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Biden administration replaces top immigration court official

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Biden administration replaces top immigration court official

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Staffers and judges were informed of the shift Wednesday morning in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin. The move will be effective Sunday.

"Jean will provide continuity in EOIR's leadership until a new director is selected," Carlin wrote, according to a person who received the memo.

The personnel change comes after complaints from immigration advocates who were troubled to see McHenry's name on the agency-wide list the Justice Department released last Thursday of those holding top posts on an acting or continuing basis for the first weeks of the Biden presidency.

McHenry's presence on the roster of officials staying on into the new administration rankled immigration reformers seeking an immediate change in direction for an operation with huge power over immigrants accused of being in the U.S. illegally.

"I saw that list....and I was just shocked," said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration lawyer in Greensboro, N.C., prior to Wednesday's announcement. "The policies he was putting out in terms of his attempts to control what judges do inside the courtroom, those efforts have been monumental over the last three years. To see he's one of the hangers-on is very surprising."

"To have someone like that leading EOIR, who doesn't embrace the vision of restoring due process & fairness....this would undermine that goal and that hope," Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center said last week.

McHenry was named as acting chief of EOIR in May 2017 and was given the permanent director title the following January. As the top executive branch official overseeing the immigration courts, McHenry spearheaded a series of policy initiatives that rankled immigration advocates, including efforts to narrow asylum standards and to press immigration judges to close cases more quickly.

One immigration advocate said that Biden transition personnel at the Department of Homeland Security seemed more urgently focused on immigration issues, while those issues appeared to be put on the back burner by those planning for the Justice Department.

That perception was reinforced by a report last week that the career official the Biden team tapped to act as acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, played a role in an internal dust-up several years ago related to the Trump-era policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the Mexican border.

As an official running the office that oversees U.S. attorneys, Wilkinson approved the reassignment of a line prosecutor who was seen as resisting an early pilot of the controversial family-splitting effort, which Trump officials abandoned in 2018 following public outcry and bipartisan pressure from Congress.

Given the attention to Wilkinson's minor role in that widely-denounced policy, it was notable that when the Justice Department formally jettisoned part of that policy this week, the announcement came in a memo from Wilkinson. The new directive said the department was abandoning a so-called zero-tolerance rule that called for nearly all adults who cross the border illegally to be criminally prosecuted.

"A policy requiring a prosecutor to charge every case referred for prosecution....without regard for individual circumstances is inconsistent with our principles," Wilkinson wrote.

Greg Chen, director of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called McHenry's exit a necessary precursor for Biden to carry out his immigration agenda.

"AILA has deep concerns about the current director and other appointees currently leading EOIR, who have stripped judges of fundamental authorities that make it impossible for them to render fair and consistent decisions," Chen said. "If he is allowed to stay in office, the many steps he has taken to steamroll cases through the courts for removal orders will continue apace. His removal is imperative to the new administration being able to implement its vision of make courts fairer and more efficient."

Some lawyers said civil service laws may have complicated the Biden administration's ability to swiftly reassign McHenry. One legal provision creates a 120-day moratorium on reassigning certain senior career executives following a change in agency leadership. But with Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland still awaiting confirmation, it is unclear whether the Justice Department transitioning from an acting attorney general under President Donald Trump to another appointed by Biden triggered that 120-day clock.

However, several advocates said they were confident that the department had the power to move McHenry out of his post at least temporarily. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the personnel shift.

Regardless of the precise legal requirements, the Biden administration may be reluctant to involuntarily reassign members of the senior executive service over concerns about disregarding civil service protections. The Trump administration often seemed to be at war with the civil service and with federal employee unions, the subject of much criticism over the previous president's four years in office.

Last October, Trump issued an executive order that could have led to tens of thousands of government positions being converted from civil service positions to ones where employees can be fired without cause. Trump officials failed to complete that process by Inauguration Day.

Last Friday, Biden signed an executive order unwinding many of Trump's civil service-related actions, which the new president said had "undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles."

In 2018, more than a dozen liberal lawyers sent a letter complaining that Trump appointees were mistreating members of the senior executive service by reassigning them as retaliation and potentially in violation of civil service protections. That history may have left the new administration sensitive about any perception that it is short-circuiting the laws and rules.

While immigration advocates have been highly critical of McHenry's tenure, the Trump administration boasted of the immigration courts' successes and efficiency under his oversight.

McHenry made major strides towards replacing the courts' archaic paper-based filing system with a computerized one, hired a record number of new immigration judges and sharply increased the number of cases closed out every year - at least before Covid-19 hit.

Immigration judges concluded a record 276,000 cases in fiscal 2019 and were on pace to close 400,000 cases in fiscal 2020 before the pandemic ground the immigration court system to a near halt.

The latest news in employment, labor and immigration politics and policy.

McKinney, the North Carolina immigration lawyer, said McHenry deserves credit for being forthright about EOIR policies and policy changes, even though they proved controversial in many quarters. "He has always been consistent when meeting with us to answer our questions. While we may not always have liked his answers, he always provided those answers," McKinney said.

Carlin's new memo indicated McHenry will move next week to a lower-profile position within EOIR, heading up the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer - a unit which chiefly hears cases involving businesses accused of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants or discriminating against foreigners who have the right to work in the U.S.

Unlike other federal courts, the immigration courts operate within the Executive Branch under authority delegated by the attorney general. Prosecutors in those proceedings come from the Department of Homeland Security and immigration court rulings can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also part of the Justice Department, and then to a federal appeals court.

Many immigration judges and immigration lawyers have urged that the immigration courts be moved outside of the Justice Department to give them greater independence.

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Biden administration replaces top immigration court official

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Staffers and judges were informed of the shift Wednesday morning in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin. The move will be effective Sunday. "Jean will provide continuity in EOIR's leadership until a new director is selected," Carlin wrote, according to a person who received the memo.

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The Reality Behind Biden’s Plan to Legalize 11 Million Immigrants

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The Reality Behind Biden’s Plan to Legalize 11 Million Immigrants

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The proposal for a path to citizenship for undocumented residents has been called "the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations." But is it possible?

President Biden's plan to offer a pathway to U.S. citizenship for undocumented immigrants would allow the Hernandez family to apply for legal status. Credit... Jessica Pons for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES - Maria Elena Hernandez recently retrieved a flowery box tucked in her closet and dusted it off. For more than a decade, she has used it to store tax returns, lease agreements and other documents that she has collected to prove her family's long years of residence in the United States.

"We have been waiting for the day when we can apply for legal status. In this box is, hopefully, all the evidence we'll need," said Ms. Hernandez, 55, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who arrived in this country with three small children in 2000.

She had just learned of President Biden's plan to offer a pathway to U.S. citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented people, announced as part of a sweeping proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration system.

The bill would allow undocumented immigrants who were in the United States before Jan. 1 to apply for temporary legal status after passing background checks and paying taxes. As newly minted "lawful prospective immigrants," they would be authorized to work, join the military and travel without fear of deportation. After five years, they could apply for green cards.

The president's proposal would be perhaps the most ambitious immigration redesign passed since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized three million people.

Converting more than three times that many people into full citizens could open the door to one of the most significant demographic shifts in modern U.S. history, lifting millions out of the shadows and potentially into higher-paying jobs, providing them with welfare benefits, health coverage and Social Security eligibility while eventually creating many new voters.

"This is the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations," said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "But given that the Democrats have razor-thin majorities in Congress, the administration needs to have its expectations tempered." Legalizing just one group at first - say, farmworkers - might be "more realistic," he said.

In a sign of the hurdles ahead, another one of Mr. Biden's early immigration initiatives, a 100-day freeze on deportations, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on Tuesday after a lawsuit by the Texas attorney general, an advocate of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Immigration reform has stalled in Congress time and again, primarily over what is widely known as amnesty. Despite beefed-up border enforcement and employer sanctions, Mr. Reagan's overhaul failed to curb the arrival of unauthorized immigrants.

While Congress has wrestled with how to revamp the immigration system, the immigrants have continued to live, work and raise families in the United States. More than 60 percent have resided in the country for more than a decade and they have more than four million U.S.-born children. They account for 5 percent of the work force, representing the backbone of the agriculture, construction and hospitality sectors.

Many came for economic reasons. Others were fleeing political upheaval and violence. And about four in 10 did not enter the United States through the southwestern border. Rather they are visa overstays - tourists, students or temporary skilled workers who never left.

The family of Denise Panaligan, 27, came to the United States from the Philippines in 2002 after her father, a financial analyst, obtained an H-1B visa. They remained after their temporary legal status ran out.

"When people look at us, they don't think undocumented because we are Asians," said Ms. Panaligan, a middle school teacher in Los Angeles. "Coming in contact with deportation officers and ICE, we never experienced that. We're invisible to enforcement."

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Mr. Biden's plan would allow undocumented immigrants who were in the country before Jan. 1 to apply for temporary legal status after passing background checks and paying taxes. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

But their decision led to other indignities, she said. Her mother had to work as a housekeeper despite having a college education. Denise's father, Art, died two years ago of brain cancer without ever returning to his homeland to see his own parents because he would not have been allowed back into the United States.

"The Biden plan would fulfill our hope of keeping the family together," said Ms. Panaligan, who has two younger sisters, one of them born in the United States.

The largest share of unauthorized immigrants is from Mexico. Having survived treacherous river and desert crossings to reach the United States, they found a nation willing to look past laws that prohibit hiring them, to employ them in fields and factories, and in homes as nannies and housekeepers.

Maribel Ramirez and Eusebio Gomez of Mexico have toiled in California's vineyards since crossing the border 19 years ago. They have managed to buy a home and raise two American-born sons. Their oldest, Eusebio Jr., 17, plans to enlist in the Marines. But Ms. Ramirez said she asked herself, "Why should my son give his life to a country that doesn't value his parents?"

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both championed comprehensive immigration reform with a strong enforcement component and a pathway to legalization for undocumented people. But the immigration packages that were debated in Congress - in 2006, 2007 and 2013 - all stalled.

Among the concerns raised by opponents are that new citizens will vote as a solid Democratic bloc, displace American workers and become a burden on the health care system and other public services. Some predict that any legalization program would encourage more people from impoverished Latin American countries to make the trek north.

"Legalizing countless millions of illegal aliens - even discussing it - rings the bell for millions more to illegally enter the U.S. to await their green card, and this cycle does not end," said Lora Ries, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, and a former acting deputy chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security.

Maribel Ramirez, right, whose son Eusebio Jr., left, plans to join the military, often asks, "Why should my son give his life to a country that doesnt value his parents?" Credit... Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

Other experts argue there are benefits of legalization. Opening a pathway to citizenship for nearly 11 million people, seven to eight million of whom participate in the labor force, is tantamount to "an economic stimulus," according to Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis.

Between 2005 and 2015, new immigrants accounted fornearly half of the growth in the working-age population, and in the next two decades, immigrants will be key to offsetting an aging population that is retiring. Demographers say the increased educational attainment of Americans coupled with a shortage of blue-collar workers highlights the need for immigrants, in ever larger numbers, to perform low-skilled jobs. About five million of them work in jobs designated as "essential" by the government.

Among the biggest backers of the Biden initiative are employers who rely on immigrants. Through the years, meatpacking plants, dairy farms and a multitude of other worksites have been caught up in immigration raids targeting unauthorized workers.

The Reagan-era amnesty in 1986 caused only a temporary drop in the number of undocumented immigrants because it was not accompanied by a robust system for legally bringing in low-skilled workers. Employers faced fines for knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants but were not responsible for vetting documents presented by job applicants, spawning a huge industry of fake Social Security numbers.

"The principle is simple: If you carry out a broad legalization, it doesn't freeze undocumented migration flows as long as labor demand persists," said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. "You need to increase the number of legal entry opportunities for future migrants."

The illegal influx began to swell again in the early 1990s.

"Migrants arriving after 1986 would have vastly preferred coming legally, not having to pay hundreds of dollars to purchase false docs," Mr. Cornelius said. "But not enough legal entry tickets were available."

Economic imperatives prevailed, driving illegal immigration up year after year.

A building boom in Sun Belt states like Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona drew hundreds of thousands of undocumented construction workers. And as farm workers who had benefited from the amnesty aged and exited the fields, young undocumented labor arrived to replace them.

From 1986 to 2008 the country's undocumented population swelled from three million to 12 million despite an exponential increase in funding for border security, including boots on the ground. The militarization did not reduce illegal entries. Instead, it turned a seasonal migration of mainly men who returned home each year to Mexico into a settled population of families.

Mr. Biden's proposal would be perhaps the most ambitious immigration redesign passed since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized three million people. Credit... Paul Hosefros/The New York Times

The economic recession between 2007 and 2009 ultimately reduced the flow of immigrants. Despite successive waves of Central American migration, illegal entries remain substantially lower than in the early 2000s.

It has been about two decades since Ms. Hernandez stuffed a change of clothes in a bag, grabbed her three young children and closed the door on their lives in Jalisco, Mexico. Days later, they slipped across the border.

"We didn't have papers, but I was determined to head north for a better life," she said. "I had relatives who had benefited from a 1986 amnesty and I figured our day would come."

Ms. Hernandez got a job in Los Angeles packing CDs. Her husband, Pedro Hernandez, joined them shortly after and found work at a nursery. Their children, Luis, then 7, and Elitania and Juan, then 4-year-old twins, thrived in school. They lived modestly, in apartments where the children slept in the bedrooms and the couple in the living room.

Their hopes were lifted, dashed and revived as Congress took up various immigration bills.

"Every president gave us hope that something good was coming, and then nothing. Again maybe. Then nothing," Ms. Hernandez recalled.

Ms. Hernandez said she and her husband worked hard, paid their taxes and never got into debt.

"We tried to do everything right, according to the law, in a country that had not opened its doors to us, but that we had entered anyway," she said.

Things got more challenging when Mr. Hernandez lost his job in 2006 His employer, concerned about government audits, had asked him to prove he was in the country legally.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began showing up in their neighborhood, the family avoided going out for days at a time. Mr. Hernandez rode his bike to a new job, figuring he would be less likely to encounter law enforcement than while driving his old Mazda. Ms. Hernandez signed up for adult English classes. As the children got older, she advised them to always be on their best behavior.

"I grew up hearing that you have to be an extra good citizen," said Luis Hernandez, her oldest child, now 28. "Mom always said that: 'People who have papers can make mistakes, but you can't,'" he said.

Pedro Hernandez has opted to ride a bicycle to work instead of driving his car because he feels it decreases his chances of running into the police. Credit... Jessica Pons for The New York Times

Because of their undocumented status, Luis, who played club soccer, and Juan, a varsity football player, skipped games that required travel.

When Mr. Obama created a program known as DACA in 2012 to temporarily shield undocumented immigrants who had been brought into the country as children, Luis Hernandez and his siblings, then teenagers, applied immediately. It enabled them to work legally. They got their driver's licenses.

But President Donald J. Trump's incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric and his administration's attempt to rescind DACA generated deep anxiety in the Hernandez household. When Mr. Biden took office, the family rejoiced.

After the inauguration, Ms. Hernandez was at her dining room table thinking about the imminent birth of her second grandchild, who will be an American citizen. She and her husband planned to drive to Utah to meet the baby, and she worried about making a trip across state lines without legal status, lest law enforcement stop them.

When she learned that the president had unveiled a blueprint for legalization, she said, she was stunned at first. Then she went to retrieve the box of documents.

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The Reality Behind Biden's Plan to Legalize 11 Million Immigrants

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The proposal for a path to citizenship for undocumented residents has been called "the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations." But is it possible? LOS ANGELES - Maria Elena Hernandez recently retrieved a flowery box tucked in her closet and dusted it off.

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Credit... Illustration by Hudson Christie

Feature

Deplatforming President Trump showed that the First Amendment is broken - but not in the way his supporters think.

Credit... Illustration by Hudson Christie

In the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform Parler attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech. "If you can say it on the streets of New York," promised the company's chief executive, John Matze, in a June CNBC interview, "you can say it on Parler."

The giants of social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram - had more stringent rules. And while they still amplified huge amounts of far-right content, they had started using warning labels and deletions to clamp down on misinformation about Covid-19 and false claims of electoral fraud, including in posts by President Trump. Conservative figures, including Senator Ted Cruz, Eric Trump and Sean Hannity, grew increasingly critical of the sites and beckoned followers to join them on Parler, whose investors include the right-wing activist and heiress Rebekah Mercer. The format was like Twitter's, but with only two clear rules: no criminal activity and no spam or bots. On Parler, you could say what you wanted without being, as conservatives complained, "silenced."

After the election, as Trump sought to overturn his defeat with a barrage of false claims, Matze made a classic First Amendment argument for letting the disinformation stand: More speech is better. Let the marketplace of ideas run without interference. "If you don't censor, if you don't - you just let him do what he wants, then the public can judge for themselves," Matze said of Trump's Twitter account on the New York Times podcast "Sway." "Just sit there and say: 'Hey, that's what he said. What do you guys think?'"

Matze was speaking to the host of "Sway," Kara Swisher, on Jan. 7 - the day after Trump told supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol and fight congressional certification of the Electoral College vote. In the chaos that followed Trump's speech, the American marketplace of ideas clearly failed. Protecting democracy, for Trump loyalists, had become a cry to subvert and even destroy it. And while Americans' freedoms of speech and the press were vital to exposing this assault, they were also among its causes. Right-wing media helped seed destabilizing lies; elected officials helped them grow; and the democratizing power of social media spread them, steadily, from one node to the next.

Social media sites effectively function as the public square where people debate the issues of the day. But the platforms are actually more like privately owned malls: They make and enforce rules to keep their spaces tolerable, and unlike the government, they're not obligated to provide all the freedom of speech offered by the First Amendment. Like the bouncers at a bar, they are free to boot anyone or anything they consider disruptive. In the days after Jan. 6, they swiftly cracked down on whole channels and accounts associated with the violence. Reddit removed the r/DonaldTrump subreddit. YouTube tightened its policy on posting videos that called the outcome of the election into doubt. TikTok took down posts with hashtags like #stormthecapitol. Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump's account, and Twitter - which, like Facebook, had spent years making some exceptions to its rules for the president - took his account away permanently.

Parler, true to its stated principles, did none of this. But it had a weak point: It was dependent on other private companies to operate. In the days after the Capitol assault, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores. Then Amazon Web Services stopped hosting Parler, effectively cutting off its plumbing. Parler sued, but it had agreed, in its contract, not to host content that "may be harmful to others"; having promised the streets of New York, it was actually bound by the rules of a kindergarten playground. In a court filing, Amazon provided samples of about 100 posts it had notified Parler were in violation of its contract in the weeks before the Capitol assault. "Fry 'em up," one said, with a list of targets that included Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. "We are coming for you and you will know it." On Jan. 21, a judge denied Parler's demand to reinstate Amazon's services.

It's unlikely the volume of incendiary content on Parler could rival that of Twitter or Facebook, where groups had openly planned for Jan. 6. But Parler is the one that went dark. A platform built to challenge the oligopoly of its giant rivals was deplatformed by other giants, in a demonstration of how easily they, too, could block speech at will.

Over all, the deplatforming after Jan. 6 had the feeling of an emergency response to a wave of lies nearly drowning our democracy. For years, many tech companies had invoked the American ethos of free speech while letting disinformation and incitement spread abroad, even when it led to terrible violence. Now they leapt to action as if, with America in trouble, American ideals no longer applied. Parler eventually turned to overseas web-hosting services to get back online.

"We couldn't beat you in the war of ideas and discourse, so we're pulling your mic" - that's how Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, put it, in expressing ambivalence about the moves. It seemed curiously easier to take on Trump and his allies in the wake of Democrats' victories in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, giving them control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House. (Press officers for Twitter and Facebook said no election outcome influenced the companies' decision.) And in setting an example that might be applied to the speech of the other groups - foreign dissidents, sex-worker activists, Black Lives Matter organizers - the deplatforming takes on an ominous cast.

Fadi Quran, a campaign director for the global human rights group Avaaz, told me he, too, found the precedent worrying. "Although the steps may have been necessary to protect American lives against violence," he said, "they are a reminder of the power big tech has over our information infrastructure. This infrastructure should be governed by deliberative democratic processes."

But what would those democratic processes be? Americans have a deep and abiding suspicion of letting the state regulate speech. At the moment, tech companies are filling the vacuum created by that fear. But do we really want to trust a handful of chief executives with policing spaces that have become essential parts of democratic discourse? We are uncomfortable with government doing it; we are uncomfortable with Silicon Valley doing it. But we are also uncomfortable with nobody doing it at all. This is a hard place to be - or, perhaps, two rocks and a hard place.

When Twitter banned Trump, he found a seemingly unlikely defender: Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who criticized the decision as a "problematic" breach of the right to free speech. This wasn't necessarily because Merkel considered the content of Trump's speech defensible. The deplatforming troubled her because it came from a private company; instead, she said through a spokesman, the United States should have a law restricting online incitement, like the one Germany passed in 2017 to prevent the dissemination of hate speech and fake news stories.

Among democracies, the United States stands out for its faith that free speech is the right from which all other freedoms flow. European countries are more apt to fight destabilizing lies by balancing free speech with other rights. It's an approach informed by the history of fascism and the memory of how propaganda, lies and the scapegoating of minorities can sweep authoritarian leaders to power. Many nations shield themselves from such anti-pluralistic ideas. In Canada, it's a criminal offense to publicly incite hatred "against any identifiable group." South Africa prosecutes people for uttering certain racial slurs. A number of countries in Europe treat Nazism as a unique evil, making it a crime to deny the Holocaust.

In the United States, laws like these surely wouldn't survive Supreme Court review, given the current understanding of the First Amendment - an understanding that comes out of our country's history and our own brushes with suppressing dissent. The First Amendment did not prevent the administration of John Adams from prosecuting more than a dozen newspaper editors for seditious libel or the Socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs from being convicted of sedition over a speech, before a peaceful crowd, opposing involvement in World War I. In 1951, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of Communist Party leaders for "conspiring" to advocate the overthrow of the government, though the evidence showed only that they had met to discuss their ideological beliefs.

It wasn't until the 1960s that the Supreme Court enduringly embraced the vision of the First Amendment expressed, decades earlier, in a dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas." In Brandenburg v. Ohio, that meant protecting the speech of a Ku Klux Klan leader at a 1964 rally, setting a high bar for punishing inflammatory words. Brandenburg "wildly overprotects free speech from any logical standpoint," the University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone points out. "But the court learned from experience to guard against a worse evil: the government using its power to silence its enemies."

This era's concept of free speech still differed from today's in one crucial way: The court was willing to press private entities to ensure they allowed different voices to be heard. As another University of Chicago law professor, Genevieve Lakier, wrote in a law-review article last year, a hallmark of the 1960s was the court's "sensitivity to the threat that economic, social and political inequality posed" to public debate. As a result, the court sometimes required private property owners, like TV broadcasters, to grant access to speakers they wanted to keep out.

But the court shifted again, Lakier says, toward interpreting the First Amendment "as a grant of almost total freedom" for private owners to decide who could speak through their outlets. In 1974, it struck down a Florida law requiring newspapers that criticized the character of political candidates to offer them space to reply. Chief Justice Warren Burger, in his opinion for the majority, recognized that barriers to entry in the newspaper market meant this placed the power to shape public opinion "in few hands." But in his view, there was little the government could do about it.

Traditionally, conservatives have favored that libertarian approach: Let owners decide how their property is used. That's changing now that they find their speech running afoul of tech-company rules. "Listen to me, America, we were wiped out," the right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, an investor in Parler, said in a Fox News interview after Amazon pulled its services. "And to all the geniuses out there, too, saying this is a private company, it's not a First Amendment fight - really, it's not?" The law that prevents the government from censoring speech should still apply, he said, because "these companies are more powerful than a de facto government." You needn't sympathize with him to see the hit Parler took as the modern equivalent of, in Burger's terms, disliking one newspaper and taking the trouble to start your own, only to find no one will sell you ink to print it.

One problem with private companies' holding the ability to deplatform any speaker is that they're in no way insulated from politics - from accusations of bias to advertiser boycotts to employee walkouts. Facebook is a business, driven by profit and with no legal obligation to explain its decisions the way a court or regulatory body would. Why, for example, hasn't Facebook suspended the accounts of other leaders who have used the platform to spread lies and bolster their power, like the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte? A spokesman said suspending Trump was "a response to a specific situation based on risk" - but so is every decision, and the risks can be just as high overseas.

"It's really media and public pressure that is the difference between Trump coming down and Duterte staying up," says Evelyn Douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School. "But the winds of public opinion are a terrible basis for free-speech decisions! Maybe it seems like it's working right now. But in the longer run, how do you think unpopular dissidents and minorities will fare?"

Deplatforming works, at least in the short term. There are indications that in the weeks after the platforms cleaned house - with Twitter suspending not just Trump but some 70,000 accounts, including many QAnon influencers - conversations about election fraud decreased significantly across several sites. After Facebook reintroduced a scoring system to promote news sources based on its judgment of their quality, the list of top performers, usually filled by hyperpartisan sources, featured CNN, NPR and local news outlets.

But there's no reason to think the healthier information climate will last. The very features that make social media so potent work both to the benefit and the detriment of democracy. YouTube, for instance, changed its recommendation algorithm in 2019, after researchers and reporters (including Kevin Roose at The New York Times) showed how it pushed some users toward radicalizing content. It's also telling that, since the election, Facebook has stopped recommending civic groups for people to join. After Jan. 6, the researcher Aric Toler at Bellingcat surfaced a cheery video, automatically created by Facebook to promote its groups, which imposed the tagline "community means a lot" over images of a militia brandishing weapons and a photo of Robert Gieswein, who has since been charged in the assault on the Capitol. "I'm afraid that the technology has upended the possibility of a well-functioning, responsible speech environment," the Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith says. "It used to be we had masses of speech in a reasonable range, and some extreme speech we could tolerate. Now we have a lot more extreme speech coming from lots of outlets and mouthpieces, and it's more injurious and harder to regulate."

For decades, tech companies mostly responded to such criticism with proud free-speech absolutism. But external pressures, and the absence of any other force to contain users, gradually dragged them into the expensive and burdensome role of policing their domains. Facebook, for one, now has legions of low-paid workers reviewing posts flagged as harmful, a task gruesome enough that the company has agreed to pay $52 million in mental-health compensation to settle a lawsuit by more than 10,000 moderators.

Perhaps because it's so easy to question their motives, some executives have taken to begging for mercy. "We are facing something that feels impossible," said Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, while being grilled by Congress last year. And Facebook's founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has agreed with lawmakers that the company has too much power over speech. Two weeks after suspending Trump, Facebook said its new oversight board, an independent group of 20 international experts, would review the decision, with the power to make a binding ruling.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey have also suggested openness to government regulation that would hold platforms to external standards. That might include, for example, requiring rules for slowing the spread of disinformation from known offenders. European lawmakers, with their more skeptical free-speech tradition (and lack of allegiance to American tech companies), have proposed requiring platforms to show how their recommendations work and giving users more control over them, as has been done in the realm of privacy. Steps like these seem better suited to combating misinformation than eliminating, as is often suggested, the immunity platforms currently enjoy from lawsuits, which directly affects only a narrow range of cases, mostly involving defamation.

There is no consensus on a path forward, but there is precedent for some intervention. When radio and television radically altered the information landscape, Congress passed laws to foster competition, local control and public broadcasting. From the 1930s until the 1980s, anyone with a broadcast license had to operate in the "public interest" - and starting in 1949, that explicitly included exposing audiences to multiple points of view in policy debates. The court let the elected branches balance the rights of private ownership with the collective good of pluralism.

This model coincided with relatively high levels of trust in media and low levels of political polarization. That arrangement has been rare in American history. It's hard to imagine a return to it. But it's worth remembering that radio and TV also induced fear and concern, and our democracy adapted and thrived. The First Amendment of the era aided us. The guarantee of free speech is for democracy; it is worth little, in the end, apart from it.

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Why Is Big Tech Policing Speech? Because the Government Isn't

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Feature Deplatforming President Trump showed that the First Amendment is broken - but not in the way his supporters think. Credit... Illustration by Hudson Christie In the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform Parler attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech.

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Freedom of Speech: Crash Course Government and Politics #25

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The Voting Rights Act: Ten Things You Should Know

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The Voting Rights Act: Ten Things You Should Know

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The Voting Rights Act (VRA), signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965, was a victory for the Civil Rights Movement, southern African Americans, and American democracy. It outlawed strategies that had been used by white supremacists to disenfranchise Black citizens and included provisions to facilitate the registration of new voters. Together with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act ended most legal forms of white supremacy. Although this was important, it did not end all forms of racial discrimination, many of which were-and are-embedded in the structures of our society.

Most textbooks approach history through a top-down lens that gives President Lyndon Johnson, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., most of the credit for this important legislation. Both men did play a key role. But the Voting Rights Act came into being through intensive organizing and activism spearheaded by the Black community, including people often marginalized and not seen as central to our society.

It is tempting to think of universal voting rights as a fundamental pillar of our country, but access to the vote has been hard fought and even today we face challenges and rollbacks. Although voting rights have always been essential, they are not a given and do not alone secure equality. The struggle for civil and human rights for all must continue. The untold history of the VRA can inform and strengthen that struggle.

Here are key points missing from most textbooks.

1. Long before the Voting Rights Act, Reconstruction launched another vibrant period of democracy and voting rights.

Following the Civil War, African Americans used the Reconstruction Amendments to democratize the South. Although only men were allowed to vote in formal elections, women and children participated actively in Black community meetings, even voting on delegates and platforms. Black women often accompanied men to the polls, sometimes bringing weapons for protection.

This community-wide engagement translated into progressive laws, including policies that laid the foundation for free universal public education. As with many rights secured by African American struggle, the Black vote expanded benefits beyond the Black community.

2. Black voting rights have been attacked and rolled back throughout our history.

African American political power gained during Reconstruction was overthrown by massive fraud and domestic terrorism. The federal government stood by as white supremacists regained control over state and local governments. The timing and process varied across the South, but in the end, whites established oppressive Jim Crow laws that remained in place until the modern Civil Rights Movement.

A prime example is Wilmington, North Carolina, where whites in the Democratic Party overthrew (in a coup d'état) the legitimately elected and integrated local government, murdered Black citizens, and destroyed the Black newspaper. [Read about more massacres in U.S. history, many of the time designed to suppress the Black vote and role back gains in interracial democracy.]

3. From the end of Reconstruction through the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, white supremacists used numerous tactics to keep African Americans from accessing their constitutional right to vote.

Textbooks generally list the Jim Crow practices of the grandfather clause, literacy tests, and the poll tax, but less well known are the economic terrorism and violence that backed up these strategies and were the ultimate barrier to Black voting.

Mississippi sharecropper Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer describes what happened when she took the registration test in 1962:

Well, there was 18 of us who went down to the courthouse that day and all of us were arrested. Police said that the bus was painted the wrong color-said it was too yellow. . . . I went back to the plantation where [my husband] Pap and I had lived for 18 years. Mr. Marlowe, the plantation owner, had heard that I had tried to register. He said, "We're not going to have this in Mississippi and you will have to withdraw. If you don't withdraw you will have to leave." So I left that same night. Ten days later they fired into Mrs. Tucker's house where I was staying.

Later that year Hamer was viciously beaten in jail and in 1964 she testified: "All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens."

4. The modern voting rights struggle had deep roots in the rural South.

At times African Americans prioritized improving educational opportunities, securing land ownership, and developing the institutions-such as churches-that later provided a critical base for the Civil Rights Movement, but they never conceded their right to vote. Even when it was extremely dangerous, there were always men and women trying to register and vote.

In 1944, the NAACP won a landmark case, Smith v. Allwright, ruling the white primary-where only white voters could participate in political primaries-unconstitutional. This victory inspired an upsurge in Black voter registration that was reinforced by Black veterans returning home from overseas. One of these veterans was Medgar Evers, who became Mississippi's first NAACP field secretary and was assassinated in June 1963 for his civil rights work. He describes his first attempt to vote after successfully registering:

[S]ix of us gathered at my house and we walked to the polls. I'll never forget it. Not a Negro was on the streets, and when we got to the courthouse, the clerk said he wanted to talk with us. When we got into his office, some 15 or 20 armed white men surged in behind us, men I had grown up with, had played with. We split up and went home. Around town, Negroes said we had been whipped, beaten up, and run out of town. Well, in a way we were whipped, I guess, but I made up my mind then that it would not be like that again-at least not for me.

5. The federal government has played a contradictory role in the fight for voting rights.

The Supreme Court gradually outlawed discriminatory practices, like the grandfather clause, the white primary, and the poll tax, but in general the federal government played a passive role. Even when the Kennedy Justice Department used what civil rights activist Bob Moses calls " the crawl space," created by the 1957 Civil Rights Act to file lawsuits charging numerous Southern officials with racial discrimination in voter registration, other branches of the federal government undermined this work.

Some white supremacist judges blocked the department's work at every turn and the FBI only reluctantly carried out the necessary investigations. And after initially promising to protect anyone working on voter registration, the Kennedy administration backtracked and the FBI refused to protect civil rights workers, even when they were attacked on federal property in front of agents. More lives might have been lost if Black citizens had not used weapons to protect themselves and the young civil rights organizers.

6. SNCC's voter registration organizing fundamentally changed our country, both because of what they did and how they did it.

SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), an organization of young people that emerged from the 1960 sit-in movement, developed an approach to grassroots community organizing that has influenced every subsequent progressive movement. Their voter registration work in the Deep South was built around canvassing-going door-to-door, talking to people-and relied on patience, education, and building relationships. The work could be slow and tedious. It took place out of the spotlight, with few big or quick victories.

Influenced by Ella Baker and community leaders, the young people in SNCC made decisions by consensus, helped develop leadership skills in others, and challenged hierarchies that privileged wealth and education. In the summer of 1961, a group of about 16 young people put school and jobs on hold to become SNCC's first field staff and commit to full-time movement work.

Over the next four years-working with other organizations and allies-SNCC was successful at organizing rural African American communities and making it impossible for the country to ignore the violence and discrimination at the heart of Jim Crow and white supremacy.

Though SNCC was not acting alone, their organizing was at the heart of the movement that moved people to insist that our country eliminate the legal basis of white supremacy. SNCC's organizing led directly to the Voting Rights Act, expanding the electorate and ending the undemocratic stranglehold of the southern Dixiecrats. Their work made the national Democratic Party more explicitly representative (in race and gender).

Perhaps most importantly, SNCC recognized and nurtured leadership in people that the rest of the country had dismissed (like Hamer). Their alliance with these everyday people breathed new life into our democracy-challenging long-standing ideas of who and what was important.

7. SNCC upended traditional ideas about who was qualified to vote.

White supremacists responded to the voting rights campaign by manipulating the registration process, firing and evicting people, burning and bombing homes and churches, as well as beating and even murdering people. White officials then used the low numbers of African Americans registered to vote to insist that Blacks had no interest in politics. In response, SNCC organized Freedom Days, first in Selma, Alabama, in 1963 and in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1964. Whether in the punishing sun or pouring rain, people lined up to demonstrate their desire to vote. With little chance of actually registering, much less voting, they stayed in line and refused to be intimidated by white threats and harassment.

Working with a coalition of civil rights groups called COFO, SNCC also organized a Freedom Vote, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the Congressional Challenge. Each was designed to demonstrate that Blacks did want to vote and participate in politics. In addition, each provided an important experiential education for people who had been excluded from the political process for almost a century. Throughout this process, SNCC field secretaries were learning from the people they were working with. One result was that, in addition to helping people improve their literacy, in 1963 SNCC began to challenge the whole idea of requiring literacy to vote. They had encountered many people who had been denied education but still had more than enough wisdom to vote on their representatives.

8. SNCC sought not only Black access to the vote, but also to transform voting into "freedom politics" and small-d democracy for all.

Lowndes County, Alabama, with an approximately 80 percent African American population, but no Black registered voters, provides a wonderful case study of SNCC's approach to using the vote. According to field secretary Gloria House,

We were helping to equip the people with the information and skills essential to running the county themselves not just as new voters but also as political leaders. We found that a review of African American and African history, giving a strong sense of historical identity, was of immeasurable significance in this process.

Historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries explains that SNCC "developed a unique political education program that used workshops, mass meetings, and primers to increase general knowledge of local government and democratize political behavior."

This wasn't just voting or even politics as usual. Rather, SNCC linked their "egalitarian organizing methods" with the people's civil and human rights goals to create what Jeffries calls " freedom politics," an approach that rejected traditional politics and instead emphasized acting on the community's best interests. In Lowndes County, for example, Alice Moore, candidate for tax assessor, announced that she would "tax the rich to feed the poor."

SNCC's work followed Ella Baker's belief that "In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. . . It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system."

9. The Black Panther symbol was first used in Lowndes County, Alabama.

When the Lowndes County Freedom Party was founded, Alabama law required that it have a symbol to help illiterate voters. They chose the Black Panther, indigenous to Lowndes, as their ballot symbol. [See the short clip below from Eyes on the Prize about the Lowndes County Freedom Party.]

Leader John Hulett explains,

This black panther is a vicious animal as you know. He never bothers anything, but when you start pushing him, he moves backwards, backwards, backwards into his corner, and then he comes out to destroy everything that's before him.

When young Black activists in Oakland established an organization to combat police brutality, they adopted the snarling black panther symbol and the LCFP's informal name, the "Black Panther Party."

10. Federal protection for voting rights is still necessary.

In July 2013, a deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. Arguing in part that it is arbitrary and no longer necessary to focus exclusively on the former Confederacy, the Court's majority eliminated the pre-clearance requirement for nine Southern states. This means that the Justice Department can no longer check for racial bias in new laws in these states.

Given widespread efforts to block voting access in areas across the nation that were not governed by federal review, it may well be arbitrary to hold the former Confederate states to a different standard. But the response of those states, along with other forms of voter suppression enacted throughout the country, makes it clear that we still need robust, proactive tools to protect voting rights for all citizens, but particularly African Americans, students, immigrants, and other marginalized groups.

Rather than being curtailed, the Voting Rights Act should be extended. No doubt future historians will look back at today's voter ID laws, ex-felon disenfranchisement, and other forms of voter suppression (including Jim Crow voting booths) as a 21st-century version of the literacy tests, poll tax, and grandfather clause of the last century.

* * *

The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts removed most forms of legal discrimination against African Americans, but did not bring an immediate end to the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow.

Current protests over police brutality and the disregard for Black lives; the persistence of extreme economic and racial segregation; and the tenacity of separate and unequal schools demonstrate that although the Voting Rights Act was necessary, it is not sufficient to address white supremacy and the oppression of people of color. Unfortunately, Ella Baker's words still echo today. In 1964 she said,

Until the killing of Black men, Black mother's sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.

Although the context has changed, there are many links between the freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s and today. And millennial activists are creating a new movement that builds on the work of previous generations.

Knowing some of the bottom-up history of the VRA can help students and others learn valuable lessons for today. SNCC veteran Bernice Johnson Reagon explained that the movement gave her "the power to challenge any line that limits me. . . . And that is what it meant to me, [it] just really gave me a real chance to fight and to struggle and not respect boundaries that put me down."
The authors thank the Teaching for Change staff who collaborated on the development of the list of points and Deborah Menkart for her editing. Thanks also to Bill Bigelow and Kathleen Connelly. This article draws from "The Selma Voting Rights Struggle: 15 Key Points from Bottom-Up History and Why It Matters Today" by Emilye Crosby (January, 2015). There is a longer version of this article called "Voting Rights Act: Beyond the Headlines."
References and Related Materials

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The Voting Rights Act: Ten Things You Should Know - Zinn Education Project

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The Voting Rights Act (VRA), signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965, was a victory for the Civil Rights Movement, southern African Americans, and American democracy. It outlawed strategies that had been used by white supremacists to disenfranchise Black citizens and included provisions to facilitate the registration of new voters.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Plants play a key role in mitigating climate change. The more carbon dioxide they absorb during photosynthesis, the less carbon dioxide remains trapped in the atmospherem, where it can cause temperatures to rise. But scientists have identified an unsettling trend - 86% of land ecosystems globally are becoming progressively less efficient at absorbing the increasing levels of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/Katy Mersmann [transcript]

Land ecosystems currently play a key role in mitigating climate change. The more carbon dioxide (CO ₂) plants and trees absorb during photosynthesis, the process they use to make food, the less CO ₂ remains trapped in the atmosphere, where it can cause temperatures to rise. But scientists have identified an unsettling trend - as levels of CO ₂ in the atmosphere increase, 86% of land ecosystems globally are becoming progressively less efficient at absorbing it.

Because CO ₂ is a main "ingredient" that plants need to grow, elevated concentrations of it cause an increase in photosynthesis, and consequently, plant growth - a phenomenon aptly referred to as the CO 2 fertilization effect, or CFE. CFE is considered a key factor in the response of vegetation to rising atmospheric CO ₂ as well as an important mechanism for removing this potent greenhouse gas from our atmosphere - but that may be changing.

For a new study published Dec. 10 in Science, researchers analyzed multiple field, satellite-derived and model-based datasets to better understand what effect increasing levels of CO ₂ may be having on CFE. Their findings have important implications for the role plants can be expected to play in offsetting climate change in the years to come.

"In this study, by analyzing the best available long-term data from remote sensing and state-of-the-art land-surface models, we have found that since 1982, the global average CFE has decreased steadily from 21% to 12% per 100 ppm of CO ₂ in the atmosphere," said Ben Poulter, study co-author and scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "In other words, terrestrial ecosystems are becoming less reliable as a temporary climate change mitigator."

What's Causing It?

Without this feedback between photosynthesis and elevated atmospheric CO ₂, Poulter said we would have seen climate change occurring at a much more rapid rate. But scientists have been concerned about how long the CO ₂ Fertilization Effect could be sustained before other limitations on plant growth kick in.

For instance, while an abundance of CO ₂ won't limit growth, a lack of water, nutrients, or sunlight - the other necessary components of photosynthesis - will. To determine why the CFE has been decreasing, the study team took the availability of these other elements into account.

"According to our data, what appears to be happening is that there's both a moisture limitation as well as a nutrient limitation coming into play," Poulter said. "In the tropics, there's often just not enough nitrogen or phosphorus, to sustain photosynthesis, and in the high-latitude temperate and boreal regions, soil moisture is now more limiting than air temperature because of recent warming."

In effect, climate change is weakening plants' ability to mitigate further climate change over large areas of the planet.

Next Steps

The international science team found that when remote-sensing observations were taken into account - including vegetation index data from NASA's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments - the decline in CFE is more substantial than current land-surface models have shown. Poulter says this is because modelers have struggled to account for nutrient feedbacks and soil moisture limitations - due, in part, to a lack of global observations of them.

"By combining decades of remote sensing data like we have done here, we're able to see these limitations on plant growth. As such, the study shows a clear way forward for model development, especially with new remote sensing observations of vegetation traits expected in coming years," he said. "These observations will help advance models to incorporate ecosystem processes, climate and CO ₂ feedbacks more realistically."

The results of the study also highlight the importance of the role of ecosystems in the global carbon cycle. According to Poulter, going forward, the decreasing carbon-uptake efficiency of land ecosystems means we may see the amount of CO ₂ remaining in the atmosphere after fossil fuel burning and deforestation start to increase, shrinking the remaining carbon budget.

"What this means is that to avoid 1.5 or 2 °C warming and the associated climate impacts, we need to adjust the remaining carbon budget to account for the weakening of the plant CO ₂ Fertilization Effect," he said. "And because of this weakening, land ecosystems will not be as reliable for climate mitigation in the coming decades."

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national aeronautics and space administration

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By Esprit Smith,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Land Ecosystems Are Becoming Less Efficient at Absorbing Carbon Dioxide - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Land ecosystems currently play a key role in mitigating climate change. The more carbon dioxide (CO 2) plants and trees absorb during photosynthesis, the process they use to make food, the less CO 2 remains trapped in the atmosphere, where it can cause temperatures to rise.

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Global Mean Sea Level

Global mean sea level provides an integrative measure of the state of the climate system, encompassing both the ocean and cryosphere (ice covered portions of Earth), and it can be viewed as an important indicator of what is happening to the climate in the present and what may happen in the future. Long-term changes in global mean sea level (GMSL) are dominantly driven by three processes:

Ice Melt: Due to the warming atmosphere and ocean, ice sheets and mountain glaciers are melting resulting in the addition of freshwater into the ocean.

Thermal Expansion: Ocean water expands as it absorbs trapped heat causing sea levels to rise.

Land Water Storage: Water that is either removed from land (through groundwater pumping, for example) or impounded on land (through dam building, for example) can cause a net change in the total water found in the ocean.

Observations and the GMSL "Budget"
Changes in GMSL have been measured by satellite altimeters for the past 27 years. With the launch of the Sentinel-6/Michael Freilich satellite in 2020, this record will soon surpass three decades. The rate of GMSL rise during the time period from 1993 to present has been measured at 3.3 mm/yr, and there are indications that the rate of GMSL rise has increased during the satellite altimeter record. Other systems in the sea level observation network provide estimates of the individual process contributing to GMSL rise. The GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites measure mass-driven changes in GMSL associated with ice melt and changes in land water storage. The Argo profiling floats measure temperature and salinity changes in the global ocean, and provide an estimate of thermosteric GMSL change. Combining the GMSL estimates from GRACE/GRACE-FO and Argo and then comparing to GMSL from satellite altimeters allows us to check our understanding of the contributors to GMSL and see if the "global sea level budget" can be closed.

Analysis of the global sea level "budget". Comparison of the combined GMSL time series from GRACE/GRACE-FO and Argo to the GMSL time series from satellite altimeters. The comparison is limited to the overlapping time period of the three observing systems. Over the time period from 1993 to 2019, there is general agreement between the estimates, and we can "close the GMSL budget" Credit: NASA.

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Global mean sea level provides an integrative measure of the state of the climate system, encompassing both the ocean and cryosphere (ice covered portions of Earth), and it can be viewed as an important indicator of what is happening to the climate in the present and what may happen in the future.

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President Biden's immigration proposal would make illegal immigrant farmworkers immediately eligible for green cards -- one of a number of provisions to grant legal status to millions in a bill that is facing significant Republican opposition.

The bill includes an 8-year path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants in the country, which involves a five-year path to a green card and then a three year path to citizenship after that.
TOP DEM ADMITS PASSING BIDEN IMMIGRATION BILL A 'HERCULEAN ' TASK AMID GOP OPPOSITION
In a fact sheet released last week, the Biden administration announced that farmworkers, along with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients would immediately be eligible for green cards. They would then be eligible for citizenship three years later.

A draft summary of the legislation obtained by Fox News says that agricultural workers would be able to adjust status after background checks and payment of applicable fees if they have worked 400 days or more in a five year period. It would include seasonal or temporary work.

It's a move that's been greeted warmly by labor and immigrant activist groups.

"Under the Biden bill, farm workers with work histories would immediately get legal status, along with Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status recipients," United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said in a statement. "This bill is fundamentally different than what any other president has ever done in emancipating farm workers so they can escape pervasive fear and behave like free women and men."

"Not only is its content remarkable, but never before has a U.S. president presented his own comprehensive immigration reform measure on Day One in office," she said. "Now we must work to turn this vision into reality."
BIDEN IMMIGRATION BILL CHANGES 'ALIEN' TO 'NONCITIZEN' AS PART OF OVERHAUL
The bill, which would also allow spouses and children to gain green cards, also includes labor protections and other measures to benefit farmworkers.

But whether the bill can pass through Congress seems doubtful. While it has a solid path through the House, where the Democrats control the chamber, in the Senate it would need the support of 10 Republicans -- and it so far seems unlikely that it is possible.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who was part of the 2013 "Gang of Eight" which negotiated an immigration compromise that stalled in the House, said the bill was a non-starter.

"America should always welcome immigrants who want to become Americans. But we need laws that decide who and how many people can come here, and those laws must be followed and enforced," Rubio said in a statement.

"There are many issues I think we can work cooperatively with President-elect Biden, but a blanket amnesty for people who are here unlawfully isn't going to be one of them," he said

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said last week that the Biden administration has "sketched out a massive proposal for blanket amnesty that would gut enforcement of American laws while creating huge new incentives for people to rush here illegally at the same time."

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who is leading the push to get it through the upper chamber, said in a call last week that it would be a tough task getting it through Congress.
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"As someone who has been in these battles for nearly two decades, I am under no illusions. I know from my time in the Gang of Eight that passing immigration reform through the Senate particularly is a Herculean task," he said.

Menendez said those in the business community need to "give it everything you've got," while telling those in advocacy and labor groups: "We've got our work cut out for us."

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Biden immigration bill would make illegal immigrant farmworkers immediately eligible for green cards

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President Biden's immigration proposal would make illegal immigrant farmworkers immediately eligible for green cards -- one of a number of provisions to grant legal status to millions in a bill that is facing significant Republican opposition.

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Black Codes and Jim Crow

The first steps toward official segregation came in the form of " Black Codes." These were laws passed throughout the South starting around 1865, that dictated most aspects of Black peoples' lives, including where they could work and live. The codes also ensured Black people's availability for cheap labor after slavery was abolished.

Segregation soon became official policy enforced by a series of Southern laws. Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a derogatory term for Blacks), legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. There were separate waiting rooms for whites people and Black people in professional offices and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state to even segregate public phone booths.

Colleges were segregated and separate Black institutions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were created to compensate. Virginia's Hampton Institute was established in 1869 as a school for Black youth, but with white instructors teaching skills to relegate Black people in service positions to whites.

The Supreme Court and Segregation

In 1875 the outgoing Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a civil rights bill outlawing discrimination in schools, churches and public transportation. But the bill was barely enforced and was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of "separate but equal." The case involved a mixed-race man who was forced to sit in the Black-designated train car under Louisiana's Separate Car Act.

Housing Segregation

As part of the segregation movement, some cities instituted zoning laws that prohibited Black families from moving into white-dominant blocks. In 1917, as part of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court found such zoning to be unconstitutional because it interfered with property rights of owners.

Using loopholes in that ruling in the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover created a federal zoning committee to persuade local boards to pass rules preventing lower-income families from moving into middle-income neighborhoods, an effort that targeted Black families. Richmond, Virginia, decreed that people were barred from residency on any block where they could not legally marry the majority of residents. This invoked Virginia's anti-mixed race marriage law and was not technically in violation with the Supreme Court decision.

Segregation During the Great Migration

During the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South. Huge numbers moved northeast and reported discrimination and segregation similar to what they had experienced in the South.

As late as the 1940s, it was still possible to find "Whites Only" signs on businesses in the North. Segregated schools and neighborhoods existed, and even after World War II, Black activists reported hostile reactions when Black people attempted to move into white neighborhoods.

Segregation and the Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration's efforts to build housing for people displaced during the Great Depression focused on homes for white families in white communities. Only a small portion of houses was built for Black families, and those were limited to segregated Black communities.

In some cities, previously integrated communities were torn down by the PWA and replaced by segregated projects. The reason given for the policy was that Black families would bring down property values.

Red-Lining

Starting in the 1930s, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation conspired to create maps with marked areas considered bad risks for mortgages in a practice known as "red-lining." The areas marked in red as "hazardous" typically outlined Black neighborhoods. This kind of mapping concentrated poverty as (mostly Black) residents in red-lined neighborhoods had no access or only very expensive access to loans.

The practice did not begin to end until the 1970s. Then, in 2008, a system of "reverse red-lining," which extended credit on unfair terms with subprime loans, created a higher rate of foreclosure in Black neighborhoods during the housing crisis.

Housing Segregation

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that a Black family had the right to move into their newly-purchased home in a quiet neighborhood in St. Louis, despite a covenant dating back to 1911 that precluded the use of the property in the area by "any person not of the Caucasian race." In Shelley v. Kramer, attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), led by Thurgood Marshall, argued that allowing such white-only real estate covenants were not only morally wrong, but strategically misguided in a time when the country was trying to promote a unified, anti-Soviet agenda under President Harry Truman. Civil rights activists saw the landmark case as an example of how to start to undo trappings of segregation at the federal level.

