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GAYLE KING ANCHORS A NEW "CBS REPORTS" STREAMING SPECIAL ON THE LEGACY AND IMPACT OF TRAYVON MARTIN, A DECADE AFTER HIS KILLING

"Trayvon Martin: 10 Years Later" Will Feature Interviews with His Parents, His Family Attorney, Government Officials, Athletes, Thought Leaders and Activists

The Special Will Be Presented on the CBS News Streaming Network, BET Networks, the Smithsonian Channel(TM) and Paramount+; Click Here to Watch a Preview

CBS News' Gayle King will anchor TRAYVON MARTIN: 10 YEARS LATER, a one-hour special exploring how the senseless shooting of a Florida teenager a decade ago still reverberates in America today. The CBS News Streaming Network and the Smithsonian Channel(TM) will present the special Saturday, Feb. 26 at 8:00 PM, ET. BET will air the special Monday, Feb. 28 at 8:00 PM, ET, and afterward it will stream on Paramount+.

In addition to anchoring the special, King will sit down for new and emotional interviews with Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, and Breonna Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, as well as women from Mothers of the Movement, a group founded by Fulton for mothers whose children have been killed by police or gun violence. The hour will draw from King and CBS News' extensive reporting on the shooting and the aftermath of the incident that left Martin dead, and will tackle the tough issues of race and the killings of young Black men in America by senseless violence.

"The tragic killing of Trayvon Martin 10 years ago was a watershed moment that set the stage for the modern social justice movement," said Alvin Patrick, executive producer of the CBS News Race and Culture Unit and TRAYVON MARTIN: 10 YEARS LATER. "This special reflects on how one teenager's death still resonates today and connects the dots of activism from 2012 to 2022."

Produced by the CBS News Race and Culture Unit, TRAYVON MARTIN: 10 YEARS LATER features the work of CBS News senior national correspondent Mark Strassmann, who reported the first national story on Trayvon Martin's death by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012. Zimmerman was later charged with second-degree murder; he was acquitted in July 2013. Strassmann talks with Tracy Martin, Martin's father, and Ben Crump, who was a little-known attorney at the time, about why he wanted to take up the case and ensure the nation knew Martin's name. CBS News special correspondent James Brown explores how Martin's death prompted professional athletes to speak out in solidarity with the Martin family and jumpstart a new wave of activism. And CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan reports how Zimmerman's acquittal set the stage for the modern Black Lives Matter movement and many of the protests that have followed over the last decade.

The special also includes new interviews with former attorney general Eric Holder and former White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who were part of the Obama administration at the time of the shooting. Voices of those on the front lines of social justice are included in the special, including activists Carmen Perez and Phillip Agnew. Additionally, CBS News spoke with thought leaders such as Michael Eric Dyson; GRAMMY-nominated recording artist Fat Joe; NBA superstar Chris Paul; and sportswriter Dave Zirin.

TRAYVON MARTIN: 10 YEARS LATER is the start of a new iteration of CBS REPORTS, the storied CBS News documentary franchise that began at the Network more than 60 years ago. Featuring deep reporting on national and global issues, CBS REPORTS is one of the new, original programming offerings featured on the CBS News Streaming Network. Nancy Lane is the senior executive producer of CBS REPORTS and the senior vice president of programming and development for CBS News Streaming.

About CBS News Streaming

CBS News Streaming Network is the premier 24/7 anchored streaming news service from CBS News and Stations that is available free to everyone with access to the internet. The CBS News Streaming Network is the destination for breaking news, live events, original reporting and storytelling, and programs from CBS News and Stations' top anchors and correspondents working locally, nationally and around the globe. CBS News' streaming services, across national and local, amassed more than 1.01 billion streams in 2021. Launched in November 2014 as CBSN, the CBS News Streaming Network is available on 30 digital platforms and apps, as well as CBSNews.com and Paramount+. The service is available live in 91 countries.

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Perhaps, for Americans, the most shocking thing about the autocratic power-grab in Canada is the failure of our own government to speak out forcefully against it. Instead, the current administration is engaged in a similar process of trampling dissent, right here in the good old U.S.A.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didnt simply adopt temporary emergency powers to clear the streets of big rigs, as much of an overreach as that was. What he did appears to be even more serious, as hes shown no intention of relinquishing those powers now that the protest has been broken up.

