll on Judge Johnson’s family.  His son James Curtis Johnson, who suffered from years of harassment and ostracism, committed suicide in 1975 at age 28. Donald Trump is implementing an updated and enhanced version of George Wallace’s “attack the judge” strategy.  Trump, however, has expanded this strategy to include direct attacks on the family members of judges.  Trump’s attacks on these family members are intended to subject them to the risk of harm or death from his most violent MAGA cult members. Frankly, Donald Trump does not care if these family members get hurt or killed in a violent attack from his "patriots," or if they commit suicide to escape his tormenting conduct. This reckless and dangerous conduct is NOT an exercise of Trump’s right to free speech, as his lawyers have claimed.  Free speech has limits when the speech at issue places the lives of others at risk. Trump’s conduct in placing the lives of family members of judges at risk will not stop until he spends time in jail for violating his gag orders.   Nothing short of jail time will break Trump's pattern of reckless and dangerous pretrial conduct.

By: Donald V. Watkins ©Copyrighted and Published on April 20, 2019; Republished on March 31, 2024 Today, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. As a Christian, I, too, celebrate the resurrection of Christ on this Easter Sunday. People around the world know Jesus's name and revere his life's story. If you are a Christian, do you see a piece of yourself in how Jesus lived his life? If Jesus were here today, how would Christians in the United States and around the world treat him? I ask these simple questions because Jesus stood for everything that many of today’s political officials, religious leaders, business moguls, and 2.4 billion Christians do not. Here are some examples: Jesus was an outside agitator who led an underground liberation movement. He was homeless most of his life. He was also anti-materialistic. Jesus loved people -- all people. His love was unconditional. Jesus exalted women and treated them as equals. He never tried to control their bodies. Jesus treated women better than they are treated today. Jesus welcomed outsiders and foreigners. He favored the poor and afflicted over the rich. He did not “hate” on those who refused to follow his teachings. Jesus also encouraged help for the sick and elderly. He practiced medicine without a license and healed the sick on the Sabbath. Jesus distributed food without a permit. He made wine without a license. Jesus paraded on public streets without a permit. He held numerous illegal gatherings. Whenever children sat on Jesus’s lap, he was not molesting them. Instead, Jesus protected children and taught them in the way of the Lord. Jesus aided and abetted known prostitutes. He also stopped the stoning death of a woman who had been accused of adultery. Jesus treated the “least of these” with the utmost respect. According to the Bible, Jesus performed at least 37 "miracles." Yet, nearly every one of these "miracles" is a prohibited act under governmental regulations and criminal laws in effect in the United States today. Jesus sent revolutionaries out into the world to spread his word. Nearly all of them were executed in the most gruesome ways. Jesus denounced violence, even when it involved his own crucifixion. He asked God to forgive those who killed him. Finally, Jesus was not the white man who has been portrayed for hundreds of years in American and European versions of Christianity. Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew with "bronze" skin (Ezekiel 40:3) and other Jewish facial features. His hair was like "wool" (Revelation 1:13-14). In Isaiah 53:2, the Bible says Jesus "had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him." Who among us today promotes, protects, and advances the Christian values practiced by Jesus Christ?

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 29, 2024 My readers know that I am a spiritual person who comes from an America family that has served millions of the “least of these my brethren” since the 1830s. Along the way, the Watkins family has experienced the joy of sharing the many gifts God has conferred upon us with humanity around the world. Our five-generation focus on serving the “least of these my brethren” has exposed our family to happiness and fulfillment that very few people will ever know or experience. In 2013, we resumed our family's 1930s-era media role on “truth telling” as another added dimension of our service to humanity. In January 2024, God made it abundantly clear to the Watkins family that He places a premium on serving the “least of these my brethren” and “truth telling” on subjects that make those who serve in today's “Pharaoh” positions very uncomfortable. During the first two weeks of January 2024, God delivered two miracles to the Watkins family.  The first miracle occurred in the field of medicine. The second one occurred in the world of international business. Considering our family’s vast, multi-generational contributions in the field of medicine, I thought I had seen just about all of God’s medical miracles.  I was wrong. In early January 2024, God delivered a miracle within our family that made two things crystal clear: (a) only God could perform this miracle, and (b) the remarkable outcome was obtained in a way that only God could deliver it. The second miracle occurred within a week after the first one.  God used a cataclysmic alignment of the cosmic universe of international business to lift us above the wrecking ball and debris field of Alabama-style Old South racism. God wanted the Watkins family to know that only one force in the universe could perform these two miracles, and that force is Him. As we approach this Easter Weekend, what the Watkins family knows for sure is this:  Whenever we serve the “least of these my brethren,” we are serving God.  He appreciates our service to humanity.  From time to time, God shows us in deeply personal ways just how much He appreciates our service to the “least of these my brethren” in a troubled world.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 28, 2024 The National Honor Society at Alabama State College Laboratory School in 1965 was something special.  I was proud to be a member of this group 59 years ago. These students were brilliant by any standard of intellectual acumen or academic preparation. The students who were educated in this small all-black school in Montgomery, Alabama went on to favorably impact every aspect of American society, including law, medical research, engineering, civil and criminal justice, science and technology, mathematics, education, business and finance, aerospace, energy, diplomatic services, and international relations. The Laboratory School had a 100% graduation rate throughout its 49-year history (1920 to 1969), and every student progressed to a post-secondary education.  No public school in America today has matched the cumulative achievements and positive impact on the world stage that the graduates of the Alabama State College Laboratory School accomplished throughout their careers.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 27, 2024 An Editorial Opinion As a student of political science and independent voter, I am predicting, once again, that Donald Trump will win the November 2024 election for President of the United States.  