But while the Supreme Court ruled that white-only covenants were not enforceable, the real estate playing field was hardly leveled. The Housing Act of 1949 was proposed by Truman to solve a housing shortage caused by soldiers returned from World War II. The act subsidized housing for whites only, even stipulating that Black families could not purchase the houses even on resale. The program effectively resulted in the government funding white flight from cities.

One of the most notorious of the white-only communities created by the Housing Act was Levittown, New York, built in 1949 and followed by other Levittowns in different locations.

Segregation in Schools

Segregation of children in public schools was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. The case was originally filed in Topeka, Kansas after seven-year-old Linda Brown was rejected from the all-white schools there.

A follow-up opinion handed decision-making to local courts, which allowed some districts to defy school desegregation. This led to a showdown in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops to ensure nine Black students entered high school after Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had called in the National Guard to block them.

When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, the civil rights movement began in earnest. Through the efforts of organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the resulting protests, the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, outlawing discrimination, though desegregation was a slow process, especially in schools.

Boston Busing Crisis

One of the worst incidents of anti-integration happened in 1974. Violence broke out in Boston when, in order to solve the city's school segregation problems, courts mandated a busing system that carried Black students from predominantly Roxbury to South Boston schools, and vice versa.

The state had passed the Elimination of Racial Balance law in 1965, but it had been held up in court by Irish Catholic opposition. Police protected the Black students as several days of violence broke out between police and Southie residents. White crowds greeted the buses with insults, and further violence erupted between Southie residents and retaliating Roxbury crowds. State troopers were called in until the violence subsided after a few weeks.

Segregation in the 21st Century

Segregation persists in the 21st Century. Studies show that while the public overwhelmingly supports integrated schools, only a third of Americans want federal government intervention to enforce it.

The term "apartheid schools" describes still-existing, largely segregated schools, where white students make up 0 to 10 percent of the student body. The phenomenon reflects residential segregation in cities and communities across the country, which is not created by overtly racial laws, but by local ordinances that target minorities disproportionately.

Sources

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, published by Bodley Head.
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The .
Dismantling Desegregation by Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton by the New Press.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Segregation in the United States - Meaning, Facts. & Legacy

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After the United States abolished slavery, Black Americans continued to be marginalized through Jim Crow laws and diminished access to facilities, housing, education-and opportunities.

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This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Fishing rights. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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For the practice of checking travellers’ documents when entering a country, see border control. For the album by Show-Ya, see Immigration (album).

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Jovani Jimenez
https://time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/

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World War II: Prisoners of War - Full Documentary

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https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech

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Voting rights in the United States - Wikipedia

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For the practice of checking travellers’ documents when entering a country, see border control. For the album by Show-Ya, see Immigration (album).

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"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."

-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut

Freedom of speech, the press, association, assembly, and petition: This set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. It is the foundation of a vibrant democracy, and without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither away.

The fight for freedom of speech has been a bedrock of the ACLU's mission since the organization was founded in 1920, driven by the need to protect the constitutional rights of conscientious objectors and anti-war protesters. The organization's work quickly spread to combating censorship, securing the right to assembly, and promoting free speech in schools.

Almost a century later, these battles have taken on new forms, but they persist. The ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project continues to champion freedom of expression in its myriad forms - whether through protest, media, online speech, or the arts - in the face of new threats. For example, new avenues for censorship have arisen alongside the wealth of opportunities for speech afforded by the Internet. The threat of mass government surveillance chills the free expression of ordinary citizens, legislators routinely attempt to place new restrictions on online activity, and journalism is criminalized in the name of national security. The ACLU is always on guard to ensure that the First Amendment's protections remain robust - in times of war or peace, for bloggers or the institutional press, online or off.

Over the years, the ACLU has represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone.

Some examples of our free speech work from recent years include:

In 2019, we filed a petition of certiorari on behalf of DeRay Mckesson, a prominent civil rights activist and Black Lives Matter movement organizer, urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that, if left standing, would dismantle civil rights era speech protections safeguarding the First Amendment right to protest.

In 2019, we successfully challenged a spate of state anti-protest laws aimed at Indigenous and climate activists opposing pipeline construction.

We've called on big social media companies to resist calls for censorship.

We're representing five former intelligence agency employees and military personnel in a lawsuit challenging the government's pre-publication review system, which prohibits millions of former intelligence agency employees and military personnel from writing or speaking about topics related to their government service without first obtaining government approval.

In 2018, we filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the NRA's lawsuit alleging that the state of New York violated its First Amendment rights should be allowed to proceed.

In 2016, the we defended the First Amendment rights of environmental and racial justice activists in Uniontown, Alabama, who were sued for defamation after they organized against the town's hazardous coal ash landfill.

In 2014, the ACLU of Michigan filed an amicus brief arguing that the police violated the First Amendment by ejecting an anti-Muslim group called Bible Believers from a street festival based on others' violent reactions to their speech.

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Free Speech | American Civil Liberties Union

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Protecting free speech means protecting a free press, the democratic process, diversity of thought, and so much more. The ACLU has worked since 1920 to ensure that freedom of speech is protected for everyone.

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akira

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."

-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut

Freedom of speech, the press, association, assembly, and petition: This set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. It is the foundation of a vibrant democracy, and without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither away.

The fight for freedom of speech has been a bedrock of the ACLU's mission since the organization was founded in 1920, driven by the need to protect the constitutional rights of conscientious objectors and anti-war protesters. The organization's work quickly spread to combating censorship, securing the right to assembly, and promoting free speech in schools.

Almost a century later, these battles have taken on new forms, but they persist. The ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project continues to champion freedom of expression in its myriad forms - whether through protest, media, online speech, or the arts - in the face of new threats. For example, new avenues for censorship have arisen alongside the wealth of opportunities for speech afforded by the Internet. The threat of mass government surveillance chills the free expression of ordinary citizens, legislators routinely attempt to place new restrictions on online activity, and journalism is criminalized in the name of national security. The ACLU is always on guard to ensure that the First Amendment's protections remain robust - in times of war or peace, for bloggers or the institutional press, online or off.

Over the years, the ACLU has represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone.

Some examples of our free speech work from recent years include:

In 2019, we filed a petition of certiorari on behalf of DeRay Mckesson, a prominent civil rights activist and Black Lives Matter movement organizer, urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that, if left standing, would dismantle civil rights era speech protections safeguarding the First Amendment right to protest.

In 2019, we successfully challenged a spate of state anti-protest laws aimed at Indigenous and climate activists opposing pipeline construction.

We've called on big social media companies to resist calls for censorship.

We're representing five former intelligence agency employees and military personnel in a lawsuit challenging the government's pre-publication review system, which prohibits millions of former intelligence agency employees and military personnel from writing or speaking about topics related to their government service without first obtaining government approval.

In 2018, we filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the NRA's lawsuit alleging that the state of New York violated its First Amendment rights should be allowed to proceed.

In 2016, the we defended the First Amendment rights of environmental and racial justice activists in Uniontown, Alabama, who were sued for defamation after they organized against the town's hazardous coal ash landfill.

In 2014, the ACLU of Michigan filed an amicus brief arguing that the police violated the First Amendment by ejecting an anti-Muslim group called Bible Believers from a street festival based on others' violent reactions to their speech.

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Free Speech | American Civil Liberties Union

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Protecting free speech means protecting a free press, the democratic process, diversity of thought, and so much more. The ACLU has worked since 1920 to ensure that freedom of speech is protected for everyone.

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/voting-rights

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Table of Contents

1. Selma to Montgomery March

2. Literacy Tests

3. Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

4. Voter Turnout Rises in the South

5. Changes to the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Selma to Montgomery March

Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory and used this mandate to push for legislation he believed would improve the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws.

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged many Americans occurred on March 7, 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back.

Some protesters were severely beaten and bloodied, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national television.

In the wake of the shocking incident, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Literacy Tests

Black people attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Black people, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests, which they sometimes failed.

Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force Black voters to "recite the entire Constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws," a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even Black people with college degrees were turned away from the polls.

Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. After debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 333-85 on July 9.

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.

The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Did you know? In 1965, at the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, there were six African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives and no Black people in the U.S. Senate. By 1971, there were 13 members of the House and one Black member of the Senate.

Voter Turnout Rises in the South

Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak, and it often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of Black people in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo.

Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among Black people increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

Changes to the Voting Rights Act

Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens. It has also been walked back. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated. In the wake of the Shelby County v. Holder decision, several states began enacting laws limiting voter access, including ID requirements, limits on early voting, mail-in voting and more.

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Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Definition, Summary & Significance

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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The War on Drugs Begins

Drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes has been happening in the United States since the country's inception. In the 1890s, the popular Sears and Roebuck catalogue included an offer for a syringe and small amount of cocaine for $1.50. (At that time, cocaine use had not yet been outlawed.)

In some states, laws to ban or regulate drugs were passed in the 1800s, and the first congressional act to levy taxes on morphine and opium took place in 1890.

The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 banned the possession, importation and use of opium for smoking. However, opium could still be used as a medication. This was the first federal law to ban the non-medical use of a substance, although many states and counties had banned alcohol sales previously.

In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine.

Alcohol prohibition laws quickly followed. In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, ushering in the Prohibition Era. The same year, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), which provided guidelines on how to federally enforce Prohibition.

Prohibition lasted until December, 1933, when the 21st Amendment was ratified, overturning the 18th.

Marijuana Tax Act of 1937

In 1937, the "Marihuana Tax Act" was passed. This federal law placed a tax on the sale of cannabis, hemp, or marijuana.

The Act was introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina and was drafted by Harry Anslinger. While the law didn't criminalize the possession or use of marijuana, it included hefty penalties if taxes weren't paid, including a fine of up to $2000 and five years in prison.

Controlled Substances Act

President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law in 1970. This statute calls for the regulation of certain drugs and substances.

The CSA outlines five "schedules" used to classify drugs based on their medical application and potential for abuse.

Schedule 1 drugs are considered the most dangerous, as they pose a very high risk for addiction with little evidence of medical benefits. Marijuana, LSD, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy) and other drugs are included on the list of Schedule 1 drugs.

The substances considered least likely to be addictive, such as cough medications with small amounts of codeine, fall into the Schedule 5 category.

Nixon and the War on Drugs

In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a "War on Drugs," stating that drug abuse was "public enemy number one."

A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s likely led to President Nixon's focus on targeting some types of substance abuse. As part of the War on Drugs initiative, Nixon increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and proposed strict measures, such as mandatory prison sentencing, for drug crimes. He also announced the creation of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which was headed by Dr. Jerome Jaffe.

Nixon went on to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973. This agency is a special police force committed to targeting illegal drug use and smuggling in the United States.

At the start, the DEA was given 1,470 special agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Today, the agency has nearly 5,000 agents and a budget of $2.03 billion.

Ulterior Motives Behind War on Drugs?

During a 1994 interview, President Nixon's domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, which mainly involved helping Nixon keep his job.

In the interview, conducted by journalist Dan Baum and published in Harper magazine, Ehrlichman explained that the Nixon campaign had two enemies: "the antiwar left and black people." His comments led many to question Nixon's intentions in advocating for drug reform and whether racism played a role.

Ehrlichman was quoted as saying: "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did."

The 1970s and The War on Drugs

In the mid-1970s, the War on Drugs took a slight hiatus. Between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession.

Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 after running on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana. During his first year in office, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize up to one ounce of marijuana.

Say No to Drugs

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon's War on Drugs policies. In 1984, his wife Nancy Reagan launched the " Just Say No " campaign, which was intended to highlight the dangers of drug use.

President Reagan's refocus on drugs and the passing of severe penalties for drug-related crimes in Congress and state legislatures led to a massive increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug crimes.

In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. This law was later heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). Five grams of crack triggered an automatic five-year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence.

Critics also pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites. Overall, the policies led to a rapid rise in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 2014, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the United States had been incarcerated on drug-related charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

A Gradual Dialing Back

Public support for the war on drugs has waned in recent decades. Some Americans and policymakers feel the campaign has been ineffective or has led to racial divide. Between 2009 and 2013, some 40 states took steps to soften their drug laws, lowering penalties and shortening mandatory minimum sentences, according to the Pew Research Center.

In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

The recent legalization of marijuana in several states and the District of Columbia has also led to a more tolerant political view on recreational drug use.

Technically, the War on Drugs is still being fought, but with less intensity and publicity than in its early years.

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War on Drugs - Timeline in America, Definition & Facts | HISTORY

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The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative in America that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by increasing and enforcing penalties for offenders. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.

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Synonyms

Examples of segregation in a Sentence

They fought to end the the segregation of public schools. segregation of men and women

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'segregation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1555, in the meaning defined at sense 1

The first known use of segregation was in 1555

Dictionary Entries Near segregation

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The meaning of SEGREGATION is the act or process of segregating : the state of being segregated. How to use segregation in a sentence.

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akira

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© Stephanie Frey/Fotolia

" Gun control" refers to any legal measure intended to prevent or restrict the possession or use of guns, particularly firearms. (In a broader historical sense, the term also refers to legal limits on the possession or use of other arms, including those that predate the invention of gunpowder.) In most developed countries, gun control is strict and uncontroversial. In others it is a fraught political issue, pitting those who regard it as necessary for public safety against those who view it as a dangerous infringement of personal liberty.

Nowhere in the world is gun control more controversial than in the United States, where gun possession is constitutionally protected but where murders (including mass murders) committed with guns are extremely common; the United States has by far the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among developed countries. Proponents of increased gun control in the United States argue that limiting access to guns will save lives and reduce crime; opponents insist that it would actually do the opposite by preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against armed criminals.

The gun-control debate in the United States also necessarily concerns the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In keeping with the first clause of the amendment (the preamble), most U.S. courts, until the early 21st century, had understood it to guarantee the right of states to maintain militias or the right of individuals to "keep and bear arms" in connection with their service in a state militia, an interpretation that was consistent with a wide variety of existing restrictions on individual gun ownership and use. In United States v. Miller (1939), for example, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment did not prohibit laws requiring the registration of sawed-off shotguns, because such weapons did not have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court for the first time explicitly recognized an individual right to use firearms independent of service in a state militia for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. Two years later, the court held (in ) that this interpretation of the amendment was applicable against state and local gun-control laws as well as against federal statutes.

In the United States, mass murders committed with guns are so frequent that the vast majority of them are not even mentioned in mainstream media outlets. Those that happen to be massive or heinous enough to gain national attention-including the murder of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012-typically spark a short-lived and fruitless debate about the need for stricter gun control. Politicians of both major parties, fearful of retaliation from the National Rifle Association (NRA), solemnly offer their "thoughts and prayers" while refusing to enact reasonable and constitutional measures now favored by a majority of Americans, such as expanded background checks for gun purchases and the reinstatement of a federal ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to lapse in 2004.

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Public safety versus individual liberty-what does it mean to control people's access to firearms?

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akira

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January 20, 2020

The legal basis for firearm possession in the US is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. But how are guns regulated? DW looks at who can buy and sell them - and how one loophole undermines gun control.

Gun control is one of the most divisive issues in American politics. With each mass shooting - defined as four or more victims having been killed indiscriminately - antagonism grows between both sides of the gun control argument.

Proponents of stricter gun regulations fear for their safety in a country where there is an average of 88 guns per 100 people, according to the 2011 Small Arms Survey. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence estimates that around 114,994 people are shot each year in the US. This includes murders, assaults, accidents, police intervention, suicide attempts and suicides.

Opponents of regulatory arguments, however, also fear a loss of safety. They argue that restricting the right to bear arms would leave citizens unable to protect themselves in their daily lives or, in a worst-case scenario, from a government turned against the people.

Though regulations vary from state to state, there are a few key conditions for obtaining guns in the US.
1. Is there a minimum age?
The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), which regulates firearms at the federal level, requires that citizens and legal residents must be at least 18 years of age to purchase shotguns or rifles and ammunition. All other firearms - handguns, for example - can only be sold to people 21 and older.

State or local officials may implement higher age restrictions but are not allowed to lower the federal minimum.

Read more: US gun control: 'Conservatives must say enough is enough'
2. Who's restricted from purchasing or possessing firearms?
Fugitives, people deemed a danger to society and patients involuntarily committed to mental institutions are among those who may not purchase firearms. People with prior felony convictions that include a prison sentence exceeding one year, or misdemeanors carrying sentences of more than two years, are also prohibited from purchasing firearms.

Federal law also blocks the sale of guns to people who have been found guilty of unlawfully possessing or using controlled substances within the past year. This includes marijuana, which, though legalized in many US states, remains illegal under federal law.

Other restrictions apply to people who have been issued restraining orders by courts to prevent harassment, stalking or threatening; people who have renounced their citizenship; dishonorably discharged military personnel; unauthorized migrants; and people temporarily visiting the US on nonimmigrant visas, for example as tourists.
3. Does the federal or state government regulate firearms?
The Second Amendment serves as the legal basis for the "right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Read more: German weapons firms find lucrative market in United States

Though state and local governments regulate whether residents may, for example, carry guns in public, laws regulating who may receive or possess guns are set out at the federal level.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a division of the Department of Justice, administers the GCA. The ATF also regulates the standards for issuing licenses to gun vendors.

Shotguns, rifles, machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers are regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934. The purchase of semi-automatic weapons is legal in most states, as are automatic weapons made before 1986.

Read more: NRA ad sparks uproar with call to 'fight' Trump opponents
4. Who may sell firearms?
Like handgun owners, dealers interested in obtaining a Federal Firearms License (FFL) must be at least 21 years of age. They must have premises for conducting business and must alert a local law enforcement official at the time of submitting their applications to the federal bureau that regulates firearms. Just like gun owners, they must fulfill the same criteria regarding their history of prior convictions and mental state. The license fee costs $200 (€170) for an initial three-year period and $90 for each subsequent three-year-long renewal.

Selling firearms online also falls under these regulations. Although the purchase may be paid for online, the gun itself must be shipped to a registered FFL holder, who then conducts the necessary background check before handing the firearm over to its owner.

However, the law is unclear on what constitutes selling guns for profit. Any individual may sell firearms without a license if his or her motive isn't to make profit for livelihood through repeated and regular sales.
5. Is a background check required to purchase a firearm?
Yes. The amendment to the 1968 Gun Control Act - known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 - requires holders of FFLs to conduct a background check. Potential firearm purchasers fill out a federal form known as the ATF 4473, which checks for prior convictions and other red flags. FFL holders then use the information provided on the form in the background check.

States may decide whether the background check is carried out solely by the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) or a combination of the NICS and state agency information. Roughly 30 states rely solely on the NICS.

Estimated to take under 10 minutes by phone or online, the check gives the FFL holder an immediate answer: approve, delay or deny. A delay indicates the need for further research for three business days, after which point FFL holders can act at their own discretion if the research proves inconclusive.

The Brady law, however, does not apply to someone who is obtaining a firearm from an individual without an FFL.
6. Do states require permits to purchase firearms?
Only a dozen of the US's 50 states require purchase permits for handguns. Of those states, only three - California, Connecticut and Hawaii - require permits for the purchase of rifles and shotguns.
Read more: Las Vegas shooter converted guns to automatics with gadget 7. Do states require permits to carry firearms?
California, for example, requires applicants to pass a written test and enroll in a gun safety class to obtain purchase permits. States with this requirement do not recognize the "concealed carry reciprocity" policies of some states, which allow gun owners licensed in one state to bring their weapons to another.

Most states require permits to carry handguns. Concealed carry and open carry vary by state. Some states allow residents to carry handguns without permits.
8. What is the 'gunshow loophole'?
By contrast, virtually no state requires a permit to carry rifles and shotguns. Massachusetts and New Jersey require people carrying rifles and shotguns to bring along a form of ID or a firearms identification.

The law on selling, receiving and possessing firearms is clear. Yet not every individual providing the gun in a transfer requires an FFL, which in turn means that not every buyer is legally subject to a background check. This potentially enables guns to fall into the hands of users who might otherwise not be allowed to own a firearm.

According to the ATF, anyone can sell a gun without an FFL from their home, online, at a flea market or at a gun show as long as he or she is not conducting the sale as part of regular business activity. One example would be someone who sells a firearm from his or her personal collection. Others who are exempt include those giving guns as gifts. Only individuals whose "principal motive" is to make a profit via sale must obtain an FFL.

Commonly referred to as the "gunshow loophole," this ambiguity also explains how a purchase can occur without a background check - and without breaking the law. A 2017 survey by Harvard and Northeastern universities estimates that roughly one in five transactions occur without a background check.

A gun may also be purchased on behalf of a third party as long as it is a gift and as long as the recipient does not violate federal restrictions on gun ownership to the best of the gift giver's knowledge. The same applies to the general transfer of guns. Children younger than 18 may possess guns that were given to them by parents or guardians as gifts provided that they have written permission.

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8 facts about gun control in the US - DW - 01/20/2020

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The legal basis for firearm possession in the US is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. But how are guns regulated? DW looks at who can buy and sell them - and how one loophole undermines gun control.

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- averie

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© Stephanie Frey/Fotolia

" Gun control" refers to any legal measure intended to prevent or restrict the possession or use of guns, particularly firearms. (In a broader historical sense, the term also refers to legal limits on the possession or use of other arms, including those that predate the invention of gunpowder.) In most developed countries, gun control is strict and uncontroversial. In others it is a fraught political issue, pitting those who regard it as necessary for public safety against those who view it as a dangerous infringement of personal liberty.

Nowhere in the world is gun control more controversial than in the United States, where gun possession is constitutionally protected but where murders (including mass murders) committed with guns are extremely common; the United States has by far the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among developed countries. Proponents of increased gun control in the United States argue that limiting access to guns will save lives and reduce crime; opponents insist that it would actually do the opposite by preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against armed criminals.

The gun-control debate in the United States also necessarily concerns the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In keeping with the first clause of the amendment (the preamble), most U.S. courts, until the early 21st century, had understood it to guarantee the right of states to maintain militias or the right of individuals to "keep and bear arms" in connection with their service in a state militia, an interpretation that was consistent with a wide variety of existing restrictions on individual gun ownership and use. In United States v. Miller (1939), for example, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment did not prohibit laws requiring the registration of sawed-off shotguns, because such weapons did not have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court for the first time explicitly recognized an individual right to use firearms independent of service in a state militia for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. Two years later, the court held (in ) that this interpretation of the amendment was applicable against state and local gun-control laws as well as against federal statutes.

In the United States, mass murders committed with guns are so frequent that the vast majority of them are not even mentioned in mainstream media outlets. Those that happen to be massive or heinous enough to gain national attention-including the murder of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012-typically spark a short-lived and fruitless debate about the need for stricter gun control. Politicians of both major parties, fearful of retaliation from the National Rifle Association (NRA), solemnly offer their "thoughts and prayers" while refusing to enact reasonable and constitutional measures now favored by a majority of Americans, such as expanded background checks for gun purchases and the reinstatement of a federal ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to lapse in 2004.

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Public safety versus individual liberty-what does it mean to control people's access to firearms?

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by: WRIC, WAVY Web Staff

Posted: / Updated:

RICHMOND, Va. (WAVY) - Several gun control and reform bills have moved forward in the Virginia legislature.

On Wednesday, the Virginia House of Delegates passed three bills regarding guns and gun ownership, including background checks for gun transfers and sales, guns on school property and 3D-printed "ghost guns."

All three will now move forward to the Senate.

Here's what each bill proposes:

HB 1909 would allow a school board to ban guns on its' property. It would also ban anyone from knowingly possessing, buying or carrying a firearm and ammunition while on that property. Law enforcement officers and qualified retired law enforcement officers would be exempt.

HB 2128 would increase the amount of time the Department of State Police is given to complete a background check before a firearm is transferred from three to five business days.

Under HB 2128, a dealer who has otherwise fulfilled all requirements for a sale or transfer can complete the action if state police say a response will not be available by the end of the dealer's fifth business day. In those circumstances, the dealer would not be found in violation.

would create a Class 5 felony the manufacture, import, sale, transfer, or possession of plastic firearms and unfinished frames or receivers and unserialized firearms - which are often 3D-printed and known as "ghost guns."

These guns are difficult to detect using devices such as X-ray machines, which are commonly used at airports for security screening.
"The strong gun violence prevention bills advancing to the state Senate today show that the majority of Virginia delegates are committed to protecting their constituents from the deadly gun violence epidemic that has plagued this state for too many years. The bills, if enacted into law, would give school boards authority to ban guns on school property; increase the time for Virginia State Police to complete a background check on firearms sales; and prohibit the production, sale or possession of unserialized firearms and parts known as "ghost guns." "Virginia voters continue to support gun violence prevention legislators because voters want an end to the epidemic of gun violence. CSGV applauds Virginia delegates who listened to their constituents and advanced these bills, bringing us one step closer to creating a safer, more secure Commonwealth free of gun violence and armed intimidation. "CSGV will continue to work with legislators and our partners on the ground to advance these bills through the state Senate and eventually to Governor Northam's desk to be signed into law."
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Senior Director of Advocacy Lori Haas issued the following statement Wednesday night:

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Gun control bills passed in Virginia House, head to Senate

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RICHMOND, Va. (WAVY) - Several gun control and reform bills have moved forward in the Virginia legislature. On Wednesday, the Virginia House of Delegates passed three bills regarding guns and gun ownership, including background checks for gun transfers and sales, guns on school property and 3D-printed "ghost guns."

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Sebastian P.

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World War II[b] or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis. Nearly all of the world’s countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

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Gun violence is a contemporary global human rights issue. Gun-related violence threatens our most fundamental human right, the right to life.

Gun violence is a daily tragedy affecting the lives of individuals around the world. More than 500 people die every day because of violence committed with firearms.

Anyone can be affected by firearm violence but in certain situations gun violence disproportionately impacts communities of colour, women and other marginalized groups in society.

Sometimes, the mere presence of firearms can make people feel threatened and fearful for their lives with severe and long-term psychological effects on individuals and whole communities.

When people are afraid of gun violence, this can also have a negative impact on people's right to education or health care when they are too afraid to attend schools or health facilities or if these services are not fully functioning due to firearm violence in their community.

Amnesty International campaigns for effective gun violence prevention laws and interventions to stop gun violence

Strict regulation of firearms and strategic violence reduction initiatives are the most effective way of reducing gun violence

Easy access to firearms - whether legal or illegal - is one of the main drivers of gun violence.

The state has an obligation to maximize the protection of human rights, creating the safest possible environment for the most people, especially those considered to be at the greatest risk. If a state does not exercise adequate control over the possession and use of firearms in the face of persistent gun violence, this could amount to a breach of their obligations under international human rights law.

This is why Amnesty International calls on states to fulfil their obligations to introduce and implement strict gun violence prevention laws and regulations. States also have the duty to establish measures they can use to intervene at community level to reduce and prevent gun violence in people's daily lives.

Amnesty International campaigns for governments to use common-sense gun reform to stop gun violence and protect people's right to life. Our human rights are not protected if our leaders fail to tackle and stop gun violence and gun deaths.

What is gun violence?

Gun violence is violence committed with the use of firearms, for example pistols, shotguns, assault rifles or machine guns.

Gun violence statistics

How many people die from gun-related violence worldwide?

More than 500 people die every day from gun violence

44% of all homicides globally involve gun violence

There were 1.4 million firearm-related deaths globally between 2012 and 2016

The majority of victims and perpetrators are young men, but women are particularly at risk of firearms violence perpetrated by an intimate partner. Sexual violence can also be facilitated by firearms.

How many people are injured by gunshots worldwide?

An estimated 2,000 people are injured by gunshots every single day

At least 2 million people are living with firearm injuries around the globe

Millions of people suffer the severe and long-term psychological effects that gun violence - or the threat of gun violence - brings to individuals, families and their wider community.

In the USA, nearly 134,000 people were shot and injured by firearms in 2017.

Gunshot injuries are often life-changing and have an indelible impact on the victims' long-term mental and physical health. Some need permanent, lifelong care, and many others lose their ability to work, particularly in physically demanding jobs. Yet programmes offering adequate long-term care, rehabilitation and job retraining are virtually non-existent. The toll that gun violence has on victims, family members and the medical services has resulted in a chronic public health crisis - with remarkably little government response. Access to affordable and quality health care services in the USA should include necessary long-term health interventions, including long-term pain management, rehabilitation and other support services, and mental health care.

How many guns are produced every year globally?

There are 8 million new small arms and up to 15 billion rounds of ammunition produced each year.

The small arms trade is worth an estimated US$8.5 billion per year.

Why is gun violence a human rights issue?

Gun violence can lead to a violation of the most fundamental human right - the right to life. States have an obligation to fight actual or foreseeable threats to life and should therefore take measures to protect people from gun violence.

If a state does not adequately control how private individuals own and use firearms, this could amount to a breach of their obligations under international human rights law to protect the rights to life and security of person.

Firearm violence by private actors has a strong socio-economic dimension. It is typically concentrated in low income urban neighbourhoods with high levels of crime. This often includes trafficking in illicit drugs, inadequate policing or policing which does not comply with international standards on human rights and law enforcement, and lack of access to public services.

Easy access to and proliferation of firearms in these circumstances can have an impact on the community across the full range of human rights.

Gun violence and the right to health

Firearm violence can undermine people's right to health. People living in communities with high levels of firearm violence can find it difficult or dangerous to access local health care facilities. The partitioning of neighbourhoods by armed criminal gangs can obstruct access, and frequent official or de facto curfews related to police interventions can close health care services.

In some instances, health-related services may avoid locating in areas of high firearm violence because of issues associated with insecurity and poor staff retention. Essential psychological support for survivors of domestic violence and provision of refuges or other safe accommodation for those leaving violent relationships are often lacking in deprived neighbourhoods blighted by firearm violence.

Gun violence causes a range of health issues throughout affected communities. Lack of day-to-day security can have profound psychological impacts, particularly for those who have witnessed shootings, as well as for family members of victims. The survivors of firearm violence can be left severely and chronically physically and psychologically debilitated, in need of long-term medical and social care.

Gun violence and the right to education

Firearm violence can disrupt the functioning of schools and make students' journeys to and from school dangerous. Lack of state resources for education and the difficulty of recruiting and retaining teaching staff in neighbourhoods wracked by gun violence have a negative impact, undermining the right to education.

Endemic firearm violence and associated insecurity can have a particularly serious impact on children and adolescents, including by disrupting school attendance and retention, damaging the learning environment, and reducing the quality of teaching. This can in turn lead to poorer life outcomes regarding employment and income, and perpetuate cycles of deprivation, crime and violence.

Gun violence worldwide

Gun violence is particularly prevalent in the Americas where easy access to firearms, weak regulation or poor implementation of laws designed to combat firearms violence prevail. In Latin America and the Caribbean, corruption, organized crime and a dysfunctional criminal justice system further fuel the problem.

Percentage of killings committed with firearms:
72% in Brazil 91.1% in El Salvador 58.9% in Honduras
Gun violence in the USA

Among wealthier, developed countries, the USA is an outlier when it comes to firearm violence. US governments have allowed gun violence to become a human rights crisis. Wide access to firearms and loose regulations lead to more than 39,000 men, women and children being killed with guns each year in the USA.

On average, more than 360 people in the USA are shot every day and survive - at least long enough to get to a hospital.

In 2017, some 39,773 died from gunshot injuries, an average of nearly 109 people each day. Per capita, this is significantly higher than in other industrialized countries. Firearm homicides in the USA disproportionately impact communities of colour and particularly young black men.

The USA lacks measures such as a national firearm registry.

Individuals can lawfully carry concealed firearms in public in every state in the USA and can lawfully openly carry firearms in public in most states. However, there is no nationwide uniformity in laws governing the carrying of firearms in public, and in some states there are no laws at all: 12 states allow individuals to carry concealed weapons in public without any licence or permit and 30 states allow the open carrying of a handgun in public without any licence or permit.

Open carrying of firearms in public, in some form, is currently allowed in 45 states. In only seven states are people required to provide a credible justification or demonstrated need to carry a concealed firearm. All 50 states and Washington, D.C. allow for some form of concealed carrying of firearms in public.

The US government is prioritizing gun ownership over basic human rights. Despite the huge number of guns in circulation and the sheer numbers of people killed by guns each year, there is a shocking lack of federal regulations that could save thousands.

Margaret Huang, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA

How are discrimination and gun violence connected in the USA?

In the USA, firearm homicide disproportionately impacts African American communities, particularly young black men. 14,542 people in the USA lost their lives in gun homicides in 2017. African Americans accounted for 58.5% of these nationwide, despite making up just 13% of the US population.

Firearm homicide was the leading cause of death for black men and boys aged 15-34 in 2017, and they were more than 10 times more likely to die from firearm homicide than white men and boys of the same age group. Failure to address systemic discrimination; failure to keep firearms out of the hands of those most likely to misuse them; and a failure to invest in gun violence prevention programmes all contribute to this crisis.

Women facing domestic violence and children are also disproportionately affected.

In 2017, the number of children who died from firearm-related deaths in the USA rose to 1,814 from 1,637 in 2016

Between 2% and 7% of all injuries treated at US pediatric trauma centres are gun-related

Most children who are victims of firearm killings in the USA are from minority communities. Homicide is the second leading cause of death among black children and 65% of those killings are committed with guns.

Mass shootings stats USA

Mass shootings are typically defined as shootings where four or more victims are killed. In the USA, between 2009 and 2016, there were:

156 mass shootings

with a total of 848 people killed and

339 injured

Public mass shootings account for less than 1% of gun deaths in the USA.

However, public mass shootings have a profound emotional and psychological effect on survivors, families and communities. They have created an environment in which people feel unsafe in public places, such as churches, schools, concert venues and cinemas which impacts their human rights to religion, education and leisure.

School shootings in the USA

Between 2013 and June 2018, there were 316 incidents of gunfire on school grounds in the USA.

The factors that contribute to a child picking up a gun are varied and often poorly understood. However, in the context of urban communities, youth violence can be associated with fear, need for protection, distrust of police due to entrenched discrimination and discriminatory policing, and desire for peer respect and approval, as well as involvement in criminal activities.

The solutions to addressing mass shootings in the USA are the same as those identified to prevent other forms of gun violence and include a national system of licensing and registration along with comprehensive background checks.

Activism against gun violence

Seventeen people died in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February 2018. But this tragedy has united and inspired students from around the world to protest for gun reform. Many young people in the USA now believe that stricter gun control can keep them safer and their youth gun reform grassroots movement is growing. Jaclyn Corin is a survivor of the school shooting and has become a gun reform activist:

The only way to heal was to take action

Jaclyn Corin

"I never imagined it would happen to me. Parkland was labelled the safest community in Florida, but when tragedy hit and a mass shooting took place at school, I knew the only way to heal was to take action.

When my friends and I came together, we didn't have a plan. We literally started work on a living room floor. Being young worked in our favour. We weren't adults trying to guess what worked for young people and we weren't asking for permission. Other kids from across the nation saw what we were doing and felt they could do it too.

Being survivors of a school shooting meant people listened to us. We were angry and loud. The reaction to what happened to us helped build our movement faster than we could have imagined. It is amazing to see the impact we're having, but there's also a sense of guilt, as this has arisen out of something so horrible.

We created March For Our Lives because our friends who lost their lives would have wanted us to take action. We're doing it for them.

The kids who are doing something to make a difference inspire me - the girl who is running for school board, or the others running March For Our Lives. It's the people and the present that inspires me."

How can states stop gun violence?

Effectively implemented gun regulation and violence prevention projects can stop the carnage.

As a first step, states should recognize firearm violence as a threat to people's human rights, in particular their rights to life, to physical integrity and security of person, and to health.

Gun regulation and gun licences

States can set up some basic systems to regulate how private individuals can own and use firearms and ammunition to prevent them from using firearms to abuse human rights. The UN has set up international guidelines that states can put in place to incorporate into national laws on firearms control.

These international standards recommend prohibiting any possession of firearms without a licence; that states should register all firearms; and that unlicenced possession should be treated as a criminal offence.

A firearms licence should be subject to certain criteria being met. For example, the applicant should undergo a comprehensive background check to identify any risk factors, such as prior criminal record - especially for violent behaviour in the home or community; history of gender-based, sexual or domestic violence; and history of problematic use of drugs/alcohol, emotional issues, mental health conditions and other circumstances which heighten the risks of the harm to self or others using firearms. Gun licences should be time-limited and training on how to use the weapon should be mandatory. The number and type of weapons that an individual can possess should also be strictly limited in line with the principles of necessity and credible justification.

Firearms and ammunition which represent an unacceptable level of risk to public safety, including those likely to cause excessive or unintended injury, such as fully automatic firearms, semi-automatic assault rifles, semi-automatic shotguns and semi-automatic submachine-guns, must be prohibited for use by private individuals.

To avoid fuelling the illicit trade in and possession of firearms, states must take proactive measures to make sure that all stocks of firearms and related ammunition, including those for use by military and law enforcement personnel, as well as those held by dealers, are kept securely.

How can states help communities with high levels of gun violence?

Where patterns of firearm possession and use lead to chronic insecurity, states have the obligation to protect life and ensure security for all through human rights-compliant law enforcement, community interventions, and tightening of regulations on firearms possession and use.

Initiatives should focus on those at most risk of perpetrating and being victims of gun violence - often young males growing up in deprived urban neighbourhoods.

Long-term, adequately funded, evidence-based projects, tailored towards specific social, economic and cultural contexts, and working in partnership with the affected communities, are needed to achieve sustained reductions in firearm violence.

Stopping gender-based gun violence

In 2017, some 87,000 women were intentionally killed around the world. More than half of them, 50,000 (58%) were killed by intimate partners or family members.

This means that globally, 137 women are killed by a member of their family every single day. Of the women intentionally killed in 2017, more than a third (30,000) were killed by their current or former intimate partner.

Firearms are the principal mechanism of intimate partner killings and intimidation in countries with high rates of firearm ownership.

Studies in the USA indicate that the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of women being killed by intimate partners.

Moreover, the presence of a firearm can have a disempowering and demoralizing effect on women and be used for psychological and/or sexual coercion.

States should adopt strict laws and practices to prohibit gun possession for those individuals that have a history of violence towards a family member or intimate partner.

Does gun reform work?

Yes, gun reform works. Almost all states regulate gun acquisition, possession and use in some form. Most do this by licencing users and registering firearms.

Gun reform works in parts of the world where there are strict controls on access to firearms and well enforced firearms regulations. This is the case for much of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia. For example, in Japan, South Korea and Singapore, the rate of firearm violence is extremely low.

What does Amnesty do about gun violence?

We at Amnesty International have been focusing our work on domestic gun reform and gun violence prevention by campaigning for regulations on firearm use and possession.

We support the establishment of evidence-based violence reduction programmes in communities where there is a persistently high level of firearms violence.

We're also working to stop firearm exports to crisis zones where arms risk being used for serious human rights violations. For example, we investigated international arms exports to the Saudi Arabia/UAE-led coalition and uncovered how arms were being diverted for use by militias to commit human rights abuses in the Yemeni civil war. For states parties, supplying arms for use in the Yemen conflict violates the global Arms Trade Treaty; these transfers also breach EU law, and in many instances supplier countries' domestic law.

Along with several other organizations, we successfully campaigned for a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which became international law in 2014. Every state that has ratified the ATT must follow strict rules on international arms transfers.

We continue to campaign for the effective implementation of the ATT which will stem the flow of weapons that fuel violations in conflicts, atrocities and state repression around the world. The ATT can save lives and protect people's human rights.

Governments have a legal obligation to protect the right to life, and accordingly a responsibility to protect people from firearms violence. We have to remind them of their duty by demanding gun reform.

You can stand up and remind our leaders of their obligation to keep us safe. You can play a crucial role in campaigning and protesting against gun violence. By getting involved, you can make it clear to governments that poor regulation of the possession and use of guns leads to violence and that they must tackle this now through strict controls on guns and effective interventions in communities suffering high levels of gun violence.

You have the power to tell governments that by using gun laws, we can all live safely and without fear - which is our right.

Check if your country is signed up to the Arms Trade Treaty and tell them to do so now if they aren't!

What can you do to stop and/or reduce gun violence?

Governments have a legal obligation to protect the right to life, and accordingly a responsibility to protect people from firearms violence. We have to remind them of their duty by demanding gun reform.

You can stand up and remind our leaders of their obligation to keep us safe. You can play a crucial role in campaigning and protesting against gun violence. By getting involved, you can make it clear to governments that poor regulation of the possession and use of guns leads to violence and that they must tackle this now through strict controls on guns and effective interventions in communities suffering high levels of gun violence.

You have the power to tell governments that by using gun laws, we can all live safely and without fear - which is our right.

Check if your country is signed up to the Arms Trade Treaty and tell them to do so now if they aren't!

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Gun violence is a contemporary global human rights issue. Gun-related violence threatens our most fundamental human right, the right to life. Gun violence is a daily tragedy affecting the lives of individuals around the world.

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WASHINGTON - The White House is likely to delay its roll out of a string of executive orders on immigration, including the long-awaited announcement of a task force to reunite migrant families separated under the Trump administration, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden ran ads promising to establish a task force "on his first day as president." In a memo outlining early executive actions, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the Biden administration would "start the difficult but critical work of reuniting families separated at the border." A separate planning document circulated among Biden officials indicated the immigration executive action would be unveiled on Friday.

Sources involved with the discussions say they are delayed "by at least a few days," but declined to say what is causing the delay.

When the task force is announced, it is expected to be an inter-agency effort across the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and the State Department, led by Biden's pick to run DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, according to three sources familiar with the planning.

Their focus will be on reuniting all migrant families separated at the border - not by deportations from the interior of the country - across all four years of the Trump presidency, the sources said. They will also produce a report on what led to the separations and recommend that such a policy never be repeated, though they will not conduct an investigation that could lead to criminal referrals of officials responsible, the sources said. Instead, any investigation that would require subpoenaed witnesses will be left to the discretion of the Justice Department to conduct, the sources said.

But other key details are still being worked out, such as what factors may disqualify families from being reunited and whether those who do qualify but have been deported will be given special protections, such as humanitarian relief, to come to the U.S.

All of the families separated at the border under the four years of the Trump administration, not just those separated during "zero tolerance," will be eligible for reunification by the task force, according to three sources familiar with the planning discussions.

Nearly 3,000 migrant children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border under the "zero tolerance" policy, which systematically separated children from parents whose only crime was crossing the border illegally during May and June of 2018. But before that over 1,000 families were separated in a pilot program in and around El Paso, Texas. And after June of 2018, the ACLU estimates another 1,000 families have been separated at the U.S. border.

But many of those parents have now been deported, making them more difficult to find, and if found, potentially presenting them with the difficult choice of bringing their child home to a dangerous country or allowing them to live in the United States with relatives. The task force announcement is not expected to include details on whether the families will be given special permission to come to the United States to reunite with their children.

Pro-bono groups that have so far worked to reunify families separated under the 2017 pilot program and through zero tolerance of 2018 say they have not been able to reach the parents of over 600 children and they believe two-thirds of them have been deported.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Biden likely to delay immigration task force and executive orders

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WASHINGTON - The White House is likely to delay its roll out of a string of executive orders on immigration, including the long-awaited announcement of a task force to reunite migrant families separated under the Trump administration, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

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January 20, 2020

The legal basis for firearm possession in the US is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. But how are guns regulated? DW looks at who can buy and sell them - and how one loophole undermines gun control.

Gun control is one of the most divisive issues in American politics. With each mass shooting - defined as four or more victims having been killed indiscriminately - antagonism grows between both sides of the gun control argument.

Proponents of stricter gun regulations fear for their safety in a country where there is an average of 88 guns per 100 people, according to the 2011 Small Arms Survey. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence estimates that around 114,994 people are shot each year in the US. This includes murders, assaults, accidents, police intervention, suicide attempts and suicides.

Opponents of regulatory arguments, however, also fear a loss of safety. They argue that restricting the right to bear arms would leave citizens unable to protect themselves in their daily lives or, in a worst-case scenario, from a government turned against the people.

Though regulations vary from state to state, there are a few key conditions for obtaining guns in the US.
1. Is there a minimum age?
The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), which regulates firearms at the federal level, requires that citizens and legal residents must be at least 18 years of age to purchase shotguns or rifles and ammunition. All other firearms - handguns, for example - can only be sold to people 21 and older.

State or local officials may implement higher age restrictions but are not allowed to lower the federal minimum.

Read more: US gun control: 'Conservatives must say enough is enough'
2. Who's restricted from purchasing or possessing firearms?
Fugitives, people deemed a danger to society and patients involuntarily committed to mental institutions are among those who may not purchase firearms. People with prior felony convictions that include a prison sentence exceeding one year, or misdemeanors carrying sentences of more than two years, are also prohibited from purchasing firearms.

Federal law also blocks the sale of guns to people who have been found guilty of unlawfully possessing or using controlled substances within the past year. This includes marijuana, which, though legalized in many US states, remains illegal under federal law.

Other restrictions apply to people who have been issued restraining orders by courts to prevent harassment, stalking or threatening; people who have renounced their citizenship; dishonorably discharged military personnel; unauthorized migrants; and people temporarily visiting the US on nonimmigrant visas, for example as tourists.
3. Does the federal or state government regulate firearms?
The Second Amendment serves as the legal basis for the "right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Read more: German weapons firms find lucrative market in United States

Though state and local governments regulate whether residents may, for example, carry guns in public, laws regulating who may receive or possess guns are set out at the federal level.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a division of the Department of Justice, administers the GCA. The ATF also regulates the standards for issuing licenses to gun vendors.

Shotguns, rifles, machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers are regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934. The purchase of semi-automatic weapons is legal in most states, as are automatic weapons made before 1986.

Read more: NRA ad sparks uproar with call to 'fight' Trump opponents
4. Who may sell firearms?
Like handgun owners, dealers interested in obtaining a Federal Firearms License (FFL) must be at least 21 years of age. They must have premises for conducting business and must alert a local law enforcement official at the time of submitting their applications to the federal bureau that regulates firearms. Just like gun owners, they must fulfill the same criteria regarding their history of prior convictions and mental state. The license fee costs $200 (€170) for an initial three-year period and $90 for each subsequent three-year-long renewal.

Selling firearms online also falls under these regulations. Although the purchase may be paid for online, the gun itself must be shipped to a registered FFL holder, who then conducts the necessary background check before handing the firearm over to its owner.

However, the law is unclear on what constitutes selling guns for profit. Any individual may sell firearms without a license if his or her motive isn't to make profit for livelihood through repeated and regular sales.
5. Is a background check required to purchase a firearm?
Yes. The amendment to the 1968 Gun Control Act - known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 - requires holders of FFLs to conduct a background check. Potential firearm purchasers fill out a federal form known as the ATF 4473, which checks for prior convictions and other red flags. FFL holders then use the information provided on the form in the background check.

States may decide whether the background check is carried out solely by the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) or a combination of the NICS and state agency information. Roughly 30 states rely solely on the NICS.

Estimated to take under 10 minutes by phone or online, the check gives the FFL holder an immediate answer: approve, delay or deny. A delay indicates the need for further research for three business days, after which point FFL holders can act at their own discretion if the research proves inconclusive.

The Brady law, however, does not apply to someone who is obtaining a firearm from an individual without an FFL.
6. Do states require permits to purchase firearms?
Only a dozen of the US's 50 states require purchase permits for handguns. Of those states, only three - California, Connecticut and Hawaii - require permits for the purchase of rifles and shotguns.
Read more: Las Vegas shooter converted guns to automatics with gadget 7. Do states require permits to carry firearms?
California, for example, requires applicants to pass a written test and enroll in a gun safety class to obtain purchase permits. States with this requirement do not recognize the "concealed carry reciprocity" policies of some states, which allow gun owners licensed in one state to bring their weapons to another.

Most states require permits to carry handguns. Concealed carry and open carry vary by state. Some states allow residents to carry handguns without permits.
8. What is the 'gunshow loophole'?
By contrast, virtually no state requires a permit to carry rifles and shotguns. Massachusetts and New Jersey require people carrying rifles and shotguns to bring along a form of ID or a firearms identification.

The law on selling, receiving and possessing firearms is clear. Yet not every individual providing the gun in a transfer requires an FFL, which in turn means that not every buyer is legally subject to a background check. This potentially enables guns to fall into the hands of users who might otherwise not be allowed to own a firearm.

According to the ATF, anyone can sell a gun without an FFL from their home, online, at a flea market or at a gun show as long as he or she is not conducting the sale as part of regular business activity. One example would be someone who sells a firearm from his or her personal collection. Others who are exempt include those giving guns as gifts. Only individuals whose "principal motive" is to make a profit via sale must obtain an FFL.

Commonly referred to as the "gunshow loophole," this ambiguity also explains how a purchase can occur without a background check - and without breaking the law. A 2017 survey by Harvard and Northeastern universities estimates that roughly one in five transactions occur without a background check.

A gun may also be purchased on behalf of a third party as long as it is a gift and as long as the recipient does not violate federal restrictions on gun ownership to the best of the gift giver's knowledge. The same applies to the general transfer of guns. Children younger than 18 may possess guns that were given to them by parents or guardians as gifts provided that they have written permission.

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8 facts about gun control in the US - DW - 01/20/2020

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The legal basis for firearm possession in the US is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. But how are guns regulated? DW looks at who can buy and sell them - and how one loophole undermines gun control.

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Gender is not a straight line. | Charlie Hobman |  TEDxYouth@Frankston

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NRA-ILA | Gun Control Groups Push Hollywood to Produce Even More Anti-gun Propaganda

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Gun control advocates are once again pushing the entertainment industry to produce anti-gun propaganda with the explicit goal of advancing failed firearm legislation. The renewed overt effort will strike some as superfluous, given Hollywood's lengthy track record of anti-gun agitprop and left-wing political monoculture.

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sebastian p.

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© Stephanie Frey/Fotolia

" Gun control" refers to any legal measure intended to prevent or restrict the possession or use of guns, particularly firearms. (In a broader historical sense, the term also refers to legal limits on the possession or use of other arms, including those that predate the invention of gunpowder.) In most developed countries, gun control is strict and uncontroversial. In others it is a fraught political issue, pitting those who regard it as necessary for public safety against those who view it as a dangerous infringement of personal liberty.

Nowhere in the world is gun control more controversial than in the United States, where gun possession is constitutionally protected but where murders (including mass murders) committed with guns are extremely common; the United States has by far the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among developed countries. Proponents of increased gun control in the United States argue that limiting access to guns will save lives and reduce crime; opponents insist that it would actually do the opposite by preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against armed criminals.

The gun-control debate in the United States also necessarily concerns the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In keeping with the first clause of the amendment (the preamble), most U.S. courts, until the early 21st century, had understood it to guarantee the right of states to maintain militias or the right of individuals to "keep and bear arms" in connection with their service in a state militia, an interpretation that was consistent with a wide variety of existing restrictions on individual gun ownership and use. In United States v. Miller (1939), for example, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment did not prohibit laws requiring the registration of sawed-off shotguns, because such weapons did not have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), however, the Supreme Court for the first time explicitly recognized an individual right to use firearms independent of service in a state militia for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. Two years later, the court held (in ) that this interpretation of the amendment was applicable against state and local gun-control laws as well as against federal statutes.

In the United States, mass murders committed with guns are so frequent that the vast majority of them are not even mentioned in mainstream media outlets. Those that happen to be massive or heinous enough to gain national attention-including the murder of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016 and the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012-typically spark a short-lived and fruitless debate about the need for stricter gun control. Politicians of both major parties, fearful of retaliation from the National Rifle Association (NRA), solemnly offer their "thoughts and prayers" while refusing to enact reasonable and constitutional measures now favored by a majority of Americans, such as expanded background checks for gun purchases and the reinstatement of a federal ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to lapse in 2004.

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Public safety versus individual liberty-what does it mean to control people's access to firearms?

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Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same legal sex. As of 2024, marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 36 countries, with a total population of 1.3 billion people (17% of the world's population). The most recent country to legalise same-sex marriage is Greece.

Adoption rights are not necessarily covered, though most states with same-sex marriage allow those couples to jointly adopt as other married couples can. In contrast, 35 countries (as of 2023) have definitions of marriage in their constitutions that prevent marriage between couples of the same sex, most enacted in recent decades as a preventative measure. Some other countries have constitutionally mandated Islamic law, which is generally interpreted as prohibiting marriage between same-sex couples. In six of the former and most of the latter, homosexuality itself is criminalized. It is legally recognized in a large majority of the world's developed democracies; notable exceptions are Italy, Japan, South Korea and the Czech Republic. It is not yet recognized in any of the world's Islamic polities. Some countries, such as China and Russia, restrict advocacy for same-sex marriage.

