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A8 FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2025 INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER(317) 924-5143P.O. Box 18499, Indianapolis, IN 46218-0499newsroom@indyrecorder.comIndianapolis Recorder Newspaper encourages short, concise letters to the editor and opinion articles from the public. Letters and opinion articles will be used at the editor%u2019s discretion and are subject to editing. We will not guarantee publication of material received. We cannot guarantee dates of publication. Letters containing libelous or untrue statements will not be published. All letters and opinion articles must include a verifiable full name, address and telephone number. This information will not be published at the request of the writer. Letters and articles should be typed but will be accepted if handwriting is legible.BUSINESSBusiness Office Manager..............Lystina JimenezBusiness Office/Legals..................CrystalDalton ADVERTISING/MARKETINGSenior Strategic Media Consultant......Rita J. Wise Sales Representative...................Michael FalkerPRODUCTIONProduction Manager..........................................................................................Jeana M. Lewis OuattaraGeorge P. StewartFounder-EditorPublisher1895-1924Marcus C. Stewart Sr.Editor-Publisher1925-1988Eunice TrotterEditor-in-ChiefPublisher1988-1990William G. MaysOwner/ Publisher1990-presentPresident/Chief Executive Officer................................................................................................Robert ShegogEDITORIALEditor-in-Chief.................................Camike Jones Copy Editor..................................Mandi PattersonTechnology Editor......................Rupal Thanawala Arts & Culture Reporter.................Chloe McGowanMulti-Media & Sports Reporter.........Noral ParhamHealth & Environmental Reporter.............................................................................Hanna RauworthEDITORIALBy ANDRE CARSONIndianapolis, these are not normal times. That%u2019s why I%u2019m not calling for normal, status quo policies. In just the first six months of his presidency, President Donald Trump has: Gutted civil rights enforcement, tried to purge the country of diversity efforts and cut key offices that were established by the Civil Rights Act to protect Americans from discrimination.Instituted sweeping mass deportations, with masked ICE agents arresting families in broad daylight, without due process.Threatened federal courts that disagree with him and who are simply doing their duty to ensure everyone follows the law.Bombed Iran unprovoked and unconstitutionally, putting American troops and innocent civilians at risk.It%u2019s the textbook definition of authoritarianism. That%u2019s why I%u2019m calling for Trump%u2019s impeachment. There are many ways to hold Trump accountable. I%u2019ve joined 10 congressional amicus briefs in legal fights against the Trump administration in the courts across the country. I%u2019m fighting to protect essential programs from DOGE%u2019s cruel cuts and bring federal dollars back to our community. But we must do more. Impeachment is one of the most important tools Congress has in our toolbox %u2014 and it%u2019s past time we use it, especially as the president wages unnecessary war in the Middle East that the American people do not want and did not ask for. Trump is unfit to serve.As a Senior Member of the House Intel Committee %u2014 which works to safeguard our national security %u2014 I%u2019m always concerned about foreign threats and how to keep Americans safe. But the president%u2019s actions don%u2019t make us any safer. Prior to the president%u2019s bombing deep inside Iran, the U.S. was not directly involved in military confrontation. A diplomatic solution was not only possible %u2014 it was in process. Negotiations were happening, and a peaceful solution was within reach. The president decided to strike anyway.The president does have limited authority to take narrow military action without Congressional approval. But those conditions do not apply here. Now, he is further attempting to circumvent Congress%u2019 authorization by cancelling Congressional briefings and threatening to withhold all information on Iran from Congress. As complicated and flawed as they were individually, our Founding Fathers created a new country that should never be ruled by a king. Each branch of government is meant to be equal %u2014 the president should not have more power than Congress. We don%u2019t exist to do Trump%u2019s bidding. We exist to serve the American people and American interests %u2014 not Trump. Trump campaigned on the promise of no more foreign wars. Another campaign promise broken. But we can%u2019t be distracted from the campaign promises Trump is keeping %u2014 implementing Project 2025 %u2014 a playbook for disenfranchising Black and Brown communities. While the U.S. and the world are distracted by Trump%u2019s reckless military action in Iran, over 14 million Americans stand to lose health care %u2014 disproportionately impacting Black families, including 400,000 Black Hoosiers, which I wrote about last month.While we%u2019re distracted by Trump%u2019s barrage of social media posts, Republicans are trying to slash SNAP %u2014 also known as food stamps. SNAP lifted more than 2 million people of color out of poverty in 2023 alone. While we%u2019re glued to news pundits debating what%u2019s going to happen in the next election, another round of travel bans on Black and brown countries is going into effect. Every day, Black and brown immigrants are snatched off the streets and illegally detained. While we argue with each other in social