Trump's Top Africa Envoy Says ‘Continent Doesn’t Need Charity’

Massad Boulos

BY PREETI JHA

The US State Department’s senior Africa adviser on Wednesday said that the continent “doesn’t need charity,” driving home President Donald Trump’s message that Washington should build a new relationship with Africa based on trade, not aid.

“We strongly believe that the African continent doesn’t need charity,” Massad Boulos said at Semafor’s The Next 3 Billion summit. “The African continent is very rich. It has its own resources, and I’m not talking only about natural resources, but its human resources. So we need to establish those partnerships.”

Boulos, a businessman who also serves as a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, stressed that his mandate in Africa was based on three Ps: peace, partnerships, and prosperity.

He argued that Washington’s approach under the Trump administration was “not transactional,” but designed for “the long run.” Boulos stressed that any partnerships would be “win-win in nature… nobody is taking advantage of anybody else.”

Trump held his first multilateral meeting with leaders from the continent in July, hosting top officials from five West African countries known for being rich in highly sought-after critical minerals.

Boulos added that a US-brokered peace deal signed in June between DR Congo and Rwanda was a successful outcome of Trump’s new approach to the continent. Despite the deal, fighting has continued in DR Congo’s eastern region. Boulos said the agreement was a piece of a larger “puzzle” that still needs to be completed — with negotiations in Doha involving the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and Kinshasa still ongoing.

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The Trump administration’s push for conflict resolution in DR Congo has been linked to a strategic bid by the US for access to the country’s estimated $25 trillion mineral wealth, Semafor reported in August, as well as an attempt to counter China’s dominance on the continent.

Boulos has spent a large part of his professional life in Nigeria, where he has been involved in several businesses, including a trucking and heavy machinery company. He also played an active role as an emissary to Arab American voters during last year’s US presidential election, pitching Trump as a candidate who would bring peace to the Middle East, and his son, Michael Boulos, is married to Trump’s daughter, Tiffany Trump.

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Nigerian Christians Afraid To Gather As Attacks By Islamist Herders Mount

BY TONY ONYULO

LAGOS, NIGERIA (RNS) — Ruth Abah, 28, no longer walks to her local church, St. Paul’s, which now lies in ashes. Instead, the mother of two locks her doors and prays with her children, fearful the next attack could come at any moment.

On Aug. 11, suspected Fulani herdsmen stormed the compound of the Catholic church in the village of Aye-Twar, in central Nigeria, setting the church, rectory and parish offices ablaze along with vehicles and other property. Earlier raids had already forced the parish’s 26 outstations to shut down.

The latest assaults have sent the remaining residents fleeing into the bush, leaving the parish grounds and surrounding community eerily deserted.

The destruction of St. Paul’s is a stark sign of how attacks by Fulani “jihadists” is hollowing out once-thriving Christian communities across the region. Known as Nigeria’s “food basket,” Benue state has become a center of the violence that has left thousands dead this year.

“I used to be in church every Sunday, singing in the choir,” Abah said in a phone interview. “Now I keep the doors locked. If I hear voices shouting at night, I pray silently. If they see me walking to church with a Bible, they could kill me.”

A new report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, known as Intersociety, paints a grim picture. In the first seven months of 2025 alone, Islamist groups killed 7,087 Christians and abducted 7,800 others because of their faith. The country now sees an average of 30 Christians killed every day, making Nigeria the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian.

Emeka Umeagbalasi, lead researcher and chair of Intersociety, described the situation as a “brutal massacre” of “defenseless Christians” and warned that unchecked killings and abductions are wiping out entire communities.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with more than 236 million people, has been plagued by Islamist violence for more than a decade, particularly in its northern and central regions. The insurgency began with Boko Haram, an extremist Islamist group that launched an armed campaign in 2009 to establish a caliphate and enforce a strict interpretation of Shariah.

The group gained international notoriety in 2014 after abducting 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Though weakened by military offensives, Boko Haram splintered, and its more brutal faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, continues to carry out mass killings, kidnappings and church burnings.

Christians, who make up about half of Nigeria’s population, have borne the brunt of the violence, especially in the region called the Middle Belt, where Muslim herders and largely Christian farming communities clash over land and resources. Armed Fulani militias — some linked to jihadist groups — increasingly target villages, pastors and churches, displacing communities and leaving farmlands abandoned.

“The attacks are strategic,” said Peter Akachukwu, a security analyst in Lagos. “Targeting Christians sows fear, displaces communities and opens up land for occupation. It destabilizes the state and undermines faith in government protection.”

Across Nigeria’s Middle Belt and northern states, congregations at Sunday services are shrinking. Families who once filled pews now pray quietly at home, afraid of becoming the next victims. Some travel long distances to find safer congregations; others have stopped attending altogether.

Pastor Emmanuel Ochefu, who leads a small Pentecostal church outside Makurdi in Benue state, said in a phone interview that attendance has dropped by more than half this year.

“People call me during the week asking if the service will be safe, if the roads are clear,” he said. “Some decide to stay home rather than risk being kidnapped or attacked. I preach hope, I preach courage, but fear is stronger than my words right now.”

To keep worship alive, Ochefu has shortened services, started holding them earlier in the day and shifted some meetings to private homes. He sends recorded sermons and Bible verses by phone to members too scared to attend. “But church is meant to be together,” he said. “You can’t hug someone through a phone.”

Church leaders say the Aug. 11 assault was not just an attack on property but an assault on faith itself.

In a statement, the Nigeria Catholic Diocesan Priests’ Association condemned the attack as “barbaric” and “an attack on the Church,” saying it led to the “desecration and destruction of the Parish Church, the Parish Secretariat, the Father’s House and many other valuable items.”

They urged the government to rebuild the parish and its outstations and to deploy security forces to protect vulnerable communities, warning that continued inaction could lead to more deaths and displacements, further weakening Christian presence in the region.

The violence is reshaping what it means to be Christian in Nigeria. Believers now hide crosses, avoid public prayer and strip Christian symbols from their cars and homes.

“If I stopped being Christian, maybe my life would be easier,” Abah said. “But I cannot. My mother taught me this faith, and my children sleep under crosses. Faith is everything, but faith is heavy now.”

The Nigerian government insists the violence is driven by ethnic and land-use conflicts rather than religion alone, but human rights groups argue Christians are targeted specifically for their faith and are urging stronger protections, faster response times and accountability for perpetrators.