There are records of marriage between men dating back to the first century. The first same-sex couple to be married legally in modern times were Michael McConnell and Jack Baker in 1971 in the United States; they were married in the county of Blue Earth County, Minnesota. The first law providing for marriage equality between same-sex and opposite-sex couples was passed in the continental Netherlands in 2000 and took effect on 1 April 2001. The application of marriage law equally to same-sex and opposite-sex couples has varied by jurisdiction, and has come about through legislative change to marriage law, court rulings based on constitutional guarantees of equality, recognition that marriage of same-sex couples is allowed by existing marriage law, and by direct popular vote, such as through referendums and initiatives. The most prominent supporters of same-sex marriage are the world's major medical and scientific communities, along with human rights and civil rights organizations, while its most prominent opponents are religious fundamentalist groups. Polls consistently show continually rising support for the recognition of same-sex marriage in all developed democracies and in many developing countries.

Scientific studies show that the financial, psychological, and physical well-being of gay people are enhanced by marriage, and that the children of same-sex parents benefit from being raised by married same-sex couples within a marital union that is recognized by law and supported by societal institutions. Social science research indicates that the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage stigmatizes and invites public discrimination against gay and lesbian people, with research repudiating the notion that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon restricting marriage to heterosexuals. Same-sex marriage can provide those in committed same-sex relationships with relevant government services and make financial demands on them comparable to that required of those in opposite-sex marriages, and also gives them legal protections such as inheritance and hospital visitation rights. Opposition is based on claims such as that homosexuality is unnatural and abnormal, that the recognition of same-sex unions will promote homosexuality in society, and that children are better off when raised by opposite-sex couples. These claims are refuted by scientific studies, which show that homosexuality is a natural and normal variation in human sexuality, that sexual orientation is not a choice, and that children of same-sex couples fare just as well as the children of opposite-sex couples.

Terminology

Alternative terms

Two men marry, surrounded by wedding party, in New Orleans, United States on 11 November 2017

Some proponents of the legal recognition of same-sex marriage-such as Marriage Equality USA (founded in 1998), Freedom to Marry (founded in 2003), Canadians for Equal Marriage, and Marriage for All Japan - used the terms marriage equality and equal marriage to signal that their goal was for same-sex marriage to be recognized on equal ground with opposite-sex marriage. The Associated Press recommends the use of same-sex marriage over gay marriage. In deciding whether to use the term gay marriage, it may also be noted that not everyone in a same-sex marriage is gay - for example, some are bisexual - and therefore using the term gay marriage is sometimes considered erasure of such people.

Use of the term marriage

Anthropologists have struggled to determine a definition of marriage that absorbs commonalities of the social construct across cultures around the world. Many proposed definitions have been criticized for failing to recognize the existence of same-sex marriage in some cultures, including those of more than 30 African peoples, such as the Kikuyu and Nuer.

With several countries revising their marriage laws to recognize same-sex couples in the 21st century, all major English dictionaries have revised their definition of the word marriage to either drop gender specifications or supplement them with secondary definitions to include gender-neutral language or explicit recognition of same-sex unions. The Oxford English Dictionary has recognized same-sex marriage since 2000.

Opponents of same-sex marriage who want marriage to be restricted to pairings of a man and a woman, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Catholic Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention, use the term traditional marriage to mean opposite-sex marriage.

A reference to marriage between same-sex couples appears in the Sifra, which was written in the 3rd century CE. The Book of Leviticus prohibited homosexual relations, and the Hebrews were warned not to "follow the acts of the land of Egypt or the acts of the land of Canaan" (Lev. 18:22, 20:13). The Sifra clarifies what these ambiguous "acts" were, and that they included marriage between same-sex couples: "A man would marry a man and a woman a woman, a man would marry a woman and her daughter, and a woman would be married to two men."

A few scholars believe that in the early Roman Empire some male couples were celebrating traditional marriage rites in the presence of friends. Male-male weddings are reported by sources that mock them; the feelings of the participants are not recorded. Various ancient sources state that the emperor Nero celebrated two public weddings with males, once taking the role of the bride (with a freedman Pythagoras), and once the groom (with Sporus); there may have been a third in which he was the bride. In the early 3rd century AD, the emperor Elagabalus is reported to have been the bride in a wedding to his male partner. Other mature men at his court had husbands, or said they had husbands in imitation of the emperor. Roman law did not recognize marriage between males, but one of the grounds for disapproval expressed in Juvenal's satire is that celebrating the rites would lead to expectations for such marriages to be registered officially. As the empire was becoming Christianized in the 4th century, legal prohibitions against marriage between males began to appear.

Contemporary

Newly married couple in Minnesota shortly after the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States, 2015

The first same-sex couple to be married legally in modern times were Michael McConnell and Jack Baker in 1971, in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Historians variously trace the beginning of the modern movement in support of same-sex marriage to anywhere from around the 1980s to the 1990s. During the 1980s in the United States, the AIDS epidemic led to increased attention on the legal aspects of same-sex relationships. Andrew Sullivan made the first case for same sex marriage in a major American journal in 1989, published in The New Republic.

In 1989, Denmark became the first country to legally recognize a relationship for same-sex couples, establishing registered partnerships, which gave those in same-sex relationships "most rights of married heterosexuals, but not the right to adopt or obtain joint custody of a child". In 2001, the continental Netherlands became the first country to broaden marriage laws to include same-sex couples. Since then, same-sex marriage has been established by law in 34 other countries, including most of the Americas and Western Europe. Yet its spread has been uneven - South Africa is the only country in Africa to take the step; Taiwan the only one in Asia.

The summary table below lists in chronological order the sovereign states (the United Nations member states and Taiwan) that have legalized same-sex marriage. As of 2024, 36 states have legalized in some capacity (the status of same-sex marriage in Nepal is ambiguous).

Dates are when marriages between same-sex couples began to be officially certified, or when local laws were passed if marriages were already legal under higher authority.

Same-sex marriage around the world

Marriage open to same-sex couples (rings: individual cases)

Civil unions or domestic partnerships

Legislation or binding domestic court ruling establishing same-sex marriage, but marriage is not yet provided for

Same-sex marriage recognized with full rights when performed remotely or abroad

Neither same-sex marriage nor civil unions allowed; allows unregistered cohabitation, legal guardianship

Limited recognition of marriage performed in certain other jurisdictions (residency rights for spouses)

Country subject to an international court ruling to recognize same-sex marriage

Same-sex unions not legally recognized

On 12 March 2015, the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution encouraging EU institutions and member states to "[reflect] on the recognition of same-sex marriage or same-sex civil union as a political, social and human and civil rights issue". In 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that all signatory countries must allow same-sex marriage.

In response to the international spread of same-sex marriage, a number of countries have enacted preventative constitutional bans, with the most recent being Russia in 2020 and Mali and Tuvalu in 2023. In other countries, such restrictions and limitations are effected through legislation. Even before same-sex marriage was first legislated, some countries had constitutions that specified that marriage was between a man and a woman.

Same-sex marriage banned by secular constitution

Same-sex marriage banned by constitutionally mandated Islamic law or morality

Same-sex marriage banned for Muslims

International court rulings

European Court of Human Rights

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in Schalk and Kopf v Austria, a case involving an Austrian same-sex couple who were denied the right to marry. The court found, by a vote of 4 to 3, that their human rights had not been violated. The court further stated that same-sex unions are not protected under art. 12 of ECHR ("Right to marry"), which exclusively protects the right to marry of opposite-sex couples (without regard if the sex of the partners is the result of birth or of sex change), but they are protected under art. 8 of ECHR ("Right to respect for private and family life") and art. 14 ("Prohibition of discrimination").

Article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that: "Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right", not limiting marriage to those in a heterosexual relationship. However, the ECHR stated in Schalk and Kopf v Austria that this provision was intended to limit marriage to heterosexual relationships, as it used the term "men and women" instead of "everyone". Nevertheless, the court accepted and is considering cases concerning same-sex marriage recognition, e.g. Andersen v. Poland. In 2021, the court ruled in Fedotova and Others v. Russia-followed by later judgements concerning other member states-that countries must provide some sort of legal recognition to same-sex couples, although not necessarily marriage.

European Union

On 5 June 2018, the European Court of Justice ruled, in a case from Romania, that, under the specific conditions of the couple in question, married same-sex couples have the same residency rights as other married couples in an EU country, even if that country does not permit or recognize same-sex marriage. However, the ruling was not implemented in Romania and on 14 September 2021 the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the European Commission to ensure that the ruling is respected across the EU.

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Alexandra Chávez and Michelle Avilés, the first same-sex couple to marry in Ecuador

On 8 January 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ruled that the American Convention on Human Rights mandates and requires the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The landmark ruling was fully binding on Costa Rica and set binding precedent in the other signatory countries. The Court recommended that governments issue temporary decrees recognizing same-sex marriage until new legislation is brought in. Among states without same-sex marriage, the ruling applies to Barbados, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Suriname. The Court said that governments "must recognize and guarantee all the rights that are derived from a family bond between people of the same sex". They also said that it was inadmissible and discriminatory for a separate legal provision to be established (such as civil unions) instead of same-sex marriage. The ruling has directly led to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Costa Rica and Ecuador.

Other arrangements

Civil unions

Many advocates, such as this November 2008 protester at a demonstration in New York City against California Proposition 8, reject the notion of civil unions, describing them as inferior to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.[77]

Civil union, civil partnership, domestic partnership, registered partnership, unregistered partnership, and unregistered cohabitation statuses offer varying legal benefits of marriage. As of 29 April 2024, countries that have an alternative form of legal recognition other than marriage on a national level are: Bolivia, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel (registered foreign marriage and domestic common-law marriage), Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Montenegro and San Marino. Poland and Slovakia offer more limited rights. On a subnational level, the Dutch constituent country of Aruba allows same-sex couples to access civil unions or partnerships, but restrict marriage to couples of the opposite sex. Additionally, various cities and counties in Cambodia and Japan offer same-sex couples varying levels of benefits, which include hospital visitation rights and others.

Additionally, eighteen countries that have legally recognized same-sex marriage also have an alternative form of recognition for same-sex couples, usually available to heterosexual couples as well: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and Uruguay.

Non-sexual same-sex marriage

Female same-sex marriage is practiced among the Gikuyu, Nandi, Kamba, Kipsigis, and to a lesser extent neighboring peoples. About 5-10% of women are in such marriages. However, this is not seen as homosexual, but is instead a way for families without sons to keep their inheritance within the family.

Among the Igbo people and probably other peoples in the south of the country, there are circumstances where a marriage between women is considered appropriate, such as when a woman has no child and her husband dies, and she takes a wife to perpetuate her inheritance and family lineage.

The American Anthropological Association stated on 26 February 2004:

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

Research findings from 1998 to 2015 from the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, Florida State University, the University of Amsterdam, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Stanford University, the University of California-San Francisco, the University of California-Los Angeles, Tufts University, Boston Medical Center, the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, and independent researchers also support the findings of this study.

The overall socio-economic and health effects of legal access to same-sex marriage around the world have been summarized by Badgett and co-authors. The review found that sexual minority individuals took-up legal marriage when it became available to them (but at lower rates than different-sex couples). There is instead no evidence that same-sex marriage legalization affected different-sex marriages. On the health side, same-sex marriage legalization increased health insurance coverage for individuals in same-sex couples (in the US), and it led to improvements in sexual health among men who have sex with men, while there is mixed evidence on mental health effects among sexual minorities. In addition, the study found mixed evidence on a range of downstream social outcomes such as attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people and employment choices of sexual minorities.

As of 2006, the data of current psychological and other social science studies on same-sex marriage in comparison to mixed-sex marriage indicate that same-sex and mixed-sex relationships do not differ in their essential psychosocial dimensions; that a parent's sexual orientation is unrelated to their ability to provide a healthy and nurturing family environment; and that marriage bestows substantial psychological, social, and health benefits. Same-sex parents and carers and their children are likely to benefit in numerous ways from legal recognition of their families, and providing such recognition through marriage will bestow greater benefit than civil unions or domestic partnerships. Studies in the United States have correlated legalization of same-sex marriage to lower rates of HIV infection, psychiatric disorders, and suicide rate in the LGBT population.

While few societies have recognized same-sex unions as marriages, the historical and anthropological record reveals a large range of attitudes towards same-sex unions ranging from praise, through full acceptance and integration, sympathetic toleration, indifference, prohibition and discrimination, to persecution and physical annihilation. Opponents of same-sex marriages have argued that same-sex marriage, while doing good for the couples that participate in them and the children they are raising, undermines a right of children to be raised by their biological mother and father. Some supporters of same-sex marriages take the view that the government should have no role in regulating personal relationships, while others argue that same-sex marriages would provide social benefits to same-sex couples. The debate regarding same-sex marriages includes debate based upon social viewpoints as well as debate based on majority rules, religious convictions, economic arguments, health-related concerns, and a variety of other issues.

Gay couple with a child

Scientific literature indicates that parents' financial, psychological and physical well-being is enhanced by marriage and that children benefit from being raised by two parents within a legally recognized union (either a mixed-sex or same-sex union). As a result, professional scientific associations have argued for same-sex marriage to be legally recognized as it will be beneficial to the children of same-sex parents or carers.

Scientific research has been generally consistent in showing that lesbian and gay parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents. According to scientific literature reviews, there is no evidence to the contrary.

Compared to heterosexual couples, same-sex couples have a greater need for adoption or assisted reproductive technology to become parents. Lesbian couples often use artificial insemination to achieve pregnancy, and reciprocal in vitro fertilization (where one woman provides the egg and the other gestates the child) is becoming more popular in the 2020s, although many couples cannot afford it. Surrogacy is an option for wealthier gay male couples, but the cost is prohibitive. Other same-sex couples adopt children or raise the children from earlier opposite-sex relationships.

Legal status of adoption by same-sex couples around the world:

Second-parent (stepchild) adoption allowed

No laws allowing adoption by same-sex couples and no same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage but adoption by married same-sex couples not allowed

All states that allow same-sex marriage also allow the joint adoption of children by those couples with the exceptions of Nepal, Ecuador and a third of states in Mexico, though such restrictions have been ruled unconstitutional in Mexico. In addition, Bolivia, Croatia, Israel and Liechtenstein, which do not recognize same-sex marriage nonetheless permit joint adoption by unmarried same-sex couples. Some additional states that do not recognize same-sex marriage allow stepchild adoption by couples in civil unions include Italy (on a case-by-case basis) and San Marino.

Transgender and intersex people

The legal status of same-sex marriage may have implications for the marriages of couples in which one or both parties are transgender, depending on how sex is defined within a jurisdiction. Transgender and intersex individuals may be prohibited from marrying partners of the "opposite" sex or permitted to marry partners of the "same" sex due to legal distinctions. In any legal jurisdiction where marriages are defined without distinction of a requirement of a male and female, these complications do not occur. In addition, some legal jurisdictions recognize a legal and official change of gender, which would allow a transgender male or female to be legally married in accordance with an adopted gender identity.

In the United Kingdom, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 allows a person who has lived in their chosen gender for at least two years to receive a gender recognition certificate officially recognizing their new gender. Because in the United Kingdom marriages were until recently only for mixed-sex couples and civil partnerships are only for same-sex couples, a person had to dissolve their civil partnership before obtaining a gender recognition certificate, and the same was formerly true for marriages in England and Wales, and still is in other territories. Such people are then free to enter or re-enter civil partnerships or marriages in accordance with their newly recognized gender identity. In Austria, a similar provision requiring transsexual people to divorce before having their legal sex marker corrected was found to be unconstitutional in 2006. In Quebec, prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage, only unmarried people could apply for legal change of gender. With the advent of same-sex marriage, this restriction was dropped. A similar provision including sterilization also existed in Sweden, but was phased out in 2013. In the United States, transgender and intersex marriages was subject to legal complications. As definitions and enforcement of marriage are defined by the states, these complications vary from state to state, as some of them prohibit legal changes of gender.

In the United States before the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, couples in same-sex marriages could only obtain a divorce in jurisdictions that recognized same-sex marriages, with some exceptions.

Judicial and legislative

There are differing positions regarding the manner in which same-sex marriage has been introduced into democratic jurisdictions. A " majority rules" position holds that same-sex marriage is valid, or void and illegal, based upon whether it has been accepted by a simple majority of voters or of their elected representatives.

In contrast, a civil rights view holds that the institution can be validly created through the ruling of an impartial judiciary carefully examining the questioning and finding that the right to marry regardless of the gender of the participants is guaranteed under the civil rights laws of the jurisdiction.

Public opinion

Public opinion of same-sex marriage. Fraction in favor:[119]

Numerous polls and studies on the issue have been conducted. A trend of increasing support for same-sex marriage has been revealed across many countries of the world, often driven in large part by a generational difference in support. Polling that was conducted in developed democracies in this century shows a majority of people in support of same-sex marriage. Support for same-sex marriage has increased across every age group, political ideology, religion, gender, race and region of various developed countries in the world.

Various detailed polls and studies on same-sex marriage that were conducted in several countries show that support for same-sex marriage significantly increases with higher levels of education and is also significantly stronger among younger generations, with a clear trend of continually increasing support.

Greater support with youth

Pew Research polling results from 32 countries found 21 with statistically higher support for same-sex marriage among those under 35 than among those over 35 in 2022-2023. Countries with the greatest absolute difference are placed to the left in the following chart. Countries without a significant generational difference are placed to the right.

A 2016 survey by the Varkey Foundation found similarly high support of same-sex marriage (63%) among 18-21-year-olds in an online survey of 18 countries around the world.

(The sampling error is approx. 4% for Nigeria and 3% for the other countries. Because of legal constraints, the question on same-sex marriage was not asked in the survey countries of Russia and Indonesia.)

Opinion polls for same-sex marriage by country

Same-sex marriage performed nationwide

Same-sex marriage performed in some parts of the country

Civil unions or registered partnerships nationwide

Civil unions or registered partnerships pending

Same-sex sexual activity is illegal

Country

Pollster

Year

For [m]

Against [m]

Neither[n]

Margin
of error

Ref.

2021

46%

[135]

Ipsos

2023

51%
(64%)

20% not sure

±3.5% [o]

[131]

Pew Research Center

2023

42%

1%

[132]

CIEP

2018

35%

1%

[139]

Apretaste

2019

37%

-

[140]

Median agency

2019

-

-

[141]

Universidad Francisco Gavidia

2021

-

[144]

Pew Research Center

2023

3%

±3.6%

[132]

Gallup

2006

11%

-

[149]

Pew Research Center

2023

5%

3%

±3.6%

[132]

Kyodo News

2023

64%
(72%)

25%
(28%)

11%

[150]

Ipsos

2023

40% [31% support some rights]
(51%)

22% not sure

±3.5%

[131]

Pew Research Center

2023

9%

1%

±3.6%

[132]

Liechtenstein Institut

2021

28%

0%

[152]

Malaysia

Pew Research Center

2023

17%

1%

[132]

Pew Research Center

2023

2%

1%

±3.6%

[132]

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

AmericasBarometer

2017

4%

-

±0.6%

[130]

CNA

2023

37%

[159]

Pew Research Center

2023

12%

[132]

Rating

2023

22%

±1.5%

[160]

Ipsos

2023

9% not sure

±3.5%

[131]

1. Same-sex marriage is performed and recognized by law in continental Australia and in the non-self-governing possessions of ^ Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands, which follow Australian law.

2. Same-sex marriage is performed and recognized by law in continental Denmark, the ^ Faroe Islands and Greenland, which together make up the Realm of Denmark.

3. Same-sex marriage is performed and recognized by law in ^ the continental Netherlands, as well as in the Caribbean municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. Marriages entered into there have minimal recognition in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which together make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

4. Same-sex marriage is performed and recognized by law in ^ New Zealand proper, but not in its possession of Tokelau, nor in the Cook Islands and Niue, which make up the Realm of New Zealand.

5. Same-sex marriage is performed and recognized by law in all parts of the United Kingdom and in ^ its non-Caribbean possessions, but not in its Caribbean possessions, namely Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

6. Same-sex marriage is performed and recognized by law in all ^ fifty states of the US and in the District of Columbia, in all overseas territories except American Samoa, and in all tribal nations that do not have their own marriage laws, as well as in most nations that do. The largest of the dozen or so known exceptions among the federal reservations are Navajo and Gila River, and the largest among the shared-sovereignty Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Areas are the Creek and Citizen Potawatomi. These polities ban same-sex marriage and do not recognize marriages from other jurisdictions, though members may still marry under state law and be accorded all the rights of marriage under state and federal law.

7. Because some polls do not report 'neither', those that do are listed with simple yes/no percentages in parentheses, so their figures can be compared.

8. [+ more urban/educated than representative]

References

1. ^ VERPOEST, LIEN (2017). "The End of Rhetorics: LGBT policies in Russia and the European Union". Studia Diplomatica. 68 (4): 3-20. ISSN 0770-2965. JSTOR 26531664.

2. Multiple sources:

Coghlan, Andy (16 June 2008). "Gay brains structured like those of the opposite sex". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019.

Lamanna, Mary Ann; Riedmann, Agnes; Stewart, Susan D. (2014). Marriages, Families, and Relationships: Making Choices in a Diverse Society. Cengage Learning. p. 82. ISBN 978-1305176898. Archived from the original on 30 November 2016. [T]he APA says that sexual orientation is not a choice [...]. (American Psychological Association, 2010).

Pawelski, J. G.; Perrin, E. C.; Foy, J. M.; Allen, C. E.; Crawford, J. E.; Del Monte, M.; Kaufman, M.; Klein, J. D.; Smith, K.; Springer, S.; Tanner, J. L.; Vickers, D. L. (2006). "The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children". Pediatrics. 118 (1): 349-364. doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1279. PMID 16818585. S2CID 219194821. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019.

American Medical Association; American Academy of Pediatrics; American Psychological Association; American Psychiatric Association; American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy; National Association of Social Workers; American Psychoanalytic Association; American Academy of Family Physicians; et al. "Brief of [medical organizations] as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners" (PDF). supremecourt.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 April 2019.

Bever, Lindsey (7 July 2014). "Children of same-sex couples are happier and healthier than peers, research shows". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 4 May 2019.

Pawelski, James G.; Perrin, Ellen C.; Foy, Jane M.; Allen, Carole E.; Crawford, James E.; Del Monte, Mark; Kaufman, Miriam; Klein, Jonathan D.; Smith, Karen; Springer, Sarah; Tanner, J. Lane; Vickers, Dennis L. (July 2006). "The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children". Pediatrics. 118 (1). American Academy of Pediatrics: 349-64. doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1279. PMID 16818585. S2CID 219194821. Archived from the original on 1 May 2011. In fact, growing up with parents who are lesbian or gay may confer some advantages to children.

3. ^ "Marriage of Same-Sex Couples - 2006 Position Statement Canadian Psychological Association" (PDF). 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 April 2009.

4. Multiple sources: ^

"Resolution on Sexual Orientation and Marriage" (PDF). American Psychological Association. 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 May 2011.

"Brief of the American Psychological Association, The California Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy as amici curiae in support of plaintiff-appellees - Appeal from United States District Court for the Northern District of California Civil Case No. 09-CV-2292 VRW (Honorable Vaughn R. Walker)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 April 2015.

"Marriage of Same-Sex Couples - 2006 Position Statement" (PDF). Canadian Psychological Association. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 July 2012.

Pawelski JG, Perrin EC, Foy JM, et al. (July 2006). "The effects of marriage, civil union, and domestic partnership laws on the health and well-being of children". Pediatrics. 118 (1): 349-64. doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1279. PMID 16818585. S2CID 219194821.

Pawelski, J. G.; Perrin, E. C.; Foy, J. M.; Allen, C. E.; Crawford, J. E.; Del Monte, M.; Kaufman, M.; Klein, J. D.; Smith, K.; Springer, S.; Tanner, J. L.; Vickers, D. L. (2006). "The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children". Pediatrics. 118 (1): 349-364. doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1279. PMID 16818585. S2CID 219194821. Archived from the original on 1 May 2011.

5. ^ Pratt, Patricia (29 May 2012). "Albany area real estate and the Marriage Equality Act". Albany Examiner. On July 24, 2011 the Marriage Equality Act became a law in New York State forever changing the state's legal view of what a married couple is.

6. ^ Ring, Trudy (20 December 2012). "Newt Gingrich: Marriage Equality Inevitable, OK". The Advocate. Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 23 December 2012. He [Newt Gingrich] noted to HuffPo that he not only has a lesbian half-sister, LGBT rights activist Candace Gingrich, but has gay friends who've gotten married in Iowa, where their unions are legal. Public opinion has shifted in favor of marriage equality, he said, and the Republican Party could end up on the wrong side of history if it continues to go against the tide.

7. ^ APStylebook [@APStylebook] (12 February 2019). "The term same-sex marriage is preferred over gay marriage. In places where it's legal, same-sex marriage is no different from other marriages, so the term should be used only when germane and needed to distinguish from marriages between heterosexual couples. #APStyleChat" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 19 October 2022 - via Twitter.

8. ^ Fedorak, Shirley A. (2008). Anthropology matters!. [Toronto], Ont.: University of Toronto Press. pp. Ch. 11, p. 174. ISBN 978-1442601086.

9. Gough, Kathleen E. (January-June 1959). "The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 89 (1): 23-34. doi:10.2307/2844434. JSTOR 2844434.

10. ^ Murray, Stephen O.; Roscoe, Will (2001). Boy-wives and female husbands : studies of African homosexualities (1st pbk. ed.). New York: St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0312238292. Archived from the original on 4 February 2021.

11. ^ Njambi, Wairimu; O'Brien, William (Spring 2001). "Revisiting "Woman-Woman Marriage": Notes on Gikuyu Women". NWSA Journal. 12 (1): 1-23. doi:10.1353/nwsa.2000.0015. S2CID 144520611. Archived from the original on 13 January 2012.

12. Rabbi Joel Roth. ^ Homosexuality Archived 24 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine rabbinicalassembly.org 1992.

13. Martial 1.24 and 12.42; Juvenal 2.117-42. Williams, ^ Roman Homosexuality, pp. 28, 280; Karen K. Hersh, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 36; Caroline Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 151ff.

14. ^ Suetonius, Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and Aurelius Victor are the sources cited by Williams, Roman Homosexuality, p. 279.

15. Williams, ^ Roman Homosexuality, pp. 278-279, citing Dio Cassius and Aelius Lampridius.

16. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, p. 280.

17. ^ LGBT Marriage News [@LGBTMarriage] (2 November 2022). "#LIECHTENSTEIN: Parliament votes 23-2 in support of motion calling on government to introduce #EqualMarriage. Government will now respond, possibly bringing in bill with consultation period, and likely eventually a referendum. #lgbt https://t.co/9b3zKXsYP8" (Tweet) - via Twitter.

18. ^ "European Convention on Human Rights" (PDF). ECHR.coe.int. European Court of Human Rights. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 July 2014.

19. ^ Palazzo, Nausica (April 2023). "Fedotova and Others v. Russia : Dawn of a new era for European LGBTQ families?". Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law. 30 (2): 216-228. doi:10.1177/1023263X231195455. S2CID 261655476.

20. ^ "WETTEN, DECRETEN, ORDONNANTIES EN VERORDENINGEN LOIS, DECRETS, ORDONNANCES ET REGLEMENTS" (PDF). Ejustice.jkust.fgov.be. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 April 2019.

21. ^ Badgett, M.V. Lee; Carpenter, Christopher S.; Lee, Maxine J.; Sansone, Dario (2024). "A review of the effects of legal access to same-sex marriage". Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. doi:10.1002/pam.22587.

22. Pawelski, J.G.; Perrin, E.C.; Foy, J.M.; Allen, C.E.; Crawford, J.E.; Del Monte, M.; Kaufman, M.; Klein, J.D.; Smith, K.; Springer, S.; Tanner, J.L.; Vickers, D.L. (2006). "The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children". Pediatrics. 118 (1): 349-64. doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1279. PMID 16818585. S2CID 219194821.

23. ^ Raifman, Julia; Moscoe, Ellen; Austin, S. Bryn; McConnell, Margaret (2017). "Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts". JAMA Pediatrics. 171 (4): 350-356. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.4529. PMC . PMID 28241285.

24. ^ Pawelski JG, Perrin EC, Foy JM, et al. (July 2006). "The effects of marriage, civil union, and domestic partnership laws on the health and well-being of children". Pediatrics. 118 (1): 349-64. doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1279. PMID 16818585. S2CID 219194821.

25. ^ "Brief of the American Psychological Association, The California Psychological Association, The American Psychiatric Association, and The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy as Amici Curiae in Support of Plaintiff-Appellees" (PDF). United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 April 2015.

26. ^ Herek, GM (September 2006). "Legal recognition of same-sex relationships in the United States: a social science perspective" (PDF). The American Psychologist. 61 (6): 607-21. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.6.607. PMID 16953748. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 June 2010.

27. ^ Biblarz, Timothy J.; Stacey, Judith (February 2010). "How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?" (PDF). Journal of Marriage and Family. 72 (1): 3-22. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.593.4963. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 May 2013.

28. ^ Goldberg, Abbie E. (February 2023). "LGBTQ-parent families: Diversity, intersectionality, and social context". Current Opinion in Psychology. 49: 101517. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101517. PMID 36502588. S2CID 253665001.

29. ^ Leal, Daniela; Gato, Jorge; Coimbra, Susana; Freitas, Daniela; Tasker, Fiona (December 2021). "Social Support in the Transition to Parenthood Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Persons: A Systematic Review". Sexuality Research and Social Policy. 18 (4): 1165-1179. doi:10.1007/s13178-020-00517-y. hdl:10216/132451.

30. ^ Deborah, Anthony (Spring 2012). "CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE: TRANSSEXUAL MARRIAGE AND THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN SEX AND LEGAL SEX". Texas Journal of Women & the Law. 21 (2).

31. "Cultura polítical de la democracia en la República Dominicana y en las Américas, 2016/17" (PDF). Vanderbilt University (in Spanish). 13 November 2017. p. 132.

32. "Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe" (PDF). Pew.

33. "Eurobarometer on Discrimination 2019: The social acceptance of LGBTI people in the EU" (PDF). TNS. European Commission. p. 2. The question was whether same-sex marriage should be allowed throughout Europe.

34. "Barómetro de las Américas: Actualidad - 2 de junio de 2015" (PDF). Vanderbilt University. 2 July 2015.

35. ^ "Avaliku arvamuse uuring LGBT teemadel (2023)" (PDF). Eesti Inimõiguste Keskus. April 2023.

36. ^ "Litlar breytingar á viðhorfi til giftinga samkynhneigðra" (PDF) (in Icelandic). Gallup. September 2006.

37. ^ "Most Mozambicans against homosexual violence, study finds". MambaOnline - Gay South Africa online. 4 June 2018., (full report)

Bibliography

Brownson, James V. (2013). Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reforming the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8028-6863-3.

Calò, Emanuele (2009). Matrimonio à la carte - Matrimoni, convivenze registrate e divorzi dopo l'intervento comunitario. Milano: Giuffrè.

Cere, Daniel (2004). Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canada's New Social Experiment. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-2895-6.

Chauncey, George (2004). Why Marriage?: The History Shaping Today's Debate over Gay Equality. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00957-2.

Oliver, Marilyn Tower (1998). Gay and lesbian rights: a struggle. Enslow Publishers. ISBN 978-0-89490-958-0. Archived from the original on 4 February 2021.

Rugg, Sally (2019). How Powerful We Are : Behind the scenes with one of Australia's leading activists. Australia: Hachette Australia. ISBN 9780733642227. OCLC 1103918151.

Wolfson, Evan (2004). Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-6459-4.

External links

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Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same legal sex. As of 2024, marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 36 countries, with a total population of 1.3 billion people (17% of the world's population).

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January 20, 2020

The legal basis for firearm possession in the US is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. But how are guns regulated? DW looks at who can buy and sell them - and how one loophole undermines gun control.

Gun control is one of the most divisive issues in American politics. With each mass shooting - defined as four or more victims having been killed indiscriminately - antagonism grows between both sides of the gun control argument.

Proponents of stricter gun regulations fear for their safety in a country where there is an average of 88 guns per 100 people, according to the 2011 Small Arms Survey. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence estimates that around 114,994 people are shot each year in the US. This includes murders, assaults, accidents, police intervention, suicide attempts and suicides.

Opponents of regulatory arguments, however, also fear a loss of safety. They argue that restricting the right to bear arms would leave citizens unable to protect themselves in their daily lives or, in a worst-case scenario, from a government turned against the people.

Though regulations vary from state to state, there are a few key conditions for obtaining guns in the US.
1. Is there a minimum age?
The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), which regulates firearms at the federal level, requires that citizens and legal residents must be at least 18 years of age to purchase shotguns or rifles and ammunition. All other firearms - handguns, for example - can only be sold to people 21 and older.

State or local officials may implement higher age restrictions but are not allowed to lower the federal minimum.

Read more: US gun control: 'Conservatives must say enough is enough'
2. Who's restricted from purchasing or possessing firearms?
Fugitives, people deemed a danger to society and patients involuntarily committed to mental institutions are among those who may not purchase firearms. People with prior felony convictions that include a prison sentence exceeding one year, or misdemeanors carrying sentences of more than two years, are also prohibited from purchasing firearms.

Federal law also blocks the sale of guns to people who have been found guilty of unlawfully possessing or using controlled substances within the past year. This includes marijuana, which, though legalized in many US states, remains illegal under federal law.

Other restrictions apply to people who have been issued restraining orders by courts to prevent harassment, stalking or threatening; people who have renounced their citizenship; dishonorably discharged military personnel; unauthorized migrants; and people temporarily visiting the US on nonimmigrant visas, for example as tourists.
3. Does the federal or state government regulate firearms?
The Second Amendment serves as the legal basis for the "right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Read more: German weapons firms find lucrative market in United States

Though state and local governments regulate whether residents may, for example, carry guns in public, laws regulating who may receive or possess guns are set out at the federal level.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a division of the Department of Justice, administers the GCA. The ATF also regulates the standards for issuing licenses to gun vendors.

Shotguns, rifles, machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers are regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934. The purchase of semi-automatic weapons is legal in most states, as are automatic weapons made before 1986.

Read more: NRA ad sparks uproar with call to 'fight' Trump opponents
4. Who may sell firearms?
Like handgun owners, dealers interested in obtaining a Federal Firearms License (FFL) must be at least 21 years of age. They must have premises for conducting business and must alert a local law enforcement official at the time of submitting their applications to the federal bureau that regulates firearms. Just like gun owners, they must fulfill the same criteria regarding their history of prior convictions and mental state. The license fee costs $200 (€170) for an initial three-year period and $90 for each subsequent three-year-long renewal.

Selling firearms online also falls under these regulations. Although the purchase may be paid for online, the gun itself must be shipped to a registered FFL holder, who then conducts the necessary background check before handing the firearm over to its owner.

However, the law is unclear on what constitutes selling guns for profit. Any individual may sell firearms without a license if his or her motive isn't to make profit for livelihood through repeated and regular sales.
5. Is a background check required to purchase a firearm?
Yes. The amendment to the 1968 Gun Control Act - known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 - requires holders of FFLs to conduct a background check. Potential firearm purchasers fill out a federal form known as the ATF 4473, which checks for prior convictions and other red flags. FFL holders then use the information provided on the form in the background check.

States may decide whether the background check is carried out solely by the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) or a combination of the NICS and state agency information. Roughly 30 states rely solely on the NICS.

Estimated to take under 10 minutes by phone or online, the check gives the FFL holder an immediate answer: approve, delay or deny. A delay indicates the need for further research for three business days, after which point FFL holders can act at their own discretion if the research proves inconclusive.

The Brady law, however, does not apply to someone who is obtaining a firearm from an individual without an FFL.
6. Do states require permits to purchase firearms?
Only a dozen of the US's 50 states require purchase permits for handguns. Of those states, only three - California, Connecticut and Hawaii - require permits for the purchase of rifles and shotguns.
Read more: Las Vegas shooter converted guns to automatics with gadget 7. Do states require permits to carry firearms?
California, for example, requires applicants to pass a written test and enroll in a gun safety class to obtain purchase permits. States with this requirement do not recognize the "concealed carry reciprocity" policies of some states, which allow gun owners licensed in one state to bring their weapons to another.

Most states require permits to carry handguns. Concealed carry and open carry vary by state. Some states allow residents to carry handguns without permits.
8. What is the 'gunshow loophole'?
By contrast, virtually no state requires a permit to carry rifles and shotguns. Massachusetts and New Jersey require people carrying rifles and shotguns to bring along a form of ID or a firearms identification.

The law on selling, receiving and possessing firearms is clear. Yet not every individual providing the gun in a transfer requires an FFL, which in turn means that not every buyer is legally subject to a background check. This potentially enables guns to fall into the hands of users who might otherwise not be allowed to own a firearm.

According to the ATF, anyone can sell a gun without an FFL from their home, online, at a flea market or at a gun show as long as he or she is not conducting the sale as part of regular business activity. One example would be someone who sells a firearm from his or her personal collection. Others who are exempt include those giving guns as gifts. Only individuals whose "principal motive" is to make a profit via sale must obtain an FFL.

Commonly referred to as the "gunshow loophole," this ambiguity also explains how a purchase can occur without a background check - and without breaking the law. A 2017 survey by Harvard and Northeastern universities estimates that roughly one in five transactions occur without a background check.

A gun may also be purchased on behalf of a third party as long as it is a gift and as long as the recipient does not violate federal restrictions on gun ownership to the best of the gift giver's knowledge. The same applies to the general transfer of guns. Children younger than 18 may possess guns that were given to them by parents or guardians as gifts provided that they have written permission.

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8 facts about gun control in the US - DW - 01/20/2020

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The legal basis for firearm possession in the US is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. But how are guns regulated? DW looks at who can buy and sell them - and how one loophole undermines gun control.

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The natural resources of the earth's crust upon which industry depends for metals, non-metallics and most of its energy, come from deposits in the crust carrying six to over 1000 times the normal content of the required elements.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/world/americas/biden-immigration-reform.html

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Current news and data streams about global warming and climate change from NASA.

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"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."

-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut

Freedom of speech, the press, association, assembly, and petition: This set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. It is the foundation of a vibrant democracy, and without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither away.

The fight for freedom of speech has been a bedrock of the ACLU's mission since the organization was founded in 1920, driven by the need to protect the constitutional rights of conscientious objectors and anti-war protesters. The organization's work quickly spread to combating censorship, securing the right to assembly, and promoting free speech in schools.

Almost a century later, these battles have taken on new forms, but they persist. The ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project continues to champion freedom of expression in its myriad forms - whether through protest, media, online speech, or the arts - in the face of new threats. For example, new avenues for censorship have arisen alongside the wealth of opportunities for speech afforded by the Internet. The threat of mass government surveillance chills the free expression of ordinary citizens, legislators routinely attempt to place new restrictions on online activity, and journalism is criminalized in the name of national security. The ACLU is always on guard to ensure that the First Amendment's protections remain robust - in times of war or peace, for bloggers or the institutional press, online or off.

Over the years, the ACLU has represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone.

Some examples of our free speech work from recent years include:

In 2019, we filed a petition of certiorari on behalf of DeRay Mckesson, a prominent civil rights activist and Black Lives Matter movement organizer, urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that, if left standing, would dismantle civil rights era speech protections safeguarding the First Amendment right to protest.

In 2019, we successfully challenged a spate of state anti-protest laws aimed at Indigenous and climate activists opposing pipeline construction.

We've called on big social media companies to resist calls for censorship.

We're representing five former intelligence agency employees and military personnel in a lawsuit challenging the government's pre-publication review system, which prohibits millions of former intelligence agency employees and military personnel from writing or speaking about topics related to their government service without first obtaining government approval.

In 2018, we filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the NRA's lawsuit alleging that the state of New York violated its First Amendment rights should be allowed to proceed.

In 2016, the we defended the First Amendment rights of environmental and racial justice activists in Uniontown, Alabama, who were sued for defamation after they organized against the town's hazardous coal ash landfill.

In 2014, the ACLU of Michigan filed an amicus brief arguing that the police violated the First Amendment by ejecting an anti-Muslim group called Bible Believers from a street festival based on others' violent reactions to their speech.

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Free Speech | American Civil Liberties Union

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Protecting free speech means protecting a free press, the democratic process, diversity of thought, and so much more. The ACLU has worked since 1920 to ensure that freedom of speech is protected for everyone.

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Without the brilliant planning and heroic sacrifices of the D-Day invasion, the Allies may have never defeated the Nazi forces in Europe. On June 6, 1944, more than 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of Normandy's fiercely defended beaches in northern France in an operation that proved to be a critical turning point in World War II. Below are key facts on the planning and execution of the epic Allied invasion.

1. D-Day Meaning: The 'D' in D-Day doesn't actually stand for anything.

Unlike V-E Day ("Victory in Europe") or V-J Day (" Victory over Japan"), the "D" in D-Day isn't short for "departure" or "decision." As early as World War I, the U.S. military used the term D-Day to designate the launch date of a mission. One reason was to keep the actual date out of the hands of spies; another was to serve as a placeholder until an actual date was chosen. They also used H-Hour for the specific time of the launch.

2. The D-Day invasion took years of planning.

Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill knew from the start of the war that a massive invasion of mainland Europe would be critical to relieve pressure from the Soviet army fighting the Nazis in the east. Initially, a plan called "Operation Sledgehammer" called for an Allied invasion of ports in northwest France as early as 1943, but Roosevelt and Churchill decided to invade Northern Africa first and attack Europe's "soft underbelly" through Italy.

3. D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in military history.

According to the D-Day Center, the invasion, officially called "Operation Overlord," combined the forces of 156,115 U.S., British and Canadian troops, 6,939 ships and landing vessels, and 2,395 aircraft and 867 gliders that delivered airborne troops.

4. Allied forces carried out a massive deception campaign in advance of D-Day.

The idea behind the ruse was to trick the Nazis into thinking that the invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais, the closest French coastline to England. The Allies used fake radio transmissions, double agents, and even a "phantom army," commanded by American General George Patton, to throw Germany off the scent.
READ MORE: Fooling Hitler: The Elaborate Ruse Behind D-Day
5. A D-Day dress rehearsal was a fiasco.

Two months before D-Day, Allied forces conducted a disastrous dress rehearsal of the Normandy invasion on an evacuated English beach called Slapton Sands. Known as "Exercise Tiger," 749 U.S. troops lost their lives after a fleet of German E-boats caught wind of the mock invasion and torpedoed American tank landing ships. Survivors described the Exercise Tiger fiasco as more terrifying than the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.

6. Germany had fortified France's coast.

Anticipating an Allied invasion somewhere along the French coast, Adolf Hitler charged Field Marshal Erwin Rommel with fortifying Nazi defenses in France. In 1943, Rommel completed construction of the " Atlantic Wall," Germany's 2,400-mile line of bunkers, landmines and beach and water obstacles. It's estimated that the Nazis planted 4 million landmines along Normandy's beaches.

7. The U.S. shipped tons of supplies to the staging area in England.

Since Operation Overlord was launched from England, the U.S. military had to ship 7 million tons of supplies to the staging area, including 450,000 tons of ammunition.

8. Bad weather delayed the invasion.

Troops and supplies were in place by May, but bad weather delayed the launch date of the invasion. On June 5, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in charge of Operation Overlord, decided that the invasion would happen the next day, in part because the weather was still rough and Nazi planes were grounded. That same day, 1,000 British bombers dropped 5,000 tons of munitions on Nazi gun batteries along the Normandy coast to cripple Germany's defenses before the imminent invasion.

9. D-Day was carried out along five sections of beachfront.

Operation Overlord was divided among sections of beachfront along the Normandy coast codenamed, from West to East: "Utah," "Omaha," "Gold," "Juno" and "Sword."

10. Paratroopers launched the operation before dawn .

The D-Day invasion began in the pre-dawn hours of June 6 with thousands of paratroopers landing inland on the Utah and Sword beaches in an attempt to cut off exits and destroy bridges to slow Nazi reinforcements. American paratroopers suffered high casualties at Utah beach, some drowning under heavy equipment in flooded marshland, others shot out of the sky by Nazi snipers. The British and Canadian paratroopers met less resistance at Sword beach and quickly took two key bridges.
Video: Guy Whidden, Paratrooper
11. More than 156,000 Allied ground troops stormed the beaches.

In wave after wave of thousands of landing ships, more than 156,000 Allied infantrymen stormed the five beaches. Facing them were around 50,000 Germans troops. Stormy seas made the landings incredibly difficult, with many regiments coming ashore far from their target destinations. At Omaha Beach, only two of the 29 amphibious tanks even made it to land on their own power (three were later transported to the beach). At Utah Beach, the American troops included 14 Comanche "code-talkers" who relayed critical tactical messages in their Native American tongue.

12. The toughest fighting was on Omaha Beach.

At Omaha Beach, bombing runs had failed to take out heavily fortified Nazi artillery positions. The first waves of American fighters were cut down in droves by German machine gun fire as they scrambled across the mine-riddled beach. But U.S. forces persisted through the day-long slog, pushing forward to a fortified seawall and then up steep bluffs to take out the Nazi artillery posts by nightfall. All told, around 2,400 American troops were killed, wounded or unaccounted for after the fighting at Omaha Beach.
Video: Frank DeVita describes landing at Omaha Beach
13. Canadian troops at Juno Beach captured the most territory.

Canadian soldiers also suffered terrible casualties at Juno Beach, battling rough seas before landing on a heavily defended strip of shoreline. Similar to the Americans at Omaha Beach, the first lines of Canadian troops were gunned down en masse by Nazi artillery-estimates put the initial casualty rate at 50 percent-before pushing beyond the beachfront and chasing the Germans inland. In the end, the Canadians at Juno captured more towns and territory than any other battalions in Operation Overlord.

14. All five beaches were secured by Allied forces by June 11.

Five days after the D-Day invasion, troops immediately began installing two massive temporary harbors that had taken six months to construct back in England. All told, the Allies unloaded approximately 2,500,000 men, 500,000 vehicles and 4,000,000 tons of supplies at the temporary harbors over the remaining course of the war.

15. The D-Day invasion marked a turning point in the war.

The total Allied losses at Normandy are estimated to be at least 4,413. Total Allied casualties in the Battle of Normandy, which dragged on until August, topped 226,000. But thanks in part to the massive influx of troops and equipment, D-Day marked a decisive turning point in the war. Less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender.
READ MORE: How Many Were Killed on D-Day? Video: The Lasting Impact of War

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D-Day: Facts on the Epic 1944 Invasion That Changed the Course of WWII

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Without the brilliant planning and heroic sacrifices of the D-Day invasion, the Allies may have never defeated the Nazi forces in Europe. On June 6, 1944, more than 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of Normandy's fiercely defended beaches in northern France in an operation that proved to be a critical turning point in World War II.

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Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what exactly constitutes protected speech. The following are examples of speech, both direct (words) and symbolic (actions), that the Court has decided are either entitled to First Amendment protections, or not.

The First Amendment states, in relevant part, that:

"Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech."

Freedom of speech includes the right:

Not to speak (specifically, the right not to salute the flag).
West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war ("Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.").
Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).

To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages.
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

To contribute money (under certain circumstances) to political campaigns.
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).

To advertise commercial products and professional services (with some restrictions).
Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976); Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977).

To engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest).
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990).

Freedom of speech does not include the right:

To incite imminent lawless action.
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

To make or distribute obscene materials.
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).

To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).

To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).

Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event.
Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).

Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.
Morse v. Frederick, __ U.S. __ (2007).

Disclaimer: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for use in educational activities only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on legislation.

DISCLAIMER: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for educational purposes only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on any pending case or legislation.

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Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Learn about what this means.

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immigration: thousands of migrants forced to stay in mexico wait for direction from the biden administration  - cnnpolitics

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'It's frustrating': Thousands of migrants sit in Mexico desperate for answers from the Biden administration

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Within the span of a year and a half, a Cuban couple living on the US-Mexico border were repeatedly threatened, attacked and lost a baby after being assaulted, as they waited for their next immigration court date in the United States under a Trump-era policy.

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https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/22/us/joaquin-el-chapo-guzman-prison-seeking-appeal/index.html

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Changes in surface air temperature over the past 50 years.[1] The Arctic has warmed the most, and temperatures on land have generally increased more than sea surface temperatures.

Earth's average surface air temperature has increased almost 1.5°C (about2.5 °F) since the Industrial Revolution. Natural forces cause some variability, but the 20-year average shows the progressive influence of human activity.[2]

In common usage, climate change describes global warming-the ongoing increase in global average temperature-and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices add to greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas driving global warming, has grown by about 50% and is at levels unseen for millions of years.

Climate change has an increasingly large impact on the environment. Deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Amplified warming in the Arctic has contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include ocean heating, ocean acidification and sea level rise.

Climate change threatens people with increased flooding, extreme heat, increased food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Societies and ecosystems will experience more severe risks without action to limit warming. Adapting to climate change through efforts like flood control measures or drought-resistant crops partially reduces climate change risks, although some limits to adaptation have already been reached. Poorer communities are responsible for a small share of global emissions, yet have the least ability to adapt and are most vulnerable to climate change.

Many climate change impacts have been felt in recent years, with 2023 the warmest on record at +1.48 °C (2.66 °F) since regular tracking began in 1850. Additional warming will increase these impacts and can trigger tipping points, such as melting all of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 °C (4.9 °F) by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C will require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Fossil fuel use can be phased out by conserving energy and switching to energy sources that do not produce significant carbon pollution. These energy sources include wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power. Cleanly generated electricity can replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and running industrial processes. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover and farming with methods that capture carbon in soil.

Terminology

Before the 1980s it was unclear whether the warming effect of increased greenhouse gases was stronger than the cooling effect of airborne particulates in air pollution. Scientists used the term inadvertent climate modification to refer to human impacts on the climate at this time. In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change became more common, often being used interchangeably. Scientifically, global warming refers only to increased surface warming, while climate change describes both global warming and its effects on Earth's climate system, such as precipitation changes.

Climate change can also be used more broadly to include changes to the climate that have happened throughout Earth's history. Global warming-used as early as 1975-became the more popular term after NASA climate scientist James Hansen used it in his 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate. Since the 2000s, climate change has increased usage. Various scientists, politicians and media now use the terms climate crisis or climate emergency to talk about climate change, and global heating instead of global warming.

Global temperature rise

Global surface temperature reconstruction over the last 2000 years using proxy data from tree rings, corals, and ice cores in blue.[36] Directly observed data is in red.[37]

Temperature records prior to global warming

Over the last few million years human beings evolved in a climate that cycled through ice ages, with global average temperature ranging between 1 °C warmer and 5-6 °C colder than current levels. One of the hotter periods was the Last Interglacial between 115,000 and 130,000 years ago, when sea levels were 6 to 9 meters higher than today. The most recent glacial maximum 20,000 years ago had sea levels that were about 125 meters (410 ft) lower than today.

Temperatures stabilized in the current interglacial period beginning 11,700 years ago. Historical patterns of warming and cooling, like the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, did not occur at the same time across different regions. Temperatures may have reached as high as those of the late 20th century in a limited set of regions. Climate information for that period comes from climate proxies, such as trees and ice cores.

Warming since the Industrial Revolution

There has been an increase in ocean heat content during recent decades as the oceans absorb over 90% of the heat from global warming.[46]

Around 1850 thermometer records began to provide global coverage. Between the 18th century and 1970 there was little net warming, as the warming impact of greenhouse gas emissions was offset by cooling from sulfur dioxide emissions. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain, but it also produces sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere, which reflect sunlight and cause so-called global dimming. After 1970, the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases and controls on sulfur pollution led to a marked increase in temperature.