media comments, Trump takes away hard-fought protections for Black Americans. He wants to whitewash our history, rename military bases for confederate generals and promises to return America to mythical days when America was %u201cgreat%u201d %u2014 before integration, before civil rights advancements. Trump%u2019s actions may seem chaotic, because they are. But don%u2019t confuse that chaos for calculated attempts to erase Black history, culture and success from our country. Don%u2019t confuse that chaos. I%u2019m treating these serious attacks on our democracy with serious consequences: impeachment. I won%u2019t pretend the path to Trump%u2019s removal from office is easy. I%u2019m the first and so far, only cosponsor of a new resolution to impeach Trump. Republicans hold the majority in the House and the Senate %u2014 which means this resolution requires Republican support. Impeachment requires a strong, legal case. It requires support from both sides of the aisle. It requires more voices standing up and doing what is right. I%u2019m prepared to do what is right. And I invite all like-minded Indianapolis residents to join me: Call representatives and senators in Indiana and around the country. Talk to your neighbors. Register people to vote. And most importantly %u2014 let%u2019s work together and keep hope alive. It%u2019s what will light the way in these dark times. By LATASHA BOYD JONESThe decision just handed down by the Supreme Court is likely to be dressed in procedural language and technical footnotes. They%u2019ll say it%u2019s about jurisdiction. About the scope of judicial relief. About %u201crestoring constitutional balance.%u201d But Black folks %u2014 the ones who%u2019ve learned to listen for what the law won%u2019t say out loud %u2014 heard it plainly:The Supreme Court just legalized a caste system. And Black folk know the sound of its tongue.In Trump v. Casa, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions against unconstitutional laws or executive orders unless those injunctions are necessary to provide %u2018complete relief%u2019 to the actual plaintiffs. On paper, this is a minor adjustment. In practice, it%u2019s a seismic shift %u2014 one that fractures the power of civil rights enforcement and unleashes executive overreach with few national guardrails.And Black people, born into the rhythms of systems designed to subdue us, recognize the dialect. We know what it means when protection becomes piecemeal, when justice depends on ZIP codes, when the fight for citizenship must now be waged district by district, like some 21st-century legal Underground Railroad.This is not neutrality. This is a strategy.This is not democracy. This is digital Jim Crow, dressed in robes.This ruling doesn%u2019t just shift courtroom logistics. It greenlights a tiered system of rights, where one person can be protected in California but unprotected in Indiana, where your child may be a citizen in Illinois but %u201cundocumented%u201d in Texas, all depending on who sued first, and where.That is the essence of a caste system: unequal status codified by geography, wealth and access to justice.This echoes the legal apartheid of pre-Brown v. Board America, where one court%u2019s ruling had no bearing on a segregated state two borders away, where Black citizenship was conditional. Provisional. The law was there %u2014 but it didn%u2019t cover us unless we marched, bled and sued to make it so.Now, in 2025, the Supreme Court has made that patchwork permanent. They%u2019ve resurrected the ghost of Plessy %u2014 not by name, but by function.This isn%u2019t just political. It%u2019s profitable.Corporations now face a map of deregulation opportunities. Labor protections, environmental rules and health care standards can now be challenged %u2014 or ignored %u2014 state by state. And who will suffer most? The Black and brown workers at the bottom of the ladder, already underpaid, are now further unprotected.The rollback of birthright citizenship is already in motion %u2014 Trump%u2019s executive order is just the start. The Court didn%u2019t rule on whether it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. They merely removed the brakes. Now it%u2019s up to each district to fight on its own.If your state doesn%u2019t sue? You%u2019re out of luck. If your lawyer can%u2019t afford a class action? You stay vulnerable. If your community doesn%u2019t have access to pro bono support? You don%u2019t just lose rights %u2014 you never had them.We%u2019ve seen this before.We saw it when Dred Scott was told he had no rights that a white man was bound to respect. We saw it when Reconstruction was abandoned and Jim Crow put on its Sunday best. We saw it when red lines were drawn around our neighborhoods and when %u201ctough on crime%u201d was code for %u201clock them up.%u201dThis ruling? It%u2019s just the latest chapter in an old script. One where power rewrites justice in the voice of delay, distance and denial.But Black folks are fluent in this dialect. We were raised in it. We%u2019ve learned to read the fine print behind the flag.They may refer to this decision as %u201cjudicial modesty.