Here is the body of objective evidence that supports my prediction: Trump is leading Joe Biden in all credible national polls and his lead is greater than the margin of error.  If Biden falls behind by10 points or greater, it will be impossible for him to overtake Trump. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously placed Trump back on the ballot in Coloroda after he was kicked off the ballot by state officials. The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Trump has presidential immunity for the criminal acts alleged in his New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Georgia, and Miami, Florida criminal indictments. The six conservative justices on the Court seem poised to grant Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution in June. The New York Court of Appeals reduced Trump’s appeal bond (with accrued interest) from $464 million to $175 million in his civil fraud case, with no legal justification for doing so.  This move signals that the judges on the that court believe Trump will likely win the election. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition Corp. in February 2024, despite the fact that Trump had already found liable for civil fraud by a New York state court judge and was facing criminal prosecutions on 88 felonies in four different jurisdictions.  This approval was a substantial departure from the Commission’s anti-fraud regulations and was made for the exclusive benefit of Trump, who owns 60% of the shares in the merger and publicly traded company.  The merger increased Trump’s net worth to $6 billion on paper and makes him one of the 500 richest people in the world. Various federal courts have placed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case in Washington on an indefinite hold. U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has placed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case in Miami on an indefinite hold. The Georgia Court of Appeals in Atlanta has placed Trump’s RICO criminal case on an indefinite hold and is poised to remove District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. Every voter law that was approved by Republican-controlled state legislatures around the nation for the purpose of suppressing the black and Hispanic vote is in full force and effect for the November 2024 election. Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical abilities continue to diminish daily. However, Democrats refuse to replace him as their presidential nominee.  Even if Biden is physically and mentally able to last until November, he will likely have the energy and political effectiveness of a mannequin. Today, the only thing that can stop Donald Trump from becoming the next president of the United States is divine intervention. Trump is attempting to cover this contingency by partnering with singer Lee Greenwood to peddle "God Bless the USA" Bibles for $60 each. In August 2015, I predicted Trump's 2016 election victory and in September 2020, I predicted Trump's defeat and refusal to leave office. My predictions are based upon political science and objective evidence. This OpEd article is NOT an endorsement of Donald Trump.  This is merely a political analysis of the race for the White House, as it stands today.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on March 25, 2024 My departure from the Montgomery City Council in 1983 was hailed by longtime Montgomery Mayor and former Alabama Republican Party chairman  Emory Folmar as " one of the greatest blessings since the Yankee troops went home in 1870. ”     After a California federal judge ended all proceedings in my criminal case 4 years early on March 21, 2024, the forces that opposed my business success in Alabama echoed the same words used by Mayor Folmar after noting my relocation to California.   Today, Alabama has scores of black elected and appointed officials who are sworn to advance and protect the educational, economic, political, civil, and social justice rights of their political constituents.  I will let the people they serve decide their usefulness. The state also has a large number of digital media platforms that focus on news for the state’s black community. Whether these platforms are reporting a sedative of non-threatening " happy news " or a heavy dose of paradigm-shifting investigative reports is for their readers, listeners, and viewers to decide.   With the political and media resources available to Alabama's black communities, this is the perfect time for me to leave the frontlines of the never-ending battle for civil rights in the state and focus on advancing and protecting my business interests in the United States and abroad. I owe this shift in priorities to the Watkins family, which has always loved and supported me on an unconditional and all encompassing basis. Once in a Lifetime Business Opportunities In Namibia, the oil and gas exploration company I co-founded with Olayinka Arowolo in 2011 is focusing on implementing the geotechnical work program required to extract 522 million barrels of “unrisked” recoverable Brent crude oil and 583 billion cubic feet of “unrisked” methane natural gas from our assigned oil block in the Walvis Bay on a non-farm out basis.  In South Africa, my project development team is securing the key vendors and $300 million in financing needed to successfully launch our first commercial-scale waste-to-fuel facility.  The facility will be located in the Durban/Mandeni region.  The second and third waste-to-fuel facilities are slated for Tangiers and Casablanca, Morocco . In the United States, my project development team is presenting the innovative Dake Rechsand desert farming technology to Native-American tribes in the Southwest. Personal Interests On a personal note, I am readying myself to file a new application as a majority owner of an NFL team. I came very close to getting majority ownership of an NFL team in 2009. I am better prepared for success this time around.   I am also working to have a significant voice in who will become the 47th president of the United States. My friendship circle of Independent voters in California is ready, willing, and able to support the candidate of our choice in a major and sophisticated way. On May 11, 2020, I was featured in the " King Richard " episode of the " Trial by Media " documentary series airing on Netflix . However, I did not produce this documentary.  I plan on co-producing my next two documentaries for Netflix .    Everything is moving in a positive direction.  The people in my inner circle today are relatively young, exceptionally gifted, goal-oriented, and super-smart.  They generate positive energy around me every day. My health, energy level, passion, and overall environment are pretty good.   The nay-sayers, backstabbers, and saboteurs who used to occupy time and space in my life are rapidly becoming a distant memory.  God has pruned my garden of life of all snakes and weeds and has given me an exciting future.    Finally, I kept my May 1973 personal commitment to Mr. Ramus Rhodes every day of the 46 years I practiced law . I never forgot or betrayed the people he trained me to fight for.