Ongoing changes in climate have had no precedent for several thousand years. Multiple independent datasets all show worldwide increases in surface temperature, at a rate of around 0.2 °C per decade. The 2013-2022 decade warmed to an average 1.15 °C [1.00-1.25 °C] compared to the pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900). Not every single year was warmer than the last: internal climate variability processes can make any year 0.2 °C warmer or colder than the average. From 1998 to 2013, negative phases of two such processes, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) caused a so-called " global warming hiatus". After the hiatus, the opposite occurred, with years like 2023 exhibiting temperatures well above even the recent average. This is why the temperature change is defined in terms of a 20-year average, which reduces the noise of hot and cold years and decadal climate patterns, and detects the long-term signal.

A wide range of other observations reinforce the evidence of warming. The upper atmosphere is cooling, because greenhouse gases are trapping heat near the Earth's surface, and so less heat is radiating into space. Warming reduces average snow cover and forces the retreat of glaciers. At the same time, warming also causes greater evaporation from the oceans, leading to more atmospheric humidity, more and heavier precipitation. Plants are flowering earlier in spring, and thousands of animal species have been permanently moving to cooler areas.

Differences by region

Different regions of the world warm at different rates. The pattern is independent of where greenhouse gases are emitted, because the gases persist long enough to diffuse across the planet. Since the pre-industrial period, the average surface temperature over land regions has increased almost twice as fast as the global average surface temperature. This is because oceans lose more heat by evaporation and oceans can store a lot of heat. The thermal energy in the global climate system has grown with only brief pauses since at least 1970, and over 90% of this extra energy has been stored in the ocean. The rest has heated the atmosphere, melted ice, and warmed the continents.

The Northern Hemisphere and the North Pole have warmed much faster than the South Pole and Southern Hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere not only has much more land, but also more seasonal snow cover and sea ice. As these surfaces flip from reflecting a lot of light to being dark after the ice has melted, they start absorbing more heat. Local black carbon deposits on snow and ice also contribute to Arctic warming. Arctic surface temperatures are increasing between three and four times faster than in the rest of the world. Melting of ice sheets near the poles weakens both the Atlantic and the Antarctic limb of thermohaline circulation, which further changes the distribution of heat and precipitation around the globe.

Future global temperatures

CMIP6 multi-model projections of global surface temperature changes for the year 2090 relative to the 1850-1900 average. The current trajectory for warming by the end of the century is roughly halfway between these two extremes.[22][81][82]

The World Meteorological Organization estimates a 66% chance of global temperatures exceeding 1.5 °C warming from the preindustrial baseline for at least one year between 2023 and 2027. Because the IPCC uses a 20-year average to define global temperature changes, a single year exceeding 1.5 °C does not break the limit.

The IPCC expects the 20-year average global temperature to exceed +1.5 °C in the early 2030s. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2023) included projections that by 2100 global warming is very likely to reach 1.0-1.8 °C under a scenario with very low emissions of greenhouse gases, 2.1-3.5 °C under an intermediate emissions scenario, or 3.3-5.7 °C under a very high emissions scenario. In the intermediate and high emission scenarios, the warming will continue past 2100.

The remaining carbon budget for staying beneath certain temperature increases is determined by modelling the carbon cycle and climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases. According to the IPCC, global warming can be kept below 1.5 °C with a two-thirds chance if emissions after 2018 do not exceed 420 or 570 gigatonnes of CO ₂. This corresponds to 10 to 13 years of current emissions. There are high uncertainties about the budget. For instance, it may be 100 gigatonnes of CO ₂ equivalent smaller due to CO ₂ and methane release from permafrost and wetlands. However, it is clear that fossil fuel resources need to be proactively kept in the ground to prevent substantial warming. Otherwise, their shortages would not occur until the emissions have already locked in significant long-term impacts.

Causes of recent global temperature rise

Drivers of climate change from 1850-1900 to 2010-2019. There was no significant contribution from internal variability or solar and volcanic drivers.

The climate system experiences various cycles on its own which can last for years, decades or even centuries. For example, El Niño events cause short-term spikes in surface temperature while La Niña events cause short term cooling. Their relative frequency can affect global temperature trends on a decadal timescale. Other changes are caused by an imbalance of energy from external forcings. Examples of these include changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases, solar luminosity, volcanic eruptions, and variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun.

To determine the human contribution to climate change, unique "fingerprints" for all potential causes are developed and compared with both observed patterns and known internal climate variability. For example, solar forcing-whose fingerprint involves warming the entire atmosphere-is ruled out because only the lower atmosphere has warmed. Atmospheric aerosols produce a smaller, cooling effect. Other drivers, such as changes in albedo, are less impactful.

Greenhouse gases

CO₂ concentrations over the last 800,000 years as measured from ice cores[99][100][101][102] (blue/green) and directly[103] (black)

Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, and thus allow it to pass through the atmosphere to heat the Earth's surface. The Earth radiates it as heat, and greenhouse gases absorb a portion of it. This absorption slows the rate at which heat escapes into space, trapping heat near the Earth's surface and warming it over time.

While water vapour (≈50%) and clouds (≈25%) are the biggest contributors to the greenhouse effect, they primarily change as a function of temperature and are therefore mostly considered to be feedbacks that change climate sensitivity. On the other hand, concentrations of gases such as CO ₂ (≈20%), tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide are added or removed independently from temperature, and are therefore considered to be external forcings that change global temperatures.

Before the Industrial Revolution, naturally-occurring amounts of greenhouse gases caused the air near the surface to be about 33 °C warmer than it would have been in their absence. Human activity since the Industrial Revolution, mainly extracting and burning fossil fuels ( coal, oil, and natural gas), has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, resulting in a radiative imbalance. In 2019, the concentrations of CO₂ and methane had increased by about 48% and 160%, respectively, since 1750. These CO ₂ levels are higher than they have been at any time during the last 2 million years. Concentrations of methane are far higher than they were over the last 800,000 years.

The Global Carbon Project shows how additions to CO₂ since 1880 have been caused by different sources ramping up one after another.

Global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 were equivalent to 59 billion tonnes of CO ₂. Of these emissions, 75% was CO ₂, 18% was methane, 4% was nitrous oxide, and 2% was fluorinated gases. CO ₂ emissions primarily come from burning fossil fuels to provide energy for transport, manufacturing, heating, and electricity. Additional CO ₂ emissions come from deforestation and industrial processes, which include the CO ₂ released by the chemical reactions for making cement, steel, aluminum, and fertiliser. Methane emissions come from livestock, manure, rice cultivation, landfills, wastewater, and coal mining, as well as oil and gas extraction. Nitrous oxide emissions largely come from the microbial decomposition of fertiliser.

While methane only lasts in the atmosphere for an average of 12 years, CO ₂ lasts much longer. The Earth's surface absorbs CO2 as part of the carbon cycle. While plants on land and in the ocean absorb most excess emissions of CO ₂ every year, that CO ₂ is returned to the atmosphere when biological matter is digested, burns, or decays. Land-surface carbon sink processes, such as carbon fixation in the soil and photosynthesis, remove about 29% of annual global CO ₂ emissions. The ocean has absorbed 20 to 30% of emitted CO ₂ over the last 2 decades. CO ₂ is only removed from the atmosphere for the long term when it is stored in the Earth's crust, which is a process that can take millions of years to complete.

Land surface changes

According to Food and Agriculture Organization, around 30% of Earth's land area is largely unusable for humans ( glaciers, deserts, etc.), 26% is forests, 10% is shrubland and 34% is agricultural land. Deforestation is the main land use change contributor to global warming, as the destroyed trees release CO ₂, and are not replaced by new trees, removing that carbon sink. Between 2001 and 2018, 27% of deforestation was from permanent clearing to enable agricultural expansion for crops and livestock. Another 24% has been lost to temporary clearing under the shifting cultivation agricultural systems. 26% was due to logging for wood and derived products, and wildfires have accounted for the remaining 23%. Some forests have not been fully cleared, but were already degraded by these impacts. Restoring these forests also recovers their potential as a carbon sink.

Local vegetation cover impacts how much of the sunlight gets reflected back into space ( albedo), and how much heat is lost by evaporation. For instance, the change from a dark forest to grassland makes the surface lighter, causing it to reflect more sunlight. Deforestation can also modify the release of chemical compounds that influence clouds, and by changing wind patterns. In tropic and temperate areas the net effect is to produce significant warming, and forest restoration can make local temperatures cooler. At latitudes closer to the poles, there is a cooling effect as forest is replaced by snow-covered (and more reflective) plains. Globally, these increases in surface albedo have been the dominant direct influence on temperature from land use change. Thus, land use change to date is estimated to have a slight cooling effect.

Other factors

Aerosols and clouds

Air pollution, in the form of aerosols, affects the climate on a large scale. Aerosols scatter and absorb solar radiation. From 1961 to 1990, a gradual reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface was observed. This phenomenon is popularly known as global dimming, and is primarily attributed to sulfate aerosols produced by the combustion of fossil fuels with heavy sulfur concentrations like coal and bunker fuel. Smaller contributions come from black carbon, organic carbon from combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels, and from anthropogenic dust. Globally, aerosols have been declining since 1990 due to pollution controls, meaning that they no longer mask greenhouse gas warming as much.

Aerosols also have indirect effects on the Earth's energy budget. Sulfate aerosols act as cloud condensation nuclei and lead to clouds that have more and smaller cloud droplets. These clouds reflect solar radiation more efficiently than clouds with fewer and larger droplets. They also reduce the growth of raindrops, which makes clouds more reflective to incoming sunlight. Indirect effects of aerosols are the largest uncertainty in radiative forcing.

While aerosols typically limit global warming by reflecting sunlight, black carbon in soot that falls on snow or ice can contribute to global warming. Not only does this increase the absorption of sunlight, it also increases melting and sea-level rise. Limiting new black carbon deposits in the Arctic could reduce global warming by 0.2 °C by 2050. The effect of decreasing sulfur content of fuel oil for ships since 2020 is estimated to cause an additional 0.05 °C increase in global mean temperature by 2050.

Solar and volcanic activity

The Fourth National Climate Assessment ("NCA4", USGCRP, 2017) includes charts illustrating that neither solar nor volcanic activity can explain the observed warming.[141][142]

As the Sun is the Earth's primary energy source, changes in incoming sunlight directly affect the climate system. Solar irradiance has been measured directly by satellites, and indirect measurements are available from the early 1600s onwards. Since 1880, there has been no upward trend in the amount of the Sun's energy reaching the Earth, in contrast to the warming of the lower atmosphere (the troposphere). The upper atmosphere (the stratosphere) would also be warming if the Sun was sending more energy to Earth, but instead, it has been cooling. This is consistent with greenhouse gases preventing heat from leaving the Earth's atmosphere.

Explosive volcanic eruptions can release gases, dust and ash that partially block sunlight and reduce temperatures, or they can send water vapor into the atmosphere, which adds to greenhouse gases and increases temperatures. These impacts on temperature only last for several years, because both water vapor and volcanic material have low persistence in the atmosphere. volcanic CO₂ emissions are more persistent, but they are equivalent to less than 1% of current human-caused CO ₂ emissions. Volcanic activity still represents the single largest natural impact (forcing) on temperature in the industrial era. Yet, like the other natural forcings, it has had negligible impacts on global temperature trends since the Industrial Revolution.

Climate change feedbacks

Sea ice reflects 50% to 70% of incoming sunlight, while the ocean, being darker, reflects only 6%. As an area of sea ice melts and exposes more ocean, more heat is absorbed by the ocean, raising temperatures that melt still more ice. This is a positive feedback process.[149]

The response of the climate system to an initial forcing is modified by feedbacks: increased by "self-reinforcing" or "positive" feedbacks and reduced by "balancing" or "negative" feedbacks. The main reinforcing feedbacks are the water-vapour feedback, the ice-albedo feedback, and the net effect of clouds. The primary balancing mechanism is radiative cooling, as Earth's surface gives off more heat to space in response to rising temperature. In addition to temperature feedbacks, there are feedbacks in the carbon cycle, such as the fertilising effect of CO ₂ on plant growth. Feedbacks are expected to trend in a positive direction as greenhouse gas emissions continue, raising climate sensitivty.

Radiative feedbacks are physical processes that influence the rate of global warming in response to warming. For instance, warmer air can hold more moisture, and water vapour itself is a potent greenhouse gas. Warmer air can also result in clouds becoming higher and thinner, where they act as an insulator and warm the planet. Another major feedback is the reduction of snow cover and sea ice in the Arctic, reducing the reflectivity of the Earth's surface there and contributing to amplification of Arctic temperature changes. Arctic amplification is also thawing permafrost, which releases methane and CO ₂ into the atmosphere.

Around half of human-caused CO ₂ emissions have been absorbed by land plants and by the oceans. This fraction is not static and if future CO ₂ emissions decrease, the Earth will be able to absorb up to around 70%. If they increase substantially, it'll still absorb more carbon than now, but the overall fraction will decrease to below 40%. This is because climate change increases droughts and heat waves that eventually inhibit plant growth on land, and soils will release more carbon from dead plants when they are warmer. The rate at which oceans absorb atmospheric carbon will be lowered as they become more acidic and experience changes in thermohaline circulation and phytoplankton distribution. Uncertainty over feedbacks, particularly cloud cover, is the major reason why different climate models project different magnitudes of warming for a given amount of emissions.

Energy flows between space, the atmosphere, and Earth's surface. Most sunlight passes through the atmosphere to heat the Earth's surface, then greenhouse gases absorb most of the heat the Earth radiates in response. Adding to greenhouse gases increases this insulating effect, causing an energy imbalance that heats the planet up.

A climate model is a representation of the physical, chemical and biological processes that affect the climate system. Models include natural processes like changes in the Earth's orbit, historical changes in the Sun's activity, and volcanic forcing. Models are used to estimate the degree of warming future emissions will cause when accounting for the strength of climate feedbacks. Models also predict the circulation of the oceans, the annual cycle of the seasons, and the flows of carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere.

The physical realism of models is tested by examining their ability to simulate contemporary or past climates. Past models have underestimated the rate of Arctic shrinkage and underestimated the rate of precipitation increase. Sea level rise since 1990 was underestimated in older models, but more recent models agree well with observations. The 2017 United States-published National Climate Assessment notes that "climate models may still be underestimating or missing relevant feedback processes". Additionally, climate models may be unable to adequately predict short-term regional climatic shifts.

A subset of climate models add societal factors to a physical climate model. These models simulate how population, economic growth, and energy use affect-and interact with-the physical climate. With this information, these models can produce scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions. This is then used as input for physical climate models and carbon cycle models to predict how atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases might change. Depending on the socioeconomic scenario and the mitigation scenario, models produce atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations that range widely between 380 and 1400 ppm.

The sixth IPCC Assessment Report projects changes in average soil moisture at 2.0 °C of warming, as measured in standard deviations from the 1850 to 1900 baseline.

Environmental effects

The environmental effects of climate change are broad and far-reaching, affecting oceans, ice, and weather. Changes may occur gradually or rapidly. Evidence for these effects comes from studying climate change in the past, from modelling, and from modern observations. Since the 1950s, droughts and heat waves have appeared simultaneously with increasing frequency. Extremely wet or dry events within the monsoon period have increased in India and East Asia. Monsoonal precipitation over the Northern Hemisphere has increased since 1980. The rainfall rate and intensity of hurricanes and typhoons is likely increasing, and the geographic range likely expanding poleward in response to climate warming. Frequency of tropical cyclones has not increased as a result of climate change.

Global sea level is rising as a consequence of thermal expansion and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Between 1993 and 2020, the rise increased over time, averaging 3.3 ± 0.3 mm per year. Over the 21st century, the IPCC projects 32-62 cm of sea level rise under a low emission scenario, 44-76 cm under an intermediate one and 65-101 cm under a very high emission scenario. Marine ice sheet instability processes in Antarctica may add substantially to these values, including the possibility of a 2-meter sea level rise by 2100 under high emissions.

Climate change has led to decades of shrinking and thinning of the Arctic sea ice. While ice-free summers are expected to be rare at 1.5 °C degrees of warming, they are set to occur once every three to ten years at a warming level of 2 °C. Higher atmospheric CO ₂ concentrations cause more CO ₂ to dissolve in the oceans, which is making them more acidic. Because oxygen is less soluble in warmer water, its concentrations in the ocean are decreasing, and dead zones are expanding.

Tipping points and long-term impacts

Different levels of global warming may cause different parts of Earth's climate system to reach tipping points that cause transitions to different states.[199][200]

Greater degrees of global warming increase the risk of passing through ' tipping points'-thresholds beyond which certain major impacts can no longer be avoided even if temperatures return to their previous state. For instance, the Greenland ice sheet is already melting, but if global warming reaches levels between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C, its melting will continue until it fully disappears. If the warming is later reduced to 1.5 °C or less, it will still lose a lot more ice than if the warming was never allowed to reach the threshold in the first place. While the ice sheets would melt over millennia, other tipping points would occur faster and give societies less time to respond. The collapse of major ocean currents like the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), and irreversible damage to key ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs can unfold in a matter of decades.

The long-term effects of climate change on oceans include further ice melt, ocean warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification and ocean deoxygenation. The timescale of long-term impacts are centuries to millennia due to CO ₂'s long atmospheric lifetime. When net emissions stabilise surface air temperatures will also stabilise, but oceans and ice caps will continue to absorb excess heat from the atmosphere. The result is an estimated total sea level rise of 2.3 metres per degree Celsius (4.2 ft/°F) after 2000 years. Oceanic CO ₂ uptake is slow enough that ocean acidification will also continue for hundreds to thousands of years. Deep oceans (below 2,000 metres (6,600 ft)) are also already committed to losing over 10% of their dissolved oxygen by the warming which occurred to date. Further, the West Antarctic ice sheet appears committed to practically irreversible melting, which would increase the sea levels by at least 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) over approximately 2000 years.

Nature and wildlife

Recent warming has driven many terrestrial and freshwater species poleward and towards higher altitudes. For instance, the range of hundreds of North American birds has shifted northward at an average rate of 1.5 km/year over the past 55 years. Higher atmospheric CO ₂ levels and an extended growing season have resulted in global greening. However, heatwaves and drought have reduced ecosystem productivity in some regions. The future balance of these opposing effects is unclear. A related phenomenon driven by climate change is woody plant encroachment, affecting up to 500 million hectares globally. Climate change has contributed to the expansion of drier climate zones, such as the expansion of deserts in the subtropics. The size and speed of global warming is making abrupt changes in ecosystems more likely. Overall, it is expected that climate change will result in the extinction of many species.

The oceans have heated more slowly than the land, but plants and animals in the ocean have migrated towards the colder poles faster than species on land. Just as on land, heat waves in the ocean occur more frequently due to climate change, harming a wide range of organisms such as corals, kelp, and seabirds. Ocean acidification makes it harder for marine calcifying organisms such as mussels, barnacles and corals to produce shells and skeletons; and heatwaves have bleached coral reefs. Harmful algal blooms enhanced by climate change and eutrophication lower oxygen levels, disrupt food webs and cause great loss of marine life. Coastal ecosystems are under particular stress. Almost half of global wetlands have disappeared due to climate change and other human impacts. Plants have come under increased stress from damage by insects.

The effects of climate change are impacting humans everywhere in the world. Impacts can be observed on all continents and ocean regions, with low-latitude, less developed areas facing the greatest risk. Continued warming has potentially "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts" for people and ecosystems. The risks are unevenly distributed, but are generally greater for disadvantaged people in developing and developed countries.

Food and health

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Extreme weather leads to injury and loss of life. Various infectious diseases are more easily transmitted in a warmer climate, such as dengue fever and malaria. Crop failures can lead to food shortages and malnutrition, particularly effecting children. Both children and older people are vulnerable to extreme heat. The WHO has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change would cause around 250,000 additional deaths per year. They assessed deaths from heat exposure in elderly people, increases in diarrhea, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood malnutrition. By 2100, 50% to 75% of the global population may face climate conditions that are life-threatening due to combined effects of extreme heat and humidity.

Climate change is affecting food security. It has caused reduction in global yields of maize, wheat, and soybeans between 1981 and 2010. Future warming could further reduce global yields of major crops. Crop production will probably be negatively affected in low-latitude countries, while effects at northern latitudes may be positive or negative. Up to an additional 183 million people worldwide, particularly those with lower incomes, are at risk of hunger as a consequence of these impacts. Climate change also impacts fish populations. Globally, less will be available to be fished. Regions dependent on glacier water, regions that are already dry, and small islands have a higher risk of water stress due to climate change.

Livelihoods and inequality

Economic damages due to climate change may be severe and there is a chance of disastrous consequences. Severe impacts are expected in South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the local inhabitants are dependent upon natural and agricultural resources. Heat stress can prevent outdoor labourers from working. If warming reaches 4 °C then labour capacity in those regions could be reduced by 30 to 50%. The World Bank estimates that between 2016 and 2030, climate change could drive over 120 million people into extreme poverty without adaptation.

Inequalities based on wealth and social status have worsened due to climate change. Major difficulties in mitigating, adapting to, and recovering from climate shocks are faced by marginalised people who have less control over resources. Indigenous people, who are subsistent on their land and ecosystems, will face endangerment to their wellness and lifestyles due to climate change. An expert elicitation concluded that the role of climate change in armed conflict has been small compared to factors such as socio-economic inequality and state capabilities.

While women are not inherently more at risk from climate change and shocks, limits on women's resources and discriminatory gender norms constrain their adaptive capacity and resilience. For example, women's work burdens, including hours worked in agriculture, tend to decline less than men's during climate shocks such as heat stress.

Climate migration

Low-lying islands and coastal communities are threatened by sea level rise, which makes urban flooding more common. Sometimes, land is permanently lost to the sea. This could lead to statelessness for people in island nations, such as the Maldives and Tuvalu. In some regions, the rise in temperature and humidity may be too severe for humans to adapt to. With worst-case climate change, models project that almost one-third of humanity might live in Sahara-like uninhabitable and extremely hot climates.

These factors can drive climate or environmental migration, within and between countries. More people are expected to be displaced because of sea level rise, extreme weather and conflict from increased competition over natural resources. Climate change may also increase vulnerability, leading to "trapped populations" who are not able to move due to a lack of resources.

Reducing and recapturing emissions

Global greenhouse gas emission scenarios, based on policies and pledges as of November 2021

Climate change can be mitigated by reducing the rate at which greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere, and by increasing the rate at which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. In order to limit global warming to less than 1.5 °C global greenhouse gas emissions needs to be net-zero by 2050, or by 2070 with a 2 °C target. This requires far-reaching, systemic changes on an unprecedented scale in energy, land, cities, transport, buildings, and industry.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that countries need to triple their pledges under the Paris Agreement within the next decade to limit global warming to 2 °C. An even greater level of reduction is required to meet the 1.5 °C goal. With pledges made under the Paris Agreement as of October 2021, global warming would still have a 66% chance of reaching about 2.7 °C (range: 2.2-3.2 °C) by the end of the century. Globally, limiting warming to 2 °C may result in higher economic benefits than economic costs.

Although there is no single pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 °C, most scenarios and strategies see a major increase in the use of renewable energy in combination with increased energy efficiency measures to generate the needed greenhouse gas reductions. To reduce pressures on ecosystems and enhance their carbon sequestration capabilities, changes would also be necessary in agriculture and forestry, such as preventing deforestation and restoring natural ecosystems by reforestation.

Other approaches to mitigating climate change have a higher level of risk. Scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5 °C typically project the large-scale use of carbon dioxide removal methods over the 21st century. There are concerns, though, about over-reliance on these technologies, and environmental impacts. Solar radiation modification (SRM) is also a possible supplement to deep reductions in emissions. However, SRM raises significant ethical and legal concerns, and the risks are imperfectly understood.

Clean energy

Coal, oil, and natural gas remain the primary global energy sources even as renewables have begun rapidly increasing.[278]

Wind and solar power, Germany

Renewable energy is key to limiting climate change. For decades, fossil fuels have accounted for roughly 80% of the world's energy use. The remaining share has been split between nuclear power and renewables (including hydropower, bioenergy, wind and solar power and geothermal energy). Fossil fuel use is expected to peak in absolute terms prior to 2030 and then to decline, with coal use experiencing the sharpest reductions. Renewables represented 75% of all new electricity generation installed in 2019, nearly all solar and wind. Other forms of clean energy, such as nuclear and hydropower, currently have a larger share of the energy supply. However, their future growth forecasts appear limited in comparison.

While solar panels and onshore wind are now among the cheapest forms of adding new power generation capacity in many locations, green energy policies are needed to achieve a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewables. To achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, renewable energy would become the dominant form of electricity generation, rising to 85% or more by 2050 in some scenarios. Investment in coal would be eliminated and coal use nearly phased out by 2050.

Electricity generated from renewable sources would also need to become the main energy source for heating and transport. Transport can switch away from internal combustion engine vehicles and towards electric vehicles, public transit, and active transport (cycling and walking). For shipping and flying, low-carbon fuels would reduce emissions. Heating could be increasingly decarbonised with technologies like heat pumps.

There are obstacles to the continued rapid growth of clean energy, including renewables. For wind and solar, there are environmental and land use concerns for new projects. Wind and solar also produce energy intermittently and with seasonal variability. Traditionally, hydro dams with reservoirs and conventional power plants have been used when variable energy production is low. Going forward, battery storage can be expanded, energy demand and supply can be matched, and long-distance transmission can smooth variability of renewable outputs. Bioenergy is often not carbon-neutral and may have negative consequences for food security. The growth of nuclear power is constrained by controversy around radioactive waste, nuclear weapon proliferation, and accidents. Hydropower growth is limited by the fact that the best sites have been developed, and new projects are confronting increased social and environmental concerns.

Low-carbon energy improves human health by minimising climate change as well as reducing air pollution deaths, which were estimated at 7 million annually in 2016. Meeting the Paris Agreement goals that limit warming to a 2 °C increase could save about a million of those lives per year by 2050, whereas limiting global warming to 1.5 °C could save millions and simultaneously increase energy security and reduce poverty. Improving air quality also has economic benefits which may be larger than mitigation costs.

Energy conservation

Reducing energy demand is another major aspect of reducing emissions. If less energy is needed, there is more flexibility for clean energy development. It also makes it easier to manage the electricity grid, and minimises carbon-intensive infrastructure development. Major increases in energy efficiency investment will be required to achieve climate goals, comparable to the level of investment in renewable energy. Several COVID-19 related changes in energy use patterns, energy efficiency investments, and funding have made forecasts for this decade more difficult and uncertain.

Strategies to reduce energy demand vary by sector. In the transport sector, passengers and freight can switch to more efficient travel modes, such as buses and trains, or use electric vehicles. Industrial strategies to reduce energy demand include improving heating systems and motors, designing less energy-intensive products, and increasing product lifetimes. In the building sector the focus is on better design of new buildings, and higher levels of energy efficiency in retrofitting. The use of technologies like heat pumps can also increase building energy efficiency.

Agriculture and industry

Taking into account direct and indirect emissions, industry is the sector with the highest share of global emissions. Data as of 2019 from the IPCC.

Agriculture and forestry face a triple challenge of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, preventing the further conversion of forests to agricultural land, and meeting increases in world food demand. A set of actions could reduce agriculture and forestry-based emissions by two thirds from 2010 levels. These include reducing growth in demand for food and other agricultural products, increasing land productivity, protecting and restoring forests, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production.

On the demand side, a key component of reducing emissions is shifting people towards plant-based diets. Eliminating the production of livestock for meat and dairy would eliminate about 3/4ths of all emissions from agriculture and other land use. Livestock also occupy 37% of ice-free land area on Earth and consume feed from the 12% of land area used for crops, driving deforestation and land degradation.

Steel and cement production are responsible for about 13% of industrial CO ₂ emissions. In these industries, carbon-intensive materials such as coke and lime play an integral role in the production, so that reducing CO ₂ emissions requires research into alternative chemistries.

Carbon sequestration

Most CO₂ emissions have been absorbed by carbon sinks, including plant growth, soil uptake, and ocean uptake (2020 Global Carbon Budget).

Natural carbon sinks can be enhanced to sequester significantly larger amounts of CO ₂ beyond naturally occurring levels. Reforestation and afforestation (planting forests where there were none before) are among the most mature sequestration techniques, although the latter raises food security concerns. Farmers can promote sequestration of carbon in soils through practices such as use of winter cover crops, reducing the intensity and frequency of tillage, and using compost and manure as soil amendments. Forest and landscape restoration yields many benefits for the climate, including greenhouse gas emissions sequestration and reduction. Restoration/recreation of coastal wetlands, prairie plots and seagrass meadows increases the uptake of carbon into organic matter. When carbon is sequestered in soils and in organic matter such as trees, there is a risk of the carbon being re-released into the atmosphere later through changes in land use, fire, or other changes in ecosystems.

Where energy production or CO ₂-intensive heavy industries continue to produce waste CO ₂, the gas can be captured and stored instead of released to the atmosphere. Although its current use is limited in scale and expensive, carbon capture and storage (CCS) may be able to play a significant role in limiting CO ₂ emissions by mid-century. This technique, in combination with bioenergy ( BECCS) can result in net negative emissions as CO ₂ is drawn from the atmosphere. It remains highly uncertain whether carbon dioxide removal techniques will be able to play a large role in limiting warming to 1.5 °C. Policy decisions that rely on carbon dioxide removal increase the risk of global warming rising beyond international goals.

Adaptation

Adaptation is "the process of adjustment to current or expected changes in climate and its effects". Without additional mitigation, adaptation cannot avert the risk of "severe, widespread and irreversible" impacts. More severe climate change requires more transformative adaptation, which can be prohibitively expensive. The capacity and potential for humans to adapt is unevenly distributed across different regions and populations, and developing countries generally have less. The first two decades of the 21st century saw an increase in adaptive capacity in most low- and middle-income countries with improved access to basic sanitation and electricity, but progress is slow. Many countries have implemented adaptation policies. However, there is a considerable gap between necessary and available finance.

Adaptation to sea level rise consists of avoiding at-risk areas, learning to live with increased flooding, and building flood controls. If that fails, managed retreat may be needed. There are economic barriers for tackling dangerous heat impact. Avoiding strenuous work or having air conditioning is not possible for everybody. In agriculture, adaptation options include a switch to more sustainable diets, diversification, erosion control, and genetic improvements for increased tolerance to a changing climate. Insurance allows for risk-sharing, but is often difficult to get for people on lower incomes. Education, migration and early warning systems can reduce climate vulnerability. Planting mangroves or encouraging other coastal vegetation can buffer storms.

Ecosystems adapt to climate change, a process that can be supported by human intervention. By increasing connectivity between ecosystems, species can migrate to more favourable climate conditions. Species can also be introduced to areas acquiring a favorable climate. Protection and restoration of natural and semi-natural areas helps build resilience, making it easier for ecosystems to adapt. Many of the actions that promote adaptation in ecosystems, also help humans adapt via ecosystem-based adaptation. For instance, restoration of natural fire regimes makes catastrophic fires less likely, and reduces human exposure. Giving rivers more space allows for more water storage in the natural system, reducing flood risk. Restored forest acts as a carbon sink, but planting trees in unsuitable regions can exacerbate climate impacts.

There are synergies but also trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation. An example for synergy is increased food productivity, which has large benefits for both adaptation and mitigation. An example of a trade-off is that increased use of air conditioning allows people to better cope with heat, but increases energy demand. Another trade-off example is that more compact urban development may reduce emissions from transport and construction, but may also increase the urban heat island effect, exposing people to heat-related health risks.

Policies and politics

The Climate Change Performance Index ranks countries by greenhouse gas emissions (40% of score), renewable energy (20%), energy use (20%), and climate policy (20%).

Countries that are most vulnerable to climate change have typically been responsible for a small share of global emissions. This raises questions about justice and fairness. Limiting global warming makes it much easier to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, such as eradicating poverty and reducing inequalities. The connection is recognised in Sustainable Development Goal 13 which is to "take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts". The goals on food, clean water and ecosystem protection have synergies with climate mitigation.

The geopolitics of climate change is complex. It has often been framed as a free-rider problem, in which all countries benefit from mitigation done by other countries, but individual countries would lose from switching to a low-carbon economy themselves. Sometimes mitigation also has localised benefits though. For instance, the benefits of a coal phase-out to public health and local environments exceed the costs in almost all regions. Furthermore, net importers of fossil fuels win economically from switching to clean energy, causing net exporters to face stranded assets: fossil fuels they cannot sell.

Policy options

A wide range of policies, regulations, and laws are being used to reduce emissions. As of 2019, carbon pricing covers about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon can be priced with carbon taxes and emissions trading systems. Direct global fossil fuel subsidies reached $319 billion in 2017, and $5.2 trillion when indirect costs such as air pollution are priced in. Ending these can cause a 28% reduction in global carbon emissions and a 46% reduction in air pollution deaths. Money saved on fossil subsidies could be used to support the transition to clean energy instead. More direct methods to reduce greenhouse gases include vehicle efficiency standards, renewable fuel standards, and air pollution regulations on heavy industry. Several countries require utilities to increase the share of renewables in power production.

Climate justice

Policy designed through the lens of climate justice tries to address human rights issues and social inequality. According to proponents of climate justice, the costs of climate adaptation should be paid by those most responsible for climate change, while the beneficiaries of payments should be those suffering impacts. One way this can be addressed in practice is to have wealthy nations pay poorer countries to adapt.

Oxfam found that in 2023 the wealthiest 10% of people were responsible for 50% of global emissions, while the bottom 50% were responsible for just 8%. Production of emissions is another way to look at responsibility: under that approach, the top 21 fossil fuel companies would owe cumulative climate reparations of $5.4 trillion over the period 2025-2050. To achieve a just transition, people working in the fossil fuel sector would also need other jobs, and their communities would need investments.

International climate agreements

Since 2000, rising CO₂ emissions in China and the rest of world have surpassed the output of the United States and Europe.[358]

Per person, the United States generates CO₂ at a far faster rate than other primary regions.[358]

Nearly all countries in the world are parties to the 1994 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The goal of the UNFCCC is to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. As stated in the convention, this requires that greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilised in the atmosphere at a level where ecosystems can adapt naturally to climate change, food production is not threatened, and economic development can be sustained. The UNFCCC does not itself restrict emissions but rather provides a framework for protocols that do. Global emissions have risen since the UNFCCC was signed. Its yearly conferences are the stage of global negotiations.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol extended the UNFCCC and included legally binding commitments for most developed countries to limit their emissions. During the negotiations, the G77 (representing developing countries) pushed for a mandate requiring developed countries to "[take] the lead" in reducing their emissions, since developed countries contributed most to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Per-capita emissions were also still relatively low in developing countries and developing countries would need to emit more to meet their development needs.

The 2009 Copenhagen Accord has been widely portrayed as disappointing because of its low goals, and was rejected by poorer nations including the G77. Associated parties aimed to limit the global temperature rise to below 2 °C. The Accord set the goal of sending $100 billion per year to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation by 2020, and proposed the founding of the Green Climate Fund. As of 2020, only 83.3 billion were delivered. Only in 2023 the target is expected to be achieved.

In 2015 all UN countries negotiated the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global warming well below 2.0 °C and contains an aspirational goal of keeping warming under 1.5 °C. The agreement replaced the Kyoto Protocol. Unlike Kyoto, no binding emission targets were set in the Paris Agreement. Instead, a set of procedures was made binding. Countries have to regularly set ever more ambitious goals and reevaluate these goals every five years. The Paris Agreement restated that developing countries must be financially supported. As of October 2021, 194 states and the European Union have signed the treaty and 191 states and the EU have ratified or acceded to the agreement.

The 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to stop emitting ozone-depleting gases, may have been more effective at curbing greenhouse gas emissions than the Kyoto Protocol specifically designed to do so. The 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol aims to reduce the emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, a group of powerful greenhouse gases which served as a replacement for banned ozone-depleting gases. This made the Montreal Protocol a stronger agreement against climate change.

National responses

In 2019, the United Kingdom parliament became the first national government to declare a climate emergency. Other countries and jurisdictions followed suit. That same year, the European Parliament declared a "climate and environmental emergency". The European Commission presented its European Green Deal with the goal of making the EU carbon-neutral by 2050. In 2021, the European Commission released its " Fit for 55" legislation package, which contains guidelines for the car industry; all new cars on the European market must be zero-emission vehicles from 2035.

Major countries in Asia have made similar pledges: South Korea and Japan have committed to become carbon-neutral by 2050, and China by 2060. While India has strong incentives for renewables, it also plans a significant expansion of coal in the country. Vietnam is among very few coal-dependent, fast-developing countries that pledged to phase out unabated coal power by the 2040s or as soon as possible thereafter.

As of 2021, based on information from 48 national climate plans, which represent 40% of the parties to the Paris Agreement, estimated total greenhouse gas emissions will be 0.5% lower compared to 2010 levels, below the 45% or 25% reduction goals to limit global warming to 1.5 °C or 2 °C, respectively.

Denial and misinformation

Data has been cherry picked from short periods to falsely assert that global temperatures are not rising. Blue trendlines show short periods that mask longer-term warming trends (red trendlines). Blue rectangle with blue dots shows the so-called global warming hiatus.

Public debate about climate change has been strongly affected by climate change denial and misinformation, which originated in the United States and has since spread to other countries, particularly Canada and Australia. Climate change denial has originated from fossil fuel companies, industry groups, conservative think tanks, and contrarian scientists. Like the tobacco industry, the main strategy of these groups has been to manufacture doubt about climate-change related scientific data and results. People who hold unwarranted doubt about climate change are called climate change "skeptics", although "contrarians" or "deniers" are more appropriate terms.

There are different variants of climate denial: some deny that warming takes place at all, some acknowledge warming but attribute it to natural influences, and some minimise the negative impacts of climate change. Manufacturing uncertainty about the science later developed into a manufactured controversy: creating the belief that there is significant uncertainty about climate change within the scientific community in order to delay policy changes. Strategies to promote these ideas include criticism of scientific institutions, and questioning the motives of individual scientists. An echo chamber of climate-denying blogs and media has further fomented misunderstanding of climate change.

Public awareness and opinion

The public substantially underestimates the degree of scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change.[394] Studies from 2019 to 2021[395][4][396] found scientific consensus to range from 98.7 to 100%.

Climate change came to international public attention in the late 1980s. Due to media coverage in the early 1990s, people often confused climate change with other environmental issues like ozone depletion. In popular culture, the climate fiction movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) focused on climate change.

Significant regional, gender, age and political differences exist in both public concern for, and understanding of, climate change. More highly educated people, and in some countries, women and younger people, were more likely to see climate change as a serious threat. Partisan gaps also exist in many countries, and countries with high CO ₂ emissions tend to be less concerned. Views on causes of climate change vary widely between countries. Concern has increased over time, to the point where in 2021 a majority of citizens in many countries express a high level of worry about climate change, or view it as a global emergency. Higher levels of worry are associated with stronger public support for policies that address climate change.

Climate movement

Climate protests demand that political leaders take action to prevent climate change. They can take the form of public demonstrations, fossil fuel divestment, lawsuits and other activities. Prominent demonstrations include the School Strike for Climate. In this initiative, young people across the globe have been protesting since 2018 by skipping school on Fridays, inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. Mass civil disobedience actions by groups like Extinction Rebellion have protested by disrupting roads and public transport.

Litigation is increasingly used as a tool to strengthen climate action from public institutions and companies. Activists also initiate lawsuits which target governments and demand that they take ambitious action or enforce existing laws on climate change. Lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies generally seek compensation for loss and damage.

Early discoveries

Scientists in the 19th century such as Alexander von Humboldt began to foresee the effects of climate change. In the 1820s, Joseph Fourier proposed the greenhouse effect to explain why Earth's temperature was higher than the Sun's energy alone could explain. Earth's atmosphere is transparent to sunlight, so sunlight reaches the surface where it is converted to heat. However, the atmosphere is not transparent to heat radiating from the surface, and captures some of that heat, which in turn warms the planet.

In 1856 Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated that the warming effect of the Sun is greater for air with water vapour than for dry air, and that the effect is even greater with carbon dioxide (CO ₂). She concluded that "An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature..."

Studying what would become known as the greenhouse effect, Tyndall's pre-1861 ratio spectrophotometer measured how much various gases in a tube absorb and emit infrared radiation-which humans experience as heat.

Starting in 1859, John Tyndall established that nitrogen and oxygen-together totaling 99% of dry air-are transparent to radiated heat. However, water vapour and gases such as methane and carbon dioxide absorb radiated heat and re-radiate that heat into the atmosphere. Tyndall proposed that changes in the concentrations of these gases may have caused climatic changes in the past, including ice ages.

Svante Arrhenius noted that water vapour in air continuously varied, but the CO ₂ concentration in air was influenced by long-term geological processes. Warming from increased CO ₂ levels would increase the amount of water vapour, amplifying warming in a positive feedback loop. In 1896, he published the first climate model of its kind, projecting that halving CO ₂ levels could have produced a drop in temperature initiating an ice age. Arrhenius calculated the temperature increase expected from doubling CO ₂ to be around 5-6 °C. Other scientists were initially skeptical and believed that the greenhouse effect was saturated so that adding more CO ₂ would make no difference, and that the climate would be self-regulating. Beginning in 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar published evidence that climate was warming and CO ₂ levels were rising, but his calculations met the same objections.

Development of a scientific consensus

Scientific consensus on causation: Academic studies of scientific agreement on human-caused global warming among climate experts (2010-2015) reflect that the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science.[423] A 2019 study found scientific consensus to be at 100%,[424] and a 2021 study concluded that consensus exceeded 99%.[425] Another 2021 study found that 98.7% of climate experts indicated that the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity.[426]

In the 1950s, Gilbert Plass created a detailed computer model that included different atmospheric layers and the infrared spectrum. This model predicted that increasing CO ₂ levels would cause warming. Around the same time, Hans Suess found evidence that CO ₂ levels had been rising, and Roger Revelle showed that the oceans would not absorb the increase. The two scientists subsequently helped Charles Keeling to begin a record of continued increase, which has been termed the " Keeling Curve". Scientists alerted the public, and the dangers were highlighted at James Hansen's 1988 Congressional testimony. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 to provide formal advice to the world's governments, spurred interdisciplinary research. As part of the IPCC reports, scientists assess the scientific discussion that takes place in peer-reviewed journal articles.

There is a near-complete scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that this is caused by human activities. As of 2019, agreement in recent literature reached over 99%. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view. Consensus has further developed that some form of action should be taken to protect people against the impacts of climate change. National science academies have called on world leaders to cut global emissions. The 2021 IPCC Assessment Report stated that it is "unequivocal" that climate change is caused by humans.

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23. ^ Olivier & Peters 2019, p. 17; Our World in Data, 18 September 2020; EPA 2020: Greenhouse gas emissions from industry primarily come from burning fossil fuels for energy, as well as greenhouse gas emissions from certain chemical reactions necessary to produce goods from raw materials; "Redox, extraction of iron and transition metals". Hot air (oxygen) reacts with the coke (carbon) to produce carbon dioxide and heat energy to heat up the furnace. Removing impurities: The calcium carbonate in the limestone thermally decomposes to form calcium oxide. calcium carbonate → calcium oxide + carbon dioxide; Kvande 2014: Carbon dioxide gas is formed at the anode, as the carbon anode is consumed upon reaction of carbon with the oxygen ions from the alumina (Al₂O₃). Formation of carbon dioxide is unavoidable as long as carbon anodes are used, and it is of great concern because CO₂ is a greenhouse gas

24. ^ EPA 2020; Global Methane Initiative 2020: Estimated Global Anthropogenic Methane Emissions by Source, 2020: Enteric fermentation (27%), Manure Management (3%), Coal Mining (9%), Municipal Solid Waste (11%), Oil & Gas (24%), Wastewater (7%), Rice Cultivation (7%)

25. ^ EPA 2019: Agricultural activities, such as fertilizer use, are the primary source of N₂O emissions; Davidson 2009: 2.0% of manure nitrogen and 2.5% of fertilizer nitrogen was converted to nitrous oxide between 1860 and 2005; these percentage contributions explain the entire pattern of increasing nitrous oxide concentrations over this period

26. ^ Staff, Carbon Brief (3 July 2023). "Analysis: How low-sulphur shipping rules are affecting global warming". Carbon Brief.

27. ^ Wuebbles, D.J.; Fahey, D.W.; Hibbard, K.A.; Deangelo, B.; Doherty, S.; Hayhoe, K.; Horton, R.; Kossin, J.P.; Taylor, P.C.; Waple, A.M.; Yohe, C.P. (23 November 2018). "Climate Science Special Report / Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I /Executive Summary / Highlights of the Findings of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report". globalchange.gov. U.S. Global Change Research Program: 1-470. doi:10.7930/J0DJ5CTG. Archived from the original on 14 June 2019.

28. ^ Greicius, Tony (2 August 2022). "Tonga eruption blasted unprecedented amount of water into stratosphere". NASA Global Climate Change. Massive volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo typically cool Earth's surface by ejecting gases, dust, and ash that reflect sunlight back into space. In contrast, the Tonga volcano didn't inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and the huge amounts of water vapor from the eruption may have a small, temporary warming effect, since water vapor traps heat. The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere and would not be enough to noticeably exacerbate climate change effects.

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33. ^ Azevedo-Schmidt, Lauren; Meineke, Emily K.; Currano, Ellen D. (18 October 2022). "Insect herbivory within modern forests is greater than fossil localities". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 119 (42). doi:10.1073/pnas.2202852119. ISSN 0027-8424.

34. ^ "Coral Reef Risk Outlook". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 2 January 2012. At present, local human activities, coupled with past thermal stress, threaten an estimated 75 percent of the world's reefs. By 2030, estimates predict more than 90% of the world's reefs will be threatened by local human activities, warming, and acidification, with nearly 60% facing high, very high, or critical threat levels.

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38. United Nations Environment Programme 2019, p. 46; Vox, 20 September 2019; Sepulveda, Nestor A.; Jenkins, Jesse D.; De Sisternes, Fernando J.; Lester, Richard K. (2018). "The Role of Firm Low-Carbon Electricity Resources in Deep Decarbonization of Power Generation". . 2 (11): 2403-2420. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006.

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41. ^ "Hydropower". iea.org. International Energy Agency. Hydropower generation is estimated to have increased by over 2% in 2019 owing to continued recovery from drought in Latin America as well as strong capacity expansion and good water availability in China (...) capacity expansion has been losing speed. This downward trend is expected to continue, due mainly to less large-project development in China and Brazil, where concerns over social and environmental impacts have restricted projects.

42. ^ IPCC SRCCL Ch5 2019, pp. 487, 488, FIGURE 5.12 Humans on a vegan exclusive diet would save about 7.9 GtCO₂ equivalent per year by 2050 IPCC AR6 WG1 Technical Summary 2021, p. 51 Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use used an average of 12 GtCO₂ per year between 2007 and 2016 (23% of total anthropogenic emissions).

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45. ^ "Public perceptions on climate change" (PDF). PERITIA Trust EU - The Policy Institute of King's College London. June 2022. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 July 2022.

46. ^ Powell, James (20 November 2019). "Scientists Reach 100% Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 37 (4): 183-184. doi:10.1177/0270467619886266. S2CID 213454806.

47. ^ Connolly, Kate (29 April 2021). "'Historic' German ruling says climate goals not tough enough". The Guardian.

48. ^ "Coal Consumption Affecting Climate". Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette. Warkworth, New Zealand. 14 August 1912. p. 7. Text was earlier published in Popular Mechanics, March 1912, p. 341.

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This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 ( license statement/permission). Text taken from The status of women in agrifood systems - Overview​, FAO, FAO.

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In common usage, climate change describes global warming-the ongoing increase in global average temperature-and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.

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NBC NEWS: Biden likely to delay executive orders on immigration..........

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NBC NEWS: Biden likely to delay executive orders on immigration..........

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-likely-delay-executive-orders-immigration-including-task-force-reunite-n1255896

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https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does

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resistance, also called Underground, in European history, any of various secret and clandestine groups that sprang up throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II to oppose Nazi rule. The exact number of those who took part is unknown, but they included civilians who worked secretly against the occupation as well as armed bands of partisans or guerrilla fighters. Their activities ranged from publishing clandestine newspapers and assisting the escape of Jews and Allied airmen shot down over enemy territory to committing acts of sabotage, ambushing German patrols, and conveying intelligence information to the Allies.

The resistance was by no means a unified movement. Rival organizations were formed, and in several countries deep divisions existed between communist and noncommunist groups. Initially, the communists took a pacifist line, but, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, they joined the underground and in some areas became dominant in it. In Yugoslavia the Serbian nationalist Chetniks under Dragoljub Mihailović and the communist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito fought each other as well as the Germans, and the two major Greek movements, one nationalist and one communist, were unable to cooperate militarily against the Germans. A similar division emerged in Poland, where the Soviet Union backed the communist resistance movement and allowed the Polish nationalist underground, the Home Army, to be destroyed by the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising of autumn 1944. In the Ukraine, where the Germans were at first welcomed as liberators, the Nazi treatment of the Slavic peoples as inferior races provoked a national resistance movement that fought not only the Germans but also the partisans organized by the Soviets to harass the long German supply lines to the Eastern Front.

In Belgium a strong communist-dominated resistance movement coexisted with a resistance group constituted by former army officers. The main Norwegian and Dutch organizations, on the other hand, were closely linked with the royal governments-in-exile. The Germans' dismissal of the legal Danish government in 1943 gave rise to a unified council of resistance groups that was able to mount considerable interference with the retreat of German divisions from Norway the following winter. Communists dominated the resistance movement in northern (occupied) France, although both there and in southern France (ruled by the puppet Vichy regime) other resistance groups were formed by former army officers, socialists, labour leaders, intellectuals, and others. In 1943 the clandestine National Council of the Resistance (Conseil National de la Résistance) was established as the central organ of coordination among all French groups. Early the following year, various belligerent forces known as maquis (named from the underbrush, or maquis, that served as their cover) were formally merged into the French Forces of the Interior ( Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur [FFI]).

Many of the resistance groups were in contact with the British Special Operations Executive, which was in charge of aiding and coordinating subversive activities in Europe; and the British, Americans, and Soviets supported guerrilla bands in Axis-dominated territories by providing arms and air-dropping supplies. After the Allied landing in France on June 6, 1944, the FFI undertook military operations in support of the invasion, and it participated in the August uprising that helped liberate Paris. Resistance forces in other northern European countries also undertook military actions to assist the Allied forces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
resistance, also called Underground, in European history, any of various secret and clandestine groups that sprang up throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II to oppose Nazi rule. The exact number of those who took part is unknown, but they included civilians who worked secretly against the occupation as well as armed bands of partisans or guerrilla fighters.

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Renewable and nonrenewable resources are energy sources that human society uses to function on a daily basis. The difference between these two types of resources is that renewable resources can naturally replenish themselves while nonrenewable resources cannot. This means that nonrenewable resources are limited in supply and cannot be used sustainably.

There are four major types of nonrenewable resources: oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy. Oil, natural gas, and coal are collectively called fossil fuels. Fossil fuels were formed within the Earth from dead plants and animals over millions of years-hence the name "fossil" fuels. They are found in underground layers of rock and sediment. Pressure and heat worked together to transform the plant and animal remains into crude oil (also known as petroleum), coal, and natural gas.

The plants and animals that became fossil fuels lived in a time called Carboniferous Period, around 300 to 360 million years ago. The energy in the plant and animal remains originally came from the sun; through the process of photosynthesis, solar energy is stored in plant tissues, which animals then consume, adding the energy to their own bodies. When fossil fuels are burned, this trapped energy is released.

Crude oil is a liquid fuel fossil fuel that is used mostly to produce gasoline and diesel fuel for vehicles, and for the manufacturing of plastics. It is found in rocks below Earth's surface and is pumped out through wells.

Natural gas is widely used for cooking and for heating homes. It consists mostly of methane and is found near oil deposits below Earth's surface. Natural gas can be pumped out through the same wells used for extracting crude oil.

Coal is a solid fossil fuel that is used for heating homes and generating power plants. It is found in fossilized swamps that have been buried beneath layers of sediment. Since coal is solid, it cannot be extracted in the same manner as crude oil or natural gas; it must be dug up from the ground.

Nuclear energy comes from radioactive elements, mainly uranium, which is extracted from mined ore and then refined into fuel.

