Jamil Smith

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is interpreted as an argument about how successful violations become normalized. The Greeks’ deception and violence at Troy teach them that rules can be suspended against enemies, and that logic later infects Odysseus’s return to Ithaca, where he must use violence to restore the order he helped undermine. The film’s contradictions are therefore part of its central theme, though its treatment of women and its cathartic depiction of the suitors’ slaughter remain weaknesses. The analysis connects this pattern to alleged forced medical treatment of an immigrant hunger striker in ICE detention, arguing that emergency methods developed for foreign enemies can become routine domestic government practices. Nolan’s ending, in which Odysseus relinquishes the throne, suggests that winning power does not make someone worthy of exercising it.

The Republican-majority Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted to begin dismantling the demographic reporting system that has required large employers and certain federal contractors to submit race, ethnicity, sex and job-category data since 1966. The proposed rule argues that compulsory demographic classification may violate equal protection, but critics contend that ending routine collection would prevent the agency from identifying systemic discrimination and give its leaders greater discretion over which workplaces to investigate. The proposal would preserve case-specific subpoenas while eliminating a consistent national baseline, and the EEOC has not published employers’ 2024 data. The column argues that Chair Andrea Lucas’s focus on alleged discrimination against white men contrasts with the administration’s willingness to fund investigations of favored grievances involving South African minorities, making the rollback a form of selective attention rather than colorblind enforcement. Although the reporting system has costs and methodological limitations, abandoning it would create permanent gaps in the historical record that a later administration could not reconstruct.

Jamil Smith argues that Donald Trump is using unsupported claims about foreign election interference and voter fraud to justify federal intervention ahead of the 2026 elections. The administration has pursued Fulton County’s 2020 election records, pressured states to provide voter rolls, and promoted identification and citizenship-document requirements despite intelligence assessments finding no foreign alteration of votes. Smith contends that these actions place voters, election workers and institutions under permanent suspicion, with Black voters and jurisdictions such as Fulton County likely to bear disproportionate consequences.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Houston construction worker and father of three, was fatally shot by ICE agents in unmarked vehicles who allegedly mistook him for another person. DHS says he rammed an ICE vehicle and threatened an agent, but surviving passengers dispute that account, and no released footage corroborates the government’s version. The killing has intensified demands that immigration officers wear body cameras, uniforms and visible identification. The column argues that a government cannot demand obedience from civilians while concealing its own identity, and links Salgado Araujo’s death to a broader rise in fatal shootings and fear under the Trump administration’s expanded immigration-enforcement strategy.

Jamil Smith argues that the United States should not simply celebrate its 250th anniversary because its founding promises were compromised by slavery and remain incomplete. He describes America as a country still requiring repair, highlighting the Supreme Court’s protection of birthright citizenship alongside rulings that weaken campaign-finance safeguards and permit restrictions on transgender girls in school sports. He also criticizes the administration for dismissing bipartisan housing legislation and pursuing stricter voter-registration rules. Smith concludes that preserving democracy and civil rights requires confronting historical distortions, identifying those dismantling protections and actively rebuilding the country’s institutions.

A new monument in Montgomery, Alabama, uses Rosa Parks’s 1956 booking number, 7053, to commemorate the collective sacrifice behind the Montgomery bus boycott and warn against forgetting the country’s history of racial terror. Created by the Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery Square is its fourth Legacy Site and opened amid a Supreme Court decision weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and renewed conservative efforts to reshape the teaching of US history. Founder Bryan Stevenson argues that memorializing racial injustice is essential because the movement’s victories were won through sustained grassroots organizing, not a few iconic events, and that the struggle for racial justice remains unfinished.

Republican-led redistricting in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi is portrayed as a coordinated effort to weaken Black political representation rather than merely win the next election. The article links the elimination or threatened elimination of Black-majority districts to the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais, the preservation of Confederate symbolism and punitive actions against Tennessee Democrats. Jamil Smith argues that these measures echo the procedural and generational nature of Jim Crow, warning that messaging on affordability will not address the deeper institutional erosion of voting rights and representation.

Jamil Smith argues that Congress must pass a new Voting Rights Act banning both racial and partisan gerrymandering under a uniform national standard. The argument follows the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v Callais ruling, which Smith says weakened protections against racial vote dilution, and a series of redistricting actions in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Virginia. The proposed law would restore preclearance, require independent commissions or transparent federal criteria, prohibit racial vote dilution disguised as partisanship, and invalidate noncompliant maps. Smith calls for simultaneous disarmament by both parties, arguing that counter-gerrymandering ultimately turns democracy into a contest among mapmakers rather than voters.

The Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling leaves Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act formally intact but, according to Jamil Smith, severely weakens its practical ability to challenge racial vote dilution. Smith argues that the decision wrongly assumes American leaders can be trusted to protect Black voting power and notes that racial turnout gaps have widened while Louisiana has never elected a Black representative from a non-majority-Black district. He points to rapid redistricting efforts in Florida and Louisiana, with Tennessee and Alabama potentially following, as evidence that the ruling’s consequences are already unfolding. The changes could eliminate Black congressional representation in parts of the South and cost Democrats and Congressional Black Caucus members numerous seats. Smith also links the ruling to broader electoral pressures, including federal demands for voter data and the weakening of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, concluding that renewed organizing and legal action will be necessary to restore meaningful voting-rights protections.

