JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON
TO SPEAK AT N.C. A&T U SEPT 3RD
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Outspoken Associate Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson, 54, the first African-American woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and one of that body’s three liberal member minority, is scheduled to speak at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University next week on Wednesday, Sept. 3rd at 6 p.m..
The event will be held in the school’s Harrison Auditorium, and is restricted to NC A&T students, faculty and staff.
Justice Jackson’s appearance is part of her current tour to support her New York Times #1 bestselling book “Lovely One.” The memoir chronicles her early life growing up in Miami, Florida, going on to earn her bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard, becoming a federal public defender and ultimately being appointed by Pres. Joe Biden to the U.S. high court in 2022 after serving as U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia.
Her father, Johnny Brown, attended North Carolina Central University, graduating with a degree in history, and later serving as a school principal.
Beyond her chart-topping book, Justice Jackson is very much in the news lately for her fiery dissenting opinions on the 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court.
Just last week on the Supreme Court’s last day of its current term, in a split decision on the emergency docket where the conservative majority voted, without argument, to allow Republican Pres. Donald Trump to cancel almost $800 million in federal National Institutes of Health grants for medical and scientific research, Justice Jackson, calling the majority’s decision “of a piece with the Court’s recent tendencies, added, “‘[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,’ the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible.”
“This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Justice Jackson continued, referring to a children’s comic strip game. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”
Justice Jackson concluded, “The court’s Calvinball jurisprudence will have grim consequences.The forward march of scientific discovery will not only be halted — it will be reversed. That’s what happens when you make up the rules as you go to help your side win.”
Knowing that sometimes strong dissenting court opinions can sometimes have as much social impact as majority opinions, Justice Jackson has made clear that she is not afraid to use her voice. She has not been afraid to chide the court’s conservative majority for for strengthening and extending Pres. Trump’s executive powers, even ruling that he enjoys immunity from prosecution for most crimes committed while in office.
In July during an appearance hosted by the Indianapolis Bar Association, when asked “What keeps you up at night?,” Justice Jackson replied, "I would say the state of our democracy.”
“I’m really very interested in getting people to focus ...and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government," Justice Jackson added.
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REP. ALMA ADAMS
REP. ADAMS BLASTS TRUMP
FOR ATTACK MUSEUMS
THAT INFORM ABOUT SLAVERY
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Congresswoman and former college professor Alma Adams (D-1-NC) took high offense to Republican President Donald Trump’s recent attack on the Smithsonian Museum, and particularly its National Museum of African-American History in Washington, D.C., which he once visited in his first term and praised, for allegedly teaching “How bad slavery was” and nothing about success.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL,” the president opined on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week,"…where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
Rep. Adams, who taught art for forty years at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, was having none of it.
“President Trump fundamentally misunderstands the role museums play in telling the story of America,” said Adams said in a statement last week. “Museums are centers of preservation, of culture, of speaking unapologetically to the history of our country—its greatest achievements and its darkest moments. The eras of slavery, segregation, and internment cannot be whitewashed because they make some people uncomfortable. Museums were never built for comfort. They’re built for learning, understanding, and chronicling the truth of our past.”
According to The Independent, “The Trump administration is on a crusade against institutions of learning, from universities to museums, to ensure they align with a narrative that presents history in a way that glorifies the nation rather than documents and explains the American historical journey warts and all.”
Trump called museums in Washington, D.C. and throughout the nation “…the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” and threatened to have his attorneys review all museum exhibit materials to determine if they fit his cultural and historical narrative. If so, they’ll be removed.
“…I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.” Trump stated.
“This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
Trump’s Truth Social posting came a week after The White House announced a “…sweeping review” of the Smithsonian Institution, which operates some of the nation’s top museums, in a letter stating that it “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Trump’s attack on museums that tell the true story of slavery has drawn an avalanche of criticism, as well as plenty of MAGA supporting comments that tried to minimize the institution of slavery for its documented cruelty.
Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association, told WTOP News in Washington, D.C. that what the White House was doing was “appalling,” and the president’s directive “is the imposition of a single, ideological, highly partisan, politicized version of history. That is not an effort to ensure that content is in line with up-to-date scholarship, …and would deprive Americans “access to a full, unvarnished version of the American past that is told in all of its complexity and all of its messiness.”
Rep. Adams added, “The president can try to remove our history from museums but make no mistake, that will not silence the American people,” she said. “We will keep acknowledging it, discussing it, and learning from it as we build for the future.”
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