Unfortunately, human society is-for the time being-dependent on nonrenewable resources as its primary source of energy. Approximately 80 percent of the total amount of energy used globally each year comes from fossil fuels. We depend on fossil fuels because they are energy-rich and relatively cheap to process. But a major problem with fossil fuels, aside from their being in limited supply, is that burning them releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Rising levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main cause of global warming.

Alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, are a possible solution to the depletion of nonrenewable sources. Both of these clean energy sources are available in unlimited supply.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nonrenewable energy resources include coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy. Once these resources are used up, they cannot be replaced, which is a major problem for humanity as we are currently dependent on them to supply most of our energy needs.

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Staffers and judges were informed of the shift Wednesday morning in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin. The move will be effective Sunday.

"Jean will provide continuity in EOIR's leadership until a new director is selected," Carlin wrote, according to a person who received the memo.

The personnel change comes after complaints from immigration advocates who were troubled to see McHenry's name on the agency-wide list the Justice Department released last Thursday of those holding top posts on an acting or continuing basis for the first weeks of the Biden presidency.

McHenry's presence on the roster of officials staying on into the new administration rankled immigration reformers seeking an immediate change in direction for an operation with huge power over immigrants accused of being in the U.S. illegally.

"I saw that list....and I was just shocked," said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration lawyer in Greensboro, N.C., prior to Wednesday's announcement. "The policies he was putting out in terms of his attempts to control what judges do inside the courtroom, those efforts have been monumental over the last three years. To see he's one of the hangers-on is very surprising."

"To have someone like that leading EOIR, who doesn't embrace the vision of restoring due process & fairness....this would undermine that goal and that hope," Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center said last week.

McHenry was named as acting chief of EOIR in May 2017 and was given the permanent director title the following January. As the top executive branch official overseeing the immigration courts, McHenry spearheaded a series of policy initiatives that rankled immigration advocates, including efforts to narrow asylum standards and to press immigration judges to close cases more quickly.

One immigration advocate said that Biden transition personnel at the Department of Homeland Security seemed more urgently focused on immigration issues, while those issues appeared to be put on the back burner by those planning for the Justice Department.

That perception was reinforced by a report last week that the career official the Biden team tapped to act as acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, played a role in an internal dust-up several years ago related to the Trump-era policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the Mexican border.

As an official running the office that oversees U.S. attorneys, Wilkinson approved the reassignment of a line prosecutor who was seen as resisting an early pilot of the controversial family-splitting effort, which Trump officials abandoned in 2018 following public outcry and bipartisan pressure from Congress.

Given the attention to Wilkinson's minor role in that widely-denounced policy, it was notable that when the Justice Department formally jettisoned part of that policy this week, the announcement came in a memo from Wilkinson. The new directive said the department was abandoning a so-called zero-tolerance rule that called for nearly all adults who cross the border illegally to be criminally prosecuted.

"A policy requiring a prosecutor to charge every case referred for prosecution....without regard for individual circumstances is inconsistent with our principles," Wilkinson wrote.

Greg Chen, director of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called McHenry's exit a necessary precursor for Biden to carry out his immigration agenda.

"AILA has deep concerns about the current director and other appointees currently leading EOIR, who have stripped judges of fundamental authorities that make it impossible for them to render fair and consistent decisions," Chen said. "If he is allowed to stay in office, the many steps he has taken to steamroll cases through the courts for removal orders will continue apace. His removal is imperative to the new administration being able to implement its vision of make courts fairer and more efficient."

Some lawyers said civil service laws may have complicated the Biden administration's ability to swiftly reassign McHenry. One legal provision creates a 120-day moratorium on reassigning certain senior career executives following a change in agency leadership. But with Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland still awaiting confirmation, it is unclear whether the Justice Department transitioning from an acting attorney general under President Donald Trump to another appointed by Biden triggered that 120-day clock.

However, several advocates said they were confident that the department had the power to move McHenry out of his post at least temporarily. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the personnel shift.

Regardless of the precise legal requirements, the Biden administration may be reluctant to involuntarily reassign members of the senior executive service over concerns about disregarding civil service protections. The Trump administration often seemed to be at war with the civil service and with federal employee unions, the subject of much criticism over the previous president's four years in office.

Last October, Trump issued an executive order that could have led to tens of thousands of government positions being converted from civil service positions to ones where employees can be fired without cause. Trump officials failed to complete that process by Inauguration Day.

Last Friday, Biden signed an executive order unwinding many of Trump's civil service-related actions, which the new president said had "undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles."

In 2018, more than a dozen liberal lawyers sent a letter complaining that Trump appointees were mistreating members of the senior executive service by reassigning them as retaliation and potentially in violation of civil service protections. That history may have left the new administration sensitive about any perception that it is short-circuiting the laws and rules.

While immigration advocates have been highly critical of McHenry's tenure, the Trump administration boasted of the immigration courts' successes and efficiency under his oversight.

McHenry made major strides towards replacing the courts' archaic paper-based filing system with a computerized one, hired a record number of new immigration judges and sharply increased the number of cases closed out every year - at least before Covid-19 hit.

Immigration judges concluded a record 276,000 cases in fiscal 2019 and were on pace to close 400,000 cases in fiscal 2020 before the pandemic ground the immigration court system to a near halt.

The latest news in employment, labor and immigration politics and policy.

McKinney, the North Carolina immigration lawyer, said McHenry deserves credit for being forthright about EOIR policies and policy changes, even though they proved controversial in many quarters. "He has always been consistent when meeting with us to answer our questions. While we may not always have liked his answers, he always provided those answers," McKinney said.

Carlin's new memo indicated McHenry will move next week to a lower-profile position within EOIR, heading up the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer - a unit which chiefly hears cases involving businesses accused of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants or discriminating against foreigners who have the right to work in the U.S.

Unlike other federal courts, the immigration courts operate within the Executive Branch under authority delegated by the attorney general. Prosecutors in those proceedings come from the Department of Homeland Security and immigration court rulings can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also part of the Justice Department, and then to a federal appeals court.

Many immigration judges and immigration lawyers have urged that the immigration courts be moved outside of the Justice Department to give them greater independence.

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Biden administration replaces top immigration court official

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Staffers and judges were informed of the shift Wednesday morning in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin. The move will be effective Sunday. "Jean will provide continuity in EOIR's leadership until a new director is selected," Carlin wrote, according to a person who received the memo.

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The proposal for a path to citizenship for undocumented residents has been called "the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations." But is it possible?

President Biden's plan would allow the Hernandez family to apply for legal status. Credit... Jessica Pons for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES - Maria Elena Hernandez recently retrieved a flowery box tucked in her closet and dusted it off. For more than a decade, she has used it to store tax returns, lease agreements and other documents that she has collected to prove her family's long years of residence in the United States.

"We have been waiting for the day when we can apply for legal status. In this box is, hopefully, all the evidence we'll need," said Ms. Hernandez, 55, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who arrived in this country with three small children in 2000.

She had just learned of President Biden's plan to offer a pathway to U.S. citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented people, announced as part of a sweeping proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration system.

The bill would allow undocumented immigrants who were in the United States before Jan. 1 to apply for temporary legal status after passing background checks and paying taxes. As newly minted "lawful prospective immigrants," they would be authorized to work, join the military and travel without fear of deportation. After five years, they could apply for green cards.

The president's proposal would be perhaps the most ambitious immigration redesign passed since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized three million people.

Converting more than three times that many people into full citizens could open the door to one of the most significant demographic shifts in modern U.S. history, lifting millions out of the shadows and potentially into higher-paying jobs, providing them with welfare benefits, health coverage and Social Security eligibility while eventually creating many new voters.

"This is the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations," said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "But given that the Democrats have razor-thin majorities in Congress, the administration needs to have its expectations tempered." Legalizing just one group at first - say, farmworkers - might be "more realistic," he said.

In a sign of the hurdles ahead, another one of Mr. Biden's early immigration initiatives, a 100-day freeze on deportations, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on Tuesday after a lawsuit by the Texas attorney general, who argued that his state faced enormous costs for services to undocumented immigrants who are not removed.

Immigration reform has stalled in Congress time and again, over border security, guest workers and whether to tackle legislation one piece at a time. But the big stumbling block remains whether providing amnesty to those who have broken the law will encourage more people to try their luck.

Even with beefed-up border enforcement and some employer sanctions, Mr. Reagan's overhaul failed to curb the arrival of unauthorized immigrants.

Meanwhile, those immigrants have continued to live, work and raise families. More than 60 percent have resided in the country for more than a decade, and they have more than four million U.S.-born children. They account for 5 percent of the work force, representing the backbone of the agriculture, construction and hospitality sectors.

About four in 10 did not enter the United States through the southwestern border. Rather they are visa overstays - tourists, students or temporary skilled workers who never left.

The family of Denise Panaligan, 27, came to the United States from the Philippines in 2002 after her father, a financial analyst, obtained an H-1B visa. They remained after their temporary legal status ran out.

"When people look at us, they don't think undocumented because we are Asians," said Ms. Panaligan, a middle school teacher in Los Angeles. "We're invisible to enforcement."

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Mr. Biden's plan would allow undocumented immigrants who were in the country before Jan. 1 to apply for temporary legal status after passing background checks and paying taxes. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

But their decision led to other indignities, she said. Her mother had to work as a housekeeper despite having a college education. Denise's father, Art, died two years ago of brain cancer without ever returning to see his own parents because he would not have been allowed back into the United States.

"The Biden plan would fulfill our hope of keeping the family together," Ms. Panaligan said.

The largest share of unauthorized immigrants is from Mexico. Having survived treacherous river and desert crossings to reach the United States, they found a nation willing to look past laws that prohibit hiring them, to employ them in fields and factories, and in homes as nannies and housekeepers.

Maribel Ramirez and Eusebio Gomez of Mexico have toiled in California's vineyards since crossing the border 19 years ago. They have managed to buy a home and raise two sons. Their oldest plans to enlist in the Marines. But Ms. Ramirez said she asked herself, "Why should my son give his life to a country that doesn't value his parents?"

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both championed comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to legalization for undocumented people. But the immigration packages that were debated in Congress - in 2006, 2007 and 2013 - all stalled.

Among the concerns raised by opponents are that new citizens will vote as a solid Democratic bloc, displace American workers and become a burden on public services. Some predict that any legalization program would encourage more people to make the trek north.

"Legalizing countless millions of illegal aliens - even discussing it - rings the bell for millions more to illegally enter the U.S. to await their green card," said Lora Ries, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Maribel Ramirez, right, whose son Eusebio Jr., left, plans to join the military, often asks, "Why should my son give his life to a country that doesnt value his parents?" Credit... Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

Others argue there are benefits to legalization. Opening a pathway to citizenship for nearly 11 million people, seven to eight million of whom participate in the labor force, is tantamount to "an economic stimulus," according to Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis.

Between 2005 and 2015, new immigrants accounted fornearly half of the growth in the working-age population, and in the next two decades, immigrants will be key to replacing retirees. Demographers say a shortage of blue-collar workers highlights the need for immigrants, in ever larger numbers, to perform low-skilled jobs. About five million of them work in jobs designated as "essential" by the government.

Among the biggest backers of the Biden initiative are employers who rely on immigrants. Through the years, dairies, packing plants and other worksites have been caught up in immigration raids targeting unauthorized workers.

The Reagan-era amnesty in 1986 caused only a temporary drop in the number of undocumented immigrants because it was not accompanied by a robust system for legally bringing in low-skilled workers. Employers faced fines for knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants but were not responsible for vetting documents presented by job applicants, spawning a huge industry of fake Social Security numbers.

"The principle is simple: If you carry out a broad legalization, it doesn't freeze undocumented migration flows as long as labor demand persists," said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

The illegal influx began to swell again in the early 1990s.

Economic imperatives prevailed, driving illegal immigration up year after year. A building boom in Sun Belt states drew hundreds of thousands of undocumented construction workers. And as farm workers who had benefited from the amnesty aged and exited the fields, young undocumented labor arrived to replace them.

From 1986 to 2008 the country's undocumented population swelled to 12 million from three million despite an exponential increase in funding for border security, including boots on the ground. The militarization did not reduce illegal entries. Instead, it turned a seasonal migration of mainly men who returned home each year to Mexico into a settled population of families.

Mr. Biden's proposal would be perhaps the most ambitious immigration redesign passed since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized three million people. Credit... Paul Hosefros/The New York Times

The 2007 recession ultimately reduced the flow of immigrants. Despite successive waves of Central American migration, illegal entries remain substantially lower than in the early 2000s.

It has been about two decades since Ms. Hernandez stuffed a change of clothes in a bag, grabbed her three young children and slipped across the border.

"We didn't have papers, but I was determined to head north for a better life," she said. "I had relatives who had benefited from a 1986 amnesty and I figured our day would come."

Ms. Hernandez got a job in Los Angeles packing CDs. Her husband, Pedro Hernandez, joined them shortly after and found work at a nursery. Their children, Luis, then 7, and Elitania and Juan, then 4-year-old twins, thrived in school. They lived modestly, in apartments where the children slept in the bedrooms and the couple in the living room.

Their hopes were lifted, dashed and revived as Congress took up various immigration bills.

"Every president gave us hope that something good was coming, and then nothing. Again maybe. Then nothing," Ms. Hernandez recalled.

"We tried to do everything right, according to the law, in a country that had not opened its doors to us, but that we had entered anyway," she said.

Things got more challenging when Mr. Hernandez lost his job in 2006. His employer, concerned about government audits, had asked him to prove he was in the country legally.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began showing up in their neighborhood, the family avoided going out for days at a time. Mr. Hernandez rode his bike to a new job, figuring he would be less likely to encounter law enforcement than while driving his old Mazda. Ms. Hernandez signed up for adult English classes. As the children got older, she advised them to always be on their best behavior.

"I grew up hearing that you have to be an extra good citizen," said Luis Hernandez, her oldest child, now 28. "Mom always said that: 'People who have papers can make mistakes, but you can't,'" he said.

Pedro Hernandez has opted to ride a bicycle to work instead of driving his car because he feels it decreases his chances of running into the police. Credit... Jessica Pons for The New York Times

Because of their undocumented status, Luis, who played club soccer, and Juan, a varsity football player, skipped games that required travel.

When Mr. Obama created a program known as DACA in 2012 to temporarily shield undocumented immigrants who had been brought into the country as children, Luis Hernandez and his siblings, then teenagers, applied immediately. It enabled them to work legally. They got their driver's licenses.

But President Donald J. Trump's incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric and his administration's attempt to rescind DACA generated deep anxiety in the Hernandez household. When Mr. Biden took office, the family rejoiced.

After the inauguration, Ms. Hernandez was at her dining room table thinking about the imminent birth of her second grandchild, who will be an American citizen. She and her husband planned to drive to Utah to meet the baby, and she worried about making a trip across state lines without legal status, lest law enforcement stop them.

When she learned that the president had unveiled a blueprint for legalization, she said, she was stunned at first. Then she went to retrieve the box of documents.

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The Reality Behind Biden's Plan to Legalize 11 Million Immigrants

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The proposal for a path to citizenship for undocumented residents has been called "the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations." But is it possible? LOS ANGELES - Maria Elena Hernandez recently retrieved a flowery box tucked in her closet and dusted it off.

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Table of Contents

1. Selma to Montgomery March

2. Literacy Tests

3. Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

4. Voter Turnout Rises in the South

5. Changes to the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Selma to Montgomery March

Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory and used this mandate to push for legislation he believed would improve the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws.

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged many Americans occurred on March 7, 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back.

Some protesters were severely beaten and bloodied, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national television.

In the wake of the shocking incident, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Literacy Tests

Black people attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Black people, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests, which they sometimes failed.

Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force Black voters to "recite the entire Constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws," a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even Black people with college degrees were turned away from the polls.

Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. After debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 333-85 on July 9.

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.

The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Did you know? In 1965, at the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, there were six African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives and no Black people in the U.S. Senate. By 1971, there were 13 members of the House and one Black member of the Senate.

Voter Turnout Rises in the South

Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak, and it often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of Black people in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo.

Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among Black people increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

Changes to the Voting Rights Act

Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens. It has also been walked back. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated. In the wake of the Shelby County v. Holder decision, several states began enacting laws limiting voter access, including ID requirements, limits on early voting, mail-in voting and more.

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Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Definition, Summary & Significance

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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Association of American Colleges & Universities

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In the past few years, fierce debates about the rights of unauthorized immigrants have raged across the nation. The outcome of these debates will have tremendous demographic, economic, social, cultural, and political ramifications that will shape the country's future and the future of higher education. My adopted state, Arizona, has become "ground zero" in these disputes as they relate to Mexican immigration. As Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, has observed in discussing the abysmal graduation rates of Latino high school students, Arizona and the nation at large will "face a social revolution and economic train wreck" if policymakers, educators, and citizens do not address immigration soon and in a constructive way (2004).

Arizona State University

This is, of course, easier said than done. Immigration is a highly controversial issue, and as such, it is one that we educators cannot ignore. In Peoples of the Southwest, an anthropology course I teach at Northern Arizona University (informally known as "Cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, and Mormons"), immigration is problema número uno for many students. In order to discuss the region's distinguishing cultures and backgrounds, the class must grapple with contemporary controversies, including those surrounding immigration. Students want to know about immigration and border issues as we consider Mexican and Mexican American culture from diverse perspectives.

As educators, we have a unique opportunity to help students develop the civic skills that will enable them to operate in and contribute to the modern globalized world. These skills may be the most powerful tools we can teach students to use. With this in mind, my goal in facilitating learning is simple. I want to help students see the world in new ways--through both indigenous and innovative lenses that expand their horizons beyond the often ethno-, class-, or gender-centric viewpoints they may encounter among family and friends, in their previous schooling, and in the media. I want to help them use new understandings to make practical and positive differences in the world. I ask students to see cultures, including their own, as experiments in sustainability. I encourage them to ask, "If we continue as we are (in this case, without immigration reform), what will things look like forty years from now--and what do we want them to look like?"
The Complexities of Mexican Emigration
Although recent national priorities have pushed immigration reform into the background of media coverage, the realities of immigration persist. In Arizona, Mexican immigration is particularly controversial, and I want to help my students grapple with its complexity.

Texts that Encourage Students to Think Systemically about Immigration

Narratives can help students consider the systemic effects of Mexican immigration through an empathetic lens. Suggested assignments include:

Arau, S. 2004. A day without a Mexican. Xenon Pictures.

Chavez, L. 1998. Shadowed lives: Undocumented immigrants in American society. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Gonzales, R. I am Joaquin. Film available on youtube.com.

Urrea, L. 1993. Across the wire: Life and hard times on the Mexican border. New York: Anchor Books.

-Miguel Vasquez

Mexican emigration is not a new phenomenon; it has been happening for centuries. But in the past fifteen years, the rate of immigration to the United States from rural Mexico has accelerated dramatically, even doubling by some accounts (Pew Hispanic Center 2005). The United States has not loosened control of the southern border, which is more militarized than ever. But military might cannot guard against the economic effects of initiatives like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Originally touted by free trade proponents as a move that would boost Mexico's economy and end immigration, this 1994 agreement has had the opposite effect, leading to the devastation of the rural Mexican economy. With food prices doubling, Mexican farmers and small businesses have been displaced, unable to compete with subsidized American agribusiness and corporate clout.

Refugees from this economic process have few options but to leave their home communities in record numbers. Many rural towns and villages are now empty of all but the very young and very old. Adults of working age have moved to urban areas across Mexico, where rampant unemployment exists, even in the maquilladora sector, where many manufacturers have moved to China. Little growth occurs outside of the burgeoning narco-tráfico (narcotics trafficking) sector. Thus many Mexicans find themselves compelled to cross the border illegally for jobs that Americans don't want. Millions of immigrants seeking a better life cross the desert into the American Southwest. These migrants have taken the initiative to leave home, family, community, language--all that is familiar--for el norte. Having risked everything to come to the United States, they often encounter substandard wages and constant fear of the federal immigration raids that humiliate them, separate their families, and turn needed workers into criminals. Although their cheap labor helps lower American production costs and subsidizes American lifestyles, they are nonetheless demonized in the media and public discourse.

Politicians and theoreticians on the left, right, and center have focused their arguments on NAFTA's impact on North American business and labor, but many have ignored its impacts on Mexican businesses and workers. Theoretical attempts to make sense of rampant immigration identify a variety of "push" and "pull" factors that encourage undocumented people to cross the southern border: wage differentials between Mexico and the United States, a desire for cheap labor and inexpensive services on the part of U.S. employers and consumers, corrupt and callous Mexican officials dependent on the remittances Mexican immigrants send home to their families as a major source of national revenue. But few mainstream politicians and pundits express interest in NAFTA's impact on immigrants themselves or its implications for humane immigration policy. Buried in heated rhetoric, immigrants' stories are often invisible, and public debates reflect little understanding of the underlying reasons for immigration or its impacts on their lives.
Framing the Issue Systemically
On the topic of immigration, and in regard to larger issues of social justice, a cultural divide emerges--a moral division between fundamentally different world views that has Americans on both sides of the issue talking past each other. As educators, it is our role to help our students bridge this divide and consider immigration with intelligence and empathy. Our students--America's future citizens, politicians, and pundits--must learn to explore the economic and moral effects of immigration policy as they engage in the public debates.

The work of cognitive scientist George Lakoff suggests a way to approach discussion of this topic. Lakoff proposes that the basis for the cultural divide lies in the different mental frames with which humans see reality, which reflect the brain's neural functioning. Thus links between thoughts are links between neurons, and metaphors and narratives are "physically constitute[d] in the brain" (2008). Depending on one's "frame of mind," immigration can seem like a "no-brainer." For example, one might view unauthorized immigration in terms of what Lakoff calls direct causation. This approach might suggest that because undocumented people have "broken the law," they are criminals with no rights and should be deported. Alternatively, one might view immigration in terms of systemic causation, examining the issue within a broader framework. An observation made by former Arizona governor and current head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano reflects this systemic perspective: "[W]hether we like it or not, in our three major industries in Arizona--tourism, agriculture, and construction--we are absolutely dependent on undocumented Mexican workers" (2004). In this frame, immigration is part of a complex codependent system, where native-born Americans depend on immigrants just as immigrants depend on American economic opportunities and their home communities depend on remittances immigrants send.

A systemic causation frame acknowledges that the economic and social disruption American policies cause in Mexico and other countries is not irrelevant to American concerns or an inevitable (and thus acceptable) consequence of the "free market." It takes into account the complex consequences of policies like NAFTA, including the economic exodus of displaced workers and their families (Lakoff 2008, Appadurai 1996). Instead of framing these people's lives as externalities, and them as "others" who don't really matter (unless they decide to emigrate and "take American jobs"), it recognizes the complicated realities that we must equip our students to address.
Class Exercises
Facilitating new perspectives that enable students to see beyond the anti-immigrant rhetoric of what Lakoff refers to as "othering" requires educators to move beyond abstract theory. If, as Lakoff contends, human understanding is facilitated by a process of mental "framing"--of placing new knowledge and experiences within a larger, already-familiar context--educators can help students develop systemic cognitive frames. Narratives, including stories, anecdotes, jokes, and myths, help contextualize abstract and theoretical concepts, framing them within students' life experiences. Social theory is notoriously dry, obtuse, and difficult to digest; but everyone experiences the world, and most of us try to make sense of it. Narrative helps students frame issues in ways that make sense to their lives.

In Peoples of the Southwest, I use students' life experiences and narrative techniques to help students think systemically. We open the class sessions on immigration with a writing exercise that asks students to reflect on their experiences and draft a paragraph in response to the statement, "Immigrants are taking American jobs." I ask students not to put their names on what they have written. Students then pass the papers around until no one knows whose paper they have, and students with interesting responses read them aloud. Anonymity eliminates the intimidation students might feel in being identified with a particular belief, and the exercise provides a starting point for discussing a spectrum of viewpoints while separating issues from individuals. From there, we move to a thought experiment, applying "free market" logic to the following employment scenario:

I explain that I am a watermelon grower in Yuma, Arizona, with two hundred acres of watermelon ready to harvest in August. It's 115 degrees Fahrenheit and there is a weeklong window before the crop becomes worthless. I propose a better-than-minimum-wage pay of ten dollars an hour and ask students if they would be willing to work under these terms. When there are no takers, I raise the pay to twelve dollars an hour, then fifteen dollars an hour. It is not until the hypothetical pay approaches twenty dollars an hour that enough student "workers" raise their hands to compose a work crew adequate to complete the job. I then ask the students what they would expect to pay for one watermelon for a family Labor Day picnic. Students often respond with newfound understanding of their role in the labor economy. After identifying their participation in the system, most students are more willing to think empathetically about the conditions for immigrant workers.

Once my students have brought empathy to the discussion, the class is able to explore other previously unexamined assumptions about undocumented immigrants. As a class, we discuss the complicated set of presumptions and stereotypes that portray unauthorized immigrants as bankrupting our healthcare and education systems, increasing crime, eluding taxes, refusing to enter the United States by legal means, refusing to assimilate or learn English, or bringing diseases across the border. Most importantly, we critique the assumption that undocumented immigrants have no legal or human rights.
Democracy's Future
In my experience, many students seem to fundamentally comprehend that inequity exists in the contemporary world, and that it is wrong. But they often have not been given the tools or the time to examine questions of equity and justice in any depth. Class exercises in "framing" become a means to help students see immigration and other contemporary issues confronting their world, including diversity, globalization, climate change, and sustainability, in the systemic context of their own lives. Having made these connections, students can develop cultural sensitivity and the capacity to recognize and transcend ethnocentrism. These capacities appear in the essays they write in later sessions, as well as in the ways many become engaged in organizations, projects, and events beyond the classroom.

Historically, we as a country have only imperfectly embodied the American ideals of democracy and social justice. But our "unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" have their roots in concepts of empathy and responsibility--capacities we must teach our students. President Obama has argued that a "deficit of empathy"--a "lack of caring"--plagues the United States and ultimately endangers our democracy. Educators have a pivotal role to play in helping students eliminate this deficit with down payments on democracy's future and on America's survival.
References
Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Crow, M. 2004. Speech delivered at the annual meeting of the Arizona Association of Chicanos in Higher Education, Tempe, AZ. November 12.

Lakoff, G. 2008. The political mind: A cognitive scientist's guide to your brain and its politics. New York: Viking.

Napolitano, J. 2004. Speech delivered at a meeting of local Latino leaders, Flagstaff, AZ. December 12.

Pew Hispanic Center. 2005. Estimates of the size and characteristics of the undocumented population. pewhispanic.org/files/reports/44.pdf.

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Teaching Students to Consider Immigration with Empathy

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In the past few years, fierce debates about the rights of unauthorized immigrants have raged across the nation. The outcome of these debates will have tremendous demographic, economic, social, cultural, and political ramifications that will shape the country's future and the future of higher education.

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The legacy of D-Day resonates through history: It was the largest-ever amphibious military invasion. Allied forces faced rough weather and fierce German gunfire as they stormed Normandy's coast. Despite tough odds and high casualties, Allied forces ultimately won the battle and helped turn the tide of World War II toward victory against Hitler's forces.

But there are some aspects from D-Day that may not be as well known. Among them: Hitler's miscalculations, a hero medic who has still not received official recognition, and the horror faced by a 19-year-old coastguardsman as he followed a tough command. Here are some lesser-known stories about the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

1. Eisenhower threatened to quit just months before D-Day.

Just a few months before the D-Day invasion, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and English Prime Minister Winston Churchill were at odds over a controversial plan. Eisenhower wanted to divert Allied strategic bombers that had been hammering German industrial plants to instead begin bombing critical French infrastructure.

For Eisenhower, the switch in bombing seemed like a no-brainer. But others, including Churchill and Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of the Royal Air Force's strategic bomber command, didn't see it that way. Harris saw the plan as a waste of resources, while Churchill was concerned about collateral damage to France-an important ally. Facing this opposition, Eisenhower threatened to step down from his position.

The move worked, the bombing plan went ahead and, historians argue, Eisenhower showed the depth of his dedication to making D-Day a successful operation and defeating the Nazis.
Read more here.
2. Hitler thought he was ready-but Nazi defenses were focused in the wrong place.

As early as 1942, Adolf Hitler knew that a large-scale Allied invasion of France could turn the tide of the war in Europe. But thanks in large part to a brilliant Allied deception campaign and Hitler's fanatical grip on Nazi military decisions, the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944 became precisely the turning point that the Germans most feared. In 1942 Germany began construction on the Atlantic Wall, a 2,400-mile network of bunkers, pillboxes, mines and landing obstacles up and down the French coastline. But without the money and manpower to install a continuous line of defense, the Nazis focused on established ports.

The top candidate for an Allied invasion was believed to be the French port city of Calais, where the Germans installed three massive gun batteries. Meanwhile, the rest of the French coastline-including the northern beaches of Normandy-was less fiercely defended. What's more, if Hitler had listened to his Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, matters might have been worse for the Allies landing at Normandy.
Read more here.
3. Key early parts of the invasion did not go to plan.

The strategy on D-Day was to prepare the beaches for incoming Allied troops by heavily bombing Nazi gun positions at the coast and destroying key bridges and roads to cut off Germany's retreat and reinforcements. The paratroopers were to then drop in to secure inland positions ahead of the land invasion.

But almost nothing went exactly as planned on June 6, 1944.

In the end, partly due to poor weather and visibility, bombers failed to take out key artillery, particularly at Omaha Beach. Many paratroopers were dropped far off their marks and became vulnerable to German snipers. And during the land invasion, a critical fleet of marine tanks sank in stormy seas and failed to make it ashore. Despite the setbacks, Allied troops pushed through and by pure grit, got the job done.
Explore how D-Day unfolded here.
4. Ramps on Allied landing crafts acted as shields-until they were dropped.

D-Day veteran Frank DeVita says he'll never forget how tough it was to be the man in charge of dropping the ramp as his landing craft approached Omaha Beach. "This was our shield as long as it was up. And as we approached the shoreline where the water hits the sand, and the machine guns were hitting the front of the boat-it was like a typewriter," DeVita, who was barely 19 on June 6, 1944, remembers.

When he was ordered to drop the ramp, he paused. "I figured in my mind when I drop that damn ramp, the bullets that are hitting the ramp are going to come into the boat. So I froze."

But then the coxswain again yelled at DeVita to lower the ramp, and he followed the order. "I dropped the ramp," he said. "And the first 7, 8, 9, 10 guys went down like you were cutting down wheat...They were kids."
Watch DeVita tell his story here.
5. Among the heroes on Omaha Beach was a black combat medic who treated more than 200 men.

Heavy machine-gun fire greeted a nauseous and bloody Waverly B. Woodson, Jr. as he disembarked onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. A German shell had just blasted apart his landing craft, killing the man next to him and peppering him with so much shrapnel that he initially believed he, too, was dying.

But Woodson, a medic with the lone African-American combat unit to fight on D-Day, managed to set up a medical aid station. For the next 30 hours, he removed bullets, dispensed blood plasma, cleaned wounds, reset broken bones and at one point amputated a foot. He also saved four men from drowning.

After the battle, Woodson was highly commended, but never received a medal. Though Woodson died in 2005, his family has been pushing the Army to award him a Medal of Honor posthumously.
Watch Woodson's widow tell his story here.
6. Historians are still calculating how many died on D-Day

In planning the D-Day attack, Allied military leaders knew that casualties might be staggeringly high, but it was a cost they were willing to pay in order to establish an infantry stronghold in France. Days before the invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was told by a top strategist that paratrooper casualties alone could be as high as 75 percent. The casualties were staggeringly high on D-Day-but how high?

When a memorial was first being planned in the late 1990s, there were wildly different estimates for Allied D-Day fatalities ranging from 5,000 to 12,000. Military records clearly showed that thousands of troops perished during the initial phases of the months-long Normandy Campaign, but it wasn't clear when many of the troops were actually killed. Historians estimate there were 4,414 Allied deaths on June 6, including 2,501 Americans. But they also know that list isn't complete and the project to count the dead continues.
Read more here.
7. Allied troops won more than a military victory on D-Day.

D-Day's hard-fought battles not only led to the beginning of the end of the war, the men who fought in the invasion forever changed people's lives-and influenced the perception of the soldier-as savior-for at least one young boy.

French businessman Bernard Marie was 5 years old and living in Normandy on June 6, 1944. He remembers before the Allied invasion, he and his friends could not go out and play on the beaches because "Mother couldn't trust anybody. So, for me, everybody wearing a uniform was a bad guy. "

On D-Day, as sirens wailed over their town starting at 2 a.m., Marie retreated to the basement with his grandfather to take shelter. "My grandfather put his hands on my ears because there was a lot of noise. It was nonstop. And we stayed there 15 hours. We were so afraid."

At 5 pm, Marie recalls, the shooting was done. Then he heard his mother outside yelling, so he and his grandfather ran upstairs to follow her. "I will never forget," Marie says, "She was hugging a soldier! I could not understand that. For me it was a bad guy. So she called me to come and said, 'These soldiers are good, they've come to save us.'"

To this day, Marie is grateful to that soldier-and to all the veterans who fought to liberate France from the Nazis. "The most important thing for any human being is freedom," he says. "We cannot forget the 6th of June."
Watch Marie tell his story here.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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7 Surprising Facts About D-Day | HISTORY

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D-Day was a historic World War II invasion, but the events of June 6, 1944 encompassed much more than a key military victory.

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The primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government. They are some of the most-viewed and sought-out documents in the holdings of the National Archives.

Revolution and the New Nation

Expansion and Reform

Civil War and Reconstruction

The Development of the Industrial United States

The Emergence of Modern America

The Great Depression and World War II

Postwar United States

A note about the documents included on this page: These documents were originally selected for the project Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives, a national initiative on American history, civics, and service. They were identified to "help us think, talk and teach about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in our democracy...These documents reflect our diversity and our unity, our past and our future, and mostly our commitment as a nation to continue to strive to 'form a more perfect union.'" The original list included only documents created prior to 1965. In the future, this page will be updated with additional documents created after 1965. The original list also included several documents from the Library of Congress (Federalist Paper No. 10, Federalist Paper No. 51, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address) and the New York Public Library (George Washington's Farewell Address)."

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The primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government. They are some of the most-viewed and sought-out documents in the holdings of the National Archives.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/28/republicans-considering-100-bills-restrict-voting-rights

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Staffers and judges were informed of the shift Wednesday morning in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin. The move will be effective Sunday.

"Jean will provide continuity in EOIR's leadership until a new director is selected," Carlin wrote, according to a person who received the memo.

The personnel change comes after complaints from immigration advocates who were troubled to see McHenry's name on the agency-wide list the Justice Department released last Thursday of those holding top posts on an acting or continuing basis for the first weeks of the Biden presidency.

McHenry's presence on the roster of officials staying on into the new administration rankled immigration reformers seeking an immediate change in direction for an operation with huge power over immigrants accused of being in the U.S. illegally.

"I saw that list....and I was just shocked," said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration lawyer in Greensboro, N.C., prior to Wednesday's announcement. "The policies he was putting out in terms of his attempts to control what judges do inside the courtroom, those efforts have been monumental over the last three years. To see he's one of the hangers-on is very surprising."

"To have someone like that leading EOIR, who doesn't embrace the vision of restoring due process & fairness....this would undermine that goal and that hope," Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center said last week.

McHenry was named as acting chief of EOIR in May 2017 and was given the permanent director title the following January. As the top executive branch official overseeing the immigration courts, McHenry spearheaded a series of policy initiatives that rankled immigration advocates, including efforts to narrow asylum standards and to press immigration judges to close cases more quickly.

One immigration advocate said that Biden transition personnel at the Department of Homeland Security seemed more urgently focused on immigration issues, while those issues appeared to be put on the back burner by those planning for the Justice Department.

That perception was reinforced by a report last week that the career official the Biden team tapped to act as acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, played a role in an internal dust-up several years ago related to the Trump-era policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the Mexican border.

As an official running the office that oversees U.S. attorneys, Wilkinson approved the reassignment of a line prosecutor who was seen as resisting an early pilot of the controversial family-splitting effort, which Trump officials abandoned in 2018 following public outcry and bipartisan pressure from Congress.

Given the attention to Wilkinson's minor role in that widely-denounced policy, it was notable that when the Justice Department formally jettisoned part of that policy this week, the announcement came in a memo from Wilkinson. The new directive said the department was abandoning a so-called zero-tolerance rule that called for nearly all adults who cross the border illegally to be criminally prosecuted.

"A policy requiring a prosecutor to charge every case referred for prosecution....without regard for individual circumstances is inconsistent with our principles," Wilkinson wrote.

Greg Chen, director of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called McHenry's exit a necessary precursor for Biden to carry out his immigration agenda.

"AILA has deep concerns about the current director and other appointees currently leading EOIR, who have stripped judges of fundamental authorities that make it impossible for them to render fair and consistent decisions," Chen said. "If he is allowed to stay in office, the many steps he has taken to steamroll cases through the courts for removal orders will continue apace. His removal is imperative to the new administration being able to implement its vision of make courts fairer and more efficient."

Some lawyers said civil service laws may have complicated the Biden administration's ability to swiftly reassign McHenry. One legal provision creates a 120-day moratorium on reassigning certain senior career executives following a change in agency leadership. But with Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland still awaiting confirmation, it is unclear whether the Justice Department transitioning from an acting attorney general under President Donald Trump to another appointed by Biden triggered that 120-day clock.

However, several advocates said they were confident that the department had the power to move McHenry out of his post at least temporarily. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the personnel shift.

Regardless of the precise legal requirements, the Biden administration may be reluctant to involuntarily reassign members of the senior executive service over concerns about disregarding civil service protections. The Trump administration often seemed to be at war with the civil service and with federal employee unions, the subject of much criticism over the previous president's four years in office.

Last October, Trump issued an executive order that could have led to tens of thousands of government positions being converted from civil service positions to ones where employees can be fired without cause. Trump officials failed to complete that process by Inauguration Day.

Last Friday, Biden signed an executive order unwinding many of Trump's civil service-related actions, which the new president said had "undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles."

In 2018, more than a dozen liberal lawyers sent a letter complaining that Trump appointees were mistreating members of the senior executive service by reassigning them as retaliation and potentially in violation of civil service protections. That history may have left the new administration sensitive about any perception that it is short-circuiting the laws and rules.

While immigration advocates have been highly critical of McHenry's tenure, the Trump administration boasted of the immigration courts' successes and efficiency under his oversight.

McHenry made major strides towards replacing the courts' archaic paper-based filing system with a computerized one, hired a record number of new immigration judges and sharply increased the number of cases closed out every year - at least before Covid-19 hit.

Immigration judges concluded a record 276,000 cases in fiscal 2019 and were on pace to close 400,000 cases in fiscal 2020 before the pandemic ground the immigration court system to a near halt.

The latest news in employment, labor and immigration politics and policy.

McKinney, the North Carolina immigration lawyer, said McHenry deserves credit for being forthright about EOIR policies and policy changes, even though they proved controversial in many quarters. "He has always been consistent when meeting with us to answer our questions. While we may not always have liked his answers, he always provided those answers," McKinney said.

Carlin's new memo indicated McHenry will move next week to a lower-profile position within EOIR, heading up the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer - a unit which chiefly hears cases involving businesses accused of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants or discriminating against foreigners who have the right to work in the U.S.

Unlike other federal courts, the immigration courts operate within the Executive Branch under authority delegated by the attorney general. Prosecutors in those proceedings come from the Department of Homeland Security and immigration court rulings can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also part of the Justice Department, and then to a federal appeals court.

Many immigration judges and immigration lawyers have urged that the immigration courts be moved outside of the Justice Department to give them greater independence.

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Biden administration replaces top immigration court official

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Staffers and judges were informed of the shift Wednesday morning in a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin. The move will be effective Sunday. "Jean will provide continuity in EOIR's leadership until a new director is selected," Carlin wrote, according to a person who received the memo.

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https://wethepeople.scholastic.com/grade-4-6/voting.html

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Table of Contents

1. Selma to Montgomery March

2. Literacy Tests

3. Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

4. Voter Turnout Rises in the South

5. Changes to the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Selma to Montgomery March

Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory and used this mandate to push for legislation he believed would improve the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws.

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged many Americans occurred on March 7, 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back.

Some protesters were severely beaten and bloodied, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national television.

In the wake of the shocking incident, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Literacy Tests

Black people attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Black people, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests, which they sometimes failed.

Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force Black voters to "recite the entire Constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws," a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even Black people with college degrees were turned away from the polls.

Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. After debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 333-85 on July 9.

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.

The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Did you know? In 1965, at the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, there were six African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives and no Black people in the U.S. Senate. By 1971, there were 13 members of the House and one Black member of the Senate.

Voter Turnout Rises in the South

Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak, and it often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of Black people in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo.

Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among Black people increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

Changes to the Voting Rights Act

Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens. It has also been walked back. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated. In the wake of the Shelby County v. Holder decision, several states began enacting laws limiting voter access, including ID requirements, limits on early voting, mail-in voting and more.

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Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Definition, Summary & Significance

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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The Lives They Lived

The Lives They Lived

When Mimi Jones was 17, she leapt into a Florida swimming pool, expecting trouble. It was June 1964 in St. Augustine, a tourist town heavy with humidity and hate. The Ku Klux Klan and others harnessed guns, firebombs, death threats, clubs and fists against Black demonstrators protesting segregation. The police relied on cattle prods and German shepherds. Days before, Jones and at least a dozen other activists traveled 250 miles by bus from Albany, Ga., to take part in the demonstrations. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had labeled St. Augustine - where the Rev. Andrew Young was brutally beaten, where King and hundreds of others were arrested - as the most "lawless" city he had worked in. It was the only place where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's hospital bills exceeded its food and lodging bills.

Jones (whose name at the time was Mamie Ford) did not scare easily. Serious and determined, a straight-A student, she had just finished her junior year of high school but was already a civil rights veteran. Starting at around 15, inspired by her minister, the Rev. Samuel B. Wells, a formidable leader who oversaw an army of teenage activists, she knocked on doors and chatted on porches, encouraging people to register to vote. She taught reading to illiterate Black Georgians so they could pass poll literacy tests, and she demonstrated at the Dairy Queen and other establishments that either were segregated or refused to hire Black people. Throughout her teens, she was arrested again and again.

In the spring of 1964, the Civil Rights bill, which would end segregation in public places and ban employment discrimination, was stalled in the Senate. Hosea Williams, a brash, fearless S.C.L.C. tactician (King affectionately called him "my wild man") had an idea: a swim-in at the segregated Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine. It would draw attention and, hopefully, help push through the bill. Civil rights activists had been protesting in the city for weeks, and the police had recently arrested King and others for trying to enter the Monson's whites-only restaurant. The location was ideal for a movement dependent on public sympathy and outrage: Near lots of foot traffic, the hotel was also a favorite among out-of-town journalists.

The plan was simple: Two white activists would rent a room and then invite Black swimmers as their pool "guests." But when Williams announced it at a church meeting hall, few Black hands went up. Many of them didn't know how to swim.

For decades, Black people had been banned from public pools and whites-only beaches. Jones and her 13 siblings, however, grew up near several creeks in southwest Georgia. Jones learned to swim in one and was baptized by Wells in another. Now in St. Augustine, Jones and her younger sister Altomease volunteered.

Around 12:45 p.m. on Thursday, June 18, Jones and a group of Black demonstrators - including 22-year-old J.T. Johnson, who had been a lifeguard in Albany, and Brenda Darten, 21, who was expelled from Albany State College for protesting - climbed out of two cars in front of the pool.

Jones and the others hopped over a low chain fence surrounding the pool and plunged in, joining the two white demonstrators. A few moments later, James Brock, the hotel manager, arrived, in his dark sunglasses, a pencil tie and a brow furrowed in anger. He had just finished waging another battle across the parking lot, shoving rabbis and other protesters in front of his restaurant into waiting police cars.

At the pool, the swimmers chatted and splashed around, ignoring Brock. "The water's fine, isn't it?" one of them called out. Brock grabbed two plastic jugs of muriatic acid, a cleaning agent, and began circling the pool, shaking the liquid into it. Drops landed near Jones and Darten's heads. Jones could feel the fumes in her nose and eyes.

By then a cadre of cops was also trying to rid the pool of Black bodies. A deputy sheriff suggested calling in the dogs. Another police officer smacked his baton against the water, trying to force the swimmers out. Then Henry Billitz, an off-duty cop, jumped into the pool, fully dressed, save for his socks and shoes. He swung at Al Lingo, one of the white protesters; another person hit Peter Shiras, the other white swimmer, as he left the pool. Within minutes the police arrested the entire group. Jones was charged with "deliberate disturbance of the peace," "malicious trespassing" and "conspiracy." She was hauled off to jail in her pale checkered one-piece bathing suit with spaghetti straps, soaking wet.

Jones didn't know it then, but in less than 24 hours photos of her would land on the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers. One showed Billitz suspended in midleap above the water and the swimmers' heads. In the other, Jones held onto Lingo as Brock poured acid behind her, her mouth open wide, as if in midscream.

After seeing the photos, President Lyndon Johnson told an adviser: "Our whole foreign policy and everything else will go to hell over this!" That same day, the Senate finally voted to pass the Civil Rights bill.

Jones would leave the South - after helping to desegregate Albany High School in her senior year - for college and eventually to marry and raise a son and to champion education, immigrants and the poor. It wasn't until her late 60s that Jones returned to St. Augustine, this time for the filming of Clennon L. King's documentary "Passage at St. Augustine: The 1964 Black Lives Matter Movement That Transformed America." One of her first stops was the pool. The Monson Motor Lodge was now a Hilton, and the old pool had been replaced with a new one. Standing beside it, she slipped off her boots and dipped her toes in. She wanted to feel the water again. This time without fear.

Maggie Jones is a contributing writer for the magazine and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.

Any appraisal of 1970s pop music usually involves, and in some cases devolves into, some of the following arguments: disco versus punk; sensitive troubadours versus glam gods; Barry Manilow versus Led Zeppelin. Often lost among these discussions is just how rich a time it was for female artists, and especially for fans of female artists. In line at a record-store cash register one night in 1973, I looked down and realized that my selections, all four of them, were by women. These songs included the latest singles by Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Melanie; the newest member of the quartet was "Peaceful," Helen Reddy's follow-up to "I Am Woman."

If you know anything about Reddy, it probably starts with that song and its insistent refrain, "I am strong/I am invincible/I am woman." Reddy wrote most of the lyrics to the future feminist anthem in 20 minutes in 1971, but they were at least a decade in coming. In her early 20s, she left her alcoholic first husband while she was still living in her native Australia, when he became physically abusive during her pregnancy. "Once was enough," she wrote in her 2006 memoir, "The Woman I Am." "I would not risk losing the baby I had prayed for." After winning a singing contest, she moved to the United States in the mid-1960s with a toddler in tow, $230 in her purse and hopes for a career in music, but she was told by one male record executive after another that no one was interested in a "girl singer." She had to hector her second husband, who was also her manager, to finally secure her a record deal. By the time he did, she was nearing 30, the usual expiration age for pop stardom. Rather than detail her grievances, "I Am Woman" offered a triumphant message of validation, and it landed just as the second wave of feminism was cresting, when Carole King's "Tapestry" album was ruling the charts, Shirley Chisholm was running for president and Roe v. Wade was being decided. Reddy would claim that of the million or so people who bought "I Am Woman," eight out of 10 were women. When she accepted a Grammy for her vocal on the song, besting Franklin, Carly Simon, Roberta Flack and Barbra Streisand, Reddy famously thanked God, "because she makes everything possible."

But you didn't have to be a woman, or even like "I Am Woman," to appreciate Reddy. Maybe that's as sacrilegious as saying you like Franklin but never cared for "Respect," or Nirvana but not "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Sometimes, though, when a career moment turns into a monument, it can overshadow everything else. In Reddy's case, "I Am Woman," and a few of the monster hits that followed, like "Delta Dawn" and "Leave Me Alone," were far from her best; they could seem squarely on the nose, catchy but kitschy, passing tones on the way to something better on the radio.

Dig a little deeper into Reddy's catalog, and you'll find the goods - songs like "Emotion," "Gladiola," "What Would They Say" and, especially, "Bluebird." Written by the great Leon Russell, "Bluebird" had a chill disco backbeat, but the jazzy melody and wistful lyric would have made it welcome on Ella Fitzgerald's set list. On these tracks, Reddy, like the best vocalists of any era, made musical intelligence sound sexy, and her versatility extended her appeal to, at any given time, rock critics and the cocktail-shaker set.

Reddy placed at least one song in the Top 40 every year for seven years, but then "maybe radio listeners needed a break," she wrote. "I know I did." By the time of the next women's wave in music, with the likes of Madonna, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson, she had pivoted to theater - I saw her give a strong performance in "Blood Brothers" on Broadway in 1995 - and she left show business altogether for a while to study clinical hypnotherapy. She wondered if "I Am Woman" had been all for naught in the age of "Material Girl." "I was asked many times if I still believed in feminism! As if it had been a fad like mood rings and pet rocks."

Reddy did have a last round of concerts in her, and I caught one of those final shows in Provincetown, Mass., in 2014. The draw was clearly the big hits, based on how the audience - women and men, Reddy's era and younger, mostly gay - practically drowned her out singing along to them. I was hoping she'd include some of my favorite deeper cuts, but as the show went on, my hopes sagged; there was no "Emotion," no "Gladiola." Then, near the end, there it was: "Bluebird," and she sang it with all the heart and salty affirmation she brought to the song 40 years earlier. "I Am Woman" closed the show, and it sounded newly relevant. Its hold-your-head-up message had never really lost currency, and in a town long known to be a gay haven, the song itself seemed a safe harbor, from which songs like "Bluebird," and probably many other great recordings by women, had set sail. As we poured into the street with "I am strong/I am invincible" fresh in our ears, I found myself thinking of a different Reddy lyric, from "Peaceful": "Maybe someday you'll up and say we had a pretty nice time." Another estimable songwriter, Kenny Rankin, a man, may have written it. But leave it to a woman to make it sing.

Rob Hoerburger is the copy chief of the magazine and the author of the novel "Why Do Birds."

On the morning of June 16, 1978, one year after the Mets traded Tom Seaver to Cincinnati in a deal that came to be known as the Midnight Massacre, Seaver taught his 7-year-old daughter, Sarah, how to fill out a baseball scorecard. He showed her where to write the players' names and explained what 6-4-3 meant, and BB, and FC, and all those backward Ks. By that night, at Riverfront Stadium, Sarah was putting her new skills to work as her father pitched for the Reds against the St. Louis Cardinals. "We got into probably the seventh inning or so," she said recently, "and I notice Mom's crying - every once in a while there's a tear rolling down her cheek. And obviously I'm missing something, because there was just a weird mood in our section of the stands, and then the entire ballpark."

Sarah was confused. She thought maybe she'd scored something wrong, but her mother had stopped responding to her questions. "She said: 'I can't - I can't look at that right now.' I didn't know what was going on. Finally she said, 'This is a very big game for Daddy.' And I was like, Well, it wasn't in the third inning. Eventually someone in the stands explained to me what a no-hitter was."

For Mets fans, the sight of Tom Seaver completing the only no-hitter of his Hall of Fame career in front of 40,000 screaming Ohioans seemed to kill what remained of their appetite for baseball. A week later, at Shea Stadium, just 7,800 fans came out to watch a young starter and former Rookie of the Year named Pat Zachry - the centerpiece of the Seaver deal for the Mets - lose to the Montreal Expos. Six weeks later, Zachry was rocked for nine hits, and he took out his frustration on the top step of the Mets dugout, breaking his foot in the process and ending his season.

Tom Seaver will always be the greatest Met of all time, because he is the one who put the franchise on the map - the brilliant ace who led an expansion team to a championship in 1969, during just its eighth year of existence - but the rest of his saga was pure, for lack of a better word, Mets. He won three Cy Young awards in New York, along with two National League pennants and one World Series. He spent his first 10 seasons in Queens, started at least 30 games in all of them and never once had a losing record, despite pitching that whole time for the Mets. And the team showed its gratitude by kicking him in the teeth not once, not twice, but three times before he called it a career. The morning after he was traded to the Reds, The New York Post ran front-page photos of the teary-eyed pitcher and his college-sweetheart wife under the (misspelled) headline "Tom and Nancy Say Goodby."

