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On Episode 240 of The Qasim Rashid Show:

This week, we welcome a new guest: Columbia University Professor Emeritus Rashid Khalidi, one of the premier scholars on Palestine in the world today. He’s the author of the essential The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine — if you haven’t read it, you need to — and he’s just released an abbreviated version for younger readers, Palestine: A Primer, tracing that same history for the next generation.

We close the show with my reflections on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 — mourning the Americans lost that day, but refusing the revisionist “unity” narrative that’s grown up around it.

Listen to the full episode here on Substack, or watch the live interview with Rashid Khalidi below.

The Qasim Rashid Show has surpassed 328,000 downloads. Thank you for your support!

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, host of the Qasim Rashid Show, as well as Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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What Is The Public Thinking?

This week, prediction markets put Democrats' odds of winning all four core Senate seats—Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Maine—at 56%.

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the fight against the disinformation and hate that corporate media refuses to name. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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There’s only one problem—it’s all a lie. Let’s Address This.

Even Rudy Giuliani’s personal aide attested that no such thing happened, and the entire outrage is false.

In fact, Mayor Mamdani stayed until the end of the ceremony, and was the only senior elected official to do so.

Contrast Mayor Mamdani’s leadership with Donald Trump, who fell asleep at the 9/11 memorial ceremony at the Pentagon. Unsurprisingly, we see zero outrage from the right wing ecosystem. A reminder once more that every MAGA accusation is a confession.

Meanwhile, here is what my inbox looks like today. [CONTENT WARNING]

https://youtube.com/shorts/Pxaoou5yClM?is=AMNO8YBx-AErxwoU

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If you earnestly believe that “Palestinians” or “Hamas” are why we do not have peace in Palestine and Israel—this article is for you. Because the documented, sourced, on-the-record evidence leads, inescapably, to one man as the source of the conflict—at least spanning over the last 30 years: Benjamin Netanyahu.

A man who belongs not in the Prime Minister’s office but in a prison cell—as the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for him attests. Let’s Address This.

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Fact One: Netanyahu Funded Hamas

Yes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu funded Hamas. This is not speculation. None other than The Times of Israel reported this on October 8, 2023—the day after the October 7 attacks—based on years of documented Israeli policy.

As the Times of Israel reported, Netanyahu’s own Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in 2015 that keeping Hamas in power in Gaza served Israeli political interests. And as multiple Israeli sources confirmed, Netanyahu made a similar argument at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019—saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support transferring funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu did not want Hamas destroyed. He wanted Hamas empowered—specifically to undermine the Palestinian Authority and eliminate the possibility of a two-state solution. He funded the organization whose attack he now uses to justify a genocide. If any ordinary person funded Hamas, they’d be thrown in prison for aiding and abetting what the US and Israel has labeled a terrorist group. Why does Netanyahu get to walk free despite funding that same group?

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Fact Two: Netanyahu Was Warned of October 7—And Did Nothing

Multiple outlets, including the New York Times, have confirmed that Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence received warnings of the October 7 attack well in advance. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu was briefed. No, he did not act. In fat, the most recent reporting from the New York Times confirms that the UAE leader warned Netanyahu again mere days before October 7 that Hamas was planning a major attack. Rather than take any precautionary measures, Netanyahu did nothing with the information.

All the billions in military aid that our tax dollars fund, all the spy and clandestine tools at their disposal, all the clear warnings that an attack was coming—and Netanyahu sat on his hands. This isn’t just incompetence, it’s malice.

And worse, the malice and cruelty of Netanyahu’s actions don’t stop here.

When the 10/7 attack began—as forewarned—Netanyahu was briefed immediately. He then knowingly waited nearly four hours before ordering an IDF response.

Four hours.

Think about the suffering and terror he enabled by refusing to act immediately. What sane head of state hears of an attack on their nation’s sovereignty—”the worst attack since the Holocaust” as Netanyahu himself reminds us—and does nothing for nearly four hours?

And yet, it gets even worse.

As Haaretz reported, when the IDF did respond, it issued the Hannibal Directive—a controversial military protocol that, in effect, prioritizes preventing the capture of Israeli soldiers and civilians—by killing them—over their rescue. The directive’s application on October 7 has been the subject of extensive Israeli investigative journalism and remains one of the most damning elements of the Israeli government’s conduct on that day.

Netanyahu is now threatening to sue Haaretz for reporting what the UAE warned him. You do not sue for defamation when the reporting is false. You sue to silence the truth.

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Fact Three: Hamas Offered to Release the Hostages. Netanyahu Said No.

This is perhaps the most devastating fact in this entire piece—and it is almost entirely absent from American corporate media coverage. I’ve written on this extensively over the past three years.

Immediately after October 7, Hamas offered the full release of all civilian hostages with no conditions, except securing a mutually agreed-upon mediator to end the conflict. Israel rejected the offer flat out. Netanyahu would not even discuss it.

Hamas made clear to Israeli negotiators back in 2024, in writing, that they have no desire to continue to control Gaza and will leave—but it is Netanyahu who continues to break ceasefires and refuses deals to have the hostages returned.

Do not take Hamas’ word for it. Don’t even take my word for it. Take the word of the people closest to this catastrophe.

These are facts that the hostage families attest to, that Israeli hostage negotiators attest to, that Netanyahu’s own Israeli generals attest to, that the US Government attests to, that the UN Security Council attests to. Everyone agreed to hostage release without further bloodshed—except Netanyahu.

The families of the hostages themselves have stated publicly that Netanyahu is responsible for their loved ones remaining in captivity. At their weekly media conference, family members demanded he end the war.

As reported by Haaretz and numerous outlets, Efrat Machikawa, the relative of freed hostage Gadi Moses, said: “Netanyahu is misleading and deceiving the public at the expense of the lives of our hostages.”

Yotam Cohen, the brother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, was even more direct:

An entire nation has been deceived. They tell us that military pressure will bring the hostages back, when in fact all it does is kill them. The longer this war drags on, the more living hostages lose their lives. The blood of every hostage taken alive returning in a body bag is on Netanyahu’s hands.

Israel’s own hostage negotiating team has confirmed the same. According to Kan public broadcaster, sources involved in the ongoing talks accused Netanyahu of intentionally sabotaging the negotiations after he told a hawkish political forum that “Israel won’t leave the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor under any circumstances.”

One source said:

Netanyahu’s statement is intended to blow up the negotiations, there’s no other way about it. The prime minister knows that we are in a critical period during which we’re working on solutions for the Philadelphi Corridor and Netzarim ahead of the next summit. He knows there is progress—and then he puts out statements that are the opposite of what was agreed upon with the mediators.

These are not the actions of an innocent man—but a man complicit in war crimes and genocide. That is Netanyahu.

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So Who Do Palestinians Negotiate With?

Palestinians are told to negotiate for peace. With whom?

• With a man who funded Hamas.

• Who ignored advance warnings of the October 7 attack.

• Who waited four hours to respond when it came.

• Who ordered the Hannibal Directive.

• Who rejected a full hostage release immediately after the attack.

• Whose own negotiating team says he is intentionally sabotaging peace talks.

• Whose own generals say he is operating against their military advice.

• Whose own allies’ families say the blood of hostages is on his hands.

• Who has killed at least 1000 more Palestinians in Gaza since the “ceasefire” deal.

• And who the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes.

This is who Palestinians are called to negotiate with?

Any honest person can see that Netanyahu—not Palestinians—is the obstacle to peace. He is not a partner for negotiation. He is an obstructionist and a mass murderer. He is a war criminal with an ICC arrest warrant, using the suffering of Israeli hostages and the genocide of Palestinian civilians as instruments of his own political survival. And it is a shame that both Democratic and Republican administrations continue to protect him.

Netanyahu belongs in prison. The ICC agrees. The ICJ agrees. And the mountain of evidence compiled by his own allies, his own negotiators, his own generals, the families of his own hostages, the US government, and the UN Security Council leaves no honest space for any other conclusion.

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The ICC Warrant Is Not the End. It Is the Beginning.

The ICC’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is historic. But it is just the first step. While it establishes on an international front that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him for war crimes and crimes against humanity—it is not self executing.

No warrant is.

An arrest warrant is only meaningful if it is enforced. And enforcement requires political will from governments—including the United States government—that have spent decades shielding Israel from exactly this kind of accountability. So, when Netanyahu arrives in New York City later this month, he should be arrested upon arrival and handed over to the ICC for prosecution. He deserves due process, nothing more, nothing less.

But sadly, the Trump White House will do no such thing. To be sure, the Biden White House would not have acted either. The irony is that the US Government helped establish the ICC, and the ICC would not have been established without the US Government leading the way. And now that same US Government entity does not find the courage to do what is right—arrest a credibly accused war criminal and force him to stand trial for the charges made against him.

Corporate media will likewise continue to capitulate to Netanyahu and his fascism. And this yet another reason your support of Let’s Address This and independent media is so important. As a human rights lawyer, I am accountable to you—not to lobbyists, governments, or corporate interested. Human rights must uphold absolute justice, and that is precisely what we will always demand.