For now, pastors like Ochefu keep showing up, even if only a handful gather. “Even if just 10 people come next Sunday, I will preach,” he said. “The church is not just a building. As long as one believer remains, there is hope.”

How The First Amendment Protects Americans’ Speech − And How It Does Not

BY RAY BRESCIA

ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH

AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE, ALBANY

LAW SCHOOL, NEW YORK

Imagine a protest outside the funeral of a popular political leader, with some of the protesters celebrating the death and holding signs that say things like “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “America is Doomed” and “Don’t Pray for the USA.”

No matter the political leanings of that leader, most Americans would probably abhor such a protest and those signs.

What would tolerate such activities, no matter how distasteful? The First Amendment.

The situation described above is taken from an actual protest, though it did not involve the funeral of a political figure. Instead, members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested outside the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, a U.S. service member killed in Iraq.

Through demonstrations like this, members of this group were conveying their belief that the U.S. is overly tolerant of those they perceive as sinners, especially people from the LGBTQ community, and that the death of U.S. soldiers should be recognized as divine retribution for such sinfulness.

Snyder’s family sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other claims. A jury issued a US$5 million jury award in favor of the family of the deceased service member. But in a nearly unanimous decision issued in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment insulated the protesters from such a judgment.

This holding is particularly instructive today.

The Trump administration has vowed to crack down on what it calls hate speech. It has labeled antifa, a loosely organized anti-fascist group, a terrorist organization. And it has sought to punish figures such as TV host Jimmy Kimmel for statements perceived critical of conservative activists.

What the First Amendment makes clear is that it does not just protect the rights of speakers who say things with which Americans agree. Or, as the Supreme Court said in a separate decision it issued one year after the case involving the funeral protesters: “The Nation well knows that one of the costs of the First Amendment is that it protects the speech we detest as well as the speech we embrace.”

But free speech is not absolute. As a legal scholar who has studied political movements, free speech and privacy, I realize the government can regulate speech through what are known as “reasonable time, place, and manner” restrictions. These limits cannot depend upon the content of the speech or expressive conduct in which a speaker is engaged, however.

For example, the government can ban campfires in an area prone to wildfires. But if it banned the burning of the U.S. flag only as a form of political protest, that would be an unconstitutional restriction on speech.

Protected and unprotected speech

There are certain categories of speech that are not entitled to First Amendment protection. They include incitement to violence, obscenity, defamation and what are considered “true threats.”

When, for example, someone posts threats on social media with reckless disregard for whether they will instill legitimate fear in their target, such posts are not a protected form of speech. Similarly, burning a cross on someone’s property as a means of striking terror in them such that they fear bodily harm also represents this kind of true threat.

There are also violations of the law that are sometimes prosecuted as “hate crimes,” criminal acts driven by some discriminatory motive. In these cases, it’s generally not the perpetrator’s beliefs that are punished but the fact that they act on them and engage in some other form of criminal conduct, as when someone physically assaults their victim based on that victim’s race or religion. Such motives can increase the punishment people receive for the underlying criminal conduct.

Speech that enjoys the strongest free-speech protections is that which is critical of government policies and leaders. As the Supreme Court said in 1966, “There is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of (the First) Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs.”

As the late Justice Antonin Scalia would explain in 2003, “The right to criticize the government” is at “the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect.”

Restrictions on government action

The First Amendment prevents the government from taking direct action to curtail speech by, for example, trying to prevent the publication of material critical of it. Americans witnessed this in the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not prevent newspapers from publishing a leaked – and politically damaging – study on U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

But it also applies when the government acts in indirect ways, such as threatening to investigate a media company or cutting funding for a university based on politically disfavored action or inaction.

In 2024 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the state of New York’s efforts to punish companies that did business with the National Rifle Association because of the organization’s political positions violated the group’s First Amendment rights.

Similarly, in recent months, courts have ruled on First Amendment grounds against Trump administration efforts to punish law firms or to withhold funds from Harvard University.

And just last week, a federal court in Florida threw out a lawsuit filed by President Trump against The New York Times seeking $15 billion for alleged harm to the president’s investments and reputation.

Nevertheless, some people fear government retribution for criticizing the administration. And some, like the TV network ABC, have engaged in speech-restricting action on their own, such as taking Kimmel temporarily off the air for his comments critical of conservative activists in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Before Kimmel’s suspension, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr described his negotiations with ABC’s parent company, Disney, to take action against him. “We could do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. And Trump said that some media companies might “lose their license” for criticizing the president. It is encouraging that, in the face of these threats, ABC has reversed course and agreed to put Kimmel back on the air.

The First Amendment protects speech across the political spectrum, even speech Americans do not like. Both liberal comedian Jon Stewart and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson have recently agreed on this. As Carlson said recently, “If they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. … There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human.”

Just last year in the NRA case referenced above, the Supreme Court clearly stated that even indirect government efforts to curtail protected speech are indeed unconstitutional. In light of that ruling, efforts to limit criticism of the administration, any administration, should give all Americans, regardless of their political views, great pause.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Trump Tells UN In Speech That It Is ‘Not Even Coming Close To Living Up’ To Its Potential

President Donald Trump walks from Marine One with Col. Christopher Robinson, right, commander of the 89th Airlift Wing, to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

BY AAMER MADHANI AND FARNOUSH AMIRI

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump castigated the United Nations as a feckless institution in a speech to the world body on Tuesday, praising the turn America has taken under his leadership while warning Europe will be ruined if it doesn’t turn away from a “double-tailed monster” of ill-conceived migration and green energy policies.

His roughly hourlong speech before the U.N. General Assembly was both grievance-filled and self-congratulatory as he used the platform to applaud his second-term achievements and lament that some of his fellow world leaders’ countries were “going to hell.”

The address was the latest reminder for U.S. allies and foes that the United States — after a four-year interim under the more internationalist President Joe Biden — has returned to an unapologetically “America First” posture with an antagonistic view toward the United Nations. Trump also sharply criticized the global body for inaction, saying it was filled with “empty words” that “don’t solve wars.”

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump said. “The U.N. has such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”

Afterward, Trump attempted to assuage fears from some diplomats by assuring the top U.N. leader that the U.S. remained “100%” supportive of the global body despite his earlier criticism.

“I may disagree with it sometimes, but I am so behind it because the potential for peace at this institution is great,” Trump told Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

It was another about-face after Trump offered a weave of jarring juxtapositions in his address to the assembly.