The story of Tom Terrific's arrival in New York is often told as the predestined first act in the story of the '69 Miracle Mets, but it was more like a series of blunders that culminated in young George Thomas Seaver washing up on the shore of Flushing Bay. He only reached New York because the Mets won a blind lottery held via conference call. But it was like the flipping of a switch: Suddenly the Mets' blue and orange went bright neon, like Dylan's going electric.

"We all felt like Seaver was so in command of himself," his teammate Ron Swoboda said. "He was in control of his thoughts and his ideas and just about everything in his life, it seemed like." Or, as the pitcher Jim McAndrew put it at the time, "All of us wanted to be Tom Seaver, and we weren't."

The World Series triumph that October, in five games over the chest-thumping, smack-talking Baltimore Orioles, elevated Seaver to that rare plateau of New York fame, in which he and Nancy were both on a first-name basis with the city. They starred in gasoline commercials together, and she was a fixture behind home plate at Shea, the former high school diver, as focused and intense in her seat as her husband was on the mound.

The Mets fell out with Seaver over money, of course. The team's chairman, M. Donald Grant, refused to pay the market rate for the best pitcher in baseball, or really for anyone who was good at the game. Grant was old-school: He believed that players were meant to be seen and not paid. The Yankees' brash new owner, George Steinbrenner, was meanwhile scribbling a $3 million offer to Reggie Jackson on a cocktail napkin at the O'Hare Hyatt and throwing in a free Rolls Royce to seal the deal. The Rolls alone was worth a third of Seaver's 1977 salary. Three months after Grant cast Seaver out of Queens, Jackson and the Yankees brought the World Series trophy back to the Bronx.

The trade from New York devastated Seaver. (It did even more damage to the Mets, arguably: Two years later, the widower of the franchise's founding owner unloaded the team for just $21 million.) But inside the Seaver household, Tom and Nancy sold Cincinnati to the girls as their next great family adventure. "We just packed up our sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon," Sarah said, "and once school was out, Mom drove us out to Cincinnati."

Five years later, Cincinnati shipped him right back to the Mets, and for one blissful season, in 1983, everything was right again in Tom Seaver's world. He pitched the season opener at Shea. "We all cried," Sarah said. "I think Mom must've expected it, but I did not. I was just looking for the hot-dog guy." And then, that winter, the front office inexplicably left him unprotected in the 1984 free-agent compensation draft - the Chicago White Sox snatched him, and suddenly it was time for another Seaver family adventure.

Sarah was 13 at the time of this second sucker punch, old enough to see how much it hurt. "He didn't really talk about it with us, but I do remember him being incredulous." He'd always love his Metsies - that's what he always called them, the Metsies - but the franchise itself? That was more complicated. From then on, according to Sarah, "there was scar tissue." Seaver grew up a few hours from Napa Valley and spent summers working at the raisin factory where his father was a vice president; his plan was to retire as a Metsie and live out his days making wine. The Mets bungled the first part, but he did get to spend his last two decades on Seaver Vineyards in Calistoga.

His baseball career ended on the night of Oct. 27, 1986. He notched one last milestone with the White Sox - his 300th career win - and then Chicago traded him to a playoff contender in need of some veteran pitching depth: the Boston Red Sox. Maybe you see where this is going. Seaver hurt his knee in late September, so he didn't pitch in the World Series, when the Mets faced the Red Sox. Swoboda believes this came as a kind of comfort to Seaver. "Maybe it was convenient that he didn't have to put that closing on his career," Swoboda said. "I bet you he didn't mind that at all."

He still had to watch it happen, though - the third blow from his former team. When the Mets clinched their only other World Series title since 1969, and the celebration began, and the scoreboard started flashing WE WIN, and the police horses galloped onto the field to turn back the revelers, no one had a better view than Tom Seaver. He was sitting right there in the Red Sox dugout.

[Read the Times's obituary of Tom Seaver.]

Devin Gordon is a writer based in Brookline, Mass. He is the author of a forthcoming book about the Mets.

Recently, while biking through Brooklyn, I glimpsed a freshly painted mural of a face that looked so familiar that I felt I knew it. In a way, I did. Breonna Taylor became so recognizable this year that she felt like a friend, a relative. That was the point. Her image - smiling, dimples dug deep, edges laid - was everywhere. I visited her regularly, at the beach, in an underpass that connects the parking lot to the boardwalk. I encountered her in Philadelphia, right in the middle of Baltimore Avenue, flanked by several gentle sentinels, who moved aside respectfully when I approached to pay my respects.

The Grammy Award-winning keyboardist PJ Morton and his daughter sang a dirge for Taylor on Instagram, where you barely needed a full finger-pull to see countless tributes in her honor. Oprah Winfrey devoted the cover of O Magazine to Taylor - the first time that someone other than Winfrey herself was featured. She appeared at the Emmys, on the shirts of the actors Regina King and Uzo Aduba as they accepted their awards, and she was there on the W.N.B.A.'s court, thanks to the player Angel McCoughtry, who inspired all 12 teams to wear Taylor's name on their jerseys for the playoffs. LeBron James repurposed a MAGA hat in her honor, which he wore to news conferences. Naomi Osaka had seven embroidered masks custom-made for the U.S. Open, each featuring the name of an unjustly killed Black person, but she wore Taylor's first, she told reporters, "because she was most important."

One name for this phenomenon is a haunting. I like the way the sociologist Avery Gordon considers a ghost to be something that lingers, rather than something that disappeared. Business left unfinished, as they say in the movies. And in this country, that unfinished business can almost always be traced back to slavery, and the way the terrors of the past resurface in the present. Ghosts interfere with our sense of time, confusing the delineation between now and then. Taylor's death seemed to fold time onto itself, a gory wormhole. Were we in 2020 or 1820? The distortion was bewildering, with many of us asking ourselves: How can this keep happening?

Resharing her image was one way of reminding ourselves, and one another, that although deaths like hers are devastatingly normal in America, they do not have to be normalized. "A haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known," Gordon writes in "Ghostly Matters." "Especially when they are supposedly over and done with." Taylor's face haunted me this year, and although the social currency of sharing her image faded, her presence remains, still demanding its due.

In our culture these days, an image can be repeated only so many times before it becomes a meme. Memes have become a part of how we express grief and joy, how we make sense of our information-dense time and how we process otherwise-incomprehensible news. They are also a way of redirecting collective attention toward an idea or an issue that deserves it. The efforts to honor Taylor online were a prime example of this.

Memes are also elastic, though, and difficult to control. They tend to reflect the perspective and behaviors of their creators or their spreaders, who riff on a meme as they pass it along. Even when we're making or sharing memes in the name of solidarity, we are operating within a framework that "centers the self in an expression of support for others," as Jia Tolentino deftly observed in her book "Trick Mirror."

That's one way to rationalize why the actor Lili Reinhart posted a nude photo of herself on Instagram, along with the caption: "Now that my sideboob has gotten your attention, Breonna Taylor's murderers have not been arrested. Demand justice." I'm sure Reinhart thought she was cleverly drawing attention to Taylor's death, but it felt crude - the effect was more Dana Schutz than Atticus Finch. She wasn't the only one whose protest was perceived to be in poor taste: There was the unfortunately titled BreonnaCon, organized by Black activists with the support of Taylor's family, that included a panel on beauty and empowerment called "TaylorMade," as well as a "Bre-B-Que," held in Taylor's hometown, Louisville. And then there were the millions of people who posted black squares on social media to show their outrage at killings like Taylor's. It was meant to be an act of solidarity and support, but instead managed to drown out information and resources shared by organizers and activists. In some ways, Taylor's hypervisibility was a relief - a necessary mirroring of pain and outrage - but it was also a relentless reminder of the fragility of Black life in America.

By late August, as Taylor's image entered peak circulation, the line between memorial and meme seemed discomfortingly thin. The internet felt full of feral attempts to prove that Black lives mattered - at least for the time being. The feeling was pervasive when Vanity Fair dropped its September cover, a regal portrait of Taylor painted by Amy Sherald, online. It quickly blanketed the internet, shared by admirers and critics alike. A popular observation on Twitter was that Taylor, alive, never would have been considered for the cover - raising a criticism that her death made her marketable, desirable. I myself felt a bit queasy thinking about the sick lottery that favored her rather than, say, Layleen Polanco, or Dominique Fells, or any of the other Black women who died horrifically and deserved the same amount of attention and fury. When I went to see the painting at Sherald's studio, I was still unsure how I felt about its popularity.

Sitting face to face with the portrait, in a silent and empty room, I recognized the care that Sherald put into restoring Taylor's agency post-mortem. In person, it was unmistakable. Online, it's almost impossible to see that Taylor doesn't just receive your gaze; she meets and returns it. I came to see Sherald as something like a mortician. She lovingly styled Taylor's baby hairs, glossed her lips and painstakingly painted her French tips. The portrait helped me understand the function of memorials, even when they become memes. There's an entire discipline of Black artists and academics who study the way Blackness operates online, and specifically through social media. The critic Aria Dean is among them. "The meme's structure is at once its potential energy, its possibility and its limit," she writes in a 2016 essay, "Rich Meme, Poor Meme." Dean's point is that while Black culture is especially adaptable to meme form - popular song lyrics, dances, slang and celebrities often fuel its potency - asserting power and ownership over that popularity has always been complicated. Black jubilation and Black death each have the tendency to go viral. "If there is liberation," Dean writes, "it will not take place on corporate platforms, where Mark Zuckerberg profits directly from the reproduction of our deaths."

The history of circulating images to generate empathy against racial violence is long and exhausting. Anti-lynching efforts in the late 1800s and early 1900s, for example, worked to expose mob murders as white terrorism. Pamphlets like "A Red Record," written in 1895 by Ida B. Wells, included graphic images of lynchings to show how the grisly brutality of Black men was treated as spectacle and entertainment. It excerpted reports from white-run newspapers that justified the murders, contrasting them with its own reportage on how the victims were framed and killed. Yet Leigh Raiford, a scholar of art and social movements who teaches African-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, told me that decades of anti-lynching activism did not manage to end state-protected violence against Black people.

I thought about this history in late September when Daniel Cameron, the attorney general of Kentucky, announced in a news conference that Breonna Taylor's killing was not considered murder by the state, despite months of online campaigning for her humanity and for justice. The heartbreak was devastating, a terrifying reminder of Black precarity.

But I've come to see the thousands of images of Taylor as a memory of our collective will - even though it was betrayed by the state. Anti-lynching efforts were ultimately successful in reshaping the historical and cultural memory of the brutality and immorality of those deaths. "We shouldn't see them - or this - as a failure, but as a project on the road to redemption," Raiford told me. She reminded me that memory and memorialization are necessary for that work, as is the honest appraisal of the past to work toward justice in the present and the future.

As winter arrives, the memorials have mostly faded from view. Yet many of us are still keeping vigil for Taylor - and George Floyd, Tony McDade and Walter Wallace Jr. and the 200 other Black people killed by the police in 2020 - and the whole host of persistent failures to protect Black life that we cannot forget. That we should not forget.

[Read more about Breonna Taylor.]

Jenna Wortham is a staff writer for the magazine and an editor of the anthology "Black Futures."

Bill Withers sang like a man who knew something. Born in Slab Fork, W.Va., he grew up during the years when Brown v. Board of Education was decided and Emmett Till was murdered. Plus, no one would claim that being a child in coal country is easy. In a 2005 video interview that accompanied the rerelease of his first album, "Just as I Am," Withers describes his world as a young boy with asthma: "I'm Black. I stutter. But I'm a little yellow boy, and so some Black folks is pissed off about that. And white folks is pissed off period." He wanted out of West Virginia and at 17 left for the Navy. Withers enrolled in aircraft-mechanic's school to show that he was no fool. He became the first Black mechanic most of his peers would know. Nine years later, in 1965, he left the military. To get by, he toiled in a factory making toilets for Boeing 747s. And then, everything changed.

As the story goes, Withers overheard a club owner complain about paying Lou Rawls $2,000 a week just for him to show up late. Withers had never written a song and couldn't play an instrument. Yet, he explains in "Still Bill," a 2009 documentary about his life, that after hearing the story, he "decided it would be awfully nice to get in the music business." He bought an acoustic guitar from a pawnshop and composed songs in his head while working at a Weber Aircraft factory; the resulting demo would lead Clarence Avant, a Black record executive and the founder of Sussex Records, to sign him. Withers was past 30 and nothing could have predicted what happened next.

One single off his 1971 album "Just as I Am" would guarantee that he had worked on his last airplane. "Ain't No Sunshine," originally a B-side, won a Grammy. Withers's sound reaches back to the austere roots of the blues and country music. "Ain't No Sunshine" is quiet with a stripped-down 15-second riff on the phrase "I know" that turns Withers voice into an instrument performing its own solo. Withers stuttered until he was 28, and as he chants "I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know," the lovers' rift becomes singular - a lament you might carry with you to a cold shower or the factory line or walking down the street on a fall day thinking about somebody who won't answer your calls no more.

On the cover of "Just as I Am," Withers leans against a brick wall with a metal lunch pail in his right hand. The pail belonged to him, part of the working man's life he lived before he sang a song about a woman who'd gone away. The music critic and essayist Greg Tate tells me that Withers arrived on the music scene as "a full-grown worldly-wise Black working man," simply "sitting in a chair summoning up the emotional depth of everyday Black humanity." But by 1985, after a run of songs that would be playing on repeat in American households decades later, Withers, through with what he called the music industry's desire to shape his sound and intentions, walked away. In that 2005 interview, Withers explains why he left, leaning forward and speaking as if to a record exec back in 1985: "You gonna tell me about the history of the blues? I am the goddamn blues." He continued: "I'm from West Virginia. I'm the first man in my family not to work in the coal mines. My mother scrubbed floors on her knees for a living. And you gonna tell me about the goddamn blues?"

I was once incarcerated in a Virginia prison 141 miles from Slab Fork, the home of Withers and the coal-mining people who inspired his most well-known song, "Lean on Me." I must have been 22 when I met this brother whose name I can't remember. He was older, but like me he'd been inside since his teenage years and read books as if they would heal something. One afternoon, in the middle of dozens of other men who were paying us no mind, we got to arguing about something I would bet neither of us now remember. Because every disagreement in prison can lead to violence, friendship is a precarious thing. After our argument, we never spoke again. I thought I'd left those memories in prison, but when I recently stumbled on "Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall" and heard the song "For My Friend" for the first time, I remembered the story. "One of us has to say he's sorry/or we will never be friends again," he sings. Withers's lyrics describe the kind of vulnerable we were too tough or fragile to be. It's a subtle thing, but Withers's lyrics help us notice how the smallest of moments trouble the heart.

In "Still Bill," Withers says "my real life was when I was just a working guy." Maybe, because he believed this, he wrote songs that turned the regular loves and struggles and regrets and joys of working people into art. That gutbucket quality of Withers's voice is how, I think, my father or my mother, my uncle, aunts or any of my cousins would sound if they could sing the songs that they carry around inside them.

[Read the Times's obituary of Bill Withers.]

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, a lawyer and the poetry editor for the magazine.

I.

He is 73, with a long, woolly beard, like someone's version of Father Time. He lives in a hand-built shack with no electricity or running water, nearly eight miles up a forgotten dirt road in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, a mile from a creek named for a long-ago settler - Waddell - who was killed by a grizzly bear. They call him a hermit, a holy man, the Unabomber. He couldn't care less. On the night of Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020, a heat wave with temperatures well above 100 degrees brings a rolling cloud from the ocean as the old man sleeps under a canopy of redwood trees. When the lightning comes, it sizzles and snakes, consummates with dry earth.

II.

We all start somewhere - and end somewhere too. But how did he come to be here, feeding the jays and squirrels each day, under the redwoods? His vow of silence, one he takes in his early 30s, makes him an enigma to others, for silence is one of our great American fears. But still, he hasn't annulled himself. He has a history too, born a middle child, to a mother of blighted artistic ambitions and a father who was a traveling salesman, with two sisters, living in a comfortable Sears Roebuck house in Columbus, Ohio. He loved camping and fishing with his father. He loved animals, rabbits first. Patiently played with his younger sister, Jill. Was gravely ill at one point and probably concussed himself after hitting a tree with his sled. He went to college and rambunctiously flunked out. He went into the military, in 1967, and was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam, growing to hate authority figures and command chains. His inheritance was an anger that kept growing; almost a substance: even now it smolders and ignites.

III.

By the next day - Monday, Aug. 17 - the lightning has set the grasses and underbrush on fire in the mountains around Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Within miles of these growing fires lives the old man in the remote enclave of Last Chance, in a gully beneath the ridge. He has no plumbing and stores his supplies in plastic barrels. Once a month, he rents a car in town, in Santa Cruz, to procure his supplies, including 800 pounds of seed to feed the animals, and to visit Windy, a friend's 43-year-old daughter whom he helped raise. Until recently, she had never heard his voice as he took the vow of silence back when Jimmy Carter was president, communicating by chalkboard and jottings on paper. She has only ever known him as that wise, constant presence in her life. "The Bay Area is made up of many microclimates, and the one I am living in is particularly nice," he tells Windy in one of his letters. "I don't have the heat of inland or the fog of the coast. So I'll stay here as long as possible." The spot fires, left unfettered, now grow and begin to converge. In some places there is 50, 100 years' worth of fuel on the ground. Though there has been no call for evacuation yet, you can smell the smoke. The forecast projects more heat and wind.

IV.

Booze, weed, the Sixties. Tad Jones, for that's his name when people use it, lives in a school bus, on Sanibel Island in Florida, with a girlfriend. After they split, he lives for a time with his other sister, in her barn. His skin turns a green pallor perhaps because of "alcohol mixed with pharmacology," as Jill puts it today. But at some point, he lifts himself up and turns himself into a seeker. He finds yoga, which helps with his scoliosis, and a guru: Baba Hari Dass, an Indian yoga master he follows to California. Like his guru, he renounces all but essential material possessions - and seemingly sex too - and takes a vow of silence. Baba Hari Dass wrote: "One who doesn't want to possess any thing possesses every thing."

V.

At first it's hard for the Jones family to understand this retreat, his wanton rejection of American society, but he keeps repeating his mantra: He doesn't want to inflict his anger on the world. Or his growing paranoia. "How uncalm he was," Jill recalls. "If he was outside his realm, he was overwhelmed." He carries a knife for protection; he's careful to wear neutral clothing so as not to be confused for a gang member. He lets his beard grow out, until eventually it reaches his knees. He braids it and often rolls it up, then unfurls it to the surprise of new acquaintances. He lives inside the trunk of a redwood tree, in time with it, in opposition to industrial time, replicating those happy camping trips with his father. In the 1980s he moves out to Last Chance, a back-to-the-land community fed by cold springs and an August barn dance. His work here is to become part of the fauna, to enter the understory, to encode himself in nature. He writes in a letter that the skunks brush up against his legs, not once thinking to spray.

V I.

We could use more contemplation, more self-reflection. America - us - we could use more silence. As radical as it seems to subtract yourself from society, to cancel your own voice, and add yourself to the forest floor, the old man, it turns out, is not really radical. He likes the band Rush and the movie "The Big Lebowski." He reads National Geographic, articles about faraway places and these extreme changes to our environment. The wind direction shifts now from the northwest to the northeast, and the fire leaps into alignment with the topography, lighting duff and branches: More than 43,000 acres are about to burn in a matter of hours.

VII.

Windy, who adores him, saves all his letters, which are full of advice written in his big loopy handwriting: here's how to interact with your grandparents, here are the pros and cons of having children. ("[T]he earth doesn't need any more people, so if you do give birth you want to give the child a reasonable chance to succeed.") He tells her about the Mexican radio station he listens to, with the woman's voice singing so lovely. He cracks slightly profane jokes about Donald Trump. He says he has set redwood trunks in ascending order to a little pet entrance to the shack so the cat can keep safe from predators. When he's overrun by arthritis - his knees and shoulders and hips, walking with two metal canes - he goes to town to see the doctor, to stay with Windy. "Word is the crabs are meaty and good," he writes her. "I am including a hunny B" - a hundred-dollar bill - "to buy the dinner." Guinness beer too. He writes, "Remember I am speaking/talking now so don't be shocked."

VIII.

After nearly 40 years of silence, the old man starts talking again, at first to communicate with the doctors. It's 2017, and he still swears like a sailor. Jill, his sister, speaks to him over Windy's cellphone, and the first words out of his mouth are "How do you make this goddamn thing work?" It's as if they've never missed a beat: he still has that mellifluous, bemused voice, that Midwestern accent. And that hair-trigger temper. As the fire encroaches, on that Tuesday, he buys feed for the animals in town - then returns to Last Chance. The wind is blowing, harder now, created by the fire itself, it seems. A community is its own ecosystem - like a forest - connected through pulses, half aerial, half subterranean. Every person, every cell, communicates in a chain. Still, almost no one here knows the old man's last name. The fire conjoins and rages, from oak to oak, redwood to redwood. In the mesmerizing face of it, your own anger isn't much. Even by 8 p.m. no evacuation order has been issued by the state. The residents of Last Chance, over 100 in all, think they're safe. Only when the smoke blows clear does the fire marshal see wild flames from the ridge, the fine, dry leaf matter catching hot. By the time the conflagration jumps Waddell Creek, she take matters into her own hands, no longer waiting for state officials to raise the alarm, and the evacuation plan goes into effect.

IX.

By about 9:30 p.m., all but three people are accounted for at the gate that leads out of Last Chance. The old man - the hermit, the holy man, Unabomber - tries to drive the road out in his rented minivan, but fire suddenly blocks his way. He turns, and drives back, but now more fire blocks the back way. It's as if napalm has been dropped on the forest, everything lit and storming. Fire personnel are nowhere to be seen. One resident spends the night in a field, fighting off rivers of sparks; another takes to a pond in his backyard, breathing out of a hose to escape the inferno. By 10:30 p.m. Last Chance has mostly burned to the ground. In the days after, only one person remains unaccounted for.

X.

Later comes the recovery mission. People with chain saws, an incursion to reclaim what's left of home. Many of the redwoods are still burning inside and will die later. The old man is found - his bones, his ashes - near his two metal canes and the minivan not far from his shack, next to a scorched ravine, the fire so hot the van's windows have been vaporized. Jill says there's a way of seeing her brother's demise as "terrifying" but "glorious." "A slow, rusty death - that wouldn't have been good for him," she says. "It would have been awful." After 70,000 people evacuate and nearly 1,500 structures are lost, Tad Jones ends up the only casualty of what comes to be called the CZU Lightning Complex in the most rampant fire year California has ever seen. "He burned on the ground of the place he lived," Windy says, "the land he loved, the forest he walked through thousands and thousands of times, and he became part of it."

Michael Paterniti is a contributing writer for the magazine and is working on a book about the discovery of the North Pole.

Correction: Dec. 28, 2020
An earlier version of this article misstated Tad Jones's birth year. It is 1946, not 1949.

In "Get On Up," from 2014, Chadwick Boseman played James Brown in all of his swaggering, hip-thrusting, preacher-on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown glory. But that's not the version of Soul Brother No. 1 we see as the movie opens. He's not preening onstage but sitting in a pickup truck in a nondescript strip-mall parking lot. He's got the signature perm going, but things are off. He's disheveled, a little plumper than we might remember him. His face is weathered, his entire visage sagging.

Yet he beats the steering wheel in time to his own music, looks into the mirror and pats the perm down just so. He's a man of supreme confidence in spite of his situation, in whose body defeat and defiance commingle. Boseman imbues the moment with an aura of curdled pride that suggests the heights from which Brown has tumbled and the distance he must still travel before he arrives at his life's nadir.

"Get On Up" was one in a run of biopics that revealed Boseman as an actor of uncommon presence and dignity, someone who could convincingly portray legends from Brown to Jackie Robinson to Thurgood Marshall despite not looking very much like any of them. His particular talent was excavating his Great Man subjects' interior lives, revealing an emotional attunement that turned otherwise middling movies into engaging character studies. He had a keen grasp of psychology that he could convey with the slightest of adjustments to his angular face. He didn't portray individuals so much as he used his body to conjure the emotional weather that turns a character into a person.

Boseman did not begin his career intending to be a movie star. A native of Anderson, S.C., he studied playwriting and directing at Howard University before eventually heading to New York and settling into the decidedly unsettled life of a writer. He began acting as a way to understand how to best communicate with actors, taking television roles until his unlikely casting in the 2013 film "42," which told the story of Jackie Robinson's rookie season as a Brooklyn Dodger.

Brian Helgeland, who directed the film, has spoken of the innate, dignified stillness that made Boseman perfect for the role of Robinson. Boseman's collaborators often speak of this stillness, but I'd like to think of it in terms other than dignity. It's about craft first, about the man's ability to wander the labyrinthine halls of human interiority without rushing himself or his audience toward an exit. Boseman prepared for roles by concocting entire lives for his characters - imagining the childhood traumas, personal fears and private hopes that undergirded the script. His job was to loose those histories, to lose himself in the narratives lurking beneath the stories he was telling. What we're perceiving in Boseman's stillness, then, is the quiet and observant mien of the writer he naturally was.

With the success of "Black Panther," in 2018, in which he played the fictional African king T'Challa, Boseman transitioned into another phase of his career, occupying a similar niche in American cinema to Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington before him: a representation of upright and noble Black masculinity. With that transition came a sense that we possessed him, that his likeness was a public commodity - a lens through which we could perceive all Black people, no matter the particularities of their lives or Boseman's. After years of playing giants of American history, it was a fictional character that transformed him into a kind of political figure.

His death at 43 after a struggle with colon cancer was shocking, especially so in a year when the institutions and figures we took for granted as fixed facts of our lives seemed to disintegrate. For days after his family announced his passing, people took to Twitter to express their surprise and pain at losing a lodestar of popular Black cinema. Perhaps even more shocking than his death was the revelation that the cancer was diagnosed in 2016 and that he had all the while been working through his illness - doing press for "Black Panther," filming his final performances in Spike Lee's "Da 5 Bloods" and George C. Wolfe's screen adaptation of the August Wilson play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," and even sitting in as a judge at the N.B.A.'s 2020 Slam Dunk Contest. His wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, and the rest of his family treated the illness as a strictly private matter. Not even his "Ma Rainey" co-star Viola Davis or Denzel Washington, one of the film's producers, knew that he was sick at the time of filming.

I keep thinking about the intense privacy with which Boseman approached his illness in the context of his acting's emotional frankness. An artist whose craft depended on his ability to call upon resources from a deep reservoir of feeling, on a certain sense of transparency, left us on a note of opacity that seems to me a final refusal of capture.

"Da 5 Bloods" and "Ma Rainey" are curious bookends to Boseman's career. In his performance as Cmdr. Stormin' Norman Holloway in "Da 5 Bloods," he played a Vietnam veteran who was a formidable warrior and a stirring speaker. His is a gripping presence, a larger-than-life figure of Black Power-era pride. But he's also elusive; he appears only in flashback sequences, and it's unclear whether his exploits are merely a figment of his fellow veterans' imaginations. In "Ma Rainey," meanwhile, he plays the churlish trumpeter Levee, a character whose very name hints at the flood of trauma and insatiable desire barely restrained behind his feral grin. Even as these roles rely on the almost mythic aura of heroism we associate with Boseman, they also seem like rejections of the static notion of dignity that had become his calling card. As Spike Lee suggested to me over the phone, they are evidence that Boseman was maturing as an actor with the aid of directors like Ryan Coogler, Wolfe and Lee himself - burnishing his talents even in the midst of his illness.

Watching these films after his death, as companion performances of startling power and violence, the films feel like a sly commentary on his career, a closing argument that maybe only a playwright could engineer: No matter how much he seemed to bare onscreen, no matter how much he seemed to belong to us, Boseman's depths remained his, and his alone.

[Read the Times's obituary of Chadwick Boseman.]

Ismail Muhammad is a writer and critic in Oakland, Calif.

Among the many things we've lost this year has been our ability to go - or at least to go safely - to the movies. This particular loss may seem relatively small, but our relationship to the movies is not, and never has been. An intrinsic part of that relationship has always been the presence of others - sitting in a packed house, feeling that simultaneity of response that can make sudden intimates of total strangers.

No one understood this better than the critic and cultural historian James Harvey. In three brilliant books - "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood," "Movie Love in the '50s" and "Watching Them Be" - he combined a spiritually charged celebration of movies with a down-to-earth appreciation of "the common American knowingness" to be found in a packed venue.

Thus, his celebration of Greta Garbo begins with his first being exposed to her in a "crowded theater in Chicago's Loop, a mostly young audience as new to her probably as I was at the time, and a feeling in the place like revelation."

That "feeling in the place" became a hallmark of his writing, perhaps because of the fact that he arrived in New York in the '50s, at the onset of the then-new obsession with looking at movies, an obsession that would soon make stars of critics like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael. Great revival houses dotted the city like beacons: the Regency, the Thalia (where Harvey worked, briefly, writing program notes), the Elgin, the Theatre 80 St. Marks. A young "would-be highbrow" in a city full of them, he became part of a generation finding liberation at the movies, "a way of saying that whatever heights we aspired to otherwise we were still part of the mass reality around us - that we didn't kid ourselves and we didn't buy any [expletive], least of all from the movies themselves. There you could be both skeptic and believer, awe-struck and wised-up at the same time."

He had no patience for film theory, or for anything the least bit academic. His gift was to see into movies, into what they meant in their own time, and to do so in writing that was rapturously precise. It took a keen eye to nail Glenn Ford's "curdled boyishness" or the "ruined handsomeness" of Robert Forster (in "Jackie Brown"). He was perhaps the only critic to notice how, if you look very closely at Doris Day when she's not being called upon to sell cheerfulness, "her eyes look desolate." There were phrases and sentences that, once you read them, would come to define a movie you only thought you'd seen. In the sight of Jimmy Stewart at the end of "Vertigo," looking down on his dead "Madeleine," he found "a final image that seems as inevitable as it is memorable. Because this is the vertigo - the madness of longing, this almost infinitude of painful desire, of longing beyond longing - that Hitchcock has been drawing us into all along."

Given how much he seemed to know about "the madness of longing," it was always a mystery to his friends that Harvey lived such a monastic life, holed up in a Carroll Gardens apartment spending endless, tortured years on each of his books, surrounded by rescue animals who did not always share his devotion to them. For his friends, there were limits you knew to observe; too much probing into the personal was discouraged. "It was our movie life that mattered to us as friends," he wrote about his friendship with the critic Gilberto Perez. "That, for us, was the personal one." But perhaps such a life only makes "sense" if you recognize that there are those whose guiding obsession sustains life in a way most of us probably can't understand. It was Harvey's quirky, consuming love for the movies that came to define him, even, maybe especially, for those who would have loved to know more.

In an unpublished memoir, he wrote about his childhood experience of chasing Walt Disney's "Fantasia" from theater to theater, like a besotted boy, aware that the movie was asking for "an unusual sort of attention" from its mainstream audience, but never wanting to remove himself from those in attendance. What capped the experience was being part of the crowd, going "along with it to different and exciting new places." Decades later, when he was well into his 80s, he could have given up the long walks he would take from Carroll Gardens to Manhattan movie houses in search of one more revelation. He could have settled, like the rest of us, for Netflix. But for him, to do that would be to lose something essential.

He died just at the point when the doors to the palaces were being closed, and his fellow congregants told to stay home.

[Read the Times's obituary on James Harvey.]

Anthony Giardina is a novelist and playwright. His most recent play is "Dan Cody's Yacht."

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Mimi Jones Understood the Power of Public Resistance From a Young Age

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The Lives They Lived The Lives They Lived When Mimi Jones was 17, she leapt into a Florida swimming pool, expecting trouble. It was June 1964 in St. Augustine, a tourist town heavy with humidity and hate. The Ku Klux Klan and others harnessed guns, firebombs, death threats, clubs and fists against Black demonstrators protesting segregation.

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Table of Contents

1. The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin

2. The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis

3. The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall

4. The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989

5. The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep so-called Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.

The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin

Berlin's Animal Arms Race

As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany's territories. They split the defeated nation into four "allied occupation zones": The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France.

Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945.

The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis

The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, "stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat," as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift, lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949.

Did you know? On October 22, 1961, a quarrel between an East German border guard and an American official on his way to the opera in East Berlin very nearly led to what one observer called "a nuclear-age equivalent of the Wild West Showdown at the O.K. Corral." That day, American and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie for 16 hours. Photographs of the confrontation are some of the most familiar and memorable images of the Cold War.

After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets-emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before during the " Space Race " and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3 million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers)-blustered and made threats, while the Allies resisted. Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution.

Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. In June 1961, some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin. The following month, 30,000 fled. In the first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed-the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.

The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall

That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall -the Berlin Wall-that divided one side of the city from the other.

Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt ("Checkpoint Alpha" in American military parlance), at Dreilinden ("Checkpoint Bravo") and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse ("Checkpoint Charlie"). (Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border.

The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989

The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President John F. Kennedy conceded that "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.") Almost two years after the Berlin Wall was erected, John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most famous addresses of his presidency to a crowd of more than 120,000 gathered outside West Berlin's city hall, just steps from the Brandenburg Gate. Kennedy's speech has been largely remembered for one particular phrase. "I am a Berliner."

In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.

The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting "Tor auf!" ("Open the gate!"). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, "the greatest street party in the history of the world." People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall-they became known as "mauerspechte," or "wall woodpeckers"-while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. "Only today," one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, "is the war really over."

The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

HISTORY Vault: Declassified: Rise and Fall of the Wall

Mine formerly guarded vaults and archives around the world to reveal untold stories about the brutal life and catastrophic death of the Berlin Wall, a central symbol of the 20th century's longest and deadliest war.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.

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WW2 https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history

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Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what exactly constitutes protected speech. The following are examples of speech, both direct (words) and symbolic (actions), that the Court has decided are either entitled to First Amendment protections, or not.

The First Amendment states, in relevant part, that:

"Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech."

Freedom of speech includes the right:

Not to speak (specifically, the right not to salute the flag).
West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war ("Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.").
Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).

To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages.
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

To contribute money (under certain circumstances) to political campaigns.
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).

To advertise commercial products and professional services (with some restrictions).
Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976); Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977).

To engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest).
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990).

Freedom of speech does not include the right:

To incite imminent lawless action.
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

To make or distribute obscene materials.
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).

To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).

To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).

Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event.
Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).

Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.
Morse v. Frederick, __ U.S. __ (2007).

Disclaimer: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for use in educational activities only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on legislation.

DISCLAIMER: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for educational purposes only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on any pending case or legislation.

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Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Learn about what this means.

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﻿Metals are not a renewable resource. They are found in rock, called ore, which is a part of the earth's crust. There is a finite amount of metal in the earth, and there is a financial and environmental cost to mining and refining it into a usable product.

To make metal, ore is identified in the bedrock, mined, broken up and ground down into tiny particles which are then separated into the desirable metal and gangue, or the leftover rock and minerals. Metals are separated and removed from ore with magnets, chemicals such as sulfuric acid, or with heat. Vast amounts of resources are used to mine and refine these virgin metals. There is also a cost to the environment while mining and refining, even though damage is monitored and limited very carefully these days.

Recycled metal is unusable waste or scrap metal that is carefully separated by type, and then melted down either alone or with other raw materials, and poured, cooled and shaped into metal that can be used again to create new products. Recycling means less ore must be mined and processed to meet the demands of consumers and manufacturers. It also means that the energy and environmental impact of the mining happens once, while the metal is used again and again.

Recycling your scrap metal from your business or home doesn't make metal a renewable resource, but it does make the best possible use of the metal we have!

Contact Mann Metals at 248-960-1200 for more information on recycling your scrap metal.

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Metals Are Not a Renewable Resource - Mann Metals Corporation

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﻿Metals are not a renewable resource. They are found in rock, called ore, which is a part of the earth's crust. There is a finite amount of metal in the earth, and there is a financial and environmental cost to mining and refining it into a usable product.

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Table of Contents

This article was most recently revised and updated by

racial segregation, the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race. Racial segregation provides a means of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of the politically dominant group, and in recent times it has been employed primarily by white populations to maintain their ascendancy over other groups by means of legal and social colour bars. Historically, however, various conquerors-among them Asian Mongols, African Bantus, and American Aztecs-practiced discrimination involving the segregation of subject races.

Racial segregation has appeared in all parts of the world where there are multiracial communities, except where racial amalgamation occurred on a large scale as in Hawaii and Brazil. In such countries there has been occasional social discrimination but not legal segregation. In the Southern states of the United States, on the other hand, legal segregation in public facilities was current from the late 19th century into the 1950s. ( See Jim Crow law.) The civil rights movement was initiated by Southern Blacks in the 1950s and '60s to break the prevailing pattern of racial segregation. This movement spurred passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which contained strong provisions against discrimination and segregation in voting, education, and use of public facilities.

Elsewhere, racial segregation was practiced with the greatest rigour in South Africa, where, under the apartheid system, it was an official government policy from 1950 until the early 1990s.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Racial segregation | History, Meaning, Examples, Laws, & Facts

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racial segregation, the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race.

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https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/emotional-wellness/Building-Resilience/Pages/Talking-to-Children-About-Racial-Bias.aspx

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​​​By: Ashaunta Anderson, MD, MPH, MSHS, FAAP & Jacqueline Dougé, MD, MPH, FAAP

Given the tragic and racially-charged current events, many parents are wrestling with their own feelings, the hopes they have for their children, and the difficulty of helping those children thrive in a world full of racial bias.

Parents may better face today's challenges with an understanding of how racial bias works in children, as well as strategies to help them deal with and react to racial differences.

How Do Children Learn Racial Bias?

Children learn about racial differences and racial bias from an early age and learn from their first teachers-their parents-how to deal with and react to these differences.

The process of learning racial bias is a lot like learning a new language (e.g., a child raised bilingual vs. a child who starts learning Spanish in junior high). Biology determines a critical early learning period as well as a later window where learning is much harder.

As early as 6 months, a baby's brain can notice race-based differences.

By ages 2 to 4, children can internalize racial bias.

By age 12, many children become set in their beliefs-giving parents a decade to mold the learning process, so that it decreases racial bias and improves cultural understanding.

But like language immersion, children exposed to society will gain fluency in racial bias even if their parents do nothing.

Strategies to Help Children Deal with Racial Bias

There are three strategies that parents can use to help their children deal with racial bias:

Talk to your children and acknowledge that racial differences and bias exist.

Confront your own bias and model how you want your children to respond to others who may be different than them.

Encourage your children to challenge racial stereotypes and racial bias by being kind and compassionate when interacting with people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.

How Parents Can Confront Their Own Racial Bias

Parents must first confront their own biases, so that their example is consistent with messages of racial and ethnic tolerance.

Be a role model. Identify and correct your own racially biased thoughts, feelings, and actions. If you want your children to believe what you preach, you have to exhibit those behaviors as well. Your everyday comments and actions will say more than anything else.

Travel and expose your children to other communities. This can help them understand that there is diversity in the world that might not be represented in the community that you live in.

Do not reverse stereotype police officers and other groups or talk about law enforcement in a negative way.

Get involved in your child's school, your place of worship, and politics. Parents who are involved in this way are better able to advocate for fair treatment of racially marginalized groups and raise awareness of race issues in other groups.

Tips for Talking About Racial Differences & Racism

For preschoolers: At this age, your child may begin to notice and point out differences in the people around you (i.e., at the grocery store, at the park, etc.). If your child asks about someone's skin tone, you might say, "Isn't it wonderful that we are all so different!" You can even hold your arm against theirs to show the differences in skin tones in your family.

For gradeschoolers: This is the age that is important to have open talks with your child about race, diversity, and racism. Discussing these topics will help your child see you as a trusted source of information on the topic, and he or she can come to you with any questions. Point out stereotypes and racial bias in media and books such as villains or "bad guys" in movies.

I f your child makes comments or asks you questions about race based on school incidents or something they read or watched: Further the discussion with questions such as,"How do you feel about that?" and "Why do you think that?" This is also helpful if your child heard something insensitive or if your child experienced racial bias themselves. Before responding to his or her statement or question, figure out where it came from and what it means from his or her perspective. See Talking to Children About Tragedies & Other News Events for more information.

Talking about race is not racist. It's OK-and important. From a young age, children may have questions about racial differences and parents must be prepared to answer them. But, it's important to keep your child's developmental readiness in mind.

These conversations begin to lay the groundwork for your child to accept and respect everyone's differences and similarities. As children mature, the answers to questions will become more complex. These are moments to learn what your child understands or is struggling to understand about racial bias.

Remember:

To create a culture of inclusiveness, we all must look at and acknowledge our biases, so we can do something about the ones that are unfair or cause harm to others-like racial bias. Understanding the way people feel about and behave toward those outside their own group can help communities heal after a tragedy, as well as prevent future ones.

Additional Resources to Help Parents Address Racism & Discrimination:

About Dr. Anderson:

Ashaunta Anderson, MD, MPH, MSHS, FAAP is an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine and a health policy researcher at RAND Corporation. Her research focuses on the impact of race and racism on child health. She is also a pediatrician and a published author of 50 Studies Every Pediatrician Should Know, a guide to the scientific evidence underlying everyday pediatric practice.

About Dr. Dougé:

Jacqueline Dougé, MD, MPH, FAAP is the Child Health Medical Director at the Howard County Health Department. Her interests are health disparities, media, school health and the interaction of public health and pediatrics. Within the American Academy of Pediatrics, she co-chairs the Council on Community Pediatrics' Prevention and Public Health Special Interest Group. Her blog site is drjacquelinedouge.com.

Ashaunta Anderson, MD, MPH, MSHS, FAAP & Jacqueline Dougé, MD, MPH, FAAP

American Academy of Pediatrics (Copyright © 2019)

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racial bias~ biases~ racism~ crime~ violence~ black~ police officer~ law enforcement~ racial issues~ skin color~ resiliency~ peace~ gun violence~ guns~ news~ tragedies~ current events~ violence in the media~ violence in movies~ explaining race~ difference

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​​​By: Ashaunta Anderson, MD, MPH, MSHS, FAAP & Jacqueline Dougé, MD, MPH, FAAP Given the tragic and racially-charged current events, many parents are wrestling with their own feelings, the hopes they have for their children, and the difficulty of helping those children thrive in a world full of racial bias.

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https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/womens-human-rights/#:~:text=These%20rights%20include%20the%20right,to%20all%20of%20these%20rights.

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Global Fund for Women's approach focuses on winning rights for women, girls, and all historically marginalized people. Women's human rights are essential to achieving gender justice globally. Learn more about gender justice here.
What are women's human rights?

Women's rights are the fundamental human rights that were enshrined by the United Nations for every human being on the planet nearly 70 years ago. These rights include the right to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination; to be educated; to own property; to vote; and to earn a fair and equal wage.

As the now-famous saying goes, "women's rights are human rights." That is to say, women are entitled to all of these rights. Yet almost everywhere around the world, women and girls are still denied them, often simply because of their gender.

Winning rights for women is about more than giving opportunities to any individual woman or girl; it is also about changing how countries and communities work. It involves changing laws and policies, winning hearts and minds, and investing in strong women's organizations and movements.

Global Fund for Women exists to support the tireless and courageous efforts of women's groups who work every day to win rights for women and girls. These groups are working to ensure women can own property, vote, run for office, get paid fair wages, and live free from violence - including domestic violence, sexual assault, and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation.

What rights do we stand for?

We want every woman and girl to realize the rights that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also stand for other rights that are vital for women's equality. We stand for a woman's right to decide if and when she has children, and to have high-quality health care that means she won't die in pregnancy or during childbirth. We know female genital mutilation is a violation of girls' rights, and must be eliminated. And we stand for the right of every woman to live equally and free from discrimination, no matter her sexuality or identity.

We support two critical documents for women's rights that have followed the UN declaration. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international bill of rights for women, requires governments to end gender discrimination and affirms women's rights to health services, including family planning. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted in 1995 at the UN's Fourth World Conference in Beijing, was a rallying cry to embed gender equality and women's rights in every facet of life.

Women's rights and the Global Goals

The UN Millennium Development Goals set specific targets to reduce poverty, including targets for increased gender equality in education, work, and representation. UN Women found that progress was uneven. Globally, more women are now in school and work. Yet girls are still more likely than boys to be out of school (particularly at the secondary level). And although the number of women in elected office has risen, they are still only 21.8 percent of parliamentarians. What's more, women's rights remain at risk in many areas not addressed in the millennium goals - from violence against women to sexual and reproductive rights. And women who are already marginalized because of their race, caste, sexuality, income, or location see the fewest gains of all.

The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hold real promise to embed advances in women's rights, and include a specific goal (Goal 5) for gender equality. Goal 5 is more broad-based than the last gender goal and includes targets on ending gender-based violence, eliminating child marriage and female genital mutilation, and ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health. It also includes equal access to education, expanding women's economic opportunities, and reducing the burdens of unpaid care work on women and girls. Now it is up to all of us to hold governments accountable for their commitments and make sure the goals are met. Involving women - and funding the solutions of grass-roots women's groups - will be critical to success.

What does the future of women's rights look like?

The future of global women's rights is at stake. The U.S. administration's proposed cuts to foreign aid and stringent policies-from abortion and refugee resettlement to climate change- pose a direct threat to the health, dignity, and well-being of women and girls everywhere. We must reflect: Will women globally lose hard-won rights, or will the backlash instead catalyze new wins?

This moment calls for energizing new efforts and focus on strengthening women's movements to help lead the charge for social change on the most pressing issues of our time. Global Fund for Women is committed to turning these challenges into opportunities for women to assert their leadership, action, and voice. By 2020, Global Fund for Women will ensure that movements for women's rights are powerful, influential, and achieving lasting gains. Now is the time to stand with the global women's movement.

Global Fund for Women is working for a world where every woman and girl can realize and enjoy her human rights.

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immigration: biden to sign executive orders and establish task force to reunite separated families - cnnpolitics

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WW2

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Battle of Okinawa

Part of the Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign of the Pacific Theater ( World War II)

1st Marine Regiment during fighting at Wana Ridge during the Battle of Okinawa, May 1945

Belligerents

Ground forces:
United States
Naval support:
United Kingdom

Japan

Commanders and leaders

Simon B. Buckner Jr. †
Roy Geiger
Chester W. Nimitz Raymond A. Spruance

William Halsey Jr.

Mitsuru Ushijima †
Isamu Chō †
Hiromichi Yahara (POW)
Minoru Ōta †
Seiichi Itō †

Units involved

Ground units:
Tenth Army

Naval units:
Fifth Fleet

Task Force 50

Joint Exp. Force

Ground units:
32nd Army

Naval units:
Combined Fleet

Strength

~541,000 in Tenth Army
~183,000 combat troops[3] rising to ~250,000[4]: 567

~76,000+ Japanese soldiers
~40,000+ Okinawan conscripts[5]

Casualties and losses

American personnel:
Battle casualties:
~50,000, including ~12,500 dead[6][7]
Army: 19,929[a]
Navy: 10,007 at Okinawa,[b] 1,285 on USS Franklin[c]
Marines: 19,460[d]
Non-battle casualties: 26,211 to 33,096 (all causes)
Total casualties: ~76,000 to 84,000
Materiel:
153 tanks destroyed[15]
13 destroyers sunk
15 amphibious ships sunk
8 other ships sunk
386 ships damaged
763 aircraft lost[4]: 573  [16]: 473

Japanese personnel:
Battle & Non-battle casualties:
94,136 soldiers and sailors dead (all causes)[e]
4,037 dead from Yamato task force[18]
7,401 captured (by 30 June)[19][f]
Total casualties: ~105,000 to 110,000
Materiel:
1 battleship sunk
1 light cruiser sunk
5 destroyers sunk
9 other warships sunk
1,430 aircraft lost[20]
27 tanks destroyed
743-1,712 artillery pieces, anti-tank guns, mortars and anti-aircraft guns[16]: 91-92

40,000-150,000 civilians dead[21][22][g]

Battle of Okinawa (Pacific Ocean)

The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Army and United States Marine Corps forces against the Imperial Japanese Army. The initial invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945 was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The Kerama Islands surrounding Okinawa were preemptively captured on 26 March by the 77th Infantry Division. The 82-day battle lasted from 1 April until 22 June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were planning to use Kadena Air Base on the large island of Okinawa as a base for Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, 340 mi (550 km) away.

The United States created the Tenth Army, a cross-branch force consisting of the U.S. Army 7th, 27th, 77th and 96th Infantry Divisions with the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Marine Divisions, to fight on the island. The Tenth Army was unique in that it had its own Tactical Air Force (joint Army-Marine command) and was supported by combined naval and amphibious forces. Opposing the Allied forces on the ground was the Japanese Thirty-Second Army.

The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, of which Japanese original phrase was " tetsu no bōfū". The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks and the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle was the bloodiest in the Pacific, with around 50,000 Allied and 84,166-117,000 Japanese casualties, including Okinawans conscripted into the Japanese Army. According to local authorities, at least 149,425 Okinawan people were killed, died by coerced suicide or went missing.

In the naval operations surrounding the battle, both sides lost considerable numbers of ships and aircraft, including the Japanese battleship Yamato. After the battle, Okinawa provided a fleet anchorage, troop staging areas, and airfields in proximity to Japan for US forces in preparation for a planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.

In all, the US Army had over 103,000 soldiers (of these, 38,000+ were non-divisional artillery, combat support and HQ troops, with another 9,000 service troops), over 88,000 Marines and 18,000 Navy personnel (mostly Seabees and medical personnel). At the start of the Battle of Okinawa, the US Tenth Army had 182,821 personnel under its command. It was planned that Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. would report to Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner until the amphibious phase was completed, after which he would report directly to Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. Total aircraft in the US Navy, Marine and Army Air Force exceeded 3,000 over the course of the battle, including fighters, attack aircraft, scout planes, bombers and dive-bombers. The invasion was supported by a fleet consisting of 18 battleships, 27 cruisers, 177 destroyers/ destroyer escorts, 39 aircraft carriers (11 fleet carriers, 6 light carriers and 22 escort carriers) and various support and troop transport ships.

The British naval contingent accompanied 251 British naval aircraft and included a British Commonwealth fleet with Australian, New Zealand and Canadian ships and personnel.

The Japanese land campaign (mainly defensive) was conducted by the 67,000-strong (77,000 according to some sources) regular 32nd Army and some 9,000 Imperial Japanese Navy troops at Oroku Naval Base (only a few hundred of whom had been trained and equipped for ground combat), supported by 39,000 drafted local Ryukyuan people (including 24,000 hastily drafted rear militia called and 15,000 non-uniformed laborers). The Japanese had used tactics since the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but for the first time they became a major part of the defense. Between the American landing on 1 April and 25 May, seven major kamikaze attacks were attempted, involving more than 1,500 planes.

The 32nd Army initially consisted of the 9th, 24th and 62nd Divisions and the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade. The 9th Division was moved to Taiwan before the invasion, resulting in shuffling of Japanese defensive plans. Primary resistance was to be led in the south by Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Isamu Chō and his chief of operations, Colonel Hiromichi Yahara. Yahara advocated a defensive strategy, whilst Chō advocated an offensive one.

In the north, Colonel Takehido Udo was in command. The naval troops were led by Rear Admiral Minoru Ōta. They expected the Americans to land 6-10 divisions against the Japanese garrison of two and a half divisions. The staff calculated that superior quality and numbers of weapons gave each US division five or six times the firepower of a Japanese division. To this, would be added the Americans' abundant naval and air firepower.

On Okinawa, the Imperial Japanese Army mobilized 1,780 schoolboys aged 14-17 years into front line service as an Iron and Blood Imperial Corps ( Japanese: , Tekketsu Kinnōtai), while female Himeyuri students were organized into a nursing unit. This mobilization was conducted by an ordinance of the Ministry of the Army, not by law. The ordinances mobilized the students as volunteer soldiers for form's sake; in reality, the military authorities ordered schools to force almost all students to "volunteer" as soldiers; sometimes they counterfeited the necessary documents. About half of the Tekketsu Kinnōtai were killed, including in suicide bomb attacks against tanks and in guerrilla operations.

Among the 21 male and female secondary schools that made up these student corps, 2,000 students died on the battlefield. Even with the female students acting mainly as nurses to Japanese soldiers, they were still exposed to the harsh conditions of war.