The despotism we so easily recognize around the world is becoming entrenched right here, right now. We cant permit it.

In an update to the above story, the leftists in the Canadian parliament have shown themselves to be accomplices of this tyrant, voting to allow him to extend his emergency powers after the emergency is over. Read this and be shocked.

And Robert Spencer at PJ Media has a must-read commentary on what has just happened there. Note especially the new regulations for crowdfunding and payment platforms. Hes right: this is how democracies die, by starving dissenters financially.

On Monday, Tucker Carlson interviewed a man whod been repeatedly kneed by police in Ottawa after cooperatively climbing down from his rig, kneeling before police, and putting his hands behind his head. Ironically, this man, named Csaba Vizi, had come to Canada after fleeing Communist Romania.

Video of him inside his truck shows him calmly describing to police how hes going to surrender peacefully and get on his knees. Then he does so, and waits for them to take him away. But as he tells it, he heard someone yell, Arrest him! Arrest him! and he was pushed down onto his stomach. They piled on top of him. We see from other video taken from farther away that one cop very forcefully kneed him, over and over, as he lay on the ground. I feel like I was beaten, but I took it like a man, he said.

Yes, they had injured him, he said. They break my body a little bit, but not my spirit.

He said that when he came to Canada from Romania, he loved it there, especially the friendly people. He was so happy. It was like that for 20 years, but the last couple of years have been different. Its impossible to live here anymore, he said.

A quote from George Orwell featured Monday on Instapundit seems apt:

I have no particular love for the idealized worker as he appears in the bourgeois, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

Its a shame to see a policeman treat a compliant worker such as Csaba Vizi as a natural enemy. Those chilling video images depict an unforgivable abuse of power.

By coincidence, that Orwell quote led into discussion of an article by Glenn Greenwald that I was already planning to highlight in todays commentary. Greenwald has a new piece on Substack called The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West.

Greenwald comes from what used to be the political left; he would call himself a classical liberal, someone who believes in freedom and free thought, religious freedom, civil rights, equality under the law (as opposed to equity), and a government limited by the Constitution. But in the 21st century, classical liberalism has given way to progressive authoritarian neoliberalism, with its rigid beliefs, two-tier justice system, and strict censorship. He knows these people well. And he has a big reality check for us.

We in America have no problem recognizing tyranny across the globe: A Chinese tank sitting ready to crush a lone protester in Tiananmen Square. An East German wiretapper spying on the lives of others behind the Berlin Wall before it fell. The censorship and even criminalization of all dissent. Re-education camps. Journalists silenced. We know it when we see it if its someplace far away.

But when its right here in front of us, in a democracy, we might have a little more trouble recognizing it for what it is: the same kind of tyranny. And if we do see it, theres still something faintly heretical to some of us about admitting it out loud. Its as if the idea of this happening in a Western democracy were so absurd it cant be real. Id liken this situation to one in which a horrendous crime has happened in your own neighborhood. This just doesnt happen here, you likely think. Your neighborhood has always seemeddifferent. When it happens somewhere else, you take notice, but when its two houses down, youre in shock.

When we were children and pledged allegiance to the Flag, and said one nation under God, we took for granted that the freedom given to us by God would always remain, that America was special, shielded by Divine power. It had existed for about 200 years, which to a child is an eternity. As we grew older, we knew there were wars and that freedom can be taken away by other human beings, but, other than the vague atomic threat from faraway Soviet Russia, we still had that feeling of comfort and safety inside our own borders. This was America.

We assumed that the Bill of Rights protected us as individuals, even if we disagreed with the majority. Our country was set up as a democratic republic, not a pure, majority-rule democracy that might be prone to popular uprisings that squelched the rights of the minority. And it has lasted that way for a long time.

But now, even in America, were seeing despotism. Its easy to point to situations in which due process doesnt even apply. In civil asset forfeiture, for example, the government will seize your assets before youve even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Its blatantly unconstitutional. Justin Trudeau has done something similar in Canada, freezing assets not only of the protesters but even of people who donated a few dollars to buy them meals. When we witness such tyranny in, say, Russia, we see it for what it is. Its the same thing here.