He trumpeted himself as a peacemaker and enumerated successes of his administration’s efforts in several hotspots around the globe. At the same time, Trump heralded his decisions to order the U.S. military to carry out strikes on Iran and more recently against alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela and argued that “globalists” are on the verge of destroying successful nations.

Warnings about ‘green scam’ and migration

Trump touted his administration’s policies allowing for expanded drilling for oil and natural gas in the United States, and aggressively cracking down on illegal immigration, implicitly suggesting more countries should follow suit.

He sharply warned that European nations that have more welcoming migration policies and commit to expensive energy projects aimed at reducing their carbon footprint were causing irreparable harm to their economies and cultures.

“I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from the ‘green energy’ scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump said. “If you don’t stop people that you’ve never seen before that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail.”

Trump added, “I love the people of Europe, and I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer.”

Trump makes dramatic shift on Russia-Ukraine war

Trump also addressed Russia’s war in Ukraine, once again threatening to hit Moscow with “a very strong round of powerful tariffs” if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not come to the table to end the war.

He waited until after the speech, and a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to announce a dramatic shift in his position on the war: He said he now believes Ukraine, with the help of NATO, can win back all territory lost to Russia.

Trump wrote in part in his post. “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option.”

The strengthened support from Trump, if it sticks, is a huge win for Zelenskyy, who has urged the American president to keep up the pressure on Putin to end his brutal war on Ukraine.

Trump going back to his 2024 campaign insisted that he would quickly end the war. And he’s frequently suggested that U.S. interests in the outcome were limited.

“Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,” Trump wrote. “This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”

Trump speaks out on Palestinian statehood push

The president also pushed back on longtime American allies who are using this year’s General Assembly to spotlight the growing international campaign for recognition of a Palestinian state, a move that the U.S. and Israel vehemently oppose.

France became the latest nation to recognize Palestinian statehood on Monday at the start of a high-profile meeting at the U.N. aimed at galvanizing support for a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.

Trump sharply criticized the effort.

“The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists,” Trump said. “This would be a reward for these horrible atrocities, including Oct. 7.”

The president also took part in a group meeting with officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan for talks focused on ending the Gaza war.

“This is my most important meeting,” Trump said. “But this is the one that’s very important to me because we’re going to end something that should have probably never started.”
Trump pokes at UN for escalator, teleprompter issues

Early in his speech, Trump broke from his prepared remarks to bemoan an inoperable escalator in U.N. headquarters that he happened upon as well as a defective teleprompter.

“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter,” Trump poked, eliciting laughs from delegates and leaders.

A U.N. official said the United Nations understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for the president.

Trump has Oslo dreams

The president again made clear that he wants to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, repeating his spurious claim that he’s “ended seven wars” since he returned to office.

“Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Prize — but for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless wars,” Trump said in his address.

Trump regularly points to his administration’s efforts to end several conflicts around the world, including fighting between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, and Egypt and Sudan.

“It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them,” Trump said. “Sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them.”

Although Trump helped mediate relations among many of these nations, experts say his impact isn’t as clear cut as he claims.

Associated Press writers Jamey Keaton in Geneva, Switzerland, Tracy Brown and Darlene Superville in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report.

Trump’s Use Of FBI To Target ‘Enemies’ Echoes FBI’s Dark History Of Mass Surveillance, Dirty Tricks And Perversion Of Justice Under J. Edgar Hoover

A letter sent anonymously by the FBI to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 urging him to commit suicide. Wikipedia

BY BETTY MEDSGER

PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF JOURNALISM,

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

As a candidate last year, Donald Trump promised retribution against his perceived enemies. As president, he is doing that.

At the Department of Justice, a “Weaponization Working Group” has a long list of Trump’s perceived enemies to investigate. At the FBI, director Kash Patel has conducted a political purge, firing the highest officials at the bureau and thousands of FBI agents who investigated alleged crimes by Trump as well as investigated participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots.

It marks the first time since J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign as FBI director that the FBI has targeted massive numbers of people perceived to be political enemies.

Trump’s recent fury showed how much he expects top officials in federal law enforcement to carry out his retribution.

He was enraged when Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, decided there was insufficient evidence to charge two people Trump regards as enemies: former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“I want him out,” Trump angrily told reporters on Sept. 19, 2025. Siebert resigned, although Trump claimed he had fired him.

Trump’s most recent demands for retribution came soon after top adviser Stephen Miller’s vow to prosecute leftists in the “vast domestic terror movement” – that the administration blames, without evidence, for Charlie Kirk’s assassination – using “every resource we have.”

As the director of the FBI, Patel will likely be in charge of the investigations of perceived enemies generated by the Department of Justice and the White House. He already has sacrificed the bureau’s independence, making it essentially an arm of the White House.

This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies. Hoover, director until his death in 1972, operated a secret FBI within the FBI that he used to destroy people and organizations whose political opinions he opposed.

A burglary’s revelations

Hoover’s secret FBI was revealed, beginning in 1971, when a group of people called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office and removed files.

This group suspected Hoover’s FBI was illegally suppressing dissent. Given Hoover’s enormous power, they thought it was unlikely any government agency would investigate the FBI. They decided documentary evidence was needed to convince the public that suppression of dissent – what they considered a crime against democracy – was taking place.

In my book “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,” I describe how these eight people decided to risk imprisonment and break into the FBI’s office in Media, Pennsylvania.

The files they stole and made public confirmed the FBI was suppressing dissent. But they revealed much more: Hoover’s secret FBI and the startling crimes he had committed. These secret operations had become so extensive that they eventually diminished the bureau’s capacity to carry out its core mission: law enforcement.

Hoover, one of the most admired and powerful officials in the country, had secretly conducted a wide array of operations directed against people whose political opinions he opposed.

The files revealed that agents were instructed to “enhance paranoia” and make activists think there was an FBI agent “behind every mailbox.” Questioning Vietnam war policy could cause anyone, even a U.S. senator, Democrat J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, to be placed under FBI surveillance.

It was the revelation of Hoover’s worst operations, COINTELPRO – what Hoover called The Counter Intelligence Program – that made Americans demand investigation and reform of the FBI. Until the mid-1970s, there had never been oversight of the FBI and little coverage of the FBI by journalists, except for laudatory stories.

‘Almost beyond belief’

The COINTELPRO operations ranged from crude to cruel to murderous.

Antiwar activists were given oranges injected with powerful laxatives. Agents hired prostitutes known to have venereal disease to infect campus antiwar leaders.

