• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republicans do not trust women.

Republicans in disarray!

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Mobile Menu

  • 4 Directions VA 2025 Raffle
  • 2025 Activism
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
On Allyship and Fear

Civil Rights

You are here: Home / Archives for Civil Rights

Wisconsin Is A Reminder of Why We Should Never Give up

by WaterGirl|  July 8, 20258:10 pm| 60 Comments

This post is in: Civil Rights, Open Threads, Political Action, Politics

The United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (LIVE AUDIO)

Another win for human rights in Wisconsin!

State laws that let a 10-member committee of the Legislature override regulations are unconstitutional, a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling hands the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a victory in an ongoing battle with the Legislature’s Republican leaders.

It also affirms that the state Legislature cannot renew its attempt to block regulations against conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, and appears to clear the way for an update of Wisconsin’s building code that was suspended nearly two years ago.

The ruling finds five statutes, granting power to the Legislature’s committee that reviews and periodically suspends administrative rules, violate the Wisconsin Constitution.

Taken together, wrote Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for the four justices making up the Court’s liberal wing, the statutes give the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules the power to effectively change state laws without going through the full legislative process.

“The ability of a ten-person committee to halt or interrupt the passage of a rule, which would ordinarily be required to be presented to the governor as a bill [to block the rule], is simply incompatible with Articles IV and V of the Wisconsin Constitution,” Karofsky wrote.

The Court’s three conservative justices took issue with the majority opinion, asserting that rulemaking itself involves legislative power and that Tuesday’s ruling improperly constrains the Legislature as the elected representatives of the people.

The decision is the second to come from a lawsuit Evers filed in the fall of 2023, Evers v. Marklein, accusing the Republican leaders of the Legislature of exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto” hampering the lawful powers of the executive branch to make administrative rules.

The Evers administration argued that five statutes granting JCRAR the power to review, object to and block rules before or after they are promulgated violate the state Constitution. Those include a law enacted in December 2018, after Evers was elected governor but before he took office, that allows the committee to lodge “indefinite” objections blocking a rule.

The Court majority agreed with the administration’s argument.

The Wisconsin Constitution requires that for a law to be enacted, it must pass both the Assembly and the Senate and then be presented to the governor to be signed or vetoed.

“By permitting JCRAR to exercise discretion over which approved rules may be promulgated and which may not, the statute empowers JCRAR to take action that alters the legal rights and duties of persons outside of the legislative branch” without going through the lawmaking process, Karofsky wrote.

The indefinite objection “prevents the agency from promulgating a rule unless the Legislature passes a bill enacting the rule,” she wrote. “Said another way, legislative inertia after an indefinite objection could permanently stop the promulgation of a rule.”

The law allowing the committee to pause a rule for 30 days before it is promulgated “essentially allows JCRAR to capture control of agency rulemaking authority from the executive branch during the 30-day pause period,” Karofksy wrote.

The pause, which can be extended to 30 days “operates as a ‘pocket veto,’” she wrote. “Even if such an interruption is relatively brief, the constitution does not contemplate temporary violations of its provisions.”

Similarly, after the rule has been promulgated, JCRAR’s power to suspend it multiple times “means that even after promulgation, JCRAR could suspend a rule repeatedly in perpetuity with no other checks in place,” the chief justice wrote.

Thanks to Mousebumples for keeping us informed about Wisconsin.

Totally open thread.

 

Wisconsin Is A Reminder of Why We Should Never Give upPost + Comments (60)

Monday Evening Open Thread: A Win, If We Can Keep It

by Anne Laurie|  July 7, 20257:59 pm| 16 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Politics, Women's Rights

BREAKING: A federal judge just blocked the "big beautiful bill's" provision to defund Planned Parenthood. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us…

[image or embed]

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 6:11 PM

Backstory:

Planned Parenthood sues Trump administration over planned defunding.
In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Planned Parenthood said the provision is unconstitutional, and its clear purpose is to prevent its nearly 600 health centers from receiving Medicaid.
www.reuters.com/legal/litiga…

[image or embed]

— Liz (or Lizzie) Kim 김혜성 💫 (@liz.sheshed.rocks) July 7, 2025 at 12:05 PM

show full post on front page

… The complaint was filed 11 days after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, cleared the way for South Carolina to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, saying the applicable federal law did not authorize the group to sue.

