Bernice King Speaks Out as the Government Releases Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Files In an exclusive first-person piece, Bernice King writes on the Trump administration’s release of 230,000 pages of documents related to the 1968 assassination of her father, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“Fifty-seven years after he was assassinated, the man who was the target of an overreaching government in search of communism is now honored with a federal holiday and a national memorial on the Mall in our nation’s capital,” she writes. “While the country and world commemorate his birthday and multitudes invoke his words, we have not yet, collectively and with earnest intent, embraced and applied his nonviolent mindset and methods.”
“These are indeed difficult days,” she adds, “days when my father’s very work to create a more inclusive society and economy is threatened with closures and removals of important history, programs, initiatives, information, and services designed to advance genuine equality; days when aid is cut off from nations grappling with dire poverty; days when militarism persists and entire families perish; days when voter suppression goes unchecked by the highest court in the land; days when thousands of hardworking Americans are laid off in the name of government efficiency; and days when hope lies prostrate and must be lifted and levied by people jointly determined to keep moving.”
Elsewhere, the White House stepped up its fight with The Wall Street Journal yesterday by removing the outlet from the pool of reporters covering Donald Trump’s trip to Scotland. The Journal declined to comment Monday afternoon to VF media reporter Natalie Korach, but the move follows Trump suing the paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, over the Journal’s reporting on his relationship to the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Epstein saga hasn’t gone away, despite Trump’s protests, and his recent rant about how the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians should return to their old, offensive monikers seems like another attempt at distraction, writes Tom Kludt. Still, amid all the bombast, Kludt explores whether Trump could actually derail the Commanders’ plan for a new stadium.
Thanks for reading.
—Michael Calderone |