Many of the COINTELPRO operations were almost beyond belief:

"The project conducted against the entire University of California system lasted more than 30 years. Hundreds of agents and informants were assigned in 1960 to spy on each of Berkeley’s 5,365 faculty members by reading their mail, observing them and searching for derogatory information – “illicit love affairs, homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking, other instances of conduct reflecting mental instability.”

An informant trained to give perjured testimony led to the murder conviction of Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He served 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1997 when a judge found that the FBI concealed evidence that would have proved Pratt’s innocence.

· The bureau spied for years on Martin Luther King Jr. After it was announced King would receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover approved a particularly sinister plan that was designed to cause King to commit suicide.

What one historian called Hoover’s “savage hatred” of Black people led to the FBI’s worst operation, a collaboration with the Chicago police that resulted in the killing of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton, shot dead by police as he slept. An FBI informant had been hired to ingratiate himself with Hampton. He came to know Hampton and the apartment very well. He drew a map of the apartment for the police on which he located “Fred’s bed.” After the killing, Hoover thanked the informant for his role in this successful operation. Enclosed in his letter was a cash bonus.

Actress Jean Seberg was the victim of a 1970 COINTELPRO operation. In a memo, Hoover wrote that she had donated to the Panthers and “should be neutralized.” Seberg was pregnant, and the plot, approved personally by Hoover – as many COINTELPRO plots were – called for the FBI to tell a gossip columnist that a Black Panther was the father. Agents gave the false rumor to a Los Angeles Times gossip columnist. Without using Seberg’s name, the columnist’s story made it unmistakable that she was writing about Seberg. Three days later, Seberg gave birth prematurely to a stillborn white baby girl. Every year on the anniversary of her dead baby’s birth, Seberg attempted suicide. She succeeded in August 1979.

There was wide public interest in these revelations about COINTELPRO, many of which emerged in 1975 during hearings conducted by the Church Committee, the Senate committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.

At this first-ever congressional investigation of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, former FBI officials testified under oath about bureau policies under Hoover.

One of them, William Sullivan, who had helped carry out the plots against King, was asked whether officials considered the legal and ethical issues involved in their operations. He responded:

“Never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the questions: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful? Is it legal? Is it ethical or moral?’ We never gave any thought to that line of questioning because we were just pragmatic. The one thing we were concerned about: will this course of action work, will it get us what we want.”

Ethical? Legal?

The future of the new FBI under Patel and Trump is unclear, especially in light of the president’s known tolerance for lawlessness, even violence. His gifts of clemency and pardons to Jan. 6 rioters are evidence of that.

As for Patel, fired FBI Officials stated in their recent lawsuit over those dismissals that Patel had told one of them it was “likely illegal” to fire agents because of the cases they had worked on, but that he was powerless to resist Trump’s demands.

The recent statements from both Trump and top aide Miller suggest the FBI’s independence, and broader constitutional requirements that the administration remain faithful to the law, are meaningless to them. They suggest that, like Hoover, they would criminalize dissent.

What will happen at the FBI after the internal purge ends? Will retribution fever wane? Will Patel refocus on the bureau’s chief mission, law enforcement? And will the questions asked in Congress in 1975, as the bureau was being forced to reject Hoover’s worst practices, be asked now: Is what we are doing ethical? Is it legal?

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Six World Leaders On Navigating Climate Change, Without The US

President William Ruto of Kenya. Dina Litovsky for The New York Times

BY DAVID GELLES

Climate debates often focus on the world’s largest economies and biggest emitters. But the work of adapting to a hotter planet is happening in countries that have contributed little to the problem but are nevertheless exposed to its consequences.

I spoke with six world leaders from these places and heard some common themes — the ravages of extreme weather, the difficulties posed by the Trump administration’s retreat. (The president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and denies the existence of climate change.)

But the conversations, which you can see in full, also show how varied environmental predicaments can be. Some of the interviews, condensed and edited, are here:

Kenya

President William Ruto has positioned himself as Africa’s climate leader. Kenya’s energy system is powered in large part by biofuels, wind and solar power. But many African countries, including Kenya, have struggled to obtain competitive financing for clean-energy projects. Ruto’s push for climate action has not moved many voters who want improvements in government services, currency stability and living costs.

Talking to your countrymen, how do you explain your focus on something that can seem very abstract to people who are still just struggling to get by?

Droughts made millions of Kenyans go hungry. Floods just in the city of Nairobi killed over 30 people. Nobody can persuasively tell any Kenyan that climate change is abstract. It is not.

Do you feel that the effort to coordinate global climate action has been effective?

It is generally acceptable now that countries like Kenya should be considered for financing. There was a time when we said this and it looked like a joke.

Does international collaboration on climate change work if the United States is rowing in the opposite direction? 

I am very confident that the position of the United States, of China, of Europe, of Africa must come together at some point. We may disagree for a moment, we may disagree for a while, but reality is going to beat us into an agreement. The effects of climate change are in every continent. The only difference is that developed countries can cushion themselves.

Finland

This country has done something unusual: It has cut down on carbon emissions while growing its economy. Of course, it helps that the Finnish public is wildly supportive of government action on climate. Finland hopes to be carbon neutral by 2035, but it is still reliant on oil because of shipping fuel. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo describes a nation being transformed: The Arctic is warming nearly four times as fast as the global average, and arable land is moving north as remote regions thaw.

Is China becoming a more powerful partner to Finland with the retreat of the U.S. on clean energy? 

We have to be careful. We have to get rid of dangerous dependencies, because we have to be autonomous in clean-energy production.

You’ve been working on this issue for many years now. What was the moment when you felt the most personal disillusionment about the politics around climate change? 

About five to 10 years ago, there was a debate in my own country over whether climate change is true or not. And because I believe it is, and I’m deeply worried about our world and our planet, that debate was frustrating. But we won. Today we have new technologies. We can change our behavior without cutting our welfare. We just have to believe that it’s possible, and we have to continue our work.

The Marshall Islands

This country, made from islands and reefs in the Pacific Ocean, is a few feet above sea level. Each year, the challenges grow. Mosquito-borne diseases have spread because of more frequent rainfall. Tuna — an economic backbone — are leaving for cooler parts of the Pacific. The water is rising. “We will be submerged by 2050 if the world doesn’t do its part,” says President Hilda Heine, who has spent her career sounding the alarm.

What do developed nations owe countries like the Marshall Islands? 