The Iran war is becoming politically damaging for Donald Trump because Americans experience its consequences through sharply higher gasoline prices, grocery bills, housing costs and healthcare expenses. Jamil Smith argues that Trump’s movement cultivated a politics focused on immediate personal costs and distrust of broader moral or institutional concerns, leaving the administration vulnerable to judgment at the gas pump. Conflicting predictions from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright about when prices might fall further undermine the administration’s message. Smith warns that a later decline in gas prices or recovery in Trump’s ratings would not justify the war or constitute accountability, and urges Americans not to forget its human, economic and moral costs.

Donald Trump’s public aggression, escalation and refusal to apologize are tolerated because many Americans equate domination with strength and impulse with authenticity. Jamil Smith argues that Trump did not invent these ideas but exposes longstanding assumptions about power, masculinity and unequal standards of political accountability. The defeat of Viktor Orbán shows that strongmen can eventually lose public legitimacy, but Smith sees little evidence that Americans are close to rejecting Trump’s behavior. He warns that treating brinkmanship as leadership risks conflict and catastrophe, contrasting it with Pope Leo XIV’s insistence that restraint and peace are forms of strength.

The White House’s installation of a replica Christopher Columbus statue is presented as a deliberate political statement rather than a neutral act of historical preservation. Jamil Smith argues that Columbus’s documented record of enslavement, violence, and the destruction of Indigenous communities has been knowingly subordinated to a heroic national myth. The statue’s replication of one toppled by Baltimore protesters in 2020 symbolizes a rejection of their challenge to that narrative. Smith connects the gesture to broader administration positions on slavery, diversity policies, Cuba, and military or territorial power, arguing that the administration treats historical harm as irrelevant when acknowledging it would create obligations. The central issue, he concludes, is not whether Columbus’s actions are known, but whether that knowledge is allowed to shape public power and national identity.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department has rescinded federal limits on no-knock warrants, restoring broader discretion for federal law enforcement six years after a police raid killed Breonna Taylor in Louisville. The reversal undermines safeguards adopted after Taylor’s death and, the column argues, disregards evidence that such raids—often used for drug warrants—create dangerous confusion and disproportionately harm Black communities. Although Louisville and other jurisdictions imposed restrictions and Congress has repeatedly introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, nationwide reform has stalled. The decision is presented as evidence that the lessons of Taylor’s killing have been politically marginalized despite the continuing risks to home privacy, safety and civil rights.

The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran before Congress or the public received a clear justification, with Pentagon briefings reportedly finding no evidence that Iran was about to attack US forces. The strikes have exposed weakened checks on presidential war powers, inconsistent administration objectives and inadequate evacuation planning for Americans in the Middle East. The column argues that wars of choice require clear aims, credible oversight and honesty before force is used, warning that escalation, miscalculation and lasting human costs may outlive the administration that initiated them.

Donald Trump’s move to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 endangerment finding would remove the legal foundation for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The decision is portrayed as a denial of well-documented climate risks, including extreme heat, wildfires, storms, rising seas and deteriorating air quality, while leaving Black and other frontline communities especially vulnerable. The policy could also intensify migration pressures caused by climate-related drought, crop failure and displacement, undermining the administration’s hardline border politics. By weakening climate regulation while supporting coal interests, the administration is accused of shifting responsibility away from government and reducing citizens’ ability to compel federal protection through the courts, even though the underlying harms will continue.

A racist image depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, prompted one lifelong Republican voter to apologize for supporting Trump. The incident made visible a pattern of racism and political harm that the voter had previously rationalized, but the column argues that apologies without accountability are inadequate. Jamil Smith links Trump’s conduct to attacks on journalists, personal enrichment, weakened climate protections, anti-immigrant scapegoating, deaths and abuses connected to his policies, and damage to democratic institutions. The central argument is that regret must lead to responsibility, repair and political action rather than serving as a way to ease guilt while leaving power unchanged.

The FBI’s seizure of ballots and election records from majority-Black Fulton County, Georgia, is presented as part of a broader Trump administration effort to undermine election legitimacy and consolidate federal control over voting. The column links the raid to false claims about noncitizen voting, proposed restrictions on mail voting and registration drives, immigration enforcement abuses, and the removal of Black history and other marginalized identities from public institutions. It argues that Republican leaders’ equivocation is enabling the erosion of democratic safeguards and warns that tactics resembling Jim Crow-era voter suppression are being expanded nationally.

Federal immigration operations in the Minneapolis area have destabilized daily life, with schools, businesses, hospitals, local police and public services affected. The column links the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, along with the detention of children and alleged abuses by agents, to what it describes as racist policies targeting Somali and other minority communities. It argues that Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has been converted into state power, undermining public safety, democratic accountability and effective governance. The piece also connects the administration’s demand for Minnesota voter-registration data to growing electoral coercion and calls for organized resistance and reconstruction.