Monday’s lawsuit seeks an injunction to block the government from denying Medicaid funds to “prohibited” entities, including abortion providers and entities receiving more than $800,000 in Medicaid funds in the 2023 fiscal year.

The parent entity, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said it does not provide abortion care and has never received Medicaid funds, but that the law was drafted to target its members, including those that do not provide abortions.

It said clinics that could face closure are in 24 U.S. states, with more than 90% in states where abortion is legal.

Planned Parenthood said the law violates its members’ constitutional rights to free association under the First Amendment and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. Member groups in Massachusetts and Utah are also plaintiffs.

“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and STI (sexually transmitted infection) testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center,” Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement…

Monday Evening Open Thread: A Win, If We Can Keep ItPost + Comments (16)

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her Legacy

by Anne Laurie|  July 6, 20254:23 pm| 70 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Post-racial America, Proud to Be A Democrat, Supreme Court

Assuming that we get onto some kind of good timeline in the future I think justice KBJ's volumes of concurrences and dissents will be studied as the important work of a justice with a fervent commitment to democracy and the constitution, a commitment that ACB and the NYT leadership lack

[image or embed]

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 5:34 PM

The SC(R)OTUS Sinister Six sent Amy ‘Blank Sheet of Paper’ Cunning-Bunny out to complain about that very rude Black lady, and the NYTimes had a nice clean hanky for her — “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes Herself Heard, Prompting a Rebuke” [gift link]:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote just five majority opinions in the Supreme Court term that ended last month, the fewest of any member of the court. But her voice resonated nonetheless, in an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions, more than 20 in all.

Several of them warned that the court was taking lawless shortcuts, placing a judicial thumb on the scale in favor of President Trump and putting American democracy in peril. She called the majority’s opinion in the blockbuster case involving birthright citizenship, issued on the final day of the term, “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s newest member, having just concluded her third term. Other justices have said it took them years to find their footing, but Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, quickly emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda.

Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing…

Her slashing critiques sometimes seemed to test her colleagues’ patience, culminating in an uncharacteristic rebuke from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the case arising from Mr. Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. In that case, the majority sharply limited the power of district court judges to block presidential orders, even if they are patently unconstitutional…

Justice Jackson added her own dissent, speaking only for herself. She said the majority imperiled the rule of law, creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”

That prompted an extended response from Justice Barrett, the next most junior justice and the author of the majority opinion. It did not stint on condescension.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees…

Just months ago, Justice Barrett was the target of ugly criticism from the right for minor deviations from Mr. Trump’s legal agenda, with some of his allies calling her “a D.E.I. hire,” suggesting she had been chosen only for her gender. But the president’s supporters were delighted by her criticism of Justice Jackson, with some crowing that their earlier attacks on Justice Barrett had succeeded…

Professor Murray said she suspected that Justice Barrett’s remarks were part of a larger agenda intended to silence a critic. “It was incredibly dismissive,” she said. “And I just wonder if it wasn’t just about this case, but rather about these asides that Justice Jackson has been leavening into her dissents.”…

show full post on front page

Justice Jackson has appeared comfortable expressing herself from the start.

She has been particularly active in filing concurring opinions — ones that agree with the majority’s bottom line but offer additional comments or different reasoning…

She has also been active in dissent. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did not write his first solo dissent in an argued case until 16 years into his tenure. Justice Jackson issued three such dissents in her first term.

Marin Levy, a law professor at Duke, said Justice Jackson had been doing two things in her dissents.