There was a hypnotic fascination to the sight so alien to our Western philosophy. We watched each plunging kamikaze with the detached horror of one witnessing a terrible spectacle rather than as the intended victim. We forgot self for the moment as we groped hopelessly for the thought of that other man up there.

The protracted length of the campaign under stressful conditions forced Admiral Chester W. Nimitz to take the unprecedented step of relieving the principal naval commanders to rest and recuperate. Following the practice of changing the fleet designation with the change of commanders, US naval forces began the campaign as the US 5th Fleet under Admiral Spruance, but ended it as the 3rd Fleet under Admiral Halsey.

Japanese air opposition had been relatively light during the first few days after the landings. However, on 6 April the expected air reaction began with an attack by 400 planes from Kyushu. Periodic heavy air attacks continued through April. During the period of 26 March to 30 April, 20 American ships were sunk and 157 damaged by enemy action. By 30 April the Japanese had lost more than 1,100 planes to Allied naval forces alone.

Between 6 April and 22 June, the Japanese flew 1,465 kamikaze aircraft in large-scale attacks from Kyushu, 185 individual kamikaze sorties from Kyushu, and 250 individual kamikaze sorties from Taiwan, then called Formosa. While US intelligence estimated there were 89 planes on Formosa, the Japanese actually had about 700, dismantled or well camouflaged and dispersed into scattered villages and towns; the US Fifth Air Force disputed Navy claims of kamikaze coming from Formosa.[clarification needed ]

The ships lost were smaller vessels, particularly the destroyers of the radar pickets, as well as destroyer escorts and landing ships. While no major Allied warships were lost, several fleet carriers were severely damaged. Land-based Shin'yō-class suicide motorboats were also used in the Japanese suicide attacks, although Ushijima had disbanded the majority of the suicide boat battalions before the battle because of expected low effectiveness against a superior enemy. The boat crews were re-formed into three additional infantry battalions.

The super battleship Yamato explodes after persistent attacks from US aircraft.

American aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill burns after being hit by two kamikaze planes within 30 seconds.

Operation Ten-Go ( Ten-gō sakusen) was the attempted attack by a strike force of 10 Japanese surface vessels, led by Yamato and commanded by Admiral Seiichi Itō. This small task force had been ordered to fight through enemy naval forces, then beach Yamato and fight from shore, using her guns as coastal artillery and her crew as naval infantry. The Ten-Go force was spotted by submarines shortly after it left the Japanese home waters and was intercepted by US carrier aircraft.

Under attack from more than 300 aircraft over a two-hour span, the world's largest battleship sank on 7 April 1945 after a one-sided battle, long before she could reach Okinawa. (US torpedo bombers were instructed to aim for only one side to prevent effective counter flooding by the battleship's crew, and to aim for the bow or the stern where armor was believed to be the thinnest.) Of Yamato's screening force, the light cruiser Yahagi and 4 of the 8 destroyers were also sunk. The Imperial Japanese Navy lost some 3,700 sailors, including Admiral Itō, at the cost of 10 US aircraft and 12 airmen.

The British Pacific Fleet, taking part as Task Force 57, was assigned the task of neutralizing the Japanese airfields in the Sakishima Islands, which it did successfully from March 26 to April 10. On April 10, its attention was shifted to airfields in northern Formosa. The force withdrew to San Pedro Bay on April 23. On May 1, the British Pacific Fleet returned to action, subduing the airfields as before, this time with naval bombardment as well as aircraft. Several kamikaze attacks caused significant damage, but as the Royal Navy carriers had armoured flight decks, they experienced only a brief interruption to their force's operations.

The battleship USS Idaho shelling Okinawa on 1 April 1945

On 31 March, Marines of the Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion landed without opposition on Keise Shima, four islets just 8 mi (13 km) west of the Okinawan capital of Naha. A group of 155 mm (6.1 in) "Long Tom" artillery pieces went ashore on the islets to cover operations on Okinawa.

US Marine reinforcements wade ashore to support the beachhead on Okinawa, 1 April 1945.

The main landing was made by the XXIV Corps and the III Amphibious Corps on the Hagushi beaches on the western coast of Okinawa on 1 April. The 2nd Marine Division conducted a demonstration off the Minatoga beaches on the southeastern coast to deceive the Japanese about American intentions and delay movement of reserves from there.

Tenth Army swept across the south-central part of the island with relative ease, capturing the Kadena and the Yomitan airbases within hours of the landing. In light of the weak opposition, General Buckner decided to proceed immediately with Phase II of his plan, the seizure of northern Okinawa. The 6th Marine Division headed up the Ishikawa Isthmus and by 7 April had sealed off the Motobu Peninsula.

Six days later on 13 April, the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment, reached Hedo Point at the northernmost tip of the island. By this point, the bulk of the Japanese forces in the north (codenamed Udo Force) were cornered on the Motobu Peninsula. The terrain was mountainous and wooded, with the Japanese defenses concentrated on Mount Yaedake, a twisted mass of rocky ridges and ravines on the center of the peninsula. There was heavy fighting before the Marines finally cleared Yaedake on 18 April. However, this was not the end of ground combat in northern Okinawa. On 24 May, the Japanese mounted Operation Gi-gou: a company of Giretsu Kuteitai commandos were airlifted in a suicide attack on Yomitan. They destroyed 70,000 US gallons (260,000 L) of fuel and nine planes before being killed by the defenders, who lost two men.

Meanwhile, the 77th Infantry Division assaulted Ie Shima, a small island off the western end of the peninsula, on 16 April. In addition to conventional hazards, the 77th Infantry Division encountered kamikaze attacks and even local women armed with spears. There was heavy fighting before the area was declared secured on 21 April and became another airbase for operations against Japan.

American soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division listen impassively to radio reports of Victory in Europe Day on 8 May 1945.

While the 6th Marine Division cleared northern Okinawa, the US Army 96th and 7th Infantry Divisions wheeled south across the narrow isthmus of Okinawa. The 96th Infantry Division began to encounter fierce resistance in west-central Okinawa from Japanese troops holding fortified positions east of Highway No. 1 and about 5 mi (8 km) northwest of Shuri, from what came to be known as Cactus Ridge. The 7th Infantry Division encountered similarly fierce Japanese opposition from a rocky pinnacle located about 1,000 yd (910 m) southwest of Arakachi (later dubbed " The Pinnacle"). By the night of 8 April, American troops had cleared these and several other strongly fortified positions. They suffered over 1,500 battle casualties in the process while killing or capturing about 4,500 Japanese. Yet the battle had only begun, for it was realized that "these were merely outposts," guarding the Shuri Line.

The next American objective was Kakazu Ridge (), two hills with a connecting saddle that formed part of Shuri's outer defenses. The Japanese had prepared their positions well and fought tenaciously. The Japanese soldiers hid in fortified caves. American forces often lost personnel before clearing the Japanese out from each cave or other hiding place. The Japanese sent Okinawans at gunpoint out to obtain water and supplies for them, which led to civilian casualties. The American advance was inexorable but resulted in a high number of casualties on both sides.

The 27th Infantry Division, which had landed on 9 April, took over on the right, along the west coast of Okinawa. General John R. Hodge now had three divisions in the line, with the 96th in the middle and the 7th to the east, with each division holding a front of only about 1.5 mi (2.4 km). Hodge launched a new offensive on 19 April with a barrage of 324 guns, the largest ever in the Pacific Ocean Theater. Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers joined the bombardment, which was followed by 650 Navy and Marine planes attacking the Japanese positions with napalm, rockets, bombs, and machine guns. The Japanese defenses were sited on reverse slopes, where the defenders waited out the artillery barrage and aerial attack in relative safety, emerging from the caves to rain mortar rounds and grenades upon the Americans advancing up the forward slope.

A tank assault to achieve breakthrough by outflanking Kakazu Ridge failed to link up with its infantry support attempting to cross the ridge and therefore failed with the loss of 22 tanks. Although flame tanks cleared many cave defenses, there was no breakthrough, and the XXIV Corps suffered 720 casualties. The losses might have been greater except for the fact that the Japanese had practically all of their infantry reserves tied up farther south, held there by another feint off the Minatoga beaches by the 2nd Marine Division that coincided with the attack.

At the end of April, after Army forces had pushed through the Machinato defensive line, the 1st Marine Division relieved the 27th Infantry Division and the 77th Infantry Division relieved the 96th. When the 6th Marine Division arrived, the III Amphibious Corps took over the right flank and Tenth Army assumed control of the battle.

Lt. Col. Richard P. Ross Jr., commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines braves sniper fire to place the United States' colors over the parapets of Shuri Castle on 30 May. This flag was first raised over Cape Gloucester and then Peleliu.

Buckner launched another American attack on 11 May. Ten days of fierce fighting followed. On 13 May, troops of the 96th Infantry Division and 763rd Tank Battalion captured Conical Hill (). Rising 476 ft (145 m) above the Yonabaru coastal plain, this feature was the eastern anchor of the main Japanese defenses and was defended by about 1,000 Japanese. Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions fought for "Sugar Loaf Hill" (). The capture of these two key positions exposed the Japanese around Shuri on both sides. Buckner hoped to envelop Shuri and trap the main Japanese defending force.

From 24 to 27 May the 6th Marine Division cautiously occupied the ruins of Naha, the largest city on the island, finding it largely deserted.

On 26 May aerial observers saw large troop movements just below Shuri. On 28 May Marine patrols found recently abandoned positions west of Shuri. By 30 May the consensus among Army and Marine intelligence was that the majority of Japanese forces had withdrawn from the Shuri Line. On 29 May the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines (1/5 Marines) occupied high ground 700 yards (640 m) east of Shuri Castle and reported that the castle appeared undefended. At 10:15 Company A, 1/5 Marines occupied the castle.

Shuri Castle had been shelled by the battleship USS Mississippi for three days before this advance. The 32nd Army withdrew to the south and thus the Marines had an easy task of securing Shuri Castle. The castle, however, was outside the 1st Marine Division's assigned zone, and only frantic efforts by the commander and staff of the 77th Infantry Division prevented an American airstrike and artillery bombardment which would have resulted in many friendly fire casualties.

On 29 May a Confederate flag was raised over Shuri Castle, before being removed and replaced by a US flag three days later on orders of General Buckner.

The Japanese retreat, although harassed by artillery fire, was conducted with great skill at night and aided by the monsoon storms. The 32nd Army was able to move nearly 30,000 personnel into its last defense line on the Kiyan Peninsula, which ultimately led to the greatest slaughter on Okinawa in the latter stages of the battle, including the deaths of thousands of civilians. In addition, there were 9,000 IJN troops supported by 1,100 militia, with approximately 4,000 holed up at the underground headquarters on the hillside overlooking the Okinawa Naval Base in the Oroku Peninsula, east of the airfield.

On 4 June, elements of the 6th Marine Division launched an amphibious assault on the peninsula. The 4,000 Japanese sailors, including Admiral Ōta, all committed suicide within the hand-built tunnels of the underground naval headquarters on 13 June. By 17 June, the remnants of Ushijima's shattered 32nd Army were pushed into a small pocket in the far south of the island to the southeast of Itoman.

On 18 June, General Buckner was killed by Japanese artillery fire while monitoring the progress of his troops from a forward observation post. Buckner was replaced by Major General Roy Geiger. Upon assuming command, Geiger became the only US Marine to command a numbered army of the US Army in combat; he was relieved five days later by General Joseph Stilwell. On 19 June, Brigadier General Claudius Miller Easley, the commander of the 96th Infantry Division, was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire, also while checking on the progress of his troops at the front.

The last remnants of Japanese resistance ended on 21 June, although some Japanese continued hiding, including the future governor of Okinawa Prefecture, Masahide Ōta. Ushijima and Chō committed suicide by in their command headquarters on Hill 89 in the closing hours of the battle. Colonel Yahara had asked Ushijima for permission to commit suicide, but the general refused his request, saying: "If you die there will be no one left who knows the truth about the battle of Okinawa. Bear the temporary shame but endure it. This is an order from your army commander." Yahara was the most senior officer to have survived the battle on the island, and he later authored a book titled The Battle for Okinawa. On 22 June Tenth Army held a flag-raising ceremony to mark the end of organized resistance on Okinawa. On 23 June a mopping-up operation commenced, which concluded on 30 June.

On 15 August 1945, Admiral Matome Ugaki was killed while part of a kamikaze raid on Iheyajima island. The official surrender ceremony was held on 7 September, near the Kadena Airfield.

The Battle of Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. The most complete tally of deaths during the battle is at the Cornerstone of Peace monument at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, which identifies the names of each individual who died at Okinawa in World War II. As of 2022, the monument lists 241,686 names, including 149,611 Okinawans, 77,485 Imperial Japanese soldiers, 14,010 Americans, and smaller numbers of people from South Korea (382), the United Kingdom (82), North Korea (82) and Taiwan (34).

The numbers correspond to recorded deaths during the Battle of Okinawa from the time of the American landings in the Kerama Islands on 26 March 1945 to the signing of the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945, in addition to all Okinawan casualties in the Pacific War in the 15 years from the Manchurian Incident, along with those who died in Okinawa from war-related events in the year before the battle and the year after the surrender. 234,183 names were inscribed by the time of unveiling, and new names are added as necessary. 40,000 of the Okinawan civilians killed had been drafted or impressed by the Japanese army and are often counted as combat deaths.

The Americans suffered some 48,000 casualties, not including some 33,000 non-battle casualties (psychiatric, injuries, illnesses), of whom over 12,000 were killed or missing. Killed in action were 4,907 Navy, 4,675 Army, and 2,938 Marine Corps personnel; when excluding naval losses at sea and losses on the surrounding islands (such as Ie Shima), 6,316 killed and over 30,000 wounded occurred on Okinawa proper. Other authors such as John Keegan have come up with higher numbers.

The most famous American casualty was Lieutenant General Buckner, whose decision to attack the Japanese defenses head-on, although extremely costly in American lives, was ultimately successful. Four days from the closing of the campaign, Buckner was killed by Japanese artillery fire, which blew lethal slivers of coral into his body, while inspecting his troops at the front line. He was the highest-ranking US officer to be killed by enemy fire during the Second World War. The day after Buckner was killed, Brigadier General Easley was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire. War correspondent Ernie Pyle was also killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on Ie Shima, a small island just off of northwestern Okinawa.

Aircraft losses over the three-month period were 768 US planes, including those bombing the Kyushu airfields launching kamikazes. Combat losses were 458, and the other 310 were operational accidents. At sea, 368 Allied ships-including 120 amphibious craft-were damaged while another 36-including 15 amphibious ships and 12 destroyers-were sunk during the Okinawa campaign. The US Navy's dead exceeded its wounded, with 4,907 killed and 4,874 wounded, primarily from kamikaze attacks.

American personnel casualties included thousands of cases of mental breakdown. According to the account of the battle presented in Marine Corps Gazette:

More mental health issues arose from the Battle of Okinawa than any other battle in the Pacific during World War II. The constant bombardment from artillery and mortars coupled with the high casualty rates led to a great deal of personnel coming down with combat fatigue. Additionally, the rains caused mud that prevented tanks from moving and tracks from pulling out the dead, forcing Marines (who pride themselves on burying their dead in a proper and honorable manner) to leave their comrades where they lay. This, coupled with thousands of bodies both friend and foe littering the entire island, created a scent you could nearly taste. Morale was dangerously low by May and the state of discipline on a moral basis had a new low barometer for acceptable behavior. The ruthless atrocities by the Japanese throughout the war had already brought on an altered behavior (deemed so by traditional standards) by many Americans resulting in the desecration of Japanese remains, but the Japanese tactic of using the Okinawan people as human shields brought about a new aspect of terror and torment to the psychological capacity of the Americans.

Medal of Honor recipients from Okinawa are:

The following table lists the Allied naval vessels that received damage or were sunk in the Battle of Okinawa between 19 March - 30 July 1945. The table lists a total of 147 damaged ships, five of which were damaged by enemy suicide boats and another five by mines. During the naval battle, which started before the amphibious landings on Okinawa on 1 April, USS Franklin suffered over 800 killed and missing and USS Bunker Hill suffered 396 killed and missing. These were the first and third largest loss of life on damaged or sunken American aircraft carriers during World War II. USS Franklin (hit by two bombs in a level bombing attack by a D4Y Suisei (Judy) on 19 March 1945) and USS Bunker Hill were the only two aircraft carriers that sustained very severe damage from Japanese attacks and as a result were the only aircraft carriers in the Essex class that did not experience any active service after the end of World War II. One source estimated that total Japanese sorties during the entire Okinawa campaign exceeded 3,700, with a large percentage being kamikaze attacks, and that the attackers damaged slightly more than 200 Allied vessels, with 4,900 naval officers and seamen killed and roughly 4,824 wounded or missing. USS Thorton was damaged as the result of a collision with another US ship.

The Japanese air attacks were so intense that Fifth Fleet commander Admiral Spruance's flagships were struck two separate times ( USS Indianapolis was hit in March and had to retire for repairs which forced him to transfer to USS New Mexico which was also hit in May). Fast Carrier Task Force commander Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher and his chief of staff Commodore Arleigh Burke were yards away from getting killed or wounded by kamikazes on his flagship USS Bunker Hill, which killed three of Mitscher's staff officers and eleven of his enlisted staff members and also destroyed his flag cabin along with all of his uniforms, personal papers, and possessions. Just two days later Mitscher's new flagship USS Enterprise was also struck by a kamikaze forcing him to have to change his flagship yet again. Both fleet carriers were knocked out for the rest of the war.

sunk or had to be scuttled due to irreparable damage. Of those sunk, the majority were relatively smaller ships; these included destroyers of around 300-450 feet. A few small cargo ships were also sunk, several containing munitions which caught fire.

scrapped or decommissioned as a result of damage.

The US military estimates that 110,071 Japanese soldiers were killed during the battle. This total includes conscripted Okinawan civilians.

A total of 7,401 Japanese regulars and 3,400 Okinawan conscripts surrendered or were captured during the battle of Okinawa. Additional Japanese and renegade Okinawans were captured or surrendered over the next few months, bringing the total to 16,346. This was the first battle in the Pacific War in which thousands of Japanese soldiers surrendered or were captured. Many of the prisoners were native Okinawans who had been pressed into service shortly before the battle and were less imbued with the Imperial Japanese Army's no-surrender doctrine. When the American forces occupied the island, many Japanese soldiers put on Okinawan clothing to avoid capture, and some Okinawans would come to the Americans' aid by offering to identify these mainland Japanese.

The Japanese lost 16 combat vessels, including the super battleship Yamato. Early claims of Japanese aircraft losses put the total at 7,800, however later examination of Japanese records revealed that Japanese aircraft losses at Okinawa were far below often-repeated US estimates for the campaign. The number of conventional and kamikaze aircraft actually lost or expended by the 3rd, 5th, and 10th Air Fleets, combined with about 500 lost or expended by the Imperial Army at Okinawa, was roughly 1,430. The Allies destroyed 27 Japanese tanks and 743 artillery pieces (including mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns), some of them eliminated by the naval and air bombardments but most knocked out by American counter-battery fire.

Civilian losses, suicides, and atrocities

A US Marine Corps Stinson Sentinel observation plane flies over the razed Naha, capital of Okinawa, in May 1945.

Some of the other islands that saw major battles in World War II, such as Iwo Jima, were uninhabited or had been evacuated. Okinawa, by contrast, had a large indigenous civilian population; US Army records from the planning phase of the operation made the assumption that Okinawa was home to about 300,000 civilians. The official US Tenth Army count for the 82-day campaign is a total of 142,058 recovered enemy bodies (including those civilians pressed into service by the Imperial Japanese Army), with the deduction made that about 42,000 were non-uniformed civilians who had been killed in the crossfire. Okinawa Prefecture's estimate is over 100,000 losses.

During the battle, American forces found it difficult to distinguish civilians from soldiers. It became common for them to shoot at Okinawan houses, as one infantryman wrote:

There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians-and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately.

In its history of the war, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum presents Okinawa as being caught between Japan and the United States. During the battle, the Imperial Japanese Army showed indifference to Okinawans' safety, and its soldiers used civilians as human shields or outright killed them. The Japanese military also confiscated food from the Okinawans and executed those who hid it, leading to mass starvation, and forced civilians out of their shelters. Japanese soldiers also killed about 1,000 people who spoke in the Okinawan language to suppress spying. The museum writes that "some were blown apart by [artillery] shells, some finding themselves in a hopeless situation were driven to suicide, some died of starvation, some succumbed to malaria, while others fell victim to the retreating Japanese troops."

With the impending Japanese defeat, civilians often committed mass suicide, urged on by the Japanese soldiers who told locals that victorious American soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping. Ryūkyū Shimpō, one of the two major Okinawan newspapers, wrote in 2007: "There are many Okinawans who have testified that the Japanese Army directed them to commit suicide. There are also people who have testified that they were handed grenades by Japanese soldiers" to blow themselves up. Thousands of civilians, having been induced by Japanese propaganda to believe that American soldiers were barbarians who committed horrible atrocities, killed their families and themselves to avoid capture at the hands of the Americans. Some of them threw themselves and their family members from the southern cliffs where the Peace Museum now resides.

Okinawans "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy". Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by Mark Selden states that the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as Japanese military officials had warned". American Military Intelligence Corps combat translators such as Teruto Tsubota managed to convince many civilians not to kill themselves. Survivors of the mass suicides blamed also the indoctrination of their education system of the time, in which the Okinawans were taught to become "more Japanese than the Japanese" and were expected to prove it.

Witnesses and historians claim that soldiers, mainly Japanese troops, raped Okinawan women during the battle. Rape by Japanese troops reportedly "became common" in June, after it became clear that the Imperial Japanese Army had been defeated. Marine Corps officials in Okinawa and Washington have said that they knew of no rapes by American personnel in Okinawa at the end of the war. There are, however, numerous credible testimony accounts which note that a large number of rapes were committed by American forces during the battle. This includes stories of rape after trading sexual favors or even marrying Americans, such as the alleged incident in the village of Katsuyama, where civilians said they had formed a vigilante group to ambush and kill three black American soldiers who they claimed would frequently rape the local girls there.

There is ongoing disagreement between Okinawa's local government and Japan's national government over the role of the Japanese military in civilian mass suicides during the battle. In March 2007, the national Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) advised textbook publishers to reword descriptions that the embattled Imperial Japanese Army forced civilians to kill themselves in the war to avoid being taken prisoner. MEXT preferred descriptions that just say that civilians received hand grenades from the Japanese military. This move sparked widespread protests among Okinawans. In June 2007, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly adopted a resolution stating, "We strongly call on the (national) government to retract the instruction and to immediately restore the description in the textbooks so the truth of the Battle of Okinawa will be handed down correctly and a tragic war will never happen again."

On 29 September 2007, about 110,000 people held the biggest political rally in the history of Okinawa to demand that MEXT retract its order to textbook publishers regarding revising the account of the civilian suicides. The resolution states, "It is an undeniable fact that the 'multiple suicides' would not have occurred without the involvement of the Japanese military and any deletion of or revision to (the descriptions) is a denial and distortion of the many testimonies by those people who survived the incidents." In December 2007, MEXT partially admitted the role of the Japanese military in civilian mass suicides. The ministry's Textbook Authorization Council allowed the publishers to reinstate the reference that civilians "were forced into mass suicides by the Japanese military", on condition it is placed in sufficient context. The council report states, "It can be said that from the viewpoint of the Okinawa residents, they were forced into the mass suicides." That was not enough for the survivors who said it is important for children today to know what really happened.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe wrote a booklet that states that the mass suicide order was given by the military during the battle. He was sued by revisionists, including a wartime commander during the battle, who disputed this and wanted to stop publication of the booklet. At a court hearing, Ōe testified "Mass suicides were forced on Okinawa islanders under Japan's hierarchical social structure that ran through the state of Japan, the Japanese armed forces and local garrisons." In March 2008, the Osaka Prefecture Court ruled in favor of Ōe, stating, "It can be said the military was deeply involved in the mass suicides." The court recognized the military's involvement in the mass suicides and murder-suicides, citing the testimony about the distribution of grenades for suicide by soldiers and the fact that mass suicides were not recorded on islands where the military was not stationed.

In 2012, Korean-Japanese director Pak Su-nam announced her work on the documentary Nuchigafu (Okinawan for "only if one is alive") collecting living survivors' accounts to show "the truth of history to many people", alleging that "there were two types of orders for 'honorable deaths'-one for residents to kill each other and the other for the military to kill all residents". In March 2013, Japanese textbook publisher Shimizu Shoin was permitted by MEXT to publish the statements that "Orders from Japanese soldiers led to Okinawans committing group suicide" and "The [Japanese] army caused many tragedies in Okinawa, killing local civilians and forcing them to commit mass suicide."

90% of the buildings on the island were destroyed, along with countless historical documents, artifacts, and cultural treasures, and the tropical landscape was turned into "a vast field of mud, lead, decay and maggots". The military value of Okinawa was significant. Okinawa provided a fleet anchorage, troop staging areas, and airfields in proximity to Japan. The US cleared the surrounding waters of mines in Operation Zebra, occupied Okinawa, and set up the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, a form of military government, after the battle. In 2011, one official of the prefectural government told David Hearst of The Guardian:

You have the Battle of Britain, in which your airmen protected the British people. We had the Battle of Okinawa, in which the exact opposite happened. The Japanese army not only starved the Okinawans but used them as human shields. That dark history is still present today - and Japan and the US should study it before they decide what to do with next.

Because the next major event following the Battle of Okinawa was the total surrender of Japan, the effect of this battle is more difficult to consider. Because Japan surrendered when it did, the anticipated series of battles and the invasion of the Japanese homeland never occurred, and all military strategies on both sides which presupposed this apparently-inevitable next development were immediately rendered moot.

Some military historians believe that the Okinawa campaign led directly to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a means of avoiding the planned ground invasion of the Japanese mainland. This view is explained by Victor Davis Hanson in his book Ripples of Battle:

... because the Japanese on Okinawa ... were so fierce in their defense (even when cut off and without supplies), and because casualties were so appalling, many American strategists looked for an alternative means to subdue mainland Japan, other than a direct invasion. This means presented itself, with the advent of atomic bombs, which worked admirably in convincing the Japanese to sue for peace [unconditionally], without American casualties.

Meanwhile, many parties continue to debate the broader question of "why Japan surrendered", attributing the surrender to a number of possible reasons including: the atomic bombings, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, and Japan's depleted resources.[page needed ]

In 1995, the Okinawa government erected a memorial monument named the Cornerstone of Peace in Mabuni, the site of the last fighting in southeastern Okinawa. The memorial lists all the known names of those who died in the battle, civilian and military, Japanese and foreign. As of 2022, the monument lists 241,686 names.

Significant US forces remain garrisoned on Okinawa as the United States Forces Japan, which the Japanese government sees as an important guarantee of regional stability, and Kadena remains the largest US air base in Asia. Local residents have long protested against the size and presence of the base.

1. ^ "Okinawa: The Costs of Victory in the Last Battle". The National WWII Museum. 7 July 2022.

2. ^ This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Appleman, Roy; Burns, James; Gugeler, Russel; Stevens, John (1948). Okinawa: The Last Battle. United States Army Center of Military History. ISBN 1410222063. Archived from the original on 8 November 2010.

3. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Nichols, Charles; Shaw, Henry (1955). Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific (PDF). Government Printing Office. ASIN B00071UAT8. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 March 2021.

4. ^ "Okinawa: The Costs of Victory in the Last Battle". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. 7 July 2022.

5. ^ Huber, Thomas (May 1990). "Japan's battle of Okinawa, April-June 1945". Combined Arms Research Library. Archived from the original on 16 October 2004.

6. ^ "Okinawa Confederate Flag". Abbeville Institute Press. 6 April 2018.

7. ^ "'The World is beginning to know Okinawa': Ota Masahide reflects on his life from the Battle of Okinawa to the Struggle for Okinawa". Japanfocus.org. Archived from the original on 14 January 2015.

8. ^ "The Cornerstone of Peace - names to be inscribed". Okinawa Prefecture. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011.

9. ^ "Recollecting the War in Okinawa". Japan Policy Research Institute. Archived from the original on 7 August 2016.

10. ^ "Okinawa marks 62nd anniversary of WWII battle". Japan Times. 24 June 2007. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007.

11. Reid, Chip. ^ "Ernie Pyle, trail-blazing war correspondent - Brought home the tragedy of D-Day and the rest of WWII" Archived 17 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine, NBC News, 7 June 2004. Retrieved 26 April 2006.

12. ^ "H-048-1: Kamikaze Attacks on U.S. Flagships off Okinawa". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Navy Department, Naval History and Heritage Command.

13. Morison, Victory, p. 177

14. Morison, Victory, pp. 186-191

15. ^ "Destroyer History, USS Howorth". Destroyer History. Destroyer History Foundation. Archived from the original on 28 June 2021.

16. Morrison, Victory, p. 279

17. ^ Molasky, Michael S. (1999). The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory. Routledge. p. 16. ISBN 978-0415191944. Archived from the original on 23 January 2023.

18. ^ Molasky, Michael S.; Rabson, Steve (2000). Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa. University of Hawaii Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0824823009. Archived from the original on 23 January 2023.

19. ^ Sheehan, Susan D; Hein, Laura; Selden, Mark (9 April 2003). Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 18. ISBN 978-1461637929. Archived from the original on 23 January 2023.

20. ^ Okinawa's war time wounds reopened Archived 6 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine BBC News, 17 November 2007.

21. ^ New high school texts say Japanese Imperial Army ordered WWII Okinawa suicides, The Mainichi, 29 March 2013.

22. ^ "Okinawan History and Karate-do". Archived from the original on 19 August 2011.

23. ^ Gaddis, John Lewis (2005). The Cold War. Allen Lane. p. 50. ISBN 978-0713999129. [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] brought about the Japanese surrender.

24. ^ "Soviets declare war on Japan; invade Manchuria". Archived 3 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 6 July 2014.

25. ^ "Did Nuclear Weapons Cause Japan to Surrender?". Archived 24 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine Wilson, Ward. YouTube. Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 16 January 2013. Web. 6 July 2014.

26. ^ Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi (2005). Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674022416.

27. ^ Fackler, Martin (5 July 2013). "In Okinawa, Talk of Break From Japan Turns Serious". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 January 2022.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army Center of Military History.

Alexander, Joseph (1995). The Final Campaign: Marines in the Victory on Okinawa (PDF). U.S. Marine Corps History Division. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 January 2021.

Appleman, Roy; Burns, James; Gugeler, Russel; Stevens, John (1948). Okinawa: The Last Battle. United States Army Center of Military History. ISBN 1410222063. Archived from the original on 8 November 2010.

Fisch, Arnold G. Jr. (2004). Ryukyus. World War II Campaign Brochures. Washington, DC: United States Army Center of Military History. ISBN 0160480329. CMH Pub 72-35. Archived from the original on 5 January 2012.

Morison, Samuel Eliot (2002) [1960]. Victory in the Pacific, 1945, vol. 14 of. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252070658. OCLC 1036894412.

Nash, Douglas (2015). Battle of Okinawa III MEF Staff Ride Battle Book (PDF). U.S. Marine Corps History Division. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 March 2021.

Nichols, Charles; Shaw, Henry (1955). Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific (PDF). Government Printing Office. ASIN B00071UAT8. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 March 2021.

Astor, Gerald (1996). Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II. Dell. ISBN 0440221781.

Buckner, Simon; Stilwell, Joseph (2004). Nicholas Evan Sarantakes (ed.). Seven Stars: The Okinawa Battle Diaries of Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. and Joseph Stilwell.

Coski, John M. (2005). The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. United States of America: First Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674019830.

Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Random House. ISBN 978-0679414247.

Hastings, Max (2008) [2007]. Retribution - The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0307263513.

Lacey, Laura Homan (2005). Stay Off The Skyline: The Sixth Marine Division on Okinawa - An Oral History. Potomac Books. ISBN 1574889524.

Sledge, E. B.; Fussell, Paul (1990). With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195067142., famous Marine memoir

Toll, Ian W. (2020). Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945. New York: W.W. Norton.

Dyer, George Carroll (1956). "The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner". United States Government Printing Office. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011.

Huber, Thomas M. (May 1990). "Japan's Battle of Okinawa, April-June 1945". Leavenworth Papers. United States Army Command and General Staff College. Archived from the original on 16 December 2006.

A film clip "footage from the National Archives.By Sgt. Rhodes" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive

A film clip "Landings On Okinawa, 1945/04/09 (1945)" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive

A film clip "Argentine Admitted To World Parley, 1945/05/03 (1945)" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive

A film clip "Final Days of Struggle in Okinawa, 1945/07/05 (1945)" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive

US military on the Battle of Okinawa Archived 26 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine

New Zealand account with reference to Operation Iceberg

Cornerstone of Peace

Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum

The Peace Learning Archive in OKINAWA

A photographic record of aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable, 1944-45, including Operation Iceberg, the attack on the Sakashimas

WWII: Battle of Okinawa Archived 10 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine - slideshow by Life magazine

Operation Iceberg Operational Documents Archived 26 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, KS

Oral history interview with Mike Busha, a member of the 6th Marine Division during the Battle of Okinawa Archived 14 December 2012 at archive.today from the Veterans History Project at Central Connecticut State University

Oral history interview with Albert D'Amico, a Navy Veteran who was aboard LST 278 during the landing at Okinawa Archived 12 December 2012 at archive.today from the Veterans History Project at Central Connecticut State University

Booknotes interview with Robert Leckie on Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II, September 3, 1995.

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Battle of Okinawa Part of the Volcano and Ryukyu Islands campaign of the Pacific Theater ( World War II) 1st Marine Regiment during fighting at Wana Ridge during the Battle of Okinawa, May 1945 Belligerents Ground forces: United States Naval support: United Kingdom Japan Commanders and leaders Simon B. Buckner Jr.

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Okinawa Island

By the time American troops landed on Okinawa, World War II on the European front was nearing its end. Allied and Soviet Union troops had liberated much of Nazi-occupied Europe and were just weeks away from forcing Germany's unconditional surrender.

In the Pacific theater, however, American forces were still painstakingly conquering Japan's Home Islands, one after another. After obliterating Japanese troops in the brutal Battle of Iwo Jima, they set their sights on the isolated island of Okinawa, their last stop before reaching Japan.

Okinawa's 466 square miles of dense foliage, hills and trees made it the perfect location for the Japanese High Command's last stand to protect their motherland. They knew if Okinawa fell, so would Japan. The Americans knew securing Okinawa's airbases was critical to launching a successful Japanese invasion.

Landing on the Beachheads

As dawn arrived on April 1, morale was low among American troops as the Fifth Fleet launched the largest bombardment ever to support a troop landing to soften Japanese defenses.

Soldiers and Army brass alike expected the beach landings to be a massacre worse than D-Day. But the Fifth Fleet's offensive onslaught was almost pointless and landing troops could have literally swum to shore-surprisingly, the expected mass of awaiting Japanese troops wasn't there.

On D-Day along the shores of northern France, American troops fought hard for every inch of beachhead-but troops landing on Okinawa's beaches surged inland with little resistance. Wave after wave of troops, tanks, ammunition and supplies went ashore almost effortlessly within hours. The troops quickly secured both Kadena and Yontan airfields.

Japanese Army Waits

Japan's 32nd Army, some 130,000 men strong and commanded by Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, defended Okinawa. The military force also included an unknown number of conscripted civilians and unarmed Home Guards known as Boeitai.

As they moved inland, American troops wondered when and where they'd finally encounter enemy resistance. What they didn't know was the Japanese Imperial Army had them just where they wanted them.

Japanese troops had been instructed not to fire on the American landing forces but instead watch and wait for them, mostly in Shuri, a rugged area of southern Okinawa where General Ushijima had set up a triangle of defensive positions known as the Shuri Defense Line.

Battleship Yamato

American troops who headed North to the Motobu Peninsula endured intense resistance and over 1,000 casualties but won a decisive battle relatively quickly. It was different along the Shuri Line where they had to overcome a series of heavily defended hills loaded with firmly-entrenched Japanese troops.

On April 7, Japan's mighty battleship Yamato was sent to launch a surprise attack on the Fifth Fleet and then annihilate American troops pinned down near the Shuri Line. But Allied submarines spotted the Yamato and alerted the fleet who then launched a crippling air attack. The ship was bombarded and sank along with most of its crew.

After the Americans cleared a series of outposts surrounding the Shuri Line, they fought many fierce battles including clashes on Kakazu Ridge, Sugar Loaf Hill, Horseshoe Ridge and Half Moon Hill. Torrential rains made the hills and roads watery graveyards of unburied bodies.

Casualties were enormous on both sides by the time the Americans took Shuri Castle in late May. Defeated but not beaten, the Japanese retreated to the southern coast of Okinawa where they made their last stand.

Kamikaze Warfare

The kamikaze suicide pilot was Japan's most ruthless weapon: On April 4, the Japanese unleashed these well-trained pilots on the Fifth Fleet. Some dove their planes into ships at 500 miles per hour, causing catastrophic damage.

American sailors tried desperately to shoot the kamikaze planes down but were often sitting ducks against enemy pilots with nothing to lose. During the Battle of Okinawa, the Fifth Fleet suffered:

* 36 sunk ships

* 368 damaged ships

* 4,900 men killed or drowned

* 4,800 men wounded

* 763 lost aircraft

Hacksaw Ridge

The Maeda Escarpment, also known as Hacksaw Ridge, was located atop a 400-foot vertical cliff. The American attack on the ridge began on April 26. It was a brutal battle for both sides.

To defend the escarpment, Japanese troops hunkered down in a network of caves and dugouts. They were determined to hold the ridge, and decimated American platoons until just a few men remained. Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand combat and particularly ruthless. The Americans finally took Hacksaw Ridge on May 6.

All Americans who fought in the Battle of Okinawa were heroic, but one soldier at the escarpment stood out-Corporal Desmond T. Doss. He was an army medic and Seventh-Day Adventist who refused to raise a gun to the enemy.

Still, he remained on the escarpment after his commanding officers ordered a retreat. Surrounded by enemy soldiers, he went alone into the battle fray and rescued 75 of his wounded comrades. His heroic story was brought to life on the big screen in 2016 in the film Hacksaw Ridge- Doss won a Medal of Honor for his bravery.

Suicide or Surrender

Most Japanese troops and Okinawa citizens believed Americans took no prisoners and they'd be killed on the spot if captured. As a result, countless took their own lives. To encourage their surrender, General Simon Bolivar Buckner initiated propaganda warfare and dropped millions of leaflets declaring the war was all but lost for Japan.

About 7,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered, but many chose death by suicide. Some jumped from high hills, others blew themselves up with grenades.

When faced with the reality that further fighting was futile, General Ushijima and his Chief of Staff, General Cho, committed ritual suicide on June 22, effectively ending the Battle of Okinawa.

Death Toll

Both sides suffered staggering losses in the Battle of Okinawa. The Americans bore over 49,000 casualties including 12,520 killed. General Buckner himself was killed in action on June 18, just days before the battle ended.

Japanese losses were even greater-about 110,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives. It's estimated between 40,000 and 150,000 Okinawa citizens were also killed. The Battle of Okinawa is now considered one of the deadliest in all of human history.

Who Won the Battle of Okinawa?

Winning the Battle of Okinawa put Allied forces within striking distance of Japan. But wanting to bring the war to a swift end, and knowing over 2 million Japanese troops were awaiting battle-weary American soldiers, President Harry S. Truman chose to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6.

Japan didn't give in immediately, so Truman ordered the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9. Finally, Japan had had enough. On August, 14, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender, marking the end of World War II.

Sources

Hellish Prelude at Okinawa. U.S. Naval Institute.
Okinawa: The Last Battle. Marine Corps Gazette. Center of Military History, United States Army.
Operation Iceberg: The Assault on Okinawa-The Last Battle of WWII (Part 1) April-June 1945. History of War.
The Decision to Drop the Bomb. USHistory.org.
The Real 'Hacksaw Ridge' Soldier Saved 75 Souls Without Ever Carrying A Gun. NPR.

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Battle of Okinawa: Date, Significance & Who Won - HISTORY

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In the Battle of Okinawa, the last major battle of World War II and one of the deadliest, U.S. troops overran Japanese resistance to take the island of Okinawa.

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The geologic record carries a terrifying warning.

Brendan Pattengale

Photo Illustrations by Brendan Pattengale | Maps by La Tigre
Images above: Glaciers from the Vatnajökull ice cap, in Iceland Brendan Pattengale is a photographer who explores how color can convey emotions in an image. In his photo illustrations throughout this article, the colors of the original photos have been adjusted, but the images are otherwise unaltered. This article was published online on February 3, 2021.
We live on a wild planet, a wobbly, erupting, ocean-sloshed orb that careens around a giant thermonuclear explosion in the void. Big rocks whiz by overhead, and here on the Earth's surface, whole continents crash together, rip apart, and occasionally turn inside out, killing nearly everything. Our planet is fickle. When the unseen tug of celestial bodies points Earth toward a new North Star, for instance, the shift in sunlight can dry up the Sahara, or fill it with hippopotamuses. Of more immediate interest today, a variation in the composition of the Earth's atmosphere of as little as 0.1 percent has meant the difference between sweltering Arctic rainforests and a half mile of ice atop Boston. That negligible wisp of the air is carbon dioxide.

Since about the time of the American Civil War, CO ₂'s crucial role in warming the planet has been well understood. And not just based on mathematical models: The planet has run many experiments with different levels of atmospheric CO ₂. At some points in the Earth's history, lots of CO ₂ has vented from the crust and leaped from the seas, and the planet has gotten warm. At others, lots of CO ₂ has been hidden away in the rocks and in the ocean's depths, and the planet has gotten cold. The sea level, meanwhile, has tried to keep up-rising and falling over the ages, with coastlines racing out across the continental shelf, only to be drawn back in again. During the entire half-billion-year Phanerozoic eon of animal life, CO ₂ has been the primary driver of the Earth's climate. And sometimes, when the planet has issued a truly titanic slug of CO ₂ into the atmosphere, things have gone horribly wrong.

Today, atmospheric CO ₂ sits at 410 parts per million, a higher level than at any point in more than 3 million years. And humans are injecting more CO ₂ into the atmosphere at one of the fastest rates ever over this entire, near-eternal span. When hucksters tell you that the climate is always changing, they're right, but that's not the good news they think it is. "The climate system is an angry beast," the late Columbia climate scientist Wally Broecker was fond of saying, "and we are poking it with sticks."

The beast has only just begun to snarl. All of recorded human history-at only a few thousand years, a mere eyeblink in geologic time-has played out in perhaps the most stable climate window of the past 650,000 years. We have been shielded from the climate's violence by our short civilizational memory, and our remarkably good fortune. But humanity's ongoing chemistry experiment on our planet could push the climate well beyond those slim historical parameters, into a state it hasn't seen in tens of millions of years, a world for which Homo sapiens did not evolve.

When there's been as much carbon dioxide in the air as there already is today-not to mention how much there's likely to be in 50 or 100 years-the world has been much, much warmer, with seas 70 feet higher than they are today. Why? The planet today is not yet in equilibrium with the warped atmosphere that industrial civilization has so recently created. If CO ₂ stays at its current levels, much less steadily increases, it will take centuries-even millennia-for the planet to fully find its new footing. The transition will be punishing in the near term and the long term, and when it's over, Earth will look far different from the one that nursed humanity. This is the grim lesson of paleoclimatology: The planet seems to respond far more aggressively to small provocations than it's been projected to by many of our models.

To truly appreciate the coming changes to our planet, we need to plumb the history of climate change. So let us take a trip back into deep time, a journey that will begin with the familiar climate of recorded history and end in the feverish, high-CO ₂ greenhouse of the early age of mammals, 50 million years ago. It is a sobering journey, one that warns of catastrophic surprises that may be in store.

Read: Scientists have uncovered a disturbing climate change precedent
The first couple of steps back in time won't take us to a warmer world-but they will illuminate just what sort of ill-tempered planet we're dealing with. As we pull back even slightly from the span of recorded history-our tiny sliver of geologic time-we'll notice almost at once that the entire record of human civilization is perched at the edge of a climate cliff. Below is a punishing ice age. As it turns out, we live on an ice-age planet, one marked by the swelling and disintegration of massive polar ice sheets in response to tiny changes in sunlight and CO ₂ levels. Our current warmer period is merely one peak in a mountain range, with each summit an interglacial springtime like today, and each valley floor a deep freeze. It takes some doing to escape this cycle, but with CO ₂ as it is now, we won't be returning to an ice age for the foreseeable future. And to reach analogues for the kind of warming we'll likely see in the coming decades and centuries, we will need to move beyond the past 3 million years of ice ages entirely, and make drastic jumps back into the alien Earths of tens of millions of years ago. Our future may come to resemble these strange lost worlds.

Before we move more dramatically backwards in time, let us briefly pause over the history of civilization, and then some. Ten thousand years ago, the big mammals had just vanished, at human hands, in Eurasia and the Americas. Steppes once filled with mammoths and camels and wetlands stocked with giant beavers were suddenly, stunningly vacant.

The coastlines that civilization presumes to be eternal were still far beyond today's horizon. But the seas were rising. The doomed vestiges of mile-thick ice sheets that had cloaked a third of North American land were retreating to the far corners of Canada, chased there by tundra and taiga. The roughly 13 quintillion gallons of meltwater these ice sheets would hemorrhage, in a matter of millennia, raised the sea level hundreds of feet, leaving coral reefs that had been bathed in sunlight under shallow waves now drowned in the deep.

By 9,000 years ago, humans in the Fertile Crescent, China, Mexico, and the Andes had independently developed agriculture and-after 200,000 years of wandering-had begun to stay put. Sedentary settlements started to blossom. Humans, with a surfeit of calories, began to divide their labor, and artisans plied new arts. The Earth's oldest cities, such as Jericho, were bustling.

It's easy to forget that the Earth-cozy, pastoral, familiar-is nevertheless a celestial body, and astronomy still has a vote in earthly affairs. Every 20,000 years or so the planet swivels about its axis, and 10,000 years ago, at civilization's first light, the Earth's top half was aimed toward the sun during the closest part of its orbit-an arrangement today enjoyed by the Southern Hemisphere. The resulting Northern-summer warmth turned the Sahara green. Lakes, hosting hippos, crocodiles, turtles, and buffalo, speckled North Africa, Arabia, and everywhere in between. Lake Chad, which today finds itself overtaxed and shrinking toward oblivion, was "Mega-Chad," a 115,000-square-mile freshwater sea that sprawled across the continent. Beneath the Mediterranean today, hundreds of dark mud layers alternate with whiter muck, a barcode that marks the Sahara's rhythmic switching from lush green to continent-spanning desert.

Imprinted on top of this cycle were the last gasps of an ice age that had gripped the planet for the previous 100,000 years. The Earth was still thawing, and amid the final approach of the rising tides, enormous plains and forests like Doggerland-a lowland that had joined mainland Europe to the British Isles-were abandoned by nomadic humans and offered to the surging seas. Vast islands like Georges Bank, 75 miles off Massachusetts-which once held mastodons and giant ground sloths-saw their menagerie overtaken. Scallop draggers still pull up their tusks and teeth today, far offshore.

By 5,000 years ago, as humanity was emerging from its unlettered millennia, the ice had stopped melting and oceans that had been surging for 15,000 years finally settled on modern shorelines. Sunlight had waned in the Northern summer, and rains drifted south toward the equator again. The green Sahara began to die, as it had many times before. Hunter-fisher-gatherers who for thousands of years had littered the verdant interior of North Africa with fishhooks and harpoon points abandoned the now-arid wastelands, and gathered along the Nile. The age of pharaohs began.

By geologic standards, the climate has been remarkably stable ever since, until the sudden warming of the past few decades. That's unsettling, because history tells us that even local, trivial climate misadventures during this otherwise peaceful span can help bring societies to ruin. In fact, 3,200 years ago, an entire network of civilizations-a veritable globalized economy-fell apart when minor climate chaos struck.

"There is famine in [our] house; we will all die of hunger. If you do not quickly arrive here, we ourselves will die of hunger. You will not see a living soul from your land." This letter was sent between associates at a commercial firm in Syria with outposts spread across the region, as cities from the Levant to the Euphrates fell. Across the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, dynasties that had ruled for centuries were all collapsing. The mortuary-temple walls of Ramses III-the last great pharaoh of Egypt's New Kingdom period-speak of waves of mass migration, over land and sea, and warfare with mysterious invaders from afar. Within decades the entire Bronze Age world had collapsed.

Historians have advanced many culprits for the breakdown, including earthquakes and rebellions. But like our own teetering world-one strained by souring trade relations, with fractious populaces led by unsteady, unscrupulous leaders and now stricken by plague-the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean were ill-prepared to accommodate the deteriorating climate. While one must resist environmental determinism, it is nevertheless telling that when the region mildly cooled and a centuries-long drought struck around 1200 B.C., this network of ancient civilizations fell to pieces. Even Megiddo, the biblical site of Armageddon, was destroyed.

This same story is told elsewhere, over and over, throughout the extremely mild stretch of time that is written history. The Roman empire's imperial power was vouchsafed by centuries of warm weather, but its end saw a return to an arid cold-perhaps conjured by distant pressure systems over Iceland and the Azores. In A.D. 536, known as the worst year to be alive, one of Iceland's volcanoes exploded, and darkness descended over the Northern Hemisphere, bringing summer snow to China and starvation to Ireland. In Central America several centuries later, when the reliable band of tropical rainfall that rings the Earth left the Mayan lowlands and headed south, the megalithic civilization above it withered. In North America, a megadrought about 800 years ago made ancestral Puebloans abandon cliffside villages like Mesa Verde, as Nebraska was swept by giant sand dunes and California burned. In the 15th century, a 30-year drought bookended by equally unhelpful deluges brought the Khmer at Angkor low. The "hydraulic empire" had been fed and maintained by an elaborate irrigation system of canals and reservoirs. But when these canals ran dry for decades, then clogged with rains, invaders easily toppled the empire in 1431, and the Khmer forfeited their temples to the jungle.

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Hopscotching through these human disasters to the present day, we pass perhaps the most familiar historical climate event of all: the Little Ice Age. Lasting roughly from 1500 to 1850, the chill made ice rinks of Dutch canals, and swelled up Swiss mountain glaciers. Tent cities sprung up on a frozen Thames, and George Washington endured his winter of cold and privation at Valley Forge in 1777 (which wasn't even particularly harsh for the times). The Little Ice Age might have been a regional event, perhaps the product of an exceptional run of sunlight-dimming volcanism. In 1816, its annus horribilis, the so-called year without a summer-which brought snows to New England in August-global temperatures dropped perhaps a mere half a degree Celsius. While it is perennially plumbed by historians for insights into future climate change, it is not even remotely on the same scale of disruption as that which might lie in our future.

As Europe emerged from its chill, coal from 300-million-year-old jungles was being fed into English furnaces. Although the Earth was now in the same configuration that, in the previous few million years, had invited a return to deep, unthinkable ice ages, for some reason the next ice age never took. Instead the planet embarked on an almost unprecedented global chemistry experiment. Halfway through the 20th century, the climate began behaving very strangely.
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So this is the climate of written history, a seemingly eventful stretch that has really been the random noise and variability of a climate essentially at peace. Indeed, if you were to find yourself in an industrial civilization somewhere else in the universe, you would almost certainly notice such similarly strange and improbably pleasant millennia behind you. This kind of climate stability seems to be a prerequisite for organized society. It is, in other words, as good as it gets.

As we jump back 20,000 years-to yesterday, geologically-the world ceases being recognizable. Whereas all of recorded history played out in a climate hovering well within a band of 1 degree Celsius, we now see what a difference 5 to 6 degrees can make-a scale of change similar to the one that humans may engineer in only the next century or so, though in this case, the world is 5 to 6 degrees colder, not warmer.

An Antarctica's worth of ice now rests atop North America. Similar sheets smother northern Europe, and as a result, the sea level is now 400 feet lower. The midwestern United States is carpeted in stands of stunted spruce of the sort that would today look at home in northern Quebec. The Rockies are carved up, not by wildflower-dappled mountain valleys, but by overflowing rivers of ice and rock. California is a land of dire wolves. Where the Pacific Northwest edges up against the American Antarctica, it is a harsh and treeless place. Nevada and Utah fill up with cold rains.