The plan for elevating only two of our communities is projected to cost us billions. It’s a lot of money. I wish that the big emitters could step up and put money into that.

What specific steps are you taking in the Marshall Islands? 

The warming of the ocean is killing our corals, which are building blocks of atoll nations. We are currently doing research to determine species of corals that can survive the warming ocean. We are building a fleet of ships that use wind and solar power to replace our fossil-fuel-run shipping fleet.

What are some of the changes your people have had to make? 

Seven years ago, Majuro had no sea walls. Now we build sea walls to protect homes and schools. I mean, we used to be able to just walk into the lagoon. Now you have to go over sea walls to get to the lagoon side or to the ocean side. The landscape is different.

Do you think your country will survive? 

As the leader of the Marshall Islands, I cannot take the view that we cannot survive.

Bangladesh

With a young population densely packed into a low-lying delta, rising sea levels and extreme heat are major problems. Agriculture is being disrupted. Populations are being displaced. After a popular uprising last year, the country installed Muhammad Yunus as the government’s chief adviser. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for developing a way to give small loans to low-income people. He called it an example of the way small individual actions can produce widespread change, and he believes that the same is possible with climate.

How is Bangladesh experiencing climate change right now? 

We have to make use of every little space we’ve got in order to feed ourselves. But not only is our land sinking into the ocean; the water system brings saline water into the land because of the tide. And salinity eats up our cultivable land. So sum total is our land is getting squeezed. It’s not a very happy situation.

How much do you think international efforts on climate action have succeeded? 

We try to solve everything by pouring money into it. That’s not the solution. I’m saying I have to change myself. That’s how the world will change.

What do you think the developed countries that have historically been responsible for most global emissions owe a country like Bangladesh? All I can do is explain to them: “Look, this is our home. You start a fire in your part of the home, you suffer. But you do something to start a fire in my part of the house — this is not a fair thing to do. You are destroying the whole home. Our life depends on what you do.”

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Why Jimmy Kimmel’s First Amendment Rights Weren’t Violated – But ABC’s Would Be Protected If It Stood Up To The FCC And Trump

A crowd protests in Hollywood, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2025, after the suspension of the ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ taping earlier in the day. David Pashaee / Middle East Images via AFP, Getty Images

BY WAYNE UNGER

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LAW,

QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has sparked a wave of political commentary.

There were the respectful and sincere comments condemning the killing. Former President Barack Obama said, “What happened was a tragedy and … I mourn for him and his family.” And former Vice President Mike Pence said, “I’m heartsick about what happened to him.”

But Kirk’s killing also elicited what many saw as inappropriate comments. MSNBC terminated commentator Matthew Dowd after he said, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” American Airlines grounded pilots accused of celebrating Kirk’s death.

Perhaps the most notable reaction to remarks seen as controversial about the Kirk killing hit ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel. His network suspended him indefinitely after comments that he made about the alleged shooter in Kirk’s death.

Countless defenders of Kimmel quickly responded to his indefinite suspension as an attack on the First Amendment. MSNBC host Chris Hayes posted the following on X: “This is the most straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life and it’s not even close.”

But is it?

Free speech? It depends

The First Amendment limits government officials from infringing one’s right to free speech and expression.

For example, the government cannot force someone to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the American flag, because the First Amendment, as one Supreme Court justice wrote, “includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”

And government cannot limit speech that it finds disagreeable while permitting other speech that it favors.

However, the First Amendment does not apply to private employers. With the exception of the 13th Amendment, which generally prohibits slavery, the Constitution applies only to government and those acting on its behalf.

So, as a general rule, employers are free to discipline employees for their speech – even the employees’ speech outside of the workplace. In this way, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham correctly said on X, “Free speech doesn’t prevent you from being fired if you’re stupid and have poor judgment.”

This is why Amy Cooper’s employer, an investment firm, was free to terminate her following her 2020 verbal dispute in New York’s Central Park with a bird-watcher over her unleashed dog. She called the police, falsely claiming that the bird-watcher, a Black man, was threatening her life. The incident, captured on video, went viral and Cooper was fired, with her employer saying, “We do not condone racism of any kind.”

This is also why ABC was able to fire Roseanne Barr from the revival of her show, “Roseanne,” after she posted a tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a Black woman who had been a top aide to President Obama, that many viewed as racist.

But as a scholar of constitutional law, I believe Kimmel’s situation is not as straightforward.

Threat complicates things

Neither Cooper’s employer nor Barr’s employer faced any government pressure to terminate them.

Kimmel’s indefinite suspension followed a vague threat from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. As complaints about Kimmel’s statement exploded in conservative media, Carr suggested in a podcast interview that Kimmel’s statements could lead to the FCC revoking ABC affiliate stations’ licenses.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said.

But the Supreme Court has been crystal clear. Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.

In a 2024 case, National Rifle Association v. Vullo, a unanimous Supreme Court plainly said that the government’s threat of invoking legal sanctions and other coercion to suppress speech it doesn’t like violates the First Amendment. That principle is so profound and fundamental that it got support from every member of an often bitterly divided court.

A threat to revoke broadcast licenses would almost certainly be seen in a court of law as a government action tantamount to coercion. And Carr’s public comments undoubtedly connect that threat to Kimmel’s disfavored comments.

If the FCC had indeed moved to strip ABC affiliates of their licenses to broadcast because of what Kimmel said, ABC and its parent company, Disney, could have sued the FCC to block the license revocations on First Amendment grounds, citing the NRA v. Vullo case.

But the network seemingly caved to the coercive threat instead of fighting for Kimmel. This is why so many are decrying the Kimmel suspension as an attack on free speech and the First Amendment – even though they might not fully understand the law they’re citing.

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The Tangled Legacy Of The Man Who Led Africa’s Liberation

BY JENNIFER SZALAI

In 1951, when Kwame Nkrumah arrived on American shores for a whirlwind visit to the United States, only a few months had passed since he had won a landslide election from a Gold Coast prison cell; in subsequent years, he would secure the colony’s independence from British rule, becoming the first prime minister of Ghana, the country formed in its place, in 1957.

While he was in New York, Nkrumah sat down for a flurry of press interviews. In Washington, he was feted with a State Department luncheon. The mayor of Philadelphia presented him with the keys to the city — an especially stark sign of how much had changed for Nkrumah, who had previously spent a decade in the United States, earning four degrees (in sociology, theology, education and philosophy). In the early 1940s, as an impecunious graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, he was harassed by Philadelphia’s police officers for sleeping overnight in the train station.