Greenwald cites the decade-long repression of Julian Assange as another example. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder, after investigating for years, failed to find evidence of criminality, but financial institutions such as MasterCard, VISA, PayPal and Bank of America were pressured by the Senate Homeland Security Committee into terminating WikiLeaks accounts, crippling it.

Financial pressure is a standard weapon these days, with the government joining forces with corporations. GoFundMe tried to steal I mean, divert, millions in donations intended for the truckers. When GiveSendGo raised millions more, Canadian courts blocked their distribution. The financial system is being used to crush dissent.

Greenwald notes recent protests against the Spanish government by people in Barcelona who wanted more autonomy. The government came down hard on the protesters, treating them like terrorists, seditionists, and insurrectionists. (Sound familiar?) Protesters were treated violently, arrested en masse, charged with terrorism and sedition and given long prison sentences.

And when Julian Assange spoke up about how wrong this was, Ecuador rescinded his asylum at their London embassy. They cut off his internet access. Then they allowed London police to come and arrest him.

Anyway, Greenwald makes a critical point: The despotism we so easily recognize around the world is becoming entrenched right here, right now. We cant permit it.

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabeeon TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.

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Can We See the Tyranny That's Already Here? - The Stream

In 2015, the Department of Justice released a report on the causes of the shooting death, a year earlier, of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Ferguson was a community where local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way to generate revenue, then-attorney general Eric Holder wrote.

The report also found that revenue raising was racially biased and had not only severely undermined the public trust, eroded police legitimacy, and made local residents less safe but created an intensely charged atmosphere where people feel under assault and under siegeby those charged to serve and protect them.

But years later, the practice remains widespread so much so that in at least 43 states, some portion of speeding ticket revenue goes to a court or law enforcement fund, suggesting the potential for conflicts of interest like in Ferguson, according to a new paper.

The Washington-based Tax Policy Centers new paper, Following the Money on Fines and Fees, looks at what the authors call the misaligned fiscal incentives in speeding tickets. The papers contribution to the issue, according to co-author Arvind Boddupalli, is novel in that it matches revenues from fine and fees to how they are allocated, thereby drawing a money trail of potential conflicts of interest.

The paper also finds that many states use speeding ticket revenue to fund general government services unrelated to the justice system. Thats a gray area, Boddupalli told MarketWatch.

Its not conclusively better to send the money to a general fund, Boddupalli said. Revenue-motivated policing and sentencing, in and of itself, can be pretty problematic and especially inequitable. There is a lot that can be problematic here.

Earlier coverage: When fines and fees ruin lives

Revenue-motivated policing doesnt have to end the way things did in Ferguson for it still to have a devastating impact on peoples lives. The practice disproportionately targets Black Americans, a raft of earlier research has shown, and it can trap people in cycles of debt, bankruptcy, and a history with the justice system, which can make getting a job or a fresh start much harder.

Whats more, by creating such incentives for law enforcement, it can set up a situation where the financial health of a community is better if people are fined more for breaking the law. But that also often leads to lower public trust in the justice system and a loss of legitimacy not to mention lower rates of solving crimes, Boddupalli said.

He hopes that his paper, co-authored with Livia Mucciolo, leads to more research focused on tracking the allocations from other types of revenues.

Excerpt from:
Nearly every state uses speeding-ticket fines and fees to fund its justice system - MarketWatch

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At crucial moments in American history when democracy was under threat, Congress took decisive action to protect voting rightsthe 15th Amendment, the 19thAmendment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This week is going to be a similarly pivotal time for American democracy. After failing to lawfully win the 2020 election and then unlawfully overturn it, the Republican Party has had a single-minded focus on rigging the countrys voting and election system to their advantage, while congressional Democrats have passed no legislation to stop them.

Now Democrats are mounting an aggressive last-ditch effort to protect voting rights, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promising a vote on changing the Senate rules to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act by Martin Luther King Jr. Day. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are traveling to Georgia on Tuesday to deliver major speeches to build public support for this effort.