“The first category concerns standard disagreements on the merits,” Professor Levy said. “The second category feels quite different — I think here we see dissents in which Justice Jackson is trying to raise the alarm. Whether she is writing for the public or a future court, she is making a larger point about what she sees as not just the errors of the majority’s position but the dangers of it as well.”

Justice Jackson, who did not respond to a request for comment, has also been a harsh critic of the court’s use of truncated procedures in ruling on emergency applications.

“This fly-by-night approach to the work of the Supreme Court is not only misguided,” she wrote in April, when the court said that Venezuelan men the administration was seeking to deport to El Salvador had sued in the wrong court. “It is also dangerous.”…

Last year, in a dissent in a public corruption case, Justice Jackson seemed to allude to revelations by ProPublica and others that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. had failed to disclose luxury travel provided to them by billionaire benefactors, a strikingly critical swipe on a sensitive topic.

“Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions,” she wrote. “Greed makes governments — at every level — less responsive, less efficient and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve.”

The reason the NYT is like "wow seems like the black justice is being a little EXTRA" and ACB is like "your opinions are trash, shut up" is because on some level they get this and their jealously is driving them mad

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 5:38 PM

The sharpest critic of the U.S. Supreme Court is its newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who hails from #Florida www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202… via @washingtonpost.com

[image or embed]

— Craig Pittman (@craigtimes.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 2:24 PM

Many people are saying… The Washington Post, “One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it” [gift link]:

Dissenting — again — on the last day of the Supreme Court’s term, in its most high-profile case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not mince words.

She had for months plainly criticized the opinions of her conservative colleagues, trading the staid legalese typical of justices’ decisions for impassioned arguments against what she has described as their acquiescence to President Donald Trump. She returned to that theme again in the final case, ripping the court for limiting nationwide injunctions.

“The majority’s ruling … is … profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” Jackson wrote…

She wrote more dissents this term than any other justice. Overall, she penned 24 opinions, second only to the prolific Clarence Thomas. Jackson also far exceeded her colleagues in the number of words she spoke during oral arguments. She uttered more than 79,000; Sonia Sotomayor, her liberal colleague, came in a distant second, at 53,000.

In her third term, one legal expert said, she has carved out a space on the left similar to what Thomas has held on the right. Writing frequently, often dissenting, and sometimes willing to depart from her liberal colleagues…

Jackson frequently disagreed with the substance of the conservative majority’s rulings this term but most strikingly offering a sustained, blunt and unsparing critique of how the court went about its work.

Again and again, Jackson accused the conservative bloc of weighing cases in a rushed, reckless and partisan fashion that undermined the high court’s mission to be an arbiter of fair and impartial justice — delivering results for Trump.

She summed up the sentiment baldly in a dissent in a case clearing the way for Trump to strip temporary protections from migrants: “The Court has plainly botched this assessment today.”

Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor, said Jackson is not so much embracing a new role as she is growing more comfortable being the justice who showed up on day one, jumping into oral arguments during her first case and grilling attorneys. Her first opinion was a dissent.

“I think this term, we have seen her take a more forthright approach in the way her colleagues are facilitating the administration,” Murray said. “I don’t know that she goes so far as to say they are in the bag for the administration, but she does come close.”…

Her role is particularly notable because she is the court’s most junior justice. Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is the first Black woman to serve on the high court.

“She’s found her footing maybe faster than other justices historically,” said Morgan Ratner, a lawyer who worked as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his tenure on the D.C. Circuit.

She also is responding to the limits of power that come with being on the court’s minority, said Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor. As a result, Goodwin said, Jackson is writing on two tracks, one legal and the other rhetorical.

“She realizes the balls and strikes on the court, and what she’s doing is writing … forward for a different day,” Goodwin said….