“Nkrumah and his delegation were given prominent coverage in almost all of America’s Black newspapers, which hailed him effusively,” Howard W. French writes in “The Second Emancipation.” The outpouring, French suggests, was inversely proportionate to the demeaning treatment African Americans faced on a daily basis. His capacious book traces the connections between the American civil rights movement and global pan-Africanism, with Nkrumah at the center.

As the title suggests, decolonization was a second emancipation, ending the forced labor and subjugation imposed by the European powers on their colonies. The 1950s and 1960s saw momentous transformations taking place on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1960 alone, 17 countries in Africa obtained their independence. That year, James Baldwin reported on a sit-in in Florida by young African Americans. These students “were born at the very moment at which Europe’s domination of Africa was ending,” Baldwin wrote in an article for Mademoiselle. Decolonization expanded the sense of possibility. Baldwin still remembered Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935; the touchstone for the new generation was “the establishment of the Republic of Ghana.”

Nkrumah, for his part, comes across as a fascinating and enigmatic figure. He was ostensibly born in 1909, the only child of his mother, though details of his early life are fuzzy. Nkrumah’s own autobiography was the kind of “polished and streamlined” account that’s typical of a political memoir. It was published in 1957, the same year that the Gold Coast became Ghana, and was handed out at the independence ceremony, presenting his ascent as a matter of destiny.

That kind of messianic thinking would become ever more pronounced as the years wore on. French chronicles how, during his nine-year rule, Nkrumah grew increasingly authoritarian, jailing political opponents, proclaiming a one-party system and giving himself the title of “president for life.” At the same time, he was drawn to the world outside of Ghana, promoting pan-Africanism — a sense of unity and purpose on the continent and among the African diaspora — to the inspiration of some and the consternation of others.

“Critics and foes called his pursuit of pan-Africanism an exorbitant distraction,” French writes, showing how Nkrumah’s lofty transnationalism could seem disconnected from the internal divisions and material problems faced by his own nation. Ghana, a dominant cocoa-producing country, was vulnerable to fickle cocoa prices, and so Nkrumah became fixated on the prospect of rapid industrialization. He was determined to build a hydroelectric dam, refusing to believe skeptical economists who warned that such a project would allow foreign companies to profit at Ghana’s expense.

French, a professor of journalism at Columbia and a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, covers a lot of ground in a book that merges biography with panorama. His previous book, “Born in Blackness,” showed how the making of the modern world wasn’t just a story about Europe; it was also about Africa. “The Second Emancipation” is a sequel, bringing that approach into the postwar era. Nkrumah, like other leaders of Africa’s newly independent states, struggled to stay neutral amid the Cold War. “We face neither East nor West,” Nkrumah once said. “We face forward.”

Nkrumah may not have been interested in the Cold War, but the Cold War was most definitely interested in him. An avowed socialist, he was continually dogged by suspicions that he was a “closet communist” (he was not, French says). He kept investing in education, but he also became paranoid and withdrawn. “The regime had begun to commit autophagy, cannibalizing itself,” French writes. A vicious circle proceeded apace: Dictatorial rule fueled assassination attempts, which deepened dictatorial rule. While traveling to Vietnam in 1966, Nkrumah was deposed in a coup, with Washington providing, “at a minimum, quiet encouragement.”

“The Second Emancipation” ably treads the line on Nkrumah’s complicated legacy. French keeps reminding the reader of the larger context, pointing out how European colonies were laboratories not for good governance but for authoritarianism. He also emphasizes the central role of time. Nkrumah noted that European powers had centuries to work through their contradictions: “What other countries have taken 300 years or more to achieve, a once dependent territory must try to accomplish in a generation if it is to survive.”

It was this shared sense of urgency that made pan-Africanism such a potent force, even if French concludes that a “can-do vision” must never lose sight of the more humble, painstaking work necessary for truly sustainable development. He quotes Julius Nyerere, the founding leader of Tanzania, who recalled Nkrumah’s impatience as double-edged — a source of tremendous energy as well as inevitable frustration: “My differences with Kwame were that Kwame thought there was somehow a shortcut, and I was saying that there was no shortcut. This is what we have inherited, and we will have to proceed within the limitations that that inheritance has imposed on us.”

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What Abraham Lincoln Understood About The Founders

BY JEFF SHESOL

Among the truths still held, by many Americans, to be self-evident, “all men are created equal” is the most fundamental. The current assault on that belief — waged by all three branches of government — is brazen and cruel, but not without precedent. Much of American history has been a battle over the ways we give meaning and the force of law to the idea of equality.

That struggle — to determine and fulfill, and perhaps to exceed, the founders’ intentions — is the focus of a new book by the legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar. “Born Equal” is the second volume in his three-part constitutional history of the United States.

The first, “The Words That Made Us,” opened in 1760 with the accession of King George III. This new installment picks up the action in 1840, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and are told, Amar observes, to “sit and listen but not speak or vote.” The story moves through the next 80 years, from Stanton and Mott’s assertion of women’s rights at Seneca Falls to Dred Scott, the Civil War and the four constitutional amendments that extended full and equal citizenship to Black Americans and women. It is an energetic, if roundabout, tour.

Amar, who teaches law at Yale and publishes widely, has always been at his best in explaining constitutional language and untangling constitutional arguments. “Born Equal” is mainly a work of narrative history, but its protagonists are America’s founding texts: As the book makes clear, the Civil War was at its core “a clash between two sharply opposed visions” of the national charter.

Amar’s treatment of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, among other episodes, showcases his expertise. Rather than simply recount the back and forth, he uses it as a prompt to consider 10 interpretations of “created equal” — from the narrowest, which holds that the phrase was just misleading rhetoric, to the most expansive, that government has a duty to provide “a fair chance” to all, as Lincoln later put it. Amar is similarly effective in showing how the 1848 Seneca Falls declaration responded to the Declaration of Independence.

“Born Equal” is learned and long but never dry; it is, if anything, strenuously chatty. The historical set pieces have punch, and Amar imbues figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe with humanity and immediacy.

Yet there is a feeling throughout of the lecturer playing to the back of the hall. The book is awash in asides, anachronisms (the word “meme” among the most frequent) and first names: The Seneca Falls statement of principles is “Elizabeth’s Declaration”; the Emancipation Proclamation is “Abe’s act.” It is also digressive to a degree that the first volume, an even longer book, was not. The complexities of 19th-century politics and, it appears, the capaciousness of Amar’s interests lead him afield from his central story line.