The stakes couldnt be higher: If Democrats dont pass these voting rights billsand soonthe 2022 election will take place under voting restrictions designed to suppress turnout among Democratic-leaning constituencies, gerrymandered maps that roll back fair representation for communities of color, and election subversion laws giving Trump-inspired Stop the Steal candidates unprecedented power over election administration and how votes are counted. Collectively, these anti-democratic measures could cost Democrats control of Congress and crucial state offices in 2022, making it much easier for Republicans to rig the 2024 election.

More than just giving Republicans a temporary tactical advantage, the GOPs bigger project is to consolidate and wield power no matter the views of a majority of voters, which is antithetical to the entire notion of representative democracy.

There is a fear that Republicans have about facing the people, says former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder. They are concerned that this changing America that is less rural, that is more urban, that is younger, that is more diversethey dont think that they can win with that changing electorate. And as a result, they want to put in place rules and mechanisms that will ensure that they keep power, even if they dont retain popular support. They are basically signing off on a political apartheid system.

Voting rights experts say Democrats, after failing to act in 2021, have a very narrow window to pass legislation that would roll back the GOPs anti-democratic efforts before voters go to the polls in 2022.

We are in a crisis of timing, says Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. The longer we wait, the more limited the impact of the reforms are.

Weiser points out that if the Freedom to Vote Act passed this month, its ban on partisan gerrymandering would immediately go into effect and new lawsuits could quickly be filed against unfair maps or existing lawsuits amended. But the chances of success diminish the closer it is to an election, as candidates run for office, voters request ballots, and election officials prepare to count votes. Texas, for example, has primary elections scheduled for March 1, with candidates already running and early voting beginning February 14. As the election calendar accelerates, the remedies that a court can consider or the time to put in place alternative maps shrinks, says Weiser.

Time is also running out to put in place measures expanding access to the ballot and blocking GOP efforts to roll back voting opportunities. Weiser said policies in the Freedom to Vote Act such as same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and two weeks of early voting could still be implemented in 2022and the number of states that quickly expanded voting options during the pandemic provides a model for how it could be done. But the more time that election officials have, the better the implementation will be and the smoother the process for voters.

Of course, all of these changes are theoretical if Democrats cannot overcome the fundamental asymmetry that has marked the fight over voting rights for the past year.

Republicans at the state-level have passed a slew of anti-democracy measures through simple majority, party-line votes, but by stubbornly supporting the filibuster Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have allowed 41 GOP senators representing just 21 percent of the country to block any effort to protect voting rights.

If the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, then how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the state level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same? Schumer asked in a letter to senators last week.

Thats not the only imbalance in tactics.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has accused Democrats of trying to break the Senate by pushing a voting rights exception to the filibuster. Theres no such thing as a narrow exception, he said last week.

But McConnell employed precisely such an exception to the filibuster in order to confirm three of Trumps Supreme Court justices with simple majority votes.

That means Republicans can pass laws to make it harder to vote and GOP-appointed judges can be confirmed to the bench to uphold them through a simple majority process, but Democrats are prevented from using the same rules to stop these efforts.

The asymmetry cannot hold, Schumer said on the Senate floor on January 5. If Senate Republicans continue to abuse the filibuster to prevent this body from acting, then the Senate must adapt.

Perhaps sensing Democratic momentum on filibuster reform, GOP leaders last week suddenly floated changes to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 in order to lure Manchin and Sinema away from considering rule changes that would allow for the passage of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. While reforming the ECA is important to prevent another coup-like attempt where Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject certified Electoral College votes from the states, changes to the act would apply only to presidential elections at the last stage of the process and do nothing to stop the voter suppression and election subversion that occurs before Congress counts the votes.

If youre going to rig the game, and then say, Oh, well count the rigged game accurately, what good is that? Schumer told reporters last week.

Holder said ECA reform was necessary and needed but called the GOPs embrace of it total bullshit and a craven tactical attempt to obfuscate how theyre killing more fundamental voting reform.

The need for the passage of these bills is now, Holder said of the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. There is nothing else to discuss. The question is, where do you stand? Do you stand for American democracy? Or do you stand with those people who are trying to subvert the American system? There is no in-between, you are on one side or the other.

The rest is here:
It's Now or Never for Democrats to Protect Voting Rights Mother Jones - Mother Jones

The Ohio Supreme Court heard a second round of arguments about gerrymandering in less than a month.

