Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, often ranked as the country’s top public high school, lies across the Potomac River from Washington in Alexandria, Virginia. For years, the magnet school’s student body has been majority Asian American, with paltry numbers of Black and Latino students. While the situation at TJ irked the county school board […]
Author: Pema Levy
Affirmative Action May Be Dead—But the Battle Over Race and Admissions Is Just Getting Started
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, often ranked as the country’s top public high school, lies across the Potomac River from Washington in Alexandria, Virginia. For years, the magnet school’s student body has been majority Asian American, with paltry numbers of Black and Latino students. While the situation at TJ irked the county school board […]
Trump and 18 Allies Slammed with 41 Charges in Sprawling Georgia Election Case
Former President Donald Trump was indicted in Georgia late on Monday on charges related to his desperate attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, follow an investigation that lasted some two and a half years. The indictment charges Trump with 13 felonies, many centered on allegations […]
In Another Sign of Florida’s Democratic Decay, DeSantis Suspends an Elected Prosecutor
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a break from his ailing presidential campaign on Wednesday to suspend Monique Worrell, an Orlando-based elected prosecutor. The move was unsurprising: Since winning the state’s top job in 2019, he has sought to make political hay by booting multiple Democrats from office, in contravention of the voters who put them […]
The Supreme Court Allows Discrimination Against LGBTQ People
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed certain businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people, creating a large loophole in federal and state civil rights laws that have protected Americans for decades. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the opinion for the court’s conservative justices, who made up the 6 vote majority. The court’s three Democratic-appointed justices dissented. The […]
Did Justice Jackson Sneak a Loophole into the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ban?
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority banned race-conscious admissions policies at colleges and universities on Thursday, ruling that using race as an admissions factor violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The decision invalidates the University of North Carolina and Harvard’s systems for making up their student body, and will, more broadly, make higher education whiter and […]
Supreme Court Strikes Down Universities’ Affirmative Action Programs
The Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-3 decision that the use of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus is unconstitutional, dealing a serious blow to affirmative action measures used by colleges to create diverse student bodies and remedy past discrimination against minorities. “Many universities have […]
Ron DeSantis Has Launched a New Battle in His War to Control Public Universities
Gov. Ron DeSantis is, famously, on a crusade to transform Florida’s education system into one that projects his own ideology. What’s taken up fewer national headlines is that one of the institutions standing in the way has been the accrediting body for Florida’s institutions of higher education. On Thursday, DeSantis ratcheted up the power struggle by […]
Today, Ron DeSantis’ Florida Will Conduct Its Fourth Execution of the Year
In the lead-up to his recently announced presidential run, Gov. Ron DeSantis ramped up Florida’s use of the death penalty and shepherded through two laws expanding capital punishment. The moves, part of a broader attempt to appear tough on crime, have helped turned the state into an executions epicenter. The latest planned killing is set for Thursday […]
What the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act Opinion Means for 2024—and Beyond
The Supreme Court’s surprise ruling upholding the use of the Voting Rights Act in cases challenging political maps is likely to affect the 2024 elections and beyond—though how big the impact will be depends on how quickly courts across the country move in multiple cases challenging racial gerrymandering schemes. Thursday’s opinion in Allen v. Milligan came out […]