Still, he is unswerving — and unblushing — in his larger aim: “to set judges and other legal officials straight about what the Constitution really means.” This of course is a tall order, whether the principle at issue is free speech or popular sovereignty or, as it is here, equality — an ideal whose meaning would seem to be as fluid and contested as any in the founding documents.

Amar has long led the charge of the so-called liberal originalists, who, like the far more prominent originalists on the right, believe the Constitution’s meaning is almost always apparent in the text or in contemporary sources, such as James Madison’s “Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787.” The two sides differ in a crucial respect: While conservatives maintain that 18th-century intentions align, invariably, with the agenda of the 21st-century G.O.P., Amar contends that they often (not always) point toward progressive results.

“Born Equal” is his latest — and perhaps most assertive — effort to stake a claim on original intent. Antebellum America, Amar argues, was “unabashedly originalist,” deeply reverential toward its “founding men and founding texts.”

He builds his case with “a blizzard of data points,” among them that the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840 and Zachary Taylor in 1848 fit an “originalist pattern” because both men served as generals, as Washington had; that countless sons and towns and territories were named after founding fathers; that James Monroe “managed to die on July 4, 1831,” sanctifying Independence Day just as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had done in 1826; and that America’s “first two postage stamps,” he writes, “bore the likenesses of Washington and Franklin.”

Few readers would question that the founders held the nation in thrall, even during a civil war over what those founders had wrought. Not only did North and South “pray to the same God,” as Lincoln memorably put it, but they invoked the same heroes. In over-stressing this point, Amar refashions a story of constitutional upheaval as a parable of consistency, one in which “politicians whose originalist claims were more faithful” — politicians like Lincoln — ultimately prevail. This reinforces the allure and false promise of originalism: the idea that the text, if you squint hard enough, reveals the answer to almost everything.

Three decades ago, in “The Bill of Rights,” a revisionist meditation on those first 10 amendments, Amar warned against a “curiously selective ancestor worship” that elevates the revolutionary era above the Second Founding — the “new birth of freedom” that reshaped the nation in the 1860s and ’70s. He would have done well here to heed his own warning.

To call Lincoln “his generation’s best originalist” sells short the radicalism of his achievement — and the distance he and his battle-weary nation had traveled from its beginning. What Lincoln understood was that the idea of equality, to be worth its cost in blood, demanded more than obeisance to words on parchment. It required reconception. At Gettysburg, he called this our “unfinished work.” So it remains.

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Why Ghana Accepts America’s Migrants Despite 15% Tariff Hit

Ghana President John Dramani Mahama

BY KENT MENSAH

ACCRA (THE AFRICA REPORT) - Ghana’s decision to host US deportees exposes the high-stakes trade-offs between sovereignty, solidarity and survival in a tariff-strained economy.

When President John Mahama confirmed last week that 14 West Africans had landed in Accra after being deported from the US, it sparked uproar and confusion among many Ghanaians.

The deportees – mostly Nigerians and one Gambian – were not Ghanaian nationals but were rerouted through Accra under a bilateral arrangement with Washington.

The development came just months after the US imposed a punitive 15% tariff on Ghanaian exports, in what analysts see as a striking example of the contradictory pressures shaping Accra’s foreign policy.

“On the one hand, Washington is squeezing Ghana’s economy with tariffs. On the other hand, it is leaning on Ghana to support its deportation regime,” Daniel Amateye Anim-Prempeh, an economist at the Policy Initiative for Economic Development (PIED), tells The Africa Report.

“The inconsistency is glaring, but it also shows how Ghana calculates its long-term interests: maintaining diplomatic capital with the world’s largest economy, even at short-term cost.”
Humanitarian solidarity or sovereignty breach?

The Mahama administration has defended its decision on Pan-African grounds.

Foreign minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa insisted that the arrangement was “not transactional like Rwanda, Eswatini, Uganda or South Sudan” and that Ghana had not received financial compensation.

“Our decision is grounded purely on humanitarian principles…,” Ablakwa told reporters in Accra.

“Since the days of our forebears, Ghana has hosted freedom fighters, welcomed Africans in the diaspora, offered them haven, resources, citizenship and even passports.”


Mahama framed the deal as consistent with the ECOWAS free movement protocol, which allows citizens of member states to enter and reside freely across borders.

“We just could not continue to take the suffering of our fellow West Africans,” Ablakwa said, noting that all 14 deportees had since returned to their home countries.


If Ghana can demonstrate that it is capable of holding its ground economically while still engaging constructively with Washington, it reassures markets that Accra is not isolated

But critics at home disagree. The Minority in parliament accused the government of breaching the Constitution by failing to seek parliamentary ratification.

“This is a clear violation of Ghana’s constitution, sovereignty and foreign policy,” Samuel Jinapor, an opposition lawmaker, tells The Africa Report.

According to him, Ghana risks being branded an enabler of Washington’s “harsh and discriminatory” immigration policies.
The geopolitics of migration diplomacy

Across Africa, Washington has sought willing partners for its third-country deportation programme.


Its best option is to keep the diplomatic channels open, use cooperation on migration as bargaining power, and hope that pragmatism prevails in Washington

Rwanda agreed last month to host up to 250 deportees, while Uganda and Eswatini have also signed on.

Nigeria has flatly refused, citing sovereignty concerns, prompting the US to tighten visa restrictions on Nigerians.

“Ghana’s agreement with the US is more nuanced and less contentious than deals with Rwanda or Uganda, largely due to ECOWAS’ free movement rules,” said Jervin Naidoo, a political analyst with Oxford Economics Africa.

“Nevertheless, the deal is politically sensitive. It signals that President Donald Trump’s administration is using migration diplomacy as a geopolitical tool.”


Naidoo says while Rwanda extracted millions of dollars in funding through its UK and US deals, Ghana has denied receiving cash incentives.

“Even if no money changes hands, Ghana gains diplomatic leverage,” he says. “In a year when the US has raised tariffs, Accra may be calculating that cooperation in one arena could soften Washington’s stance in another.”

Anim-Prempeh agreed that Ghana’s economic calculus is crucial.

“The 15% tariffs are painful – they hurt cocoa, aluminium and manufactured exports. But in the grand scheme, Ghana cannot afford to antagonise the US entirely,” he said.

“By presenting itself as a responsible partner on migration, Accra may hope to reopen trade channels and protect future access to US markets.”
Investor perceptions and African precedent

The optics matter beyond diplomacy. Analysts say foreign investors are closely watching how Ghana manages its balancing act.

