Roy L. Austin, Jr.

NEWS: RM Jamie Raskin’s statement on Trump’s DOJ filing criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey:

Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel Trump’s most brazen attack on free speech yet.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

Not hard to imagine, really. Charlie Kirk literally called Floyd a “scumbag” and blamed his death on taking fentanyl.

WASH POST: “Trump has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks… including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.” www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Spencer Cox: "Our nation is broken. We had political assassinations recently in Minnesota. We had an attempted assassination on the gov of Pennsylvania. And we had an attempted assassination on a president. Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken"

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional

ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting whom to detain and deport is cool cool cool

"How bad slavery was" is worse. Much worse. Much worse than you think, much worse than you're taught, much worse than museums depict. Worse.

There’s probably no connection between Trump’s post suggesting slavery wasn’t that bad, his restoration of monuments honoring Confederates, and renaming of military bases to honor traitors who believed that it was simply a property right being taken from them without just cause.

The horrors ‘12 Years a Slave’ couldn’t tell | Al Jazeera America What a Civil War soldier’€™s diary tells us about Solomon Northup’s ordeal

I wrote an essay a few years ago about a U.S. soldier during the Civil War who visited the plantation where Solomon Northup (of 12 Years A Slave fame) was enslaved. The soldier wrote in his diary that the horror of slavery was even worse than what Northup had written.
web.archive.org/web/20140120...

BRANDING BLACKNESS BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY AND THE SURVEILLANCE OF BLACKNESS Two days before embarkation, the head of every male and female is neatly shaved; and if the cargo belongs to several owners, each mans brand is im¬ pressed on the body of his respective negro. This operation is performed with pieces of silver wire, or small irons fashioned into the merchant s initials. —Theodore canot, Memoirs of a Slave Trader We have been branded by Cartesian philosophy. —aime cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism Let’s face it. I am a marked woman, but not everybody knows my name. —HORTENSE SPILLERS You can find Wilson Chinn on eBay.com or other online auction sites for sale among antebellum ephemera. Wilson Chinn’s portrait was taken around 1863 by Myron H. Kimball, a photographer with an interest in da¬ guerreotype and a correspondent with the Philadelphia Enquirer during New York’s 1853 World’s Fair. Kimball also served as an official photogra¬ pher for the Freedman’s Bureau. In this particular portrait, a chain is tied around Chinn’s ankle and various tools of torture lie at his feet: a paddle, a leg iron, a metal prodding device. The caption below the image reads, “exhibiting Instruments of Torture used to punish slaves.” The carte de visite (figure 3.1) captures Wilson Chinn’s stare at the camera. Particularly striking is the “longhorn,” or pronged metal collar, fastened around Chinn’s neck. An 1862 copy of Harper’s Weekly describes this torture device as con¬ sisting of three metal prongs, “each two feet in length, with a ring on the end,” to which would be attached a chain to “secure the victim beyond all WILSON OHINN, a Branded Blare (Mm Louiaiana Alan exhibiting Inatrumenta of Torture uaed to puniah Slarea. Photographed by Hob*LI, 477 Broadway, N. V Entered according to Act of Cougrru. In the year lttO. by Gbq. H. Hans, In the Clerk’• 0 ®c« of tne United States for the Southern Dlatrlct of New*Tork.

is slaves to feed the others with the flesh. They died not only from the regime but from grief and rage and despair. They undertook vast hunger strikes; undid their chains and hurled themselves on the crew in futile attempts at insurrection. What could these inland tribesmen do on the open sea, in a complicated sailing vessel? To brighten their spirits it became the custom to have them up on the deck once a day and force them to dance. Some took the oppor tunity to jump overboard, uttering cries of triumph as they cleared the vessel and disappeared below the surface. Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty in the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture .• Such incidents were not rare. Given the circumstances such things were (and are) inevitable. Nor did the system spare the slavers. Every year one-fifth of all who took part in the Mrican trade died. All America and the West Indies took slaves. When the ship reached the harbour. the cargo came up on deck to be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects. looked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the perspiration to see if the slave's blood was pure and his health as good as his appearance. Some of the women af fected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse, would have caused them to be kicked 20 yards across the deck. But the slave had to stand it. Then in order to restore the dignity which might have been lost by too intimate an examination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave. Having become the property of his owner, he was branded on both sides of the breast with a hot iron. His duties were explained to him by an interpreter, and a priest instructed him in the first principles of Christianity.1