%u201d We call it what it is: legal gaslighting. A soft coup against equal protection. A scalpel cutting civil rights into regional privileges.But we are not confused. And we will not be silenced.We know that every right we%u2019ve ever had in this country was fought for, not given. We know that liberation won%u2019t come from a robe, a bench, or a ballot alone. It will come, as it always has, from collective memory, communal strategy and cultural clarity. From Harriet%u2019s whispers. From Baldwin%u2019s fire. From Ida%u2019s pen. From Angela%u2019s scream. From every Black child who dares to dream in a language the law still doesn%u2019t speak fluently.The Supreme Court has spoken. But so have we. You don%u2019t have to say %u201csecond-class citizen%u201d out loud when the paperwork now does it for you. The robe may be black, but we know it masks an old white lie.We see you. We name you. And we will organize like freedom depends on it %u2014 because it does.Tasha Jones is an award-winning journalist, poet and cultural critic who explores language, liberation, identity, fashion, beauty and Blackness. ImpeachmentThe Supreme Court just legalized a caste systemBy LARRY SMITHAs a pro-life Evangelical Christian, I have had innumerable discussions over the years regarding abortion. My position tends not to be popular with either those who are prochoice or with my fellow pro-lifers. Why is that the case? First, I believe that life begins at conception. (Most pro-choice folks stop listening when I make that declaration.) Further, once life has been set in motion, the choice of whether to abort that life is most often based upon arbitrary developmental stages (e.g., once a heartbeat has been detected, how much the brain has formed, etc.). In other words, either a law or someone in authority decides that, at some point, a fetus is %u201ctoo far along%u201d to be aborted %u2014 barring some serious medical complication. Those are legal and moral decisions, not scientific ones. In any case, I generally oppose abortion because the vast majority of such procedures are elective. The decision is most often based upon the fact that two consenting people acted irresponsibly, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. Tragically, the fetus %u2014 who had no say in the matter %u2014 suffers the main consequence of unwise behavior. (Incidentally, this is the primary reason that I support Planned Parenthood and other providers of contraception. The best way to prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.) To be sure, I do not have a moral problem with the decision to terminate a pregnancy when the life or health of the mother is at stake, when the developing child has irreparable developmental trauma, or when the pregnancy is the result of sexual assault. Many of my fellow pro-lifers would want the pregnancy to come to term even under those circumstances; we will agree to disagree.Of course, the primary area in which many prolifers have a problem with my position is that I do not want abortion to be outlawed. I was in favor of the Roe decision %u2014 which I believe was bad law but good public policy. I believe that decisions regarding abortion should be an agreement among the mother, the father, the physician, and God. The government should not intrude into the most intimate areas of our lives, including reproductive decisions.Having stated my position regarding abortion, I now turn to the pro-life community. The vast majority of us who identify with that phrase agree that, as I stated above, life begins at conception. Where we tend to differ is the extent to which we value human life after a person has been born.I have a serious, non-rhetorical question for my fellow pro-lifers: Is there biblical evidence that we should place a higher value on the lives of the preborn as opposed to the lives of those who survived the birth canal? In other words, is the life of a fetus more important than the life of someone who is 9 months old? How about someone who is 90 years old? My question has implications far beyond the obvious moral ones. The fact is that the answers are inherently infused with political realities. Specifically, calling oneself %u201cpro-life%u201d while supporting policies that explicitly harm living people %u2014 especially children, the elderly, and the poor %u2014 is not sustainable morally. It is impossible to read Jesus%u2019 words in Matthew 25:40-45 and conclude that not caring for %u201cthe least of these%u201d would please Him. Further, the Bible (e.g., in James 1:27) speaks directly to the importance of caring for widows and orphans, who represent the people (along with the disabled and social outcasts) who were most vulnerable economically during Jesus%u2019 day. Thus, it is greatly distressing to me that so many people who have a sincere conviction to %u201cprotect the sanctity of life%u201d frequently limit their concern to the pre-born. There is no biblical warrant for that conclusion. Indeed, it is the very opposite. That is why I argue that these people are not %u201cpro-life;%u201d rather, they are %u201cpro-birth.%u201d Many of these Christians would argue that %u201ccharity%u201d (as expressed via the distribution of government dollars to the less fortunate) should be left to individuals, to churches, and to nonprofit organizations as opposed to the government. This ignores the fact that poor people are most proximate to other poor people, not to those institutions and individuals who have a massive surplus of resources. Further, most people don%u2019t realize that the number one funder of nonprofit organizations is the government %u2014 by far. Institutional philanthropy, as robust as it is in this country, simply is not an adequate substitute for government dollars. And, of course, government dollars come from individuals. It is not uncommon for %u201cboth sides%u201d of major societal debates to claim that God is on %u201ctheir%u201d side. (Tragically, that includes the Civil War.) If one claims to be %u201cpro-life%u201d and also proclaims that %u201call lives matter,%u201d by definition, one should value the people who have already been born at least as much as those lives that have yet to be born. What would Jesus do?Larry Smith is a community leader. Contact him at%u00a0larry@leaf-llc.com.What does it mean to be pro-life?