The receipts are in. The question is no longer what happened. The question is what do we do about it? And the answer begins with saying clearly, publicly, and without qualification: Netanyahu is a war criminal. He belongs before the ICC. And the genocide must end now.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, international accountability, and the journalism that corporate media refuses to deliver. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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On 9/11/01, I was a 19-year-old college sophomore. I am among the last generations who was an adult prior to 9/11, and observed the changes our world and country went through since. As we now pass the quarter century mark this week, I’m privileged to share an episode of a docu-series by my good friend Dr. , a Sikh American scholar of Islam. I hope that, in addition to reading my words below, you first watch his excellent episode. Let’s Address This.

We start with a story. This is part of the UNDIVIDED Series. UNDIVIDED is an American documentary series featuring bestselling author and religion scholar Simran Jeet Singh on a cross-country journey to discover how the fight for freedom has shaped and been shaped by our diverse religious communities throughout American history.

Lesson 1: Perspective in mourning

On 9/11 we mourn 2977 fellow Americans. Innocent people viciously ripped away from us by terrorists and extremists. We pray for the 2977 departed, we remember them, and we cherish their memories. And too often the conversation stops there. But there is so much more we must remember.

In the 25 years since we lost, by conservative estimates, another 6,000 Americans to polluted air caused by 9/11. And recently revealed documents demonstrate that the Giuliani administration knew of the poisonous air, and let people breath it in anyway. Will Rudy Giuliani ever face accountability for enabling this mass suffering?

We’ve also lost roughly 10,000 American soldiers. Depending on various estimates, hundreds of thousands to millions of Afghan and Iraq civilians were killed in the two subsequent wars after 9/11. Our government wasted more than $8 Trillion on the "war on terror"—a shocking $250 million a day for more than two decades. And we are no safer or closer to peace or justice today, than we were back then. We could have paid for student debt four times over, guaranteed universal healthcare 100 times over, ended homelessness, ended poverty, invested in major infrastructure and high speed rail, make massive climate moves, invested in affordable housing, and so much more. But instead, our elected officials spent it on war and destruction and we have absolutely nothing to show for it except the worst wealth and income inequality in more than a century, and a global instability that rivaled the years prior to World War II.

In the days and weeks after 9/11, Rep Barbara Lee stood with moral courage to oppose the war, and she was right. History has tragically proven her more right than I believe even she might have imagined. After 24 long, painful years, my prayer is that our future policies are not built on invasion and war, but on justice and diplomacy, on accountability and transparency. On our Constitutional promise of due process and human rights.

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Lesson 2: Perspective in history

Uninformed memes like the one below have begun popping up recently, dangerously whitewashing post 9/11 America by falsely calling us a "unified" country on 9/12.

If even after 25 years you think the weeks or months after 9/11 were days of unity, you have not been paying attention to the BIPOC people and Muslims in America. The people in your life who feared for our safety and suffered a massive spike in hate crimes for something we had nothing to do with.

Yes, the myth of "unity" means ignoring the massive spike in anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, and anti-Arab hate crimes post 9/11. It means ignoring the Patriot Act (which even some Democrats in Congress still recklessly vote for), the NYPD’s illegal warrantless spying on American citizens who are Muslim, the dozens of states who tried to pass "anti-Shariah" bills, Guantanamo Bay, CIA torture, indiscriminate drone strikes, & the Muslim Ban—all which denied the justice our Constitution promises.

These are all connected.

The "unity" was if you unquestionably supported what George W. Bush called "a crusade," that “God told him” to wage. Otherwise, you were unpatriotic. "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists," Bush famously said—whitewashing objections to killing of hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians. And if you’re surprised about the ‘sudden’ rise of Christian nationalism today, remember that George Bush laid the groundwork with his sociopathic claims that God told him to invade Iraq and mass murder people.

Instead, the unity we actually need is unity built on justice, as our Constitution requires. On ensuring we do not scapegoat innocent people, but always uphold due process for all people—especially when it's hard.

If we can't uphold justice when it's hard, it was never justice we upheld.

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Lesson 3: Perspective on the future

Revisionist history of "unity" undermines the lived experiences of BIPOC people and Muslims. Let's instead reflect on our past errors, and ensure a future nation built on justice. The reality is that anti-Muslim hate crimes are still at record highs. The continued dehumanization and genocide of Palestinians, funded by U.S. tax dollars demonstrates that the lessons of mass death in Afghanistan and Iraq have gone unheeded. And Islamophobia remains an acceptable form of bigotry in American politics today.

And as I’ve written recently, even the Department of Justice tragically demonstrates a double standard in how they respond to the murder and kidnapping of American citizens—condemning and prosecuting crimes committed by Hamas, but ignoring those crimes against American citizens committed by Netanyahu.

The future also requires we do right by those who continue to suffer from 9/11 in the United States. Building on what the 9/11 files document earlier with poisonous air, how many people realize that more FDNY members have died from World Trade Center illnesses than killed on 9/11? Our nation’s lack of guaranteed universal healthcare as a human right is a perpetual atrocity inflicted upon our populace.

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Conclusion

On 9/11/01 I was a 19-year-old college sophomore, unsure of what the future held, and no platform from which to speak. On 9/11/25 I am a 43-year-old father of three, husband of 17 years, and human rights lawyer with a platform committed to justice. And that is a platform I intend to continue to grow, with your support, to advance our fight for justice and humanity.

As we see increasing volatility in our nation and in our world, I am reminded that the path forward requires us to make important, thoughtful choices grounded in empathy, unity, and justice. Indeed, if we want to ensure we learn from the lessons of history, our future must be grounded in absolute justice.

That means rejecting double standards in legal accountability, rejecting discriminatory legislation against marginalized communities, and rejecting anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia. Today we mourn those lost over the last 24 years. The people lost, the opportunities lost, and the rights lost. And the best way to honor what we lost, is to ensure we truly uphold justice for the next 24 years, and beyond, to demand true justice for all. True love of humanity requires it. Just remember, love isn't a word, it's meaningful action for justice.

And that is something we must Never Forget.

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"We have yet to understand, that if I’m starving—you are in danger. People think that my danger makes them safe—they're in trouble."

—James Baldwin

How many people realize that Americans are suffering worse wealth and income inequality today in 2026 than they did before The Great Depression a century ago? This Labor Day, while politicians and legacy media marvel over how great the Stock Market is doing, I want to provide a clearer lens on the actual state of the economy, what working people are suffering through every day, and how to ensure we better protect economic justice in America. So, here are nine facts on the state of our economy that legacy media will likely ignore. Let’s Address This.

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Fact 1: Americans are suffering worse economic inequality today than we did prior to The Great Depression. That inequality in major part enabled an economic collapse, one Americans would not emerge from for over a decade. And if we want to prevent a similar 21st century collapse, we must change course quickly. Notice the below inequality chart, the relatively flat trend from 1940-1980, and then the spike since. This is not by accident. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Fact 2: According to the GINI Index, which measures economic inequality, the United States ranks last among developed nation on Earth. In fact, overall we’re even ranked worse than Russia or China on economic inequality. What does it say about our economic policies if nations run by autocrats and dictators achieve better economic justice than what our politicians enact?

Fact 3: The so-called "right to work" laws are not just anti-worker, they’re pro racist. “Right to work” laws were designed to uphold white supremacy by protecting employers who refused to hire Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) workers. These laws were crafted to weaken unions, dismantle collective bargaining, and strip workers of their power. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wisely warned us:

We must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone... Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer, and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.

This is why I refuse to sanitize what “right to work” really is. It was built to protect white supremacy, not to protect workers, and calling it anything less only lets it keep doing exactly what it was designed to do.

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Fact 4: If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and corporate productivity, it would be at least $27 per hour today. Instead, millions of workers are struggling to make ends meet on wages that have stagnated for decades. An analysis by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy and Research placed the minimum wage at $23/hour back in 2021. Given inflation and continued overall productivity growth, it should be at least $28/hour now in 2026.

Fact 5: The Reagonomics myth of "trickle-down" economics has been nothing more than a scam that has, since 1980, redistributed an astonishing $79 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Now recall the graph in Fact 1 above, and the spike in inequality since 1980. This shift in economic inequality is not an accident—it's when the Reagonomics scam began. This trickle down scam creates an economic system that favors the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. It is devastating.

So how do we fix this?

Fact 6: Well, we already have a proven way to fix this. From 1940 to 1980, the wealthiest Americans paid marginal tax rates of 70-94%. None went broke, none left the country, and all remained exceedingly wealthy. During this time, manufacturing boomed, and we witnessed the strongest middle-class growth in U.S. history. It is long past time to return to a system that works for everyone, not just the ultra-rich.

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Fact 7: Wage theft is the largest form of theft in the United States Today. Experts have long calculated that corporations continue to steal an estimated $50 billion from workers annually through wage theft and other exploitative practices. That’s more than all other forms of theft in America—combined. As Economic Policy Institute Vice President Ross Eisenbrey reports:

Wage theft affects far more people than more well-known crimes such as bank robberies, convenience store robberies, street and highway robberies, and gas station robberies combined, and can be absolutely devastating for workers living from paycheck to paycheck. For low-wage workers, the wages lost from wage theft can total nearly 10 percent of their annual earnings.

Fact 8: The collapse of unions has enabled the rise of oligarchs. We need more labor unions because unions strengthen economic justice. Unions contribute to 11% or more in increased annual wages, better benefits and paid time off, help close the gender pay gap, and help close the racial pay gap. And ultimately, Unions protect workers against billion dollar corporations. And not just low income workers.

Consider this: The wealthiest actors and athletes are unionized to ensure that team owners and billionaire financiers cannot exploit them. So why should non-unionized middle-class workers be left vulnerable to the whims of billionaire business owners?

Fact 9: Billionaires don’t create jobs, they exploit workers by driving out small businesses, driving down wages, and driving up their own corporate profits. Indeed, 99.9% of businesses are small businesses with fewer than 250 employees. Does anyone seriously not see the problem with this report by OxFam that billionaires “gained” what workers lost during the pandemic?

Let us not forget that America is not $40 trillion in debt because the poor rely too much on welfare and pay too little in taxes. The real reason is that billionaires pay too little in taxes and rely too much on corporate welfare. Billionaire philanthropy, often touted as a noble endeavor, is little more than PR designed to distract from their tax avoidance. The fact is, 90% of today's billionaires were born before Jim Crow laws were abolished, before immigration was open to non-whites, and before women were allowed financial credit. The idea that they "earned it fair and square" is one of the greatest shams of our time. Stop defending billionaires, start taxing them out of existence, and start fighting for economic justice in America.

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Conclusion

Our current economic model is not sustainable. It is unsustainable that 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It is unsustainable that 1 in 6 Americans is food insecure. It is unsustainable that 114,000 Americans die annually because we don’t guarantee healthcare as a human right. It is unsustainable that while a universal healthcare model would save Americans $1T annually per a recent Yale study, corporations lobby corrupt politicians to prevent healthcare as a human right. It is unsustainable that Americans have the lowest life expectancy, highest maternal mortality, and highest infant mortality of any developed nation on Earth. And it is unsustainable that as billionaires and the ultra wealthy get wealthier, working people continue to suffer and die sooner. We can fix this, but it requires us to stand united as working people.

This means ensuring we raise the living wage, crack down on union busters, pass the PRO Act, raise corporate taxes, decrease taxes on working people, and demand paid time off and universal healthcare as a human right. This Labor Day, as you enjoy your weekend, your pension, your overtime pay, and the many other benefits that unions have fought for, remember that the fight for economic justice is far from over. We must continue to stand strong, unionize, and demand fair taxation to ensure a future where everyone can thrive.

This Labor Day, support Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid as a free or paid subscriber. Until Sept 12, you can sign up for an annual subscription at $2/mo.

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What Is The Public Thinking?

This week, prediction markets put Democrats' odds of winning all four core Senate seats—Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Maine—at 59%.

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the fight against the disinformation and hate that corporate media refuses to name. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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More than 53 weeks have passed, and while Joe Walsh continues to praise and defend Israel on social media, he refuses to defend Israel in the field of debate.

Why? Because knows that Israel’s actions are indefensible. I afforded Joe about six months to respond on his own. When he did not, I reached out directly at least once a month to remind him. Despite these efforts, he still has not responded.

So now, I am declaring publicly that the debate is over. I have won the debate. Joe Walsh has silently conceded. He has conceded because he knows his stance on Israel is indefensible and does not pass legal muster, moral clarity, or ethical integrity. And a year later, Israel has murdered more civilians in Gaza after the so-called ceasefire, than Israelis killed on 10/7. Israel furthermore continues to kill civilians in the West Bank, and has pulled us into another war with Iran. My arguments from a year ago are—sadly—even stronger and my position is further vindicated. I reproduce below what I wrote a year ago to Joe Walsh. These are arguments that Walsh, or indeed any defender of Israel’s actions in Palestine, has been unable to refute. Let’s Address This.

The Debate

Former Tea Party Republican Congressman and newly minted Democrat Joe Walsh and I disagree on much. But I continue to dialogue with him for two reasons.

One, engagement does not mean endorsement. Just because I engage with Joe on a particular topic (in this case Palestine and Israel) does not mean I endorse all his views. In fact, by engaging I can better document where I think he’s wrong.

Two, having followed Joe’s career since his time in Congress nearly 15 years ago, I admire the steps he’s taken to rectify where he was wrong in the past, own up to mistakes, and make amends. He was one of the first Republicans to oppose Trump, a move that eventually had him leave the party. That takes integrity. He’s taken notable steps since to lead by example. For example, even now, as Establishment Democrats refuse to so much as acknowledge Zohran Mamdani’s existence, Walsh is loudly demanding the Party support him because he is, after all the duly elected Democratic nominee for NYC Mayor. I respect Joe’s leadership in this space.

Which brings us to this present discussion on Gaza.

A few weeks ago Joe and I held a robust Substack Live on Gaza. In a recent piece titled “Let’s Talk About Gaza,” Joe elaborated on his views of Israel and Palestine in writing. I followed up to share that I found many of his claims demonstrably false, and asked if he’d be open to me writing a response?

“Absolutely,” was his immediate reply. He is reading this piece now at the same time as everyone else, and has additionally committed to offering his written response.

Again, I respect that. I believe that if we can stay grounded in our desire to uphold justice and peace for all people of the region, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and more, then we can make meaningful progress. Likewise, I believe that our respective audiences can benefit by seeing a genuine and respectful exchange of ideas, and make decisions based on verifiable facts. In this piece, I do not attack Joe, I attack his argument. With that, I dive in to my rebuttal to Joe Walsh’s piece on Gaza, and welcome your questions and comments. Let’s Address This.

Setting the Stage: Joe Stands With Israel

Joe Walsh began his piece reaffirming that despite his party switch, he continues to ‘Stand with Israel’ and will do all he can to ensure the Democratic Party does as well.

Joe goes on to make clear that despite the hostility he faces from both sides of the political spectrum, he stands firm in his support of Israel. In his own words:

I still stand by it, despite getting mildly ratioed and losing a few subscribers. But I think you deserve an explanation as to why I posted that, and why my support persists even now, as the war in Gaza grinds on and the world shouts “enough.”

It’s tough to be a vocal supporter of Israel these days. My post was the direct result of a call I received from a fellow Democrat. He thanked me for taking this position publicly—something hardly any Democrat is willing to do anymore, at least not out loud.

And I get it. I know what’s happening in Gaza. I see the images of rubble and emaciated children. I know there’s a humanitarian crisis. I know Israel is hitting Hamas, and civilians are paying the price. It’s gut-wrenching.

But if you think that means Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself—or worse, that it doesn’t have the right to exist at all—I believe you are wrong.

Off the bat, I object to Joe’s framing that Israel’s siege on Gaza has anything to do with self defense or its very existence. These are straw man arguments that deflect from the demonstrable genocide that the Israeli government is committing. So let’s dive into the substance of Joes arguments, which I break down into four main claims.

Joe Walsh’s Four Main Claims

1. Hamas started this war

2. Hamas hides in hospitals, behind civilians, and in schools

3. There would be peace if Hamas stopped fighting

4. Israel is a stable democracy

While the above generally summarizes the point, I make sure to quote Joe verbatim below—lest I make the mistake of misrepresenting his argument by putting it into my words. Once I reproduce his exact words, I follow up with a detailed rebuttal. Let’s start with Joe’s first claim, that Hamas started this war.

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Joe’s First Claim: Hamas Started This War

First, let’s get this straight: Hamas started this war. On October 7, 2023, they didn’t just “launch an attack.” They slaughtered over a thousand Israelis, burned families alive, raped women, and dragged hostages—babies, teenagers, grandmothers—into Gaza. That’s evil. Not “complicated,” not “a reaction to oppression,” but pure, unadulterated evil. And evil like that doesn’t get negotiated with. It gets destroyed.

There is much to unpack here, so let’s take it one by one.

While Hamas’ attack on 10/7 is a war crime because it attacked civilians, it is also not the start of the violence. And there are at least six points Joe must grapple with if he truly wants to stand by his claim that this violence began on 10/7.

The first point.

As I and human rights lawyers globally have long detailed, we must recognize Israel’s 57 year illegal military occupation of Palestinian territories for the illegal and violent act it is. Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, reports, “The world must recognize that ending Israel’s illegal occupation is a prerequisite to stopping the recurrent human rights violations in Israel and the [Occupied Palestinian Territories]. Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the longest and one of the most deadly military occupations in the world.”

Joe, a strong defender of the Second Amendment, is silent on how he would respond to a foreign military violently and illegally occupying his home and his land, even as it kills anyone who dares stand up to said military? Does Joe consider Israel’s illegal, violent, and deadly military occupation as a form of violence?

The second point.

Hamas is not an ancient organization, but having been established only in 1987, it is a reaction to more than 20 years of Israel’s illegal occupation and land grab. Moreover, Hamas funding came with the approval and support of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a way to delegitimize Palestinian statehood. As Times of Israel reports, “For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Joe is silent on Netanyahu openly propping up Hamas. And while Joe will no doubt state he opposes Netanyahu and wants him gone—that does not change the point I am making that this violence did not begin on 10/7. Indeed, how absurd that the man who propped up Hamas for years is now pointing to Hamas as his excuse to bombard Gaza? It’s like an arsonist claiming the only way to put out a fire he started is to dump more gasoline on the fire.

The third point.

Israel’s 700,000 illegal settlements spanning 50+ years violate international human rights law. For example, on September 27, 2023, just 10 days before the 10/7 attack, the UN issued a press release citing the strong opposition to Israel’s illegal settlement expansion by none other than the United States itself, “The representative of the United States said the ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians sets back prospects for peace and is responsible for “so much needless suffering”. Voicing concern over the situation in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, she said the United States opposes the advancement of settlements and urges Israel to refrain from those actions, emphasizing that it undermines “the geographic viability of a two-State solution, exacerbates tensions and further harms trust between the two parties”.

I repeat, “the ongoing violence” caused by Israel’s illegal settlements. This is testimony from the United States itself—Israel’s staunchest ally. How does this translate to “Hamas started the war on 10/7?” Joe does not address this contradiction.

The fourth point.

Israel’s land, air, and sea blockades on Gaza violates international human rights law. Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza, its holding of thousands of Palestinian hostages (including up to 1000 Palestinian children), all violate human rights law. As NPR reports: “Israel detains individuals without any intent to prosecute them in a trial, and they're held on the basis of secret security information that the detainee and their lawyer cannot review. Israel has been using this form of detention since its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - so back to 1967.”

These are hostages by any other name. The near 1000 imprisoned children are further denied access to counsel or parents, while suffering ongoing physical and sexual abuse. As Save the Children International reports: “Palestinian children in the Israel military detention system face physical and emotional abuse, with four out of five (86%) of them being beaten, and 69% strip-searched. Nearly half (42%) are injured at the point of arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Some report violence of a sexual nature and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages.”

And while we have seen universal (rightful) condemnation of Hamas holding Israeli hostages, even by the most conservative estimates, Israel is holding far more Palestinian hostages without charge or trial—and with global silence to this atrocity. See this daunting comparison by data scientist .

Would Joe seriously argue that the Israeli government holding hostage thousands of Palestinians, including children, where they are denied access to counsel, are beaten, and are sexually abused by Israeli soldiers is somehow not an act of violence? Again, if a foreign military occupied Illinois, where Joe was a Congressman, took thousands Illinoisans hostage, including children—and we knew for a fact those children were suffering physical and sexual abuse—would Joe dismiss those acts as “not violent?” I highly doubt it, and rather, I would hope not.

The fifth point.

In just the one year prior to 10/7 the Israeli military killed at least 240 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank (where there is no Hamas authority or rule). That death toll included 47 children. In fact, it was the deadliest year in recent history for Palestinian civilians.

If the roles were reversed and Hamas had killed 240 Israelis including 47 Jewish Israeli children, would Joe Walsh dismiss that as “not starting the violence” or would he rightly condemn that as horrific violence? Again, I would hope the latter, but Joe is silent on this atrocity in his article.

The sixth point.

Finally, it is also worth noting that while Joe repeats the claim of mass rape, he might be surprised to know two things.

One, the Israeli prosecutor in charge of filing rape charges withdrew her case due to lack of evidence, and has not filed a single rape charge. Not one. Prosecutor Moran Gaz is the former head of the security cases division at the Southern District Prosecutor’s Office in Israel, and is a member of 'Team 7.10,' responsible for prosecuting rape and sexual assault crimes that occurred on 10/7. In an interview with Israeli media outlet Ynet News she admits that her department has “found no evidence to substantiate the claims of "mass" and "systematic" rape by Hamas.” She went on to state:

In the end, we don’t have any complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different… We approached women’s rights organisations and asked for cooperation. They told us that no one had approached them.

So, not only could the Israeli prosecutor specifically charged with prosecuting the claim of mass rape find no evidence of mass or systemic rape—even with the help of women’s rights organizations—they could not find a single example to prosecute. So why does Joe continue to make the claim of rape when the Israeli government itself admits no such evidence exists to substantiate that claim?

Two, as if the above was not devastating enough to Joe’s claim of mass rape, the Netanyahu government is blocking a UN commission into investigating rape charges because they are afraid that doing so will instead expose the Israeli military as the perpetuator of systemic sexual abuse. Israel’s oldest newspaper Haaretz confirms that Israel fears a UN investigation into Hamas would instead expose the rape and sexual violence committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians, reporting:

The UN's special representative on conflict-related sexual violence asked to investigate Hamas' alleged crimes on October 7 and towards the hostages, but Israel refused her request to access Israeli detention facilities to examine claims of IDF abuse. Israeli women's rights groups warn this could lead to Israel, instead of Hamas, being added to the UN's sexual violence blacklist

So not only does Joe provide no evidence of rape on 10/7, he ignores the Israeli government’s admission that rape did not occur, and he ignores that per Netanyahu, the actual fear is that the UN would document systemic rape committed by the Israeli military—which we already have ample video footage documenting.

All of the above six points are well documented. None of have been addressed or even attempted to be rebuked by those claiming Israel is justified in its genocide on Gaza. And I would hope that upon reviewing these six points, Joe can agree that 10/7 was by no means the start of this violence. Not by a long shot.

Let’s move on to Joe’s second claim.

Joe’s Second Claim: Hamas Hides In Hospitals, Behind Civilians, and in Schools

But we can’t ignore this truth either: Hamas hides behind those civilians on purpose. They store rockets in schools. They put command centers under hospitals. They make sure that when Israel fights back, the world sees dead Palestinians instead of dead terrorists. That’s the playbook. And it’s been the playbook since they took control of Gaza in 2007. And far too many Americans fall for it every time.

Joe doesn’t provide any evidence for these claims, whatsoever. He also ignores that the Israeli government has killed more than 230 journalists in Gaza, has banned all international media from reporting on their actions in Gaza, has killed dozens of aid workers, has killed American citizens, and has faced zero accountability whatsoever. Moreover, while Joe accuses Hamas (without evidence) of using human shields, he ignores what is well documented—the Israeli military uses human shields “in a systematic way.” This is a war crime.

Furthermore, Joe ignores that the only “evidence” we have of “Hamas hiding in hospitals” is the Israeli government’s verbal testimony, right after they bomb those hospitals. This includes the “double tap” bombing the Israeli government committed just this week at Al Naseer, killing five journalists and up to 20 aid workers, while claiming they targeted a “Hamas camera.” Apparently even cameras are Hamas now.

But perhaps most devastating to Joe’s claim about “Hamas hiding in hospitals” is the testimony of the Israeli military itself, which admitted to the UN that they have zero evidence of Hamas hiding in hospitals or using hospitals as command centers.

Per a detailed UN report in Summer of 2024, the Israeli military had then bombed all 110 hospitals and medical centers in Gaza, claiming Hamas was ‘hiding inside.’ This means that in bombing 110 healthcare facilities, the Israeli military should have had explicitly clear knowledge that Hamas was using these facilities as “command-and-control” centers in violation of IHL. And if the Israeli government had explicitly clear knowledge, then they should have zero trouble providing ample evidence, example after example, that Hamas is using hospitals in violation of IHL.

But what does the reality show us? A detailed UN Commission from Summer 2024 concluded the following:

Israeli security forces asserted that over 85% of major medical facilities in Gaza were used by Hamas for terror operations, but did not provide evidence to substantiate that claim. Israeli security forces alleged that there were tunnels underneath or connected to hospitals, and that Hamas stored weapons, hid personnel and operated headquarters from within and underneath hospitals. The Commission interviewed senior medical personnel at hospitals and they denied that there was any military activity, emphasizing that the hospitals’ only role was to treat patients.

Let’s unpack this. The Israeli military first claims that 85% of the 110 medical facilities it targeted were used for “Hamas terror operations.” That means that it admits 15% of the medical facilities it targeted had no Hamas terror operations, but the Israeli military targeted them anyway. That in and of itself is a clear admission of war crimes. And that is all that should be necessary for the US Government, indeed the global West, to stop arming Netanyahu.

But adding to these war crimes is that even in the “85% (allegedly) legitimate targets,” the Israeli government could provide no evidence to substantiate its claims. None. Not one single example. The UN Commission found zero evidence from the Israeli government, or from a single senior medical personnel at the hospitals that any military activity occurred at the hospitals that the Israeli military bombed. Yet, the bombings continue, in complete violation of IHL. And given that these bombings are deliberate and intentional, this satisfies the “intent” element of proving genocide.

Indeed, beyond war crimes, the Israeli military bombing 110 hospitals and medical centers in Gaza, while knowing full well they are not Hamas military command centers, proves they are intentionally killing Palestinian civilians. That is genocide.

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Joe’s Third Claim: If Hamas Stops Fighting, There’s Peace

I’ve been to Israel twice. I’ve sat in homes where families live under constant rocket fire. I’ve walked the narrow streets of Jerusalem where every security guard knows a bomb could go off at any moment. Israelis know they are one bad day away from annihilation. And yet, they get lectured by comfortable Westerners about “restraint.”

The reality is, if Israel stops fighting tomorrow, Hamas will regroup, rearm, and come again. If Hamas stops fighting tomorrow, there’s peace. And it’s why I refuse to play the moral-equivalence game.

There are three facts here that are devastating to Joe’s claim above.

First, is the fact that Hamas only exists because Netanyahu continued to prop them up—a fact I cited earlier. Hamas would not have been able to survive but for Netanyahu.

Second, Hamas has already made clear to Israeli negotiators back in 2024, in writing, that they have no desire to continue to control Gaza and will leave—but it is Netanyahu who continues to break ceasefires and refuses deals to have the hostages returned.

Third, these are facts that the hostage families attest to, that Israeli hostage negotiators attest to, that Netanyahu’s own Israeli generals attest to, that the US Government attests to, that the UN Security Council attests to.

So we have two options before us and neither of them require us to believe anything Hamas says.

Option One: We believe that the hostage families are lying, the Israeli negotiators are lying, the Israeli generals are lying, the US Government is lying, and the UN Security Council is lying.

Option Two: Netanyahu is lying.

These are the two options before us. Based on these facts, how on Earth can anyone believe that anyone but Netanyahu is responsible for the perpetuation of this violence?And given that Joe has already made clear he does not trust Netanyahu and wants him gone, he should agree with me that Netanyahu is lying, all the other entities are telling the truth, and his third claim above is without backing.

I must also add that I, too, have been to Israel and Occupied Palestine. I have seen the apartheid conditions first hand. I’ve been stopped by the Israeli military at gunpoint, forced off busses at gun point, forced to show my papers at gun point, and threatened with arrest if I did not comply. I have seen the illegal and violent military occupation of Palestinian land, the “Israelis only” areas of Occupied Palestine where Palestinians are not allowed to walk under threat of “administrative detention,” i.e. being taken hostage without charge, trial, due process, or access to counsel. Joe is right, there is no moral equivalence, but not for the reason he claims.

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Joe’s Fourth Claim: Israel Is A Democracy

Israel is the one stable, democratic ally we’ve got in a region that’s otherwise a snake pit of dictators and terrorist states. The Israeli people share our values—free elections, free press, rule of law—and they’ve bled alongside us in the fight against jihadist terror. If you think Iran and its proxies are just Israel’s problem, try asking the families of the Americans they’ve killed in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

Let’s be honest, this sounds like a redux of post 9/11 propaganda used to pass horrific pieces of legislation like the Patriot Act and expand anti-Muslim hate and sentiment. This is George Bush screaming “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” The same scapegoating that helped him sell two illegal wars, resulting in the mass death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians, of tens of thousands of American soldiers, and of trillion of dollars wasted while Americans didn’t (and still don’t) have enough to put food on the table and secure a roof over their heads. We must be better than this.

Also, I’d welcome receipts to see where Israel has “bled alongside us in the fight against jihadist terror?” Clearly I am not looking in the right places, because I cannot find any evidence that the Israeli military sent its soldiers to Iraq (despite Netanyahu goading the US into that war), Afghanistan, or any other illegal war the United States waged to fight alongside American troops? I do know that the Israeli government has killed at least 9 American citizens over the last few years, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Joe call out that injustice or demand accountability. Hopefully I am wrong.

Moreover, the assertion that Israel is a “stable democracy” needs more than Joe’s simple claim—because the facts prove otherwise.

Stable democracies value free press, they don’t enforce international media blackouts as Israel is doing in Gaza. They don’t kill more journalists in 22 months (240+) than journalists killed in 27 years of the Vietnam War and World War 2 combined (132)—as Israel has done. They don’t enforce apartheid on foreign land that they’re also illegally occupying for 70 years—as Israel is doing. They don’t block aid to the people they’re bombing, enabling famine as the UN just confirmed, while shooting and killing more than 1500 Palestinians simply trying to get aid—as Israel is doing. They don’t—as Professor Zachery Foster (himself Jewish) thoroughly documents—have a two-tiered system of apartheid, one for Israeli Jewish citizens of Israel and one for Israeli Arab citizens of Israel—as Israel is enforcing. A stable democracy does not do these things, but an apartheid state does, and that is what we are witnessing. Our tax dollars are funding these atrocities, and it is only right that we demand they end without delay.

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Conclusion

The above covers the main crux of Joe’s claims of why he still stands with Israel. I am hopeful that in his response he either addresses each of my points one by one with facts and evidence—or concede the point.

I have been clear in my decades of advocacy for peace in the region that we must adhere to international human rights law. We must ensure that Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the region can live in peace and harmony. I’ve documented the thousands of years in which Jews lived peacefully under and with Muslim rule, while facing immense persecution under Christian rule. To this day in Jerusalem, it is a Muslim family that holds the keys to the church that safeguard the holy Sepulcher of Christ—a tradition that has lasted centuries. I have seen this with my very own eyes. This trust is not by accident, but by precedent. It is this interfaith, intercultural, interpersonal, and intergenerational precedent that we must hold fast to.

This is not a religious war. It is certainly not, as Joe claims, a war between Israel and “jihadists.” This is a genocide of Netanyahu’s concocting, backed by bipartisan administrations in the United States, and further enabled by Western governments. It is not merely my opinion that this is genocide, it is the global consensus of genocide scholars and Holocaust scholars, including—nay, especially—that of Jewish and Israeli scholars like Dr. Omer Bertov and Israeli based human rights groups like B’TSalem.

Justice and international human rights law mandate that ICC prosecutions proceed against the Israeli government and against Hamas. Let due process and the evidence exonerate or condemn those responsible for these atrocities. But let us not ignore the clear evidence of Israel’s genocide and injustice against Palestinian civilians, lest we be recorded as those who were on the wrong side of history.

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I share this updated story because this threat remains. That is both unfortunate and the ground reality. But while I still have the ability to speak from this platform that each of you has helped me build, I will speak—loudly and unapologetically.

My hope is that you will read this, recognize the urgency of now, and support my human rights advocacy. That you will see that despite the immense external pressure, some of us will never relent in our oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, absolute justice, and universal human rights. And finally, that you will see why I cannot do this work alone, and need your trust, support, and partnership. Let’s Address This.

A Dark Secret We Don’t Talk About

Throughout this Trump administration, we have watched major law firms capitulate to Trump’s fascism—some offering up $100M in free legal services to appease him. While it’s easy to dismiss this as the “right-wing cult,” these aren’t just “MAGA” firms. Remarkably, infuriatingly, depressingly, while former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff spoke loudly about the need to oppose Trump, his law firm—where he is a partner— capitulated to Trump with a $100M commitment of pro bono legal services.

I certainly do not have that kind of money. But I do have a set of values and principles that prevents me from capitulating to a convicted rapist, convicted felon, and likely pedophile. This shouldn’t be a high bar, folks — yet, here we are. I am making a conscious decision to refuse to bend the knee to intimidation. And that comes with a price. Thus, I wrote about the judge’s attempt to strip me of my law license at critical risk to my career as a lawyer.

I know this will eventually reach the desk of the judge who already tried (twice) to end my legal career. I know it will reach the desks of those currently seething to do so. But I’ve decided that remaining silent, especially as our constitutional and due process rights are ripped to shreds, is just not an option. Let’s go back to Spring 2025.

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A First-Class Letter With a Judicial Complaint

It all started when a Florida chief judge filed a formal bar complaint against me for my alleged “misconduct” of criticizing an unjust judicial ruling on my Substack and Twitter.

On May 12th, 2025 I received a daunting First-Class mail letter, the likes of which I had never before received. An official warning from the Virginia State Bar (VSB) informing me that a Judge had filed a bar and ethics complaint against me. The complaint called on the VSB to investigate me and determine, effectively, whether I should be allowed to continue to practice law.

I read the sentence repeatedly, hoping each time I had misread what was obvious. Worse, I only had 21 days to respond. For context—between undergrad, LSAT prep, law school, and working as a licensed attorney, I have invested 25 years of my life into my legal career. And now, I risked losing 25 years of my life in just 21 days.

The complaint came from Francis J. Allman, Chief Judge of Florida’s Second Judicial District. (NOTE: No one reading this should attempt to contact him or address him for any reason. That is not what I seek, nor will it help me in any way). With that, I was even more confused. I am licensed to practice law in Illinois and in Virginia. I have never appeared before any judge in Florida, much less handled any Florida case or client.

Why was a Florida judge filing an attorney misconduct claim against an Illinois-based attorney by going after my Virginia law license?

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Analyzing the Complaint Against Me

To answer that question, read what Chief Judge Allman wrote in his complaint.

Apparently, Judge Allman found the time to scour millions of daily Tweets and Substack posts, and somehow arrive at my social media, where he found a Tweet and Substack article he didn’t like, and then wrote a detailed bar complaint calling on the VSB to effectively end my legal career and livelihood. What was so indefensible about my post that angered a chief judge? Read for yourself and see:

And here is a link to the Substack article in question with a screenshot of the headline.

Here’s the relevant part from the above article:

In Florida, 20-year-old Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was held in Leon County Jail. His crime? Allegedly entering the state as an “unauthorized alien.” But here’s the twist—Lopez-Gomez is a U.S. citizen. Born in the United States. He showed the judge his U.S. birth certificate. The judge didn’t care. He remained in jail anyway. In a healthy democracy, judges don’t detain citizens of the United States for having the wrong skin color or last name. But we are no longer in a healthy democracy. We are watching fascism unfold in real time.

Experts at the American Immigration Council estimate that under the previous Trump regime, ICE deported as many as 70 U.S. Citizens, mostly of Latino ethnicity. Knowing this, I loudly spoke up for Mr. Lopez-Gomez’s due process rights. And based on my comments vehemently objecting to the unlawful arrest and detainment of a U.S. citizen of Latino ethnicity, Florida’s Chief Judge Allman filed an official complaint to the VSB. A complaint that threatened to strip me of my hard earned livelihood, how I feed my family, and how I fight for human rights and democracy—including the right to due process and free speech.

And then I read the rest of the Chief Judge’s complaint. It is jaw dropping.

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Refusing to Cite Actual Violations

Chief Judge Allman continued his complaint:

There is so much to unpack here.

First—while claiming “he believes” I had violated “several” Virginia Bar Rules—throughout his lengthy complaint, Judge Allman cited exactly zero allegedly violated rules. Not one. Apparently, because “he believes” I violated the Bar Rules, that warrants an investigation into my livelihood and right to practice law.

Quoting Internet Randos

Second, Judge Allman’s next claim was even more perplexing. He wrote:

Mr. Rashid's post almost immediately resulted in a response post from a person who advocated that "these judges" and their families be held accountable.

Here is the screenshot Judge Allman included in his complaint.

Unsurprisingly, Judge Allman neglected to explain why or how an Internet comment by an account—which may or may not be a bot—named “Kallie [black cat emoji] Maddie [white cat emoji] Kitty [rainbow emoji]” means that I have violated the rules of the VSB? I have no idea who this person is. The first time I saw said Tweet was when Judge Allman shared the screenshot he or his clerk took at 10:36 and forgot to crop.

Sadly, the bar complaint gets even more confusing from here.

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Addressing Claims of “Misrepresentation”

Third, Chief Judge Allman defends the decision to detain a U.S. citizen by claiming I “misrepresented the case.” I did no such thing. But for the sake of argument, let us assume I was wrong in my legal assessment. Do we want a country where lawyers can lose their law licenses for publicly disagreeing with a judicial ruling? Does this mean we shut down every legal blog on the Internet that critiques the Supreme Court? The free speech harms would no doubt be fascistic untenable.

But also, let’s look at the facts. In his full complaint:

• Judge Allman first admits that the court found “no probable cause” as to the charge against Mr. Lopez-Gomez. I agreed.

• Judge Allman then admits that the court accepted that the birth certificate was authentic and Mr. Lopez-Gomez is in fact a U.S. Citizen. Again, I agreed.

• Judge Allman finally claims the court was powerless to release Mr. Lopez-Gomez because when “ICE as a federal agency puts a hold on someone, the court does not have authority to release the federal hold.” I wholly disagree.

And I disagree because his claim is patently false. And as ICE fascism rapidly expands—with a budget that now makes it the 11th largest military in the world—it is critical every person in the United States understands why the Chief Judge is wrong.

ICE Detainers Belong in the Trash, Not The Courtroom

Understand this fact: ICE detainers have zero legal authority. None. Law students learn this in their 1L year. I learned this in my 1L Civic Procedure class from Professor Jack Preis. It is irrelevant that ICE is a federal agency, whether or not it has a 287g agreement with local police, or believes in the flying spaghetti monster—a person’s rights are not contingent upon an ICE detainer, but upon due process of law and a judicial warrant. And this is true not just in this case of Mr. Lopez-Gomez in Florida, but everywhere nationwide. ICE detainers have the legal authority of my fifth grader’s scribbling on a napkin that she’s allowed to have ice cream for breakfast. In fact, as the ACLU of Florida explains, ICE detainers are demonstrably unconstitutional:

[I.C.E.] detainers are not arrest warrants. In fact, an I.C.E. “detainer” does not resemble an ordinary criminal detainer in anything but name, since criminal detainers pertain to pending charges approved by a judge. I.C.E. detainers also exceed statutory authority and violate due process, a right guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Our constitution requires that police do their investigation first, then make an arrest if there is sufficient evidence – it does not allow the arrest first and the investigation later.

Yet, this is precisely what the court enabled, and what the Florida Chief Judge still defends. And he’s still wrong. I accurately reported the court’s flawed ruling, period.

And still, the Chief Judge complained:

Mr. Rashid has hundreds of thousands of followers on "X," Instagram, TikTok, and more.

This is also incorrect. I have millions of social media followers on “"X," Instagram, TikTok, and more,” and I will continue to speak truth and justice to all of them, and more. Indeed, the court’s decision to wrongly detain a U.S. citizen of Latino ethnicity was roundly criticized by judges, lawyers, and politicians nationwide, and especially in Florida. In my formal response to the VSB, I cited judicial opinions, public interviews, law review articles, and public statements by literally thousands of legal scholars, condemning the denial of due process as “authoritarianism” and enabling fascism.

Yet, while ignoring all those voices, many of them in Florida—the Chief Judge instead targets an immigrant of color, Muslim American human rights lawyer halfway across the country for a Tweet and Substack article that had no bearing on the case.

Does this seem strange to anyone?

In my Substack article—that Judge Allman also complained about—I wrote as follows:

But here’s the point that should send a chill down your spine: They are no longer just targeting immigrants. They are targeting American citizens. If you are brown or Black in this country, your citizenship is not a shield. It is not respected. It is not real in the eyes of the fascists running this system. If you’ve been waiting for the big red flag—the moment when it’s “official”—you’ve missed it. It already happened. This is what fascism looks like: the state weaponizing law enforcement against its own people, based not on what they’ve done, but on who they are. What starts with immigrants always ends with citizens. What starts at the border always spills into the streets. They told you it was about "illegals." Then it was about DACA recipients. Then it was green a few card holders. And now it’s birthright citizens. They are coming for Black and brown Americans next. Not for what they’ve done. But for what they look like.

Note, I wrote this without knowing that as I hit publish, the Chief Judge would cite it in his complaint against me, a U.S. citizen of color, to potentially have me disbarred from the practice of law. How sadly astute and accurate was my warning? And that is exactly why we cannot be silent.

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Lawyers Are The Last Line—We Cannot Be Silent

In a recent ruling rebuking the Trump regime, Judge Beryl A. Howell cited William Shakespeare’s famous “kill all the lawyers” line and wrote:

Eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power.

Here’s the truth. It is in the best interest of the American experiment that lawyers are able to criticize rulings they view as unjust. I deliberately chose the word “fascism” to describe a U.S. citizen of Latino ethnicity being arrested and detained without probable cause, without due process, without a judicial warrant, and without charge. I chose it because is not only not a violation of the Virginia Bar Rules— but the Rules require me to speak up and condemn fascism as my duty. The Virginia Code of Professional Responsibility Preamble explicitly declares that, “it is a lawyer’s duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action.” That same Preamble further declare that:

A lawyer should seek improvement of the law, the administration of justice and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession. A lawyer should be mindful of deficiencies in the administration of justice and of the fact that the poor…cannot afford adequate legal assistance, and should therefore devote professional time and civic influence in their behalf. (Va. Sup. Ct. R. Part 6 § 2 Preamble.)

Is that not what I did here? Are you not entertained? This is also why the First Amendment exists, and why the Supreme Court ruled in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 429 (1992) that:

We have long recognized that when government regulates political speech or the expression of editorial opinion on matters of public importance, First Amendment protection is at its zenith.

My decision to speak up for Mr. Lopez-Gomez is what every lawyer should be doing in this country, every time due process is denied, because denial of due process for one person, is denial of due process for every person. Denial is torture. Even as I write this, we mourn the death of Pierre Damas Bel, 20, of Springfield, Ohio—shamed and humiliated by ICE fascists who forced him to wear an ankle monitor. We cannot let this dehumanization to become the norm in this country. It is literally deadly.

So I implore my fellow lawyers, let us continue to use our law degrees for their most important purpose—to protect and defend the humanity and rights of all people in this country, bar none, even if it means putting our bar licenses at risk.

Justice must be for all, or democracy will assuredly fall.

In those 21 immensely stressful days I reached out to my old law school Dean, Michelle Rahman, a Jewish woman who has always treated me like her son. With her help, I interviewed, then hired a seasoned attorney. We crafted a comprehensive point by point rebuttal to the Chief Judge’s complaint. And after nearly $10,000 in legal fees and personal costs—for which I will not be reimbursed by Judge Allman, the VSB, or malpractice insurance—the VSB ruled.

And the VSB ruled in my favor.

I breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude, but it was short-lived.

In response to losing his complaint on every count, Judge Allman filed an appeal, demanding the VSB reconsider to ensure I face “appropriate consequences.” Fortunately, the VSB ruled in my favor for a second time. This caused additional stress, time, and flat out distraction.

Let me re-emphasize an earlier point. I do not want anyone reading this article to contact Chief Judge Allman in any way. I wrote this because the public deserves to know what we face as human rights lawyers and activists when we speak up for the rights of the marginalized. We face threats to our lives, our livelihoods, and our licenses to practice law. Thus, his failed attempts to silence me represent the broader issue to which I call your attention—the need for courage and unity.

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Closing Thoughts

Returning to summer 2026, a recent essay published by three political science scholars in the New York Times asks, “How will we know when we’ve lost our democracy?” The short answer—when we have to ask if speaking up against government injustice puts us in danger, and have to debate whether it is easier to appease than oppose?

Some might argue we’ve already crossed this line. Which is all the more reason I refuse to stay silent. I could have stayed silent when I saw a sitting judge deny due process of law to Mr. Lopez Gomez. I could have retracted my Substack article and tweets condemning that denial of due process. I could even have hidden this unjust attempt to strip me of my livelihood, and hoped to let it pass by ‘toning it down.’

Instead, I’ve chosen to continue to speak up. And as a result, I continue to face such attacks on my livelihood. The tens of thousands I’ve been forced to spend to defend myself against these absurd attacks stings immensely. This literal trial remains a heavy, heavy burden. Despite this, I recognize how fortunate I am to have the amazing support of my wife Ayesha, the ability to afford a lawyer this time, and the priceless life lessons from my late parents. Lessons to remain relentless in the fight for justice, no matter what.

Therefore, my position is clear: let them come. I will remain relentless to uphold justice.

Listen, I know what it means to struggle. I am an immigrant, an American Muslim, a person of color who grew up in Section 8 housing and on food stamps. I know firsthand the weight of poverty, of living paycheck to paycheck, of systemic barriers, of being told that people like me don’t belong. I’ve seen too many of our communities—immigrant, Black, brown, Latino, Indigenous, poor, working-class, and more—suffer in silence. I have a platform—and a duty—to fight for justice and I will not back down. Because I understand the fierce urgency of now and the work we are called to do.

Finally, I know I cannot do this alone. Alone, success is impossible. But together, success is inevitable. I need your support—not just today, but continually. Stand with me. Trust that I will never compromise my commitment to human rights, no matter the cost. If you are able, subscribe, share with your networks, and let’s continue to build.

This fight involves all of us. It requires of us the courage to build a country of working-class solidarity, where justice is not reserved for the powerful, but guaranteed for all.

Together, we can and we will overcome fear, intimidation, and yes, even fascism.

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This is the same anti-Shariah playbook we fought 15 years ago, now aimed at DEI, trans people, and any Democrat who won’t fall in line—including Dr. El-Sayed, who just won his primary after being outspent 11 to 1 by AIPAC-aligned money, and Angie Nixon, who won hers outspent almost 20 to 1. Democratic leadership still won’t fully back either of them.

Wajahat also shares what he saw reporting from the occupied West Bank for his Atlantic documentary: a village whose well was deliberately poisoned and then filled with cement so residents now have to buy back their own water at six times the price.

Watch our full live interview on YouTube:

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, President of Just Win Humanity, and host of Let’s Address This. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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On Episode 238 of The Qasim Rashid Show:

I just wrapped our 1,000 Miles to Memphis March at the National Civil Rights Museum, on the same ground where Dr. King took his last breath. Last Saturday also marked 71 years since 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured, lynched, and murdered in Mississippi over a lie. The woman who told that lie lived free for the rest of her life. Her arrest warrant was never executed. She only died three years ago.

Meanwhile, as the Supreme Court continues to gut voting rights, I realized too few know the true history of the US Supreme Court. So, I get into the receipts.

I walk through 200 years of the Court’s actual record to show you why the Supreme Court is arguably the biggest obstacle to justice in America today.

The Qasim Rashid Show has now surpassed 328,000 downloads. Thank you for tuning in each week.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, host of the Qasim Rashid Show, as well as Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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As a promise, a final update on the 1,000 Miles to Memphis you helped make possible.

On August 27th, 2026, our team concluded the 1,000 Miles to Memphis voting rights march. In total, 36 days, five states, dozens of organizing events, and more than a thousand miles of Southern roads walked in the footsteps of the men and women who bled and died for the right to vote. It was both exhausting, and exhilarating.

We ended on sacred ground: at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN. We stood steps from where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. breathed his last on April 4, 1968. Standing there, I felt the full weight of what that ground holds. I felt my chest tighten. My heart rate escalate. My breathing become shallow. I felt not just his death. But more importantly, his life. His sacrifice. His vision of a beloved community that we have not yet fully built—but that we have not stopped trying to build either.

It was the privilege of my life to speak there. And I want to share with you—the people who made this march possible—what I said, what we built, and what comes next. Let’s Address This.

Why We Marched

Dr. King taught us that America faces three interlocking evils: racism, poverty, and militarism. Not three separate problems to be addressed in sequence, but three expressions of the same root disease—a disease of injustice that has never been cured, only managed, suppressed, and periodically allowed to metastasize.

We are living through one of those periods of open metastasis right now.

The Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais. The so-called ”SAVE Act” is a fascist piece of legislation concocted in white might as well be Jim Crow America. It threatens to disenfranchise millions of Americans—disproportionately Black, brown, and poor. And we’re already seeing states jump the gun. Texas is currently suspending 1.2 million registered voters from its rolls, mere months ahead of midterm elections that threaten to flip the Senate and Governor’s race blue. Voter registration, we learned on this march, is even more suffocating than most people realize—hedged in by restrictions, bureaucratic obstacles, and deliberate legislative barriers designed not to protect election integrity but to protect the political power of those who benefit from a smaller electorate.

This is racism. This is the poverty of democratic access. And it is backed by the militarized machinery of state power deployed against the people it was supposed to serve. We marched because silence in the face of that is not neutrality. It is complicity.

And we refuse to be complicit. But let me tell you what we found in every mile we marched.

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What We Found on the Road

We began at 5am on a stormy morning on July 24, in Nashville, TN. In Nashville, where organizers at StandUp Nashville, the NAACP Nashville, and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition reminded us that the fight for voting rights and the fight for immigrant rights are not separate struggles. Indeed, they are the same struggle, waged by the same communities, against the same machinery of exclusion. And rebuking them requires collective action.

In Atlanta, the Apex Museum, the Georgia Alliance, Fair Count, the Dreaming Justice Project, and the League of Women Voters all welcomed us. Each of these incredible organizations have spent years doing the painstaking, unglamorous work of registering voters, fighting suppression, and building the civic infrastructure that democracy cannot survive without. As we left, they continued the work. As you read this now, they continue the work.

In Alabama, we walked ground soaked in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. In Selma, no less, we remembered that history is not past. It is present. The same forces that opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are in federal courtrooms right now trying to finish what they started. The cancer metastasizes before our very eyes.

In Mississippi, we visited the Voting Rights Museum and Institute, spoke with the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, and met with students from Tougaloo College. We saw the hope for the future in real time. Young people who carry the legacy of one of the most important historically Black colleges in America, and who are building the next chapter of this movement with their own hands.

In a word, inspiring.

And in Arkansas, I had the profound privilege and painful experience of visiting the site of the Elaine Massacre—which the Encyclopedia of Arkansas identifies as the deadliest episode of racial violence in American history. Just as depressing, it is one that most Americans have never heard of. Yet, it is one that the Elaine Arkansas Memorial Fund is working tirelessly to ensure is never forgotten. In 1919, white mobs and federal troops killed hundreds of Black sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas—men and women who had done nothing more than organize for fair wages. Their names were not recorded. Their deaths were not prosecuted. Their story was buried. Just Win Humanity—the non-profit I launched that raised the funds for this voting rigihts march—is donating at least $1500 directly to these efforts.

Standing on that ground, I understood with renewed clarity why this march was necessary. Not because we needed to remind ourselves that injustice exists—we know it exists. But because the act of showing up, physically, on the ground where history happened, is itself a declaration: we have not forgotten. We will not forget. And we will not stop. Rather, we will persist and continue to build.

And we concluded at the Civil Rights Museum back in Memphis, Tennessee, and we understood more clearly than ever before the work that remains before us.

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What We Built Together

I have written throughout this campaign that this march was never meant to be a symbolic gesture. I have expressed my exhaustion with marches that trend on social media for 48 hours and change nothing. This is why we built 1,000 Miles to Memphis with intentionality to invest in local organizations. I am proud to report that we have, and continue to do so.

Here is what this movement produced:

• Content: North of 400 pieces of content across platforms, raising the cause of voting rights in the United States

• Reach: We reached more than 10 million impressions, views, likes, and comments, with an in-kind media value of nearly $2 million.

• Funding: Just Win Humanity is donating more than $60,000 to more than twenty local organizations doing the work on-the-ground. For voting rights, immigrant rights, racial justice, economic justice, and working families advocacy across the South. With your support, we produced meaningful resources for the Black led, women led, immigrant orgs on the ground doing the hard work every single day.

Therefore, I want to say something directly to the readers of Let’s Address This who supported this march—who subscribed, who donated, who shared, who showed up.

You did this. You trusted us. And you made this possible. The credit goes to you.

Protecting civil rights does not happen on goodwill alone. It happens on investment—in the organizations doing the work, on the ground, in the communities most impacted, day after day, without the cameras and without the applause. You are not funding an abstraction. The dollars you invested in this platform and this march is going directly to those organizations. You are funding the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope. The Shelby County Voter Alliance. Votes for All. The Stand for Children Tennessee. The Riverside Hotel in Mississippi—a historic institution in the civil rights landscape of the Delta. The National Civil Rights Museum itself.

You are literally investing in the infrastructure of protecting our republic from fascism. And I want you to know that I take that trust with the full weight of its meaning. Every organization we supported was chosen because they are doing the work that history will look back on and recognize as essential. And you helped fund that.

You are saving our democracy. I mean that without exaggeration. I declare it with gratitude.

The Organizations That Made It Possible

Likewise, none of this happens without the partners who believed in this mission before it proved itself. I want to name them with the gratitude they deserve.

ActBlue—our Gold Sponsor—whose commitment to this march was a signal to the entire movement that 1,000 Miles to Memphis was real and worth backing.

CBC PAC—our second Gold Sponsor—whose investment reflected a understanding that the fight for voting rights in the South is inseparable from the fight for Black political representation nationally.

Feel Good Action and Common Defense—our Bronze Sponsors—who showed up early and helped us launch.

And to every one of the dozens of content creators and activists who walked with us, filmed with us, shared with us, and amplified this march to audiences we could not have reached alone—thank you. You are the reason 10 million people heard this story. You did this without seeking a cent of compensation. You invested your time, your platform, and your reputations for the cause of voting rights. That is powerful.

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The Work Is Not Done

Now for the tough part. I want to be honest with you about something, because this platform has always been built on honesty. I want to discuss the part that didn’t go well.

We sought to reach 100,000 registered voters, and the truth is we will not reach that goal on this march, and are currently far from achieving that goal. It would be easy for me to ignore it and pretend it isn’t important. But it is, and it is vital to me that I continue to be transparent with you about our successes, and about our failures. That is how trust is built—not by hiding failures, but by acknowledging them and owning them.

We reached our goal of marching 1000 miles. We reached our goal of elevating the cause of voting rights to tens of millions of people. We reached our goal of injecting tens of thousands of dollars directly into the local orgs doing the hard work. But we will not reach our goal of registering 100,000 new voters. This is my shortcoming, and I own that.

We learned first hand on this march just how strong the anti-voter laws are in the south. We learned that voter registration is even more suffocating than most people realize. The restrictions are layered, deliberate, and constantly multiplying. As mentioned, even as we conclude this march, Texas is effectively purging 1.2 million registered voters from its rolls. The machinery of voter suppression does not take breaks. It does not celebrate our victories. It simply continues its work.

Which means we must continue our work.

Dr. King’s three evils—racism, poverty, militarism—did not end on April 4, 1968. They adapted. They found new legal frameworks, new legislative vehicles, new judicial majorities. They found new champions in new suits who use new language to pursue the same old project of ensuring that certain Americans have less power than others.

Our response must be equally persistent. Equally organized. Equally resourced. That only happens if we refuse to give up hope. If we refuse to forget history. If we refuse to capitulate to those who would rather install fascism than give up power.

We may not have hit our goal today. But we fight for a better tomorrow. And the good news is this, we still get to decide what that future looks like. So let’s make it one worth living in.

A Letter to the Future

The late great John Lewis once said:

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.

The powers that be want us to look at the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and give up hope. They want us to see the 120,000 polling locations closed since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby decision, and despair. They want us to see the Save Act and its potential passage, and just give in.

We will do no such thing. We will instead resist and persist. Just as we marched 1000 miles through the blistering Mississippi August sun. Just as we withstood torrential rainstorms at 5am in a Tennessee July. Just as we navigated dirt roads to witness the site of the deadliest race massacre in American history in Elaine, Arkansas. And just as we temporarily transformed our march into a community aid program by delivering water and generators to Black and low income families in a Memphis ravaged by rain storms caused by climate change.

Our letter to the future is one that promises a doubling down of our efforts, a relentlessness in our conviction, and an openness to build our coalition and invite new people every single day. All committed to the cause of absolute justice for all.

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Conclusion

If there’s one thing we learned on this journey, it is the harsh truth that those who seek evil have organized better than those who seek justice. We witnessed dozens of organizations doing the hard work, while continuing to juggle the need to raise funds to continue the hard work. If any of the above mentioned organizations appeal to you—donate to them. Invest in them. Elevate them.

We have done the best we could during these past 36 days, and we will continue to partner with them into the future. But we must also build this coalition for justice.

Because this work requires resources. It requires sustained investment. It requires people like you—readers of Let’s Address This—who understand that democracy is not self-executing and that justice does not arrive on its own.

We walked 1,000 miles. We spoke on sacred ground. We donated to the organizations holding the line. And now we come home—not to rest, but to continue.

Because, yes, while 1,000 miles is a long distance, the road to justice is still much, much longer. It traverses this entire nation and 250 years—even longer. It requires relentless organizing, swallowing of egos, and tolerance of shortcomings. But as long as we work united to uplift every person denied equal justice—then we are moving ever closer to our destination. This is a difficult path to work. But we proved on the roads of Tennessee and Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi and Arkansas, that we are willing to walk it.

In the end, all I can say is thank you, and ask you to continue to walk with us.

Indeed, thank you for walking it with us. Thank you for investing in us. And above all, thank you for trusting us. Our journey of 1000 miles began with one step. As it now concludes, we remain inspired, grateful, and hopeful for the next 1000 miles. And the next 1000 miles. And the next 1000 miles. Let us walk it together, and form the more perfect union our Founding Documents call us to build.

Godspeed.

Sincerely,

Qasim Rashid, Esq.

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[Just Win Humanity is an IRS registered 501(c)3 and donations are tax deductible]

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, President of Just Win Humanity, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, voting rights, and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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Let’s Address This on the State Level

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Your ongoing support helps us continue to expand. We have ambitions to expand to at least 4 more states in 2026. Join us as a free or paid subscriber.

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Interviews & Articles from This Week

1. Sunday

2. Monday

3. Tuesday

4. Wednesday

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5. Friday

What Is The Public Thinking?

This week, prediction markets put Democrats' odds of winning all four core Senate seats—Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Maine—at 54%.

Dad Joke of the Week

Not quite a dad joke this week, but definitely a joke of a man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the fight against the disinformation and hate that corporate media refuses to name. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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Yesterday, we completed our 1,000 Miles to Memphis voting rights march. I’ll have a full report on that soon as we are just getting started.

But right now, I want to talk about today.

Today, August 28, 2026, is the 71st anniversary of the kidnapping, torture, and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

That is not a coincidence. It is a calling. A reminder of how near this history is today.

During our march, our team stopped at the site where Till was murdered, to pay our respects. Standing there—on that ground, in that Mississippi heat—the weight of what this country has done and refused to reckon with is not abstract. It is physical. It is present. It is real. And it is a reminder as we reflect on the rise in seemingly mysterious hangings of Black people, that the horrors of yesteryear are still thriving, and the work remains. Let’s Address This.

I understand that even now, some people reading this have never before heard of Emmett Till. So let me remind you. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old Black child from Chicago visiting Mississippi. On August 27, 1955, white supremacists kidnapped him, tortured him, and murdered him. Why? On the false accusation of whistling at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. His murderers were caught—and then acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. No one was ever held accountable for his murder.

Emmett’s mother made the painful decision to hold an open casket funeral—she wanted the world to see what fascists had done to her baby. I’m reminded of the words of the late great James Baldwin, who reminded us in his 1980 essay, Notes on the House of Bondage:

The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.

My children are the same age or older than Emmett Till. I see him as my child—as he will forever remain a child in this life. But had he lived. Had he been afforded the basic humanity every child deserves, Till would have been 85 years old today. For perspective, ten current members of the United States Congress are older than Emmett Till would have been. This is not ancient history. This is yesterday.

And here is the part too many people forget: Carolyn Bryant—the woman whose false accusation set his murder in motion—only died three years ago. A warrant for her arrest for falsely accusing Emmett Till was documented and intact. It was never executed. She lived the remainder of her life unhindered, unaccountable, and free.

That warrant. Never executed.

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Black boys deserve to grow old. A refrain that has become too common in the wake of Nolan Wells, Kohen Wiley, Kaleif Browder, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and the list is yet ongoing. Emmett Till deserved to grow old