he massacre of the whites was a tragedy; not for the whites. For these old slave-owners, those who burnt a little powder in the arse of a Negro, who buried him alive for insects to eat, who were well treated by Toussaint, and who, as soon as they got the chance, began their old cruel ties again; for these there is no need to waste one tear or one drop of ink. The tragedy was for the blacks and the Mulattoes. It was not policy but revenge, and revenge has no place in politics. The whites were no longer to be feared, and such purposeless massacres degrade and brutalise a population, especially one which was just beginning as a nation and had had so bitter a past. The people did not want it--all the wanted was freedom. and independence

idk - branding humans like cattle, chaining them to dead bodies, feeding them to each other, filling them with gunpowder then blowing them up, burying them alive for insects to eat -- it being so bad mothers killed their children and people jumped from ships to drown

seems, like, super bad dude

1. The philosophy of science sometimes gets an unearned reputation as a purely academic exercise that offers little by way of concrete tools for advancing research.

This is wrong.

And today, as we grapple with how AI is changing the nature of scientific activity, it's desperately wrong.

"Free D.C.! Free D.C."

Chants of protest against Trump break out in the 51st minute of tonight's Washington Spirit game at Audi Field.

Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with children An internal Meta policy document reveals the social-media giant’s rules for chatbots, which have permitted provocative behavior on topics including sex and race.

In a world full of choices, why would I choose to use a product that is intentionally engineered to say that Black people are less intelligent than White people? www.reuters.com/investigates...

What to make of POTUS's attempt to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?

Let's run down what knowledgable people are saying...

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

Absolutely honored to join the Howard University School of Law as the Inaugural Director of the Howard Law AI Initiative. | Roy Austin Absolutely honored to join the Howard University School of Law as the Inaugural Director of the Howard Law AI Initiative.

New gig www.linkedin.com/posts/roylau...

A pretty basic FBI rule of thumb is to always go into an interview knowing more than they think you know. No way Blanche digested the whole Epstein/Maxwell case. Original prosecutor fired. No FBI agents. Victims left out. How did he know how to test her credibility? What follow up questions to ask?

Schiff uses his questioning time to highlight to Assistant AG Dhillion that her views on DEI are so extreme that they're out of step with Clarence Thomas

Another sure sign that the fix is in.

Ghislaine Maxwell's attorney, David Oscar Markus on X:

"We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case."

And says they're already in discussions with the administration.

YouTube video by Josh Johnson Trump VS MAGA? The Epstein Crashout Explained

Finally got a chance to watch the @joshjohnsoncomedy.bsky.social routine about Trump and Epstein that came out a few days ago.

I am blown away that he managed to put together a full hour of stand-up about breaking news and it's somehow polished and funny as hell.

Give it a watch and share it.

Gallup has new polling on immigration. Topline findings:
-Americans hate Trump's immigration policy (35% approve, 62% disapprove)
-Share who say immigration is a "good thing" for the country just hit an all-time high (79%)

news.gallup.com/poll/692522/...

Racial profiling for $100, Alex.

Laura Loomer‘s tweet: Alligator lives matter. The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now.

The entire Latino population in the U.S. is 65 million. She means all of us.

Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported He has no citizenship to any country, despite SCOTUS case

Deporting children of military veterans because they were born on an overseas military base.

This man has no citizenship now.

Opinion | What the University of Virginia Should Have Done

Important piece from former US Attorney Tim Heaphy. What the University of Virginia Should Have Done www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/o...

She later corrected “Muslim” to “Sikh.” The bigotry stayed exactly the same.

Former U.S. attorney Damian Williams leaves Paul Weiss for Jenner & Block The former prosecutor is leaving a firm that made ​a deal with the Trump administration for one that fought it.

Amid fallout from Trump's attacks on law firms, former Manhattan U.S. attorney leaves firm that made deal with the president www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Essential reading.

There's nothing holy about writing discrimination into the law.

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If you are or recently were a federal employee, please sign up. If you are a lawyer willing to help, please sign up. If you have the resources to donate, please donate. workerslegaldefense.org