During World War II, at Topaz, the desolate Japanese American internment camp in Utah, prisoners combed the flats of the Sevier Desert for unlikely seashells, fashioning miraculous little brooches from tiny mussel and snail shells to while away their exile. The desert seashells were roughly 20,000 years old, from the vanished depths of the giant Pleistocene-era Lake Bonneville-the product of a jet stream diverted south by the ice sheet. This was once a Utahan Lake Superior, more than 1,000 feet deep in places. It was joined by endless other verdant lakes scattered across today's bleak Basin and Range region.

Elsewhere, the retreat of the seas made most of Indonesia a peninsula of mainland Asia. Vast savannas and swamps linked Australia and New Guinea, and of course Russia shared a tundra handshake with Alaska. There were reindeer in Spain, and glaciers in Morocco. And everywhere loess, loess, and more loess. This was the age of dust.

Ice is a rock that flows. Send it in massive sterilizing slabs across the continents, and it will quarry mountainsides, pulverize bedrock, and obliterate everything in its path. At the height of the last ice age, along the crumbling margins of the continental ice sheets, the rocky, dusty spoils of all this destruction spilled out onto the tundra. Dry winds carried this silt around the world in enormous dust storms, piling it up in seas of loess that buried the central U.S., China, and Eastern Europe under featureless drifts. In Austria, not far from the site of the voluptuous Venus of Willendorf figurine, carved some 30,000 years ago, are the remains of a campground of the same age-tents, hearths, burnt garbage pits, hoards of ivory jewelry-all abandoned in the face of these violent, smothering haboobs. Ice cores from both Antarctica and Greenland record a local environment that was 10 times dustier than today. All of this dust seeded the seas with iron, a vital nutrient for carbon-hogging plankton, which bloomed around Antarctica and pulled gigatons of CO ₂ out of the air and deep into the ocean, freezing the planet further.
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This parched Pleistocene world would have appeared duller from space, hosting as it did a quarter less plant life. CO ₂ in the atmosphere registered only a paltry 180 ppm, less than half of what it is today. In fact, CO ₂ was so low, it might have been unable to drop any further. Photosynthesis starts to shut down at such trifling levels, a negative-feedback effect that might have left more CO ₂ -unused by plants-in the air above, acting as a brake on the deep freeze.

This was the strange world of the Ice Age, one that, geologically speaking, is still remarkably recent. It's so recent, in fact, that today, most of Canada and Scandinavia is still bouncing back up from the now-vanished ice sheets that had weighed those lands down.

In 2021, we find ourselves in an unusual situation: We live on a world with massive ice sheets, one of which covers one of the seven continents and is more than a mile deep. For most of the planet's past, it has had virtually no ice whatsoever. The periods of extreme cold-like the ultra-ancient, phantasmagoric nightmares of Snowball Earth, when the oceans might have been smothered by ice sheets all the way to the tropics-are outliers. There were a few other surprising pulses of frost here and there, but they merely punctuate the balmy stretches of the fossil record. For almost all of the Earth's history, the planet was a much warmer place than it is today, with much higher CO ₂ levels. This is not a climate-denying talking point; it's a physical fact, and acknowledging it does nothing to take away from the potential catastrophe of future warming. After all, we humans, along with everything else alive today, evolved to live in our familiar low-CO ₂ world-a process that took a long time.

How long, exactly? Fifty million years ago, as our tiny mammalian ancestors were still sweating through the jungly, high-CO ₂ greenhouse climate they had inherited from the dinosaurs, India was nearing the end of an extended journey. Long estranged from Africa and the august, bygone supercontinent of Gondwana, the subcontinent raced northeast across the proto-Indian Ocean and smashed into Asia in slow motion. The collision not only quieted CO₂-spewing volcanoes along Asian subduction zones; it also thrust the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau toward the stars, to be continually weathered and eroded away.

As it turns out, weathering rocks-that is, breaking them down with CO ₂-rich rainwater-is one of the planet's most effective long-term mechanisms for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, one that modern geoengineers are frantically trying to reproduce in a lab, for obvious reasons.

Adding to this colossal Himalayan CO ₂ sink, the more recent buckling, tectonic mess that lifted Indonesia and its neighbors from the sea over the past 20 million years or so also exhumed vast tracts of highly weatherable ocean crust, exposing it all to the withering assault of tropical rainstorms. Today this corroding rock accounts for roughly 10 percent of the planet's carbon sink. Over tens of millions of years, then, the stately march of plate tectonics-the balance of volcanic CO ₂ and rock weathering-seems to have driven long-term climate change, in our case toward a colder, lower-CO ₂ world. As we'll see, humans now threaten to undo this entire epic, geologic-scale climate evolution of the Cenozoic era-and in only a few decades.

When Earth's blanket of CO ₂ was finally thin enough, the planet's regular wobbles were at long last sufficient to trigger deep glaciations. The ice ages began. But the climate was not stable during this period. The ice advanced and retreated, and while the descent into the wild episodes of the Pleistocene epoch could be leisurely-the depths of planetary winter taking tens of thousands of years to arrive-the leap out of the cold tended to be sudden and violent. This is where positive feedback loops come in: When the last ice age ended, it ended fast.

Coral reefs marking the ancient sea level-but today lying deep off the coasts of Tahiti and Indonesia-reveal that about 14,500 years ago, the seas suddenly jumped 50 feet or so in only a few centuries, as meltwater from the late, great North American ice sheet raged down the Mississippi. When a 300-foot-deep lake of glacial meltwater spanning at least 80,000 square miles of central Canada catastrophically drained into the ocean, it shut down the churn of the North Atlantic and arrested the seaborne flow of heat northward. As a result, tundra advanced to retake much of Europe for 1,000 years. But when ocean circulation kicked back into gear, and the dense, salty seawater began to sink again, the system rebooted, and currents carried the equator's heat toward the Arctic once more. Temperatures in Greenland suddenly leaped 10 degrees Celsius in perhaps a decade, fires spread, and revanchist forests reclaimed Europe for good.

In Idaho, ice dams that had held back giant lakes of glacial meltwater about six times the volume of Lake Erie collapsed as the world warmed, and each released 10 times the flow of all the rivers on Earth into eastern Washington. The floods carried 30-foot boulders on biblical waves, through what were suddenly the world's wildest rapids. They left behind a labyrinth of bedrock-scoured canyons that still covers the entire southeastern corner of the state like a scar. When the Earth's climate changes, this is what it can look like on the ground.

As the ice sheets of the Northern Hemisphere finally lost their grip, darker land around the melting margins became exposed to the sun for the first time in 100,000 years, accelerating the ice's retreat. Permafrost melted, and methane bubbled up from thawing bogs. Colder, more CO ₂-soluble oceans warmed, and gave up the carbon they'd stolen in the Ice Age, warming the Earth even more. Relieved of their glacial burden, volcanoes in Iceland, Europe, and California awoke, adding even more CO ₂ to the atmosphere.

Soon the Sahara would green again, Jericho would be born, and humans would start writing things down. They would do so with the assumption that the world they saw was the way it had always been. "We were born only yesterday and know nothing," one of them would write. "And our days on earth are but a shadow."

As we leap back in time again, we emerge before the final Pleistocene glaciation. We've gone tremendously far back, 129,000 years, though in some ways we've only returned to our own world. This was the most recent interglacial period, the last of many breaks between the ice ages, and the last time the planet was roughly as warm as it is today. Once more, the seas have risen hundreds of feet, but something is awry.

As the Earth's wobble and orbit conspired to melt more ice than the poles have shed so far today, the planet absorbed more sunlight. As a result, global temperatures were little more than 1 degree warmer than today's Anthropocene chart-toppers-or maybe even the same. But sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than it is now. (A full third of Florida was sunk beneath the waves.) This is "sobering," as one paper put it.

Modelers have tried and mostly failed to square how a world about as warm as today's could produce seas so strangely high. Provisional, if nightmarish, explanations like the runaway, catastrophic collapse of monstrous ice cliffs more than 300 feet tall in Antarctica, which may or may not be set into motion in our own time, are fiercely debated in conference halls and geoscience departments.

Very soon, we may well have warmed the planet enough to trigger similarly dramatic sea-level rise, even if it takes centuries to play out. This is what the Exxon scientist James Black meant in 1977 when he warned higher-ups of the coming "super-interglacial" that would be brought about-as a matter of simple atmospheric physics-from burning fossil fuels. But our trajectory as a civilization is headed well beyond the warmth of the last interglacial, or any other interglacial period of the Pleistocene, for that matter. So it's time to keep moving. We must take our first truly heroic leap into geologic time, millions of years into the past.

We're more than 3 million years in the past now, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at 400 parts per million, a level the planet will not again see until September 2016. This world is 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than ours, and the sea level is up to 80 feet higher. Stunted beech trees and bogs line the foothills of the Transantarctic Mountains not far from the South Pole-the last members of a venerable line of once-majestic forests that had existed since long before the age of the dinosaurs.

What we've glossed over in our journey back to this ancient present: the entire evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, three Yellowstone super-eruptions, thousands of megafloods, the last of the giant terror birds, a mass extinction of whales, and the glacial creation and destruction of innumerable islands and moraines. As we make our way backwards in time to the Pliocene, the glaciations get briefer, and the ice sheets themselves become thinner and more temperamental. About 2.6 million years ago they all but disappear in North America, as CO₂ levels continue their slow climb.

When we arrive in the middle of the Pliocene, just over 3 million years ago, CO ₂ levels are high enough that we've escaped the cycle of ice ages and warm interglacials altogether. Lucy the Australopithecus roams a heavily forested East Africa. We are now outside the evolutionary envelope of our modern world, sculpted as it was by the temperamental northern ice sheets and deep freezes of the Pleistocene. But as to atmospheric carbon dioxide, 3 million years is how far back we have to go to arrive at an analogue for 2021.

Despite the similarities between our world and that of the Pliocene, the differences are notable. In the Canadian High Arctic-where today tundra spreads to the horizon-evergreen forests come right to the edge of an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Though the world as a whole is only a few degrees warmer, the Arctic, as always, gets the brunt of the extra heat. This is called "polar amplification," and it's why maps of modern warming are crowned by a disturbing fog of maroon. Models struggle to reproduce the extreme level of warming in the Pliocene Arctic. It's a full 10 to 15 degrees Celsius warmer in the long twilight of northern Canada, and the pine and birch woodlands of these Arctic shores are filled with gigantic forest-dwelling camels. Occasionally this boreal world erupts in wildfire, a phenomenon echoed by the blazes that today sweep ever farther north. Elsewhere, West Antarctica's ice sheet may have disappeared entirely, and Greenland's, if it exists at all, is shriveled and pathetic.

A common projection for our own warming world is that, while the wet places will get wetter, the dry places will get drier. But the Pliocene seems to defy this saw for reasons not yet fully understood. It's a strangely wet world, especially the subtropics, where-in the Sahara, the Outback, the Atacama, the American Southwest, and Namibia-lakes, savannas, and woodlands replace deserts. This ancient wetness might come down to inadequacies in how we model clouds, which are under no obligation to behave in physical reality as they do in simplified lines of computer code. Hurricanes were almost certainly more consistently punishing 3 million years ago, just as our storms of the future will be. And a more sluggish circulation of the atmosphere might have lulled the trade winds, turning El Niño into "El Padre." Perhaps this is what brought rains-and lakes-to the Mojave at this time.

Our modern coastlines would have been so far underwater that you'd have to take great pains to avoid getting the bends if you tried scuba diving down to them. Today, traveling east through Virginia, or North or South Carolina, or Georgia, midway through your drive you'll pass over a gentle 100-foot drop. This is the Orangeburg Scarp, a bluff-hundreds of miles long-that divides the broad, flat coastal plain of the American Southeast. It comprises the eroded and smoothed-out rumors of once-magnificent sea cliffs. Here, waves of the Pliocene high seas chewed away at the middle of the Carolinas-an East Coast Big Sur. This ancient shoreline is visible from space by the change in soil color that divides the states, and is visible on much closer inspection as well: To the east of this strange drop-off, giant megalodon-shark teeth and whale bones litter the Carolina Low Country. Though warped over the ages by the secret workings of the mantle far below, these subtle banks 90 miles inland nevertheless mark the highest shoreline of the Pliocene, when the seas were dozens of feet higher than they are today. But even within this warm Pliocene period, the sea level leaped and fell by as much as 60 feet every 20,000 years, to the rhythm of the Earth's sway in space. This is because, under this higher-CO ₂ regime, the unstable ice sheet in Antarctica took on the volatile temperament that, 1 million years later, would come to characterize North America's ice sheet, toying with the ancient coastline as if it were a marionette.

So this is the Pliocene, the world of the distant present. While today's projections of future warming tend to end in 2100, the Pliocene illuminates just what sort of long-term changes might inevitably be set in motion by the atmosphere we've already engineered. As the great ice sheets melt, the permafrost awakens, and darker forested land encroaches on the world's tundra, positive feedbacks may eventually launch our planet into a different state altogether, one that might resemble this bygone world. Nevertheless, human civilization is unlikely to keep atmospheric CO ₂ at a Pliocene level-so more ancient and extreme analogues must be retrieved.

We're now deeper in the past, and the planet appears truly exotic. The Amazon is running backwards, and gathers in great pools at the foot of the Andes. A seaway stretches from Western Europe to Kazakhstan and spills into the Indian Ocean. California's Central Valley is open ocean.

What today is the northwestern U.S. is especially unrecognizable. Today the airy, columnated canyons of the Columbia River in Oregon swarm with tiny kiteboarders zipping through gorges of basalt. But 16 million years ago, this was a black, unbreathable place, flowing with rivers of incandescent rock. The Columbia River basalts-old lava flows that spread across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, in some places more than two miles thick-were the creation of a class of extremely rare and world-changing volcanic eruptions known as large igneous provinces, or LIPs.

Some LIPs in Earth's history span millions of square miles, erupt for millions of years, inject tens of thousands of gigatons of CO ₂ into the air, and are responsible for most of the worst mass extinctions in the history of the planet. They live up to their name-they are large. But these mid-Miocene eruptions were still rather small as far as LIPs go, and so the planet was spared mass death. Nevertheless, the billowing volcanoes raised atmospheric CO ₂ up to about 500 ppm, a level that today represents something close to the most ambitious and optimistic scenario possible for limiting our future carbon emissions.

In the Miocene, this volcanic CO ₂ warmed up the world to at least 4 degrees Celsius and perhaps as much as 8 degrees above modern temperatures. As a result, there were turtles and parrots in Siberia. Canada's Devon Island, in the high Arctic, is today a desolate wasteland, the largest uninhabited island in the world-and one used by NASA to simulate life on Mars. In the Miocene, its flora resembled Lower Michigan's.

The sweeping grasslands distinctive to our cooler, drier, low-CO ₂ world had yet to take over the planet, and so forests were everywhere-in the middle of Australia and Central Asia and Patagonia. All of this vegetation was one of the reasons it was so warm. Forests and shrubs made this planet darker than our own world-one still painted pallid hues in many places by bare land and ice-and allowed it to absorb more heat. This change in the planet's color is just one of the many long-term feedback loops awaiting us after the ice melts. Long after our initial pulse of CO ₂, they will make our future world warmer and more alien still.

As for fauna, we're now so distantly marooned in time from our own world that most of the creatures that inhabited this leafy planet range from the flatly unfamiliar to the uncannily so. There were big cats that weren't cats, and rhino-size "hell pigs" that weren't pigs. There were sloths that lived in the ocean and walruses that weren't related to today's walruses. Earth's largest-ever meat-eating land mammals, African juggernauts like Megistotherium and Simbakubwa, not closely related to any living mammals today, tore early elephants apart with bladed mouths.

And with CO ₂ at 500ppm, the sea level was about 150 feet higher than today. Approaching Antarctica in the middle Miocene by sea, the waters would be warmer than today, and virtually unvisited by ice. To get to the ice sheet, you'd have to hike far past lakes and forests of conifers that lined the coast. Trudging past the trees and finally over endless tundra, you would come at last to the edge of a much smaller ice sheet whose best days were still ahead of it. An axiom about this land-based Antarctic ice sheet in paleoclimatology is that it's incredibly stubborn. That is, once you have an ice sheet atop the heart of Antarctica, feedback loops kick in to make it exceedingly hard to get rid of. Barring true climatic madness, a land-based Antarctic ice sheet is essentially there to stay.

But in the middle Miocene this young Antarctic ice sheet seemed to have a temper. It might have been "surprisingly dynamic," as one paper cheerfully puts it. As CO ₂ increased from just below today's levels up to about 500ppm, Miocene Antarctica shed what today would amount to 30 to 80 percent of the modern ice sheet. In the Miocene, Antarctica seemed exquisitely tuned to small changes in atmospheric CO₂, in ways that we don't fully understand and that we're not incorporating into our models of the future. There will undoubtedly be surprises awaiting us in our high-CO ₂ future, just as there were for life that existed in the Miocene. In fact, the Antarctic ice sheet may be more vulnerable today to rapid retreat and disintegration than at any time in its entire 34-million-year history.

In the 16 million years since this mid-Miocene heat, the volcanic hot spot responsible for the Columbia River basalts has wandered under Yellowstone. Today it powers a much tamer kind of volcano. It could cover a few states in a few inches of ash and disrupt global agriculture for years, but it couldn't launch the planet into a new climate for hundreds of thousands of years, or kill most life on the surface. Unfortunately, there is such a supervolcano active on Earth today: industrial civilization. With CO ₂ likely to soar past 500ppm from future emissions, even the sweat-soaked, Siberian-parrot-populated world of the middle Miocene might not tell us everything we need to know about our future climate. It's time to go back to a global greenhouse climate that ranks among the warmest climate regimes complex life has ever endured. In our final leap backwards, CO ₂ at last reaches levels that humans might reproduce in the next 100 years or so. What follows is something like a worst-case scenario for future carbon emissions. But these worst-case projections have continued to prove stubbornly accurate in the 21st century so far, and they remain a possible path for our future.

We're now about to take our largest leap, by far, into the geologic past. We hurdle over 40 million years of history, past volcanic eruptions thousands of times bigger than that of Mount St. Helens, past an asteroid impact that punched out a gigantic crater where the Chesapeake Bay sits today. The Himalayas slump; India unhitches from Asia; and the further back we go, the higher the CO ₂ level rises and the warmer the Earth gets. The Antarctic ice sheet, in its death throes, vanishes altogether, and the polar continent instead gives way to monkey puzzle trees and marsupials. We have arrived, finally at the end of our journey, in the greenhouse world of the early age of mammals.

Today the last dry land one steps on in Canada before setting out across the ice-choked seas for the North Pole is Ellesmere Island, at the top of the world. But once upon a time there was a rainforest here. We know this because tree stumps still erode out of the barren hillsides, and they're more than 50 million years old. They're all that's left of an ancient polar jungle now whipped by indifferent Arctic winds. But once upon a time, this island was a swampy cathedral of redwoods, whose canopy naves were filled with flying lemurs, giant salamanders, and hippolike beasts that pierced the waters. At this polar latitude, on some late-fall evening of the early Eocene, the sun tried and failed to lift itself from the horizon. A pink twilight reached deep into the jungle, but soon the sun would set entirely here for more than four months. In this unending Arctic dark, the stillness would be broken by the orphaned calls of tiny early primates, who hopped fearlessly over stilled alligators that would start moving again when the sun returned from beyond the horizon. In this unending night, tapirs hunted for mushrooms and munched on leaf litter that was left over from sunny days past and that in the far future would become coal.

We have no modern analogue for a swampy rainforest teeming with reptiles that nevertheless endures months of Arctic twilight and polar night. But for each degree Celsius the planet warms, the atmosphere holds about 6 percent more water vapor, and given that global temperatures at the beginning of the age of mammals were roughly 13 degrees warmer than today, it's difficult to imagine how uncomfortable this planet would be for Ice Age creatures like ourselves. In fact, much of the planet would be rendered off-limits to us, far too hot and humid for human physiology.

Not only was this a sweltering age, but it was also one cruelly punctuated by some of the most profound and sudden CO ₂-driven global-warming events in geologic history-on top of this already feverish baseline. Deep under the North Atlantic, the Eocene epoch kicked off in style 56 million years ago with massive sheets of magma that spread sideways through the crust, igniting vast, diffuse deposits of fossil fuels at the bottom of the ocean. This ignition of the underworld injected something like the carbon equivalent of all currently known fossil-fuel reserves into the seas and atmosphere in less than 20,000 years, warming the planet by another 5 to 9 degrees Celsius. Evidence abounds of violent storms and megafloods during this ancient spasm of climate change-episodic waves of torrential rains unlike any on Earth today. In some places, such storms would have been routine, separated by merciless droughts and long, brutal, cloudless heat waves. Seas near the equator may have been almost as hot as a Jacuzzi-too hot for most complex life. As for the rest of the planet, all of this excess CO ₂ acidified the oceans, and the world's coral reefs collapsed. Ocean chemistry took 200,000 years to recover.

The most jarring thing about the early age of mammals, though, isn't merely the extreme heat. It's the testimony of the plants. In higher-CO ₂ conditions, plants reduce the number of pores on their leaves, and fossil leaves from the jungles of the early Eocene have tellingly fewer pores than today's. By some estimates, CO ₂ 50 million years ago was about 600 ppm. Other proxies point to higher CO ₂, just over 1,000 ppm, but even that amount has long bedeviled our computer models of climate change. For years, in fact, models have told us that to reproduce this feverish world, we'd need to ramp up CO ₂ to more than 4,000 ppm.

This ancient planet is far more extreme than anything being predicted for the end of the century by the United Nations or anyone else. After all, the world that hosted the rainforests of Ellesmere Island was 13 degrees Celsius warmer than our own, while the current global ambition, enshrined in the Paris Agreement, is to limit warming to less than 2, or even 1.5, degrees. Part of what explains this glaring disparity is that most climate projections end at the end of the century. Feedbacks that might get you to Eocene- or Miocene-level warmth play out over much longer timescales than a century. But the other, much scarier insight that Earth's history is very starkly telling us is that we have been missing something crucial in the models we use to predict the future.

Some of the models are starting to catch up. In 2019, one of the most computationally demanding climate models ever run, by researchers at the California Institute of Technology, simulated global temperatures suddenly leaping 12 degrees Celsius by the next century if atmospheric CO ₂ reached 1,200ppm-a very bad, but not impossible, emissions pathway. And later that year, scientists from the University of Michigan and the University of Arizona were similarly able to reproduce the warmth of the Eocene by using a more sophisticated model of how water behaves at the smallest scales.

The paleoclimatologist Jessica Tierney thinks the key may be the clouds. Today, the San Francisco fog reliably rolls in, stranding bridge towers high above the marine layer like birthday candles. These clouds are a mainstay of west coasts around the world, reflecting sunlight back to space from coastal California and Peru and Namibia. But under higher-CO ₂ conditions and higher temperatures, water droplets in incipient clouds could get bigger and rain down faster. In the Eocene, this might have caused these clouds to fall apart and disappear-inviting more solar energy to reach, and warm, the oceans. That might be why the Eocene was so outrageously hot.

This sauna of our early mammalian ancestors represents something close to the worst possible scenario for future warming (although some studies claim that humans, under truly nihilistic emissions scenarios, could make the planet even warmer). The good news is the inertia of the Earth's climate system is such that we still have time to rapidly reverse course, heading off an encore of this world, or that of the Miocene, or even the Pliocene, in the coming decades. All it will require is instantaneously halting the super-eruption of CO ₂ disgorged into the atmosphere that began with the Industrial Revolution.

We know how to do this, and we cannot underplay the urgency. The fact is that none of these ancient periods is actually an apt analogue for the future if things go wrong. It took millions of years to produce the climates of the Miocene or the Eocene, and the rate of change right now is almost unprecedented in the history of animal life.

Humans are currently injecting CO ₂ into the air 10 times faster than even during the most extreme periods within the age of mammals. And you don't need the planet to get as hot as it was in the early Eocene to catastrophically acidify the oceans. Acidification is all about the rate of CO ₂ emissions, and we are off the charts. Ocean acidification could reach the same level it did 56 million years ago by later this century, and then keep going.

When he coined the term mass extinction in a 1963 paper, "Crises in the History of Life," the American paleontologist Norman Newell posited that this was what happened when the environment changed faster than evolution could accommodate. Life has speed limits. And in fact, life today is still trying to catch up with the thaw-out of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. Meanwhile, our familiar seasons are growing ever more strange: Flycatchers arrive weeks after their caterpillar prey hatches; orchids bloom when there are no bees willing to pollinate them. The early melting of sea ice has driven polar bears ashore, shifting their diet from seals to goose eggs. And that's after just 1 degree of warming.

Subtropical life may have been happy in a warmer Eocene Arctic, but there's no reason to think such an intimately adapted ecosystem, evolved on a greenhouse planet over millions of years, could be reestablished in a few centuries or millennia. Drown the Florida Everglades, and its crocodilians wouldn't have an easy time moving north into their old Miocene stomping grounds in New Jersey, much less migrating all the way to the unspoiled Arctic bayous if humans re-create the world of the Eocene. They will run into the levees and fortifications of drowning Florida exurbs. We are imposing a rate of change on the planet that has almost never happened before in geologic history, while largely preventing life on Earth from adjusting to that change.

Taking in the whole sweep of Earth's history, now we see how unnatural, nightmarish, and profound our current experiment on the planet really is. A small population of our particular species of primate has, in only a few decades, unlocked a massive reservoir of old carbon slumbering in the Earth, gathering since the dawn of life, and set off on a global immolation of Earth's history to power the modern world. As a result, up to half of the tropical coral reefs on Earth have died, 10 trillion tons of ice have melted, the ocean has grown 30 percent more acidic, and global temperatures have spiked. If we keep going down this path for a geologic nanosecond longer, who knows what will happen? The next few fleeting moments are ours, but they will echo for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. This is one of the most important times to be alive in the history of life.
This article appears in the March 2021 print edition with the headline "The Dark Secrets of the Earth's Deep Past."

Peter Brannen is a science writer based in Boulder, Colorado. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Wired. He is the author of The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions.

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The Planet Could Have Catastrophic Surprises in Store

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The geologic record carries a terrifying warning. Photo Illustrations by Brendan Pattengale | Maps by La Tigre Images above: Glaciers from the Vatnajökull ice cap, in Iceland Brendan Pattengale is a photographer who explores how color can convey emotions in an image.

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How the Gun Control Act of 1968 Changed America's Approach to Firearms-And What People Get Wrong About That History

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A historian explains how the U.S. was able to enact a federal gun control law in 1968, and why such a law would be hard to pass today

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The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ( UNDRIP or DOTROIP) is a legally non-binding resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007. It delineates and defines the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including their ownership rights to cultural and ceremonial expression, identity, language, employment, health, education, and other issues. Their ownership also extends to the protection of their intellectual and cultural property. The Declaration "emphasizes the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations." It "prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples," and it "promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development".

The goal of the declaration is to encourage countries to work alongside indigenous peoples to solve global issues, such as development, multicultural democracy, and decentralization.

On Thursday, September 13, 2007, the United Nations voted by a vast majority of 144 in favor (4 against, 11 abstained) of the Declaration.

Since 2007, the four countries voting against have reversed their position and now support the Declaration. As of February 2020, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Indigenous Peoples describe (A/RES/61/295) as "...the most comprehensive international instrument on the rights of indigenous peoples. It establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world and it elaborates on existing human rights standards and fundamental freedoms as they apply to the specific situation of indigenous peoples."

As a General Assembly Declaration, UNDRIP is not a legally binding instrument under international law. According to a UN press release it does "represent the dynamic development of international legal norms and it reflects the commitment of the UN's member states to move in certain directions"; the UN describes it as setting "an important standard for the treatment of indigenous peoples that will undoubtedly be a significant tool toward eliminating human rights violations against the planet's 370 million indigenous people, and assisting them in combating discrimination and marginalisation."

UNDRIP codifies "Indigenous historical grievances, contemporary challenges and socio-economic, political and cultural aspirations" and is the "culmination of generations-long efforts by Indigenous organizations to get international attention, to secure recognition for their aspirations, and to generate support for their political agendas." Canada Research Chair and faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan Ken Coates argues that UNDRIP resonates powerfully with Indigenous peoples, while national governments have not yet fully understood its impact.

The groundwork toward this declaration began in 1923 and 1925 with the works of Haudenosaunee Chief Deskaheh and Māori T.W. Ratana, who attempted to bring issues of Canada and New Zealand's failure to uphold treaties to the League of Nations, United Nations' precursor. Issues of Indigenous Peoples on a world scale began to be reevaluated in 1982 with the establishment of the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, formed by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Their goal was to create an overarching document that would help protect the rights and privileges of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world.

The Declaration went through numerous drafts from 1994 to 2006, and a version had already been recommended by the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action in 1993.

Several post-empire states with large settler-colonial portions of the total population have processes underway to better recognise and realise in practise the rights of indigenous peoples. These include New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.

This declaration is a resolution, meaning it is not a law-bearing document. Indigenous peoples are not considered political nation-states and do not have access to international law protection through the international court of justice. Article 40 states that Indigenous peoples have the right to fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts and disputes with countries or other parties, because Indigenous people cannot use the International court of justice, UNDRIP has no indication of which judicial power indigenous peoples are to bring disputes to.

The declaration's purpose is not to create new rights, but rather addresses topics such as Indigenous reconciliation in regard to restoring and protecting culture, traditions, and indigenous institutions and the pursuit of self-determined development.

The Declaration is structured as a United Nations resolution, with 23 preambular clauses and 46 articles. In most articles, an aspiration for how the State should promote and protect the rights of indigenous people is included (see Provision for further explanation). Major themes of the articles include:

Rights of self-determination of indigenous individuals and peoples (Articles 1 - 8; 33 - 34)
The difference is between the individual and people's group

Rights of indigenous individuals and people to protect their culture through practices, languages, education, media, and religion, including control of their intellectual property (Articles 9 - 15, 16, 25, and 31)

Asserts the indigenous peoples' right to own type of governance and to economic development (Articles 17 - 21, 35 - 37)

Health rights (Article 23 - 24)

Protection of subgroups ex. elderly, women, and children (Article 22)

Land rights from ownership (including reparation, or return of land i.e. Article 10) to environmental issues (Articles 26 - 30, and 32)

Dictates how this document should be understood in future reference (Articles 38 - 46).

The opening and Article 2 of the Declaration provide that "indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples" (source). Besides asserting the rights that indigenous individuals and peoples' have as other peoples, there are Articles (23 of the 46) pointing to how States should interact with the declaration. Most of the articles point to States working in conjunction with the indigenous peoples. Some measures countries are suggested to take are:

To return land (article 26), ceremonial objects (article 12), and human remains (article 12)

To place "programmes for monitoring, maintaining, and restoring the health of indigenous peoples" (article 29)

To protect and uphold the rights of indigenous individuals and peoples (subpoint in many articles; see Declaration)

The Declaration was over 25 years in the making. The idea originated in 1982 when the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) set up its Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), established as a result of a study by Special Rapporteur José Ricardo Martínez Cobo on the problem of discrimination faced by indigenous peoples. Tasked with developing human rights standards that would protect indigenous peoples, in 1985 the Working Group began working on drafting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The draft was finished in 1993 and was submitted to the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which gave its approval the following year. During this the International Labour Organization adopted the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989.

The Draft Declaration was then referred to the Commission on Human Rights, which established another Working Group to examine its terms. Over the following years this Working Group met on 11 occasions to examine and fine-tune the Draft Declaration and its provisions. Progress was slow because of certain states' concerns regarding some key provisions of the Declaration, such as indigenous peoples' right to self-determination and the control over natural resources existing on indigenous peoples' traditional lands. The final version of the Declaration was adopted on June 29, 2006, by the 47-member Human Rights Council (the successor body to the Commission on Human Rights), with 30 member states in favour, 2 against, 12 abstentions, and 3 absentees.

The vote was as follows:

All four member states that voted against have their origins as settler colonies of the British Empire, and have a majority of non-Indigenous population. Since then, all four countries have moved to endorse the declaration in some informal way in which it would not actually become binding law pleadable in court. Canada, under a Conservative Party leadership made official public statements against the application of the UNDRIP in Canada.

However, the Liberal Government elected to leadership in 2015, has unequivocally indicated Canada's support for UNDRIP. On December 3, 2020, Bill C-15 was introduced to the House of Commons that would bring Canadian law into alignment with the UN resolution. Bill C-15 passed Canada's senate on June 16, 2021, and received royal assent on June 21, 2021, to become law. In doing so Canada became the first of the four countries with histories as settler colonies of the British empire with majority non-indigenous populations that originally voted against to now adopt UNDRIP.

Australian Government interventions have been challenged under its terms without success.

In contrast to the Declaration's initial rejection by Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States over legal concerns (all four countries later switched their positions to accepting the declaration as a non-legally-binding document), United Nations officials and other world leaders expressed pleasure at its adoption. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described it as a "historic moment when UN Member States and indigenous peoples have reconciled with their painful histories and are resolved to move forward together on the path of human rights, justice and development for all." Louise Arbour, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada then serving as the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed satisfaction at the hard work and perseverance that had finally "borne fruit in the most comprehensive statement to date of indigenous peoples' rights." Similarly, news of the Declaration's adoption was greeted with jubilation in Africa and, present at the General Assembly session in New York, Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca said that he hoped the member states that had voted against or abstained would reconsider their refusal to support a document he described as being as important as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bolivia has become the first country to approve the U.N. declaration of indigenous rights. Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, stated, "We are the first country to turn this declaration into a law and that is important, brothers and sisters. We recognize and salute the work of our representatives. But if we were to remember the indigenous fight clearly, many of us who are sensitive would end up crying in remembering the discrimination, the scorn."

Stephen Corry, director of the international indigenous rights organization Survival International, said, "The declaration has been debated for nearly a quarter century. Years which have seen many tribal peoples, such as the Akuntsu and Kanoê in Brazil, decimated and others, such as the Innu in Canada, brought to the edge. Governments that oppose it are shamefully fighting against the human rights of their most vulnerable peoples. Claims they make to support human rights in other areas will be seen as hypocritical."

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) formally acknowledges and upholds the principles of the Declaration in both their Collection Access and Use Policy and their Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies.

Prior to the adoption of the Declaration, and throughout the 62nd session of the General Assembly, a number of countries expressed concern about some key issues, such as self-determination, access to lands, territories and resources and the lack of a clear definition of the term "indigenous". In addition to those intending to vote against the adoption of the declaration, a group of African countries represented by Namibia proposed to defer action, to hold further consultations, and to conclude consideration of the declaration by September 2007. Ultimately, after agreeing on some adjustments to the Draft Declaration, a vast majority of states recognized that these issues could be addressed by each country at the national level.

The four states that voted against continued to express serious reservations about the final text of the Declaration as placed before the General Assembly. All four opposing countries later changed their vote in favour of the Declaration.

The Australian Government opposed the Declaration in the General Assembly vote of 2007, but has since endorsed the Declaration. Australia's Mal Brough, Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, referring to the provision regarding the upholding of indigenous peoples' customary legal systems, said that "There should only be one law for all Australians and we should not enshrine in law practices that are not acceptable in the modern world."

Marise Payne, Liberal Party Senator for New South Wales, further elaborated on the Australian government's objections to the Declaration in a speech to the Australian Senate:

Concerns about references to self-determination and their potential to be misconstrued.

Ignorance of contemporary realities concerning land and resources. "They seem, to many readers, to require the recognition of Indigenous rights to lands which are now lawfully owned by other citizens, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and therefore to have some quite significant potential to impact on the rights of third parties."

Concerns over the extension of Indigenous intellectual property rights under the declaration as unnecessary under current international and Australian law.

The potential abuse of the right under the Declaration for indigenous peoples to unqualified consent on matters affecting them, "which implies to some readers that they may then be able to exercise a right of veto over all matters of state, which would include national laws and other administrative measures."

The exclusivity of indigenous rights over intellectual, real and cultural property, that "does not acknowledge the rights of third parties - in particular, their rights to access Indigenous land and heritage and cultural objects where appropriate under national law." Furthermore, that the Declaration "fails to consider the different types of ownership and use that can be accorded to Indigenous people and the rights of third parties to property in that regard."

Concerns that the Declaration places indigenous customary law in a superior position to national law, and that this may "permit the exercise of practices which would not be acceptable across the board", such as customary corporal and capital punishments.

In October 2007 former Australian Prime Minister John Howard pledged to hold a referendum on changing the Australian constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians if re-elected. He said that the distinctiveness of people's identity and their rights to preserve their heritage should be acknowledged.

On April 3, 2009, the Rudd Government formally endorsed the Declaration.

The Canadian Government said that while it supported the "spirit" of the declaration, it contained elements that were "fundamentally incompatible with Canada's constitutional framework", which includes both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Section 35, which enshrines aboriginal and treaty rights. In particular, the Canadian government had problems with Article 19 (which appears to require governments to secure the consent of indigenous peoples regarding matters of general public policy), and Articles 26 and 28 (which could allow for the re-opening or repudiation of historically settled land claims).

Former Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Chuck Strahl, described the document as "unworkable in a Western democracy under a constitutional government." Strahl elaborated, saying "In Canada, you are balancing individual rights vs. collective rights, and (this) document ... has none of that. By signing on, you default to this document by saying that the only rights in play here are the rights of the First Nations. And, of course, in Canada, that's inconsistent with our constitution." He gave an example: "In Canada ... you negotiate on this ... because (native rights) don't trump all other rights in the country. You need also to consider the people who have sometimes also lived on those lands for two or three hundred years, and have hunted and fished alongside the First Nations."

The Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution in December 2007 to invite Presidents Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales to Canada to put pressure on the government to sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, calling the two heads of state "visionary leaders" and demanding Canada resign its membership on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

On March 3, 2010, in the Speech From the Throne, the Governor General of Canada announced that the government was moving to endorse the declaration. "We are a country with an Aboriginal heritage. A growing number of states have given qualified recognition to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Our Government will take steps to endorse this aspirational document in a manner fully consistent with Canada's Constitution and laws."

On November 12, 2010, Canada officially endorsed the declaration but without changing its position that it was "aspirational".

Anishinabek spiritual leader, Chief William Commanda (1908-3 August 2011) was honoured at the 21st annual week-long First Peoples' Festival held in Montreal from August 2-9, 2011, celebrating Canada's 2010 adoption of the U. N. declaration. AFN Innu representative, Ghislain Picard's tribute praised Grandfather Commanda for his work that was "key not only in the adoption of the U.N. declaration, but in all the work leading up to it throughout the last 25 years."

In 2015, Romeo Saganash (a Cree Member of Parliament for Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou) sponsored Private Member's Bill C-641, the "United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act", which would have required the Canadian government to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony with UNDRIP but it was defeated on May 6, 2015.

On July 7, 2015, in an open letter to provincial cabinet members, Premier of Alberta Rachel Notley asked each minister to conduct a review of their policies, programs, and legislation that might require changes based on the principles of the UN Declaration.

In December 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission listed ratifying UNDRIP as one of its national "calls to action" in its final report.

In 2016, Canada officially adopted and promised to implement the declaration fully. Speaking at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada minister Carolyn Bennett announced, "We are now a full supporter of the declaration, without qualification. We intend nothing less than to adopt and implement the declaration in accordance with the Canadian Constitution." Bennett described the Declaration as "breathing life into Section 35 [of the Canadian Constitution] and recognizing it as a full box of rights for Indigenous Peoples in Canada." In July 2016, Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, a member of a Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation, gave a speech that stated that "adopting the UNDRIP as being Canadian law are unworkable", due to its incompatibility with the , the current governing statute.

The federal government pledged on 21 June 2017 to rename its National Aboriginal Day to be consistent with the terminology used by the Declaration.

In September 2017, British Columbia's provincial government announced that it will govern in accordance with the principles outlined in the Declaration. On October 24, 2019, it announced that it will amend its legislation to conform to UNDRIP. BC is the first province in Canada to start implementing legislation in accordance with the UNDRIP.

The British Columbia (BC) provincial government was the first Canadian province to start bringing its legislation in alliance with the UNDRIP by implementing the BC Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People's Act. The ongoing process of implementation is intended to propel reconciliation forward in BC. The provincial government has been working with the Assembly of First Nations, First Nations Summit and Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, headed by First Nations Chiefs of BC to employ UNDRIP principles . The legislation was originally put forth by Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Scott Fraser (politician), under John Horgan's New Democratic Party government. The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia notes the purpose the Act are as follows: (a) to affirm the application of the Declaration to the laws of British Columbia; (b) to contribute to the implementation of the Declaration; (c) to support the affirmation of, and develop relationships with, Indigenous governing bodies. As of November 2019, the BC government has committed to putting almost CA$100 million per year aside for First Nation communities, in order for them to invest in their own self-governance and cultural revitalization; the province has also dedicated CA$50 million to invest in First Nations communities language revitalization. Additionally, they have implemented Grand Chief Edward John's recommendations to decrease the number of indigenous children taken from homes and put in care.

On December 3, 2020, Bill C-15, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, was introduced to the House of Commons by the Minister of Justice David Lametti that would bring Canadian law into alignment with the UN resolution. Bill C-15 passed Canada's senate on June 16, 2021, and received royal assent on June 21, 2021 to become law. In doing so Canada became the first of the four countries with histories as settler colonies of the British empire with majority non-indigenous populations that originally voted against to now adopt UNDRIP.

In 2007 New Zealand's Minister of Māori Affairs, Parekura Horomia, described the Declaration as "toothless", and said, "There are four provisions we have problems with, which make the declaration fundamentally incompatible with New Zealand's constitutional and legal arrangements." Article 26 in particular, he said, "appears to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous. This ignores contemporary reality and would be impossible to implement."

In response, Māori Party leader Pita Sharples said it was "shameful to the extreme that New Zealand voted against the outlawing of discrimination against indigenous people; voted against justice, dignity and fundamental freedoms for all".

On July 7, 2009, the Key government announced that it would support the Declaration; this, however, appeared to be a premature announcement by Pita Sharples, the then Minister of Māori Affairs, as the New Zealand government cautiously backtracked on Sharples' July announcement. However, on April 19, 2010, Sharples announced New Zealand's support of the declaration at a speech in New York.

On December 16, 2010, President Obama declared that the United States would "lend its support" to the Declaration. The decision was announced during the second White House Tribal Nations Conference, where he said he is "working hard to live up to" the name that was given to him by the Crow Nation: "One Who Helps People Throughout the Land." Obama has told Native American leaders that he wants to improve the "nation-to-nation" relationship between the United States and the tribes and repair broken promises. Today, there are more than 560 Indian tribes in the United States that are recognized at the federal level, with some additional sixty-plus tribes recognized at the state level. Many had representatives at the White House conference and applauded Obama's announcement.

The Obama administration's decision came after three consultation meetings with Native Americans and more than 3,000 written comments on the subject. The support of the government also included several interpretations of the meaning of the Declaration. In the view of the United States government, the Declaration advances "a new and distinct international concept of self-determination specific to indigenous peoples," which is not the same as the existing concept in international law. The statement also interprets free, prior and informed consent, "which the United States understands to call for a process of meaningful consultation with tribal leaders, but not necessarily the agreement of those leaders, before the actions addressed in those consultations are taken."

Speaking on behalf of the United Kingdom Government, UK Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Karen Pierce, "emphasized that the Declaration was non-legally binding and did not propose to have any retroactive application on historical episodes. National minority groups and other ethnic groups within the territory of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories did not fall within the scope of the indigenous peoples to which the Declaration applied."

The UK position was also allegedly intended to prevent formal appeal of Canadian decisions to UK courts: Canadian indigenous peoples never accepted the 1982 constitution in which such appeal (regarding early treaties made with the Crown of the British Empire) was cut off. Under the prior 1867 constitution, 1920s Dominion of Canada and earlier law, which continue to apply to these peoples and treaties, the UNDRIP allegedly could have been pled in a UK court in conflicts between treaty and Canadian law. Calls to pursue this approach have been common among Canadian natives.

Finland signed the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples when it was originally put forward. However the reindeer owners and Forest Administration ( Metsähallitus) have a long dispute in the area of the forests. The UN Human Rights Committee ordered the Finnish State to stop logging in some of the disputed areas.

The Russian Federation never reversed its abstention from the adoption of the UNDRIP. During the first review cycle of the Universal Periodic Review of 2009, it had accepted a recommendation by Mexico to "comply with the principles contained in the Declaration", yet in the second cycle, 2013, it rejected an almost identical recommendation by Estonia, claiming that its own legislation is already more advanced than the provisions of the UNDRIP.

Ukraine, which initially abstained from adopting the Declaration, changed its approach to indigenous issues in response to the recent annexation of Crimea, asserting that Crimean Tatars are indigenous people. In May 2014, the country formally endorsed the UNDRIP. On June 1, 2021, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed the law "On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine", regarding the status of Crimean Tatars, Crimean Karaites, and Krymchaks, which made reference to the UNDRIP.

Ten UN member states in the Pacific, all with indigenous majorities, were absent from the assembly at the time of the vote: Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu. It is unclear whether this represents the equivalent of deliberate abstention, or whether the country delegations were absent for some other reason. The constitutions of these states typically make mention of "indigenous inhabitants" and accommodate customary laws in at least part of their modern legal systems. The constitution of Papua New Guinea, for example, has an explanatory section on the " underlying law" being based on custom, while Sch.1.2. says that "custom" means "the customs and usages of indigenous inhabitants of the country ..." (emphasis added). It may be the case, therefore, that the governments of these states took the position that their own legal systems offered sufficient protection to their own indigenous peoples. There has been no suggestion at any time since decolonisation commenced in the 1960s and the present that indigenous people are absent from any of the ten countries.

Nonetheless, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu are among countries in this group plagued by land grabbing during the 2000s. Researchers have warned that as much as 12% of the land surface of Papua New Guinea has been leased without informed consultation and consent from landowners, typically suppressing customary rights for 99 years. Land grabbing was in 2016 ruled to lie within the remit of the International Criminal Court but the pursuit of legal avenues remains problematic. For example, the head of a government-initiated Commission of Inquiry into land grabbing in Papua New Guinea said that the Prime Minister's announcement that his government would set up a Task Force drawn from the ministries responsible for lands, forestry and agriculture to revoke illegal leases over customary land was "absurd and ridiculous", given that his Commission had made "adverse findings ... against these government agencies, including their respective ministers".

There are also significant implications in the extractive sector for these states not having signed UNDRIP. Mining companies that are members of the International Council on Mining and Metals commit to respect the ICMM's position statement on indigenous peoples. However, ambiguity surrounds how or if member companies recognise when they are dealing with indigenous peoples. For example, Barrick Gold lists only its operations in North and South America as lying on indigenous land, yet operates in Fiji and Papua New Guinea (where a subsidiary has operated the Porgera gold mine since 2007). Another member, Newmont Mining, said in its 2011 Sustainability Report that it had been conducting mining exploration in Papua New Guinea for three years, yet its disclosures do not show how activities in this country may have followed the ICMM's Indigenous Peoples and Mining Good Practice Guide, first published in 2010.

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Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - Wikipedia

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The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ( UNDRIP or DOTROIP) is a legally non-binding resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007. It delineates and defines the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including their ownership rights to cultural and ceremonial expression, identity, language, employment, health, education, and other issues.

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Voting largely left out nonwhite men and women, regardless of color, for much of American history. This voter registration drive at the Black Expo in Chicago, Illinois, took place in 1973, just eight years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.

Photograph from John White/U.S. National Archives/Alamy Images

Friday, July 24, 2020

The right to vote-and who may exercise it-has changed continuously over the course of United States' history. While states have traditionally determined requirements for voting, the federal government has taken several actions that have altered those requirements in an attempt to create more In the 2013 case equity and equality in the process. Today, in order to vote in federal elections, one must be a United States citizen, at least 18 years old by the date of the general election, and a resident of the state in which one votes. However, these requirements used to be more restrictive.

Voting After the American Revolution

Following the American Revolution, the new country transitioned from a period of being under British rule to developing its own government. After the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the country adopted the United States Constitution in 1787. Article 1 of the Constitution empowers state legislatures to oversee federal elections. Suffrage, or the right to vote, was granted exclusively to white, land-owning men. Since they were at such an early stage of the republic, the founders believed these men's economic ties to the country were valuable.

However, a growing number of men began to champion an expansion of suffrage during the early 1800s. Following a period that lacked political parties or choices for voters, the 1820s saw the return of a two-party political system, as well as a renewed interest in suffrage. White men continued to move West in search of available land, but many did not feel that ownership should be a requirement for voting. Many states removed that requirement, opening the door for complete white male suffrage.

Voting After the Civil War

While the country celebrated the expansion of voting rights for white men of all economic levels, the electorate still lacked diversity. Gender and race exclusions still restricted the ability of many citizens living within the United States to exercise the right to vote. Following the conclusion of the American Civil War in the 1860s, the Radical Republicans controlled Congress. These men were primarily white Northerners who wanted to restrict the political power of the South following its rebellion against the U.S. federal government. As a result of the 13th Amendment, a large number of African Americans living in the South were freed from slavery, in addition to the many living in the North. Radical Republicans saw this as an opportunity not only to help their own cause, but also to extend suffrage to African American men. In 1870, the 15 th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The ratification of the 15 th Amendment, which affirmed the right of African American men to vote, followed that of the 14 th Amendment, which classified anyone born in the United States a citizen. The 14 th Amendment also granted "the equal protection of the laws" to all citizens. While this amendment became the basis for citizenship, along with the Indian Citizen Act of 1924 (this allowed for Native Americans to vote but did not enforce the right; it would take 40 more years until all U.S. states granted full suffrage to Native Americans), it would also be cited more than any other in litigation. The 14 th Amendment would also be at the center of the civil rights movement, which attempted to combat discrimination African Americans faced for nearly a century after its passage.

African Americans faced Supreme Court challenges ( Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896) that condoned separation of the races, as well as challenges at the polls. Having to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test were just some examples of legalized state discrimination that African Americans faced in their attempts to exercise their right to vote. Many also faced threats of violence, lynching, and other scare tactics. It was not until the 1960s that the federal government more effectively protected their right to vote. After a series of speeches, sit-ins, and marches in Selma, Alabama, and other cities in the South, the 24 th Amendment-which abolished poll taxes-and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected the right to vote for African Americans and others. Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act. Specifically, the court struck down a section of the law that required states with a history of race-based voter discrimination to gain federal approval before changing their election rules.

The Fight for Women's Suffrage

Women were important supporters of the abolition movement in the mid-19 th century, as they saw parallels with their own inequality during the period. A women's rights movement developed around the 1840s under the leadership of women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 they introduced the "Declaration of Sentiments," which included a revision to the Declaration of Independence, that "all men and women are created equal." While their attempts to achieve women's suffrage were unsuccessful at the time, they inspired future campaigners.

Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote in 1869, but it was not until 1920 that white women were granted the ability to vote nationwide. African American women continued to face obstacles to vote for many years following the 19th Amendment. The Progressive movement's reforms and women's work in industry during World War I helped drive support. The National American Woman Suffrage Association's constant protests, campaigning, and marches finally gained support from prominent politicians, such as President Woodrow Wilson, following the war. It was a catalyst that led more women to become involved in politics and government.

The ratification of the 26 th Amendment in 1971 lowered the voting age to 18, extending suffrage to more young adults.

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Director

Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society

Author

National Geographic Society

Production Managers

Gina Borgia, National Geographic Society
Jeanna Sullivan, National Geographic Society

Program Specialists

Sarah Appleton, National Geographic Society
Margot Willis, National Geographic Society

Producer

Clint Parks

Last Updated

July 24, 2020

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Director

Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society

Author

National Geographic Society

Production Managers

Gina Borgia, National Geographic Society
Jeanna Sullivan, National Geographic Society

Program Specialists

Sarah Appleton, National Geographic Society
Margot Willis, National Geographic Society

Producer

Clint Parks

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Voting Rights Throughout United States History

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Image Voting largely left out nonwhite men and women, regardless of color, for much of American history. This voter registration drive at the Black Expo in Chicago, Illinois, took place in 1973, just eight years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. Photograph from John White/U.S.