Theyre being asked to decide if the states new Congressional district map is unconstitutional, by some of the same groups that have also sued over the new maps for Ohios state House and Senate districts.

Chief Justice Maureen OConnor started by welcoming attorneys and online viewers to the arguments on two cases challenging the Ohio Congressional map approved by the Ohio Redistricting Commission and then on a party line vote by Republican state lawmakers last month.

The Ohio Supreme Court has been in person since September, but these cases were suddenly added to the docket between Christmas and New Years.

Arguing for a group of voters representing Democratic former US Attorney General Eric Holder's National Redistricting Action Fund and for the League of Women Voters of Ohio was Ben Stafford from the Elias Group, which has challenged Republican-drawn maps in several states. Those groups were involved in lawsuits over Ohios state legislative maps too.

Stafford said expert analysis shows Republicans could win 12 of 15 districts in this new Congressional map, in violation of a 2018 voter approved constitutional amendment to end the partisan process for drawing congressional districts.

This case is about how the General Assembly has thumbed its nose at these reforms and enacted a plan that palpably violates Article 19s new anti-gerrymandering protections," Stafford told the court.

Stafford and civil rights lawyer Robert Fram argued that a partisan map wouldnt have resulted in just using Ohios geography to create the plan. Fram said the 80% Republican-20% Democratic result was only achieved through county splits.

When we see a substantial deviation from compactness that results in a substantial increase in partisan gain, thats a tipoff that what we have here is an unduly partisan, favoring one political party," Fram said.

Earlier this month the court removed from the lawsuits the Democrats on the Redistricting Commission, Sen. Vernon Sykes and House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, and also Republican members Auditor Keith Faber and Gov. Mike DeWine, whos incidentally the father of Justice Pat DeWine. That left Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Senate President Matt Huffman and Speaker Bob Cupp, all Republicans.

Arguing for the map they approved was Phillip Strach, a North Carolina lawyer who said map drawing can use partisanship, just not excessively.

"This case is about a Congressional district plan that fully complies with Article 19 of the state Constitution and was the most constitutionally compliant of all the plans before the General Assembly," Strach said.

Strach said the other sides analysis is deeply flawed because of human interference, and that just using geography would also have created a Republican map.

He reiterated Republicans leaders claims that this map has six GOP and two Democratic seats with seven competitive districts, and only splits 12 counties just over half the number allowed and two counties, Hamilton and Summit, twice.

Democratic Justice Melody Stewart asked him about that: Its almost like youre saying its not as gerrymandered as it could have been.

Your Honor, Im just saying that the Constitution allows five counties to be split twice, so the General Assembly could legally have done that," Strach replied.

Ohio has had a Congressional delegation of 12 Republicans and 4 Democrats since the current map was first used in 2012.

Republican Chief Justice Maureen OConnor is considered a swing vote since she sided with the minority to throw out the current map in 2011. She asked Strach why he kept comparing the new map to the current one, which is considered one of the most gerrymandered maps in the country and arguably sparked the 2018 vote to change the process.

If you do compare it to that plan, which has been criticized but was never overruled, that if you look at that plan, its clearly " Strach began his answer.

O'Connor interrupted: "Counsel, didnt the people overrule it? I mean, maybe not overruled in front of us or another court, but the people in their vote overruled what had been done to that point, did they not?"

Strach restated his argument that this new map has more competitive districts and is therefore less partisan, which is what voters wanted, and also said lawmakers didnt have other maps that would be better.

In his follow up, Stafford said this new map is more gerrymandered than that 2011 one. And he closed with an analogy that might be understandable but perhaps difficult just weeks after OSU lost the Big Game.

If Ohio State every year has to spot Michigan a two touchdown lead, it might make the game more competitive. The rules are set up to favor one team over the other, and thats exactly what theyve done here with their supposedly competitive districts," Stafford said.

The law that created the new Congressional map sets a March 4 filing deadline for candidates for a May primary. Secretary of State LaRose filed a brief that didnt defend the maps constitutionality but asked for a quick ruling.

Decisions on this map and on the state House and Senate maps argued before the court a few weeks ago are expected soon.

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Constitutionality of Ohio's Congressional map now in the hands of the state's Supreme Court justices - ideastream