“Investors read these signals,” Anim-Prempeh said. “If Ghana can demonstrate that it is capable of holding its ground economically while still engaging constructively with Washington, it reassures markets that Accra is not isolated.”


Shadrach Kundi, an international security analyst, cautions that Africa could be reduced to “a dumping site for deportees“.


July’s tariffs were a slap in the face, but Ghana cannot simply retaliate

Yet he acknowledges that Ghana’s reliance on ECOWAS protocols gives its decision a legal cover. “You could read from Mahama’s statement that it was as a result of some concessions being made. But this is not necessarily out of place when framed as solidarity under ECOWAS.”

The controversy echoes Ghana’s 2016 row over admitting two Yemeni terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay – a move the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional because it bypassed parliament. That precedent still haunts Mahama’s government.
Fragile balancing act

For now, Accra insists that deportations will be limited to West Africans and that each case will be vetted. “We will never compromise the safety and well-being of Ghanaians,” Ablakwa added.

But the clash of narratives – humanitarian solidarity versus sovereignty breach – underscores Ghana’s delicate position.


Accepting deportees helps preserve goodwill with Washington, even as tariffs pinch. Refusing could deepen Ghana’s economic isolation at a time of fiscal stress.

“July’s tariffs were a slap in the face, but Ghana cannot simply retaliate,” Anim-Prempeh says. “Its best option is to keep the diplomatic channels open, use cooperation on migration as bargaining power, and hope that pragmatism prevails in Washington.”

Federal Judge Overturns Part Of Florida’s Book Ban Law, Drawing On Nearly 100 Years Of Precedent Protecting First Amendment Access To Ideas

Some school librarians in Florida have found themselves in the midst of controversy over complaints of “obscene” titles in their libraries. Trish233/iStock via Getty Images

BY JAMES B. BLASINGAME

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH,

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

When a junior at an Orange County public high school in Florida visited the school library to check out a copy of “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac, it wasn’t in its Dewey decimal system-assigned location.

It turns out the title had been removed from the library’s shelves because of a complaint, and in compliance with Florida House Bill 1069, it had been removed from the library indefinitely. Kerouac’s quintessential chronicle of the Beat Generation in the 1950s, along with hundreds of other titles, was not available for students to read.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in July 2023. Under this law, if a parent or community member objected to a book on the grounds that it was obscene or pornographic, the school had to remove that title from the curriculum within five days and hold a public hearing with a special magistrate appointed by the state.

On Aug. 13, 2025, Judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District of Florida ruled in Penguin Random House v. Gibson that parts of Florida HB 1069 are unconstitutional and violate students’ First Amendment right of free access to ideas.

The plaintiffs who filed the suit included the five largest trade book publishing houses, a group of award-winning authors, the Authors Guild, which is a labor union for published professional authors with over 15,000 members, and the parents of a group of Florida students.

Though the state filed an appeal on Sept. 11, 2025, this is an important ruling on censorship in a time when many states are passing or debating similar laws.

I’ve spent the past 26 years training English language arts teachers at Arizona State University, and 24 years before that teaching high school English. I understand the importance of Mendoza’s ruling for keeping books in classrooms and school libraries. In my experience, every few years the books teachers have chosen to teach come under attack. I’ve tried to learn as much as I can about the history of censorship in this country and pass it to my students, in order to prepare them for what may lie ahead in their careers as English teachers.

Legal precedent

The August 2025 ruling is in keeping with legal precedent around censorship. Over the years, U.S. courts have established that obscenity can be a legitimate cause for removing a book from the public sphere, but only under limited circumstances.

In the 1933 case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John Munro Woolsey declared that James Joyce’s classic novel was not obscene, contradicting a lower court ruling. Woolsey emphasized that works must be considered as a whole, rather than judged by “selected excerpts,” and that reviewers should apply contemporary national standards and think about the effect on the average person.

In 1957, the Supreme Court further clarified First Amendment protections in Roth v. United States by rejecting the argument that obscenity lacks redeeming social importance. In this case, the court defined obscenity as material that, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient – that is, lascivious – interest in sex in average readers.

The Supreme Court’s 1973 Miller v. California decision created the eponymous Miller test for jurors in obscenity cases. This test incorporates language from the Ulysses and Roth rulings, asking jurors to consider whether the average person, looking at the work as a whole and applying the contemporary standards in their community, would find it lascivious. It also adds the consideration of whether the material in question is of “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” when deciding whether it is obscene.

Another decision that is particularly relevant for teachers and school librarians is 1982’s Island Trees School District v. Pico, a case brought by students against their school board. The Supreme Court ruled that removing books from a school library or curriculum is a violation of the First Amendment if it is an attempt to suppress ideas. Free access to ideas in books, the court wrote, is sacrosanct: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.”

What this ruling clarifies

In his ruling in August 2025, Mendoza pointed out that many of the removed books are classics with no sexual content at all. This was made possible in part by the formulation of HB 1069. The law allows anyone from the community to challenge a book simply by filling out a form, at which point the school is mandated to remove that book within five days. In order to put a book back in circulation, however, the law requires a hearing to be held by the state’s appointed magistrate, and there is no specified deadline by which this hearing must take place.

Mendoza did not strike down the parts of HB 1069 that require school districts to follow a state policy for challenging books. In line with precedent, he also left in place challenges for obscenity using the Miller test and with reference to age-appropriateness for mature content.

The Florida Department of Education argued that HB 1069 is protected by Florida’s First Amendment right of government speech, a legal theory that the government has the right to prevent any opposing views to its own in schools or any government platform. Mendoza questioned this argument, suggesting that “slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints.”

What this means for schools, in Florida and across the US

In the wake of Mendoza’s decision, Florida schools are unlikely to pull more books from the shelves, but they are also unlikely to immediately return them. Some school librarians have said that they are awaiting the outcome of the appeal before taking action.

States with similar laws on the books or in the works will also be watching the appeal.

Some of these laws in other states have also been challenged, with mixed outcomes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit already struck down Texas’ appeal of a ruling against Texas House Bill 900. And parts of an Iowa bill currently are being challenged in court.

But the NAACP’s lawsuit against South Carolina Regulation 43-170 was dismissed On Sept. 8, 2025. And Utah’s House Bill 29 has not yet faced a challenge in court, though it could be affected by the outcomes of these lawsuits in other states.

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