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is increasingly willing to condemn the actions of the conservative majority, even when that means breaking with her Liberal colleagues
By Ruth Marcus
www.newyorker.com/news/the-led…

[image or embed]

— Mia Farrow (@miafarrow.bsky.social) June 29, 2025 at 1:05 PM

The New Yorker, on “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Declaration of Independence”:

… New Justices tend to hang back; Jackson, now in her third term, spoke up from the start. In her first eight oral arguments, she spoke eleven thousand words, twice as many as the next most loquacious Justice, Sotomayor. That tendency has persisted—The Hill found that Jackson spoke seventy-five thousand words this term, fifty per cent more than Sotomayor—and it isn’t the only measure of Jackson’s assertiveness. As the Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak noted at the conclusion of Jackson’s first term on the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts “did not write his first solo dissent in an argued case until 16 years into his tenure. Justice Jackson issued three such dissents in her first term.” Jackson’s conduct this term—in her work on the Court and her comments outside it—is not different so much as it is more so: more alarmed at the direction the Court and the country are heading, and more willing than ever to go it alone in expressing that distress…

Jackson’s independence from her liberal colleagues was on display in April, when the majority ruled that a challenge to President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison had been brought in the wrong court. Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Kagan, Jackson, and, in part, by the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was unsparing. She described the Trump Administration’s effort to “hustle” the Venezuelans out of the country before they could obtain due process as “an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.” The Court’s seeming indulgence of that behavior, she added, was “indefensible.” Jackson went further, in her own dissent. She assailed the majority’s “fly-by-night approach” of deciding cases on an emergency basis, without full briefing or oral argument—and compared the opinion with Korematsu v. United States, the discredited 1944 ruling upholding the internment of Japanese Americans. “At least when the Court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong,” Jackson wrote. “With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s Court leaves less and less of a trace. But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.”

Speaking last month at a judicial conference, Jackson seized the opportunity to call out “the elephant in the room, which is the relentless attacks and disregard and disparagement that judges around the country, and perhaps many of you, are now facing on a daily basis.” …

Even the anodyne USA Today!

In a Supreme Court term that handed Trump and conservatives, big wins, Ketanji Brown Jackson – the newest justice – has emerged as fierce voice of dissent.

[image or embed]

— USA TODAY (@usatoday.com) July 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM

1/ Whether or not Friday's SCOTUS ruling has the practical effect of denying birthright citizenship to children born on US soil, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used her dissent to issue a strong warning that this decision has altered our system of gov't—& sooner or later, may destroy it.

[image or embed]

— Fiona "Fi" Webster 🌎🌍🌏 (@fiona-webster22.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 10:45 AM

2/ “Disaster looms,” Jackson wrote. If a court cannot command the executive to follow the law, then there exists “a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, …

3/ & where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.”

“I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, …

4/ & from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends,” she wrote.

“Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, & our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”

I’m not sure why Justice Jackson’s “unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions” are said to have “prompted a rebuke,’ especially one “that did not stint on condescension.” Comey Barrett’s “rebuke” was a choice, an act of agency.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u…

[image or embed]

— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 6:43 AM


===

KBJ joined a Court whose six-person majority has made a number of dubious and dangerous opinions. Her opinions have underlined that threat. If she had joined the Court at a different time in its history, these warnings would not have been necessary. But at this moment of democratic crisis, they are.

[image or embed]

— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 6:54 AM

The claim that her opinions have tested “her colleagues’ patience” strikes me as a form of what I have called “elite victimization.” The Court’s majority has made a series of radically extremist decisions—taking away a Constitutional right, offering Trump seemingly unlimited immunity etc.

[image or embed]

— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 7:03 AM

Um. What about Earl Warren, who wrote what is arguably the most important opinion of the twentieth century less than a year after he joined the Court as Chief Justice?

[image or embed]

— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 7:10 AM

Earl Warren, recently appointed as Chief Justice, with no judicial experience beforehand, also got “the hang of things” pretty quickly when he shepherded through the unanimous Brown v. Board opinion.

— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 8:22 AM

The right’s judicial hero, Antonin Scalia, would routinely insult other justices, especially Sandra Day O’Connor, and write totally unhinged opinions.

— Phil Klinkner (@pklinkne.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 12:45 PM

No, you see, when a woman stands up to her colleagues she’s “kinda being a bitch,” but whenever a man pulls the absolutely outrageous BS Clarence Thomas pulls its “constitutionalism.”

— Brendan Davey (@brendandavey.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 8:11 AM

Literally the most qualified.

[image or embed]

— Ms. Architeuthis (@msarchiteuthis.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 11:29 AM

White women clutch their pearls. Justice Brown-Jackson proudly wears her cowrie shells. May she prevail…

[image or embed]

— DBerl0909 (@dberl.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 12:34 PM

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her LegacyPost + Comments (70)

Open Thread: Closing Out Pride Month – Proudly!

by Anne Laurie|  June 29, 20258:49 am| 91 Comments

This post is in: LGBTQ Rights Are Human Rights, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

Ten years ago, love won. On this day in 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges guaranteed marriage equality across the U.S. The White House, lit in rainbow colors that night, became a powerful symbol of progress and pride that continues to shine today. ??????

[image or embed]

— Robin Kelly, Ph.D. (@robinlynnekelly.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 9:49 AM


===
From commentor JCJ:

I am currently in Bangkok where Pride is much more celebrated. A large shopping and business complex near where I stay is called EmDistrict. Much more acknowledgement of Pride than I have seen in the US. Here are some pictures.

Open Thread: Closing Out Pride Month - Proudly!
===

show full post on front page

Open Thread: Closing Out Pride Month - Proudly! 1
===
Open Thread: Closing Out Pride Month - Proudly! 2

===

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban

[image or embed]

— Phillip Ayoub (@payoub.bsky.social) June 28, 2025 at 1:23 PM


===

Support at Dublin Pride today:

[image or embed]

— OleBiscuitBarrel.bsky.social (@olebiscuitbarrel.bsky.social) June 28, 2025 at 2:56 PM

===

Pride in NYC ??????

[image or embed]

— wlkwerks.bsky.social (@wlkwerks.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 9:10 AM


===

The Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., includes a section of graves of LGBTQ Americans. We take a pride month tour.

[image or embed]

— NPR (@npr.org) June 28, 2025 at 10:42 AM

NPR, “A D.C. cemetery’s ‘Gay Corner’ is a final resting place for trailblazing LGBTQ+ icons”:

In southeast Washington D.C. is a more-than two-century-old cemetery where members of Congress who died while in office are buried. It’s also home to a little-known final resting place for some trailblazing LGBTQ+ icons.

A group of about 20 visitors are quietly led down the oblong-shaped stone markers and squat sandstone blocks of Congressional Cemetery by docent Jeff Rollins, who volunteers for the non profit organization that helps manage the 35-acre cemetery…

As the group moves through the cemetery, Rollins notes the graves of Barbara Gittings, the mother of the modern gay rights movement; the founding father of the Harlem Renaissance Alain Locke; Ken Dresser, who designed Disney theme park parades and shows; and the grave of the man who created a stir when he became the first military member to come out publicly, Leonard Matlovich.

The granite grave is marked with American and pride flags; the headstone is piled high with stones and features pink triangles. The stone reads, ‘A Gay Vietnam Veteran.’ Below that: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

Matlovich served in the Air Force and did three tours in Vietnam. He was awarded a bronze medal, received a Purple Heart, and was lauded for exemplary service.

Then, in 1975, he told his commanding officer he was gay. Shortly after, the Air Force honorably discharged him.

It was also around this time gay rights advocate Frank Kameny (who also has a memorial marker nearby, though he is not buried at Congressional) was looking for “perfect soldier” to test the military’s ban on gay servicemen. Kameny found that in Matlovich…

Open Thread: Closing Out Pride Month – Proudly!Post + Comments (91)

Open Thread: One Step Forward, Half-Steps Backwards…

by Anne Laurie|  June 19, 20258:52 pm| 17 Comments

This post is in: Black Lives Matter, Open Threads, Racial Justice

We will never let the extremists cancel our history.

[image or embed]

— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 9:41 AM

James Brown's Say It Loud (I'm Black & I'm Proud)(1968). His record company wanted him to change it to "I'm Black BUT I'm proud," but James refused, knowing that changing "AND" to "but" destroyed its meaning. Also, James said, "That song cost me a lot of my crossover audience…I don't regret it."

[image or embed]

— Black Music Project (@blackmusicproject.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 1:56 PM


===

At a Juneteenth sleepover, campers commune with ancestors
A South Carolina park was once a town founded by freed people. Now visitors sleep there to get close to history www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2025/…

[image or embed]

— Carceral Abolition (@carceralabolition.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 2:54 AM


===

show full post on front page

10 years ago this week, a white supremacist killed nine people at a historic South Carolina church.
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/generat…

[image or embed]

— TPM (@talkingpointsmemo.com) June 16, 2025 at 12:15 PM


===

Trump won't commit to an antislavery position out of fear of angering his Confederate base.

[image or embed]

— davidrlurie (@davidrlurie.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 1:57 PM


===

the destruction of chattel slavery is one of the great accomplishments in our nation's history and the reason conservatives hate celebrating it is because doing so legitimizes the black counter-narrative of the united states

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) June 19, 2025 at 12:01 PM


===

Very confused on how Juneteenth presents logistical issues that St. Patrick's Day does not.
Also, can we stop using DEI as a euphemism for Black and just be honest? Juneteenth is not a "diversity initiative" it's a holiday celebrating Black folks' freedom. Full stop.

[image or embed]

— Chaos Cherub (@biensur-jetaime.bsky.social) June 18, 2025 at 10:03 AM


===

y'know it's kind of a tell that they think celebrating the end of slavery is DEI

— m (@keptsimple.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 11:56 AM


===

5 years after CHOP in Seattle, teen’s shooting death is without answers https://t.co/bp18qpNMfh

— 🌎 🌍 ☮️ Carl Doss (@unixdoss) March 18, 2025

Open Thread: One Step Forward, Half-Steps Backwards…Post + Comments (17)

Excellent Read:‘The Struggle to Fulfill Juneteenth’s Promise and Reckon with Its History’

by Anne Laurie|  June 19, 20252:50 pm| 34 Comments

This post is in: Civil Rights, Excellent Links

“The Juneteenth story is much more than one day, or one city. But this is where it started.”
From @josephinelee.bsky.social in 2024: Join us in getting to know the Galveston icon they call "Professor Juneteenth" …

[image or embed]

— Texas Observer (@texasobserver.org) June 18, 2025 at 12:36 PM

Around Galveston, Sam Collins III is better known as Professor Juneteenth.

For the past 20 years, Collins, 53, has devoted his life to educating the public about Juneteenth—the commemoration of June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger and his troops landed on the island. More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Texas was then the last bastion of legal slavery. Granger read the orders freeing 250,000 enslaved Texans across Galveston, before traveling inland to proclaim freedom and the promise of “absolute equality”at plantations across Texas.

Today, Galveston is an open classroom for Juneteenth’s legacy, largely due to Collins’ efforts. He’s organized community members to get Juneteenth-related historical markers, murals, statutes, and public exhibits established. Collins worked together with Fort Worth’s Opal Lee to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021. But he says that his work, as well as the promise of Juneteenth, is unfinished. He’s now trying to expand the story of Juneteenth’s legacy and bring it back home to Galveston with plans for an International Museum of Juneteenth in the port city. (A museum is also in the works up in Cowtown.)…

As a child, Collins attended parades and festivals in Galveston and nearby in his smaller hometown of Hitchcock. Celebrations were about family and community, but it wasn’t until he was older that Collins started learning more about the holiday’s history. In 2006, he gathered what he found and hosted his own Juneteenth celebration at the Stringfellow estate in Hitchcock, a former plantation that Collins had purchased and repurposed as a family home and space to present Black history. Six-hundred people attended that celebration.

That same year, Ronald Meyers, a Mississippi doctor who had since 1999 been championing a federal Juneteenth holiday, reached out to Collins for help. Through the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, Meyers worked with Opal Lee, who became the foremost representative of the national campaign, and Collins. Meyers died in 2018, before he saw his work realized. “He drove all across the country and sacrificed a lot of his personal resources, but his role in the movement has been forgotten,” Collins said.

It’s why Collins makes sure to mention Meyers and others who have fought for Juneteenth recognition. As early as 1879, Robert Evans, a Black state legislator from Navasota tried to get Juneteenth recognized as a state holiday. But that was two years after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction and, along with it, the promises to protect the rights of Black Americans. It wouldn’t be until about a hundred years later, following the civil rights movement, that calls to fulfill the promise of “absolute equality” would be collectively renewed. Juneteenth finally became a Texas holiday in 1980.

Despite the work of Meyers, Lee, and Collins, among others, it would be the 2020 mass protests against racist police brutality that spread following the murder of George Floyd that would push the federal government to recognize Juneteenth. “That started a social movement, an uprising and awakening of consciousness. The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation had been trying to get recognition for 26 years, but no one was paying attention, until after what happened to George Floyd,” Collins said. After more than 150 years, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth bill in June 2021…

Quoting Frederick Douglass, Collins said that it’s an ongoing struggle to achieve “absolute equality,” just as it’s an ongoing struggle for Americans to reckon with their past. “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing the ground,” Douglass said at a speech in Canandaigua, New York, in 1857. “They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.”

Excellent Read:<em>‘The Struggle to Fulfill Juneteenth’s Promise and Reckon with Its History’</em>Post + Comments (34)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Juneteenth

by Anne Laurie|  June 19, 20256:07 am| 130 Comments

This post is in: Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights, KULCHA!

The Juneteenth flag symbolizes liberation. The star marks Texas, where the enslaved were freed in Galveston in 1865. The arc is a new horizon, and the red, white & blue colors affirm that the enslaved are American. 64 days to Slavery Remembrance Day. #CountdowntoSRD

[image or embed]

— U.S. Representative Al Green (@algreen.house.gov) June 17, 2025 at 1:01 PM

It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after the Civil War's end.
The resulting Juneteenth holiday — its name combining “June” and “nineteenth” — has only grown, and it was designated a federal holiday in 2021.

[image or embed]

— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) June 16, 2025 at 9:00 AM

We thank #FormerPresident @JoeBiden who in 2021, made #Juneteenth the very first #FederalHoliday since the creation of #MLKDay in 1984. This, will ultimately be his legacy. ?? #Juneteenth #KeepTheFaith #Resist ??

[image or embed]

— Joseph Young (@jayoung3292.bsky.social) June 18, 2025 at 3:18 PM

Juneteenth Explained To White People

Thursday Morning Open Thread: JuneteenthPost + Comments (130)

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 628
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - dmkingto - SF Bay Area Scenes 7
Image by dmkingto (7/31/25)
Donate

Recent Comments

  • Westyny on War for Ukraine Day 1,237: TACO Tuesday!!!! (Jul 16, 2025 @ 12:20am)
  • Melancholy Jaques on Tuesday Night Open Thread (Jul 16, 2025 @ 12:15am)
  • Sister Golden Bear on War for Ukraine Day 1,237: TACO Tuesday!!!! (Jul 16, 2025 @ 12:14am)
  • AlaskaReader on War for Ukraine Day 1,237: TACO Tuesday!!!! (Jul 16, 2025 @ 12:08am)
  • hitchhiker on Tuesday Night Open Thread (Jul 16, 2025 @ 12:05am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Feeling Defeated?  If We Give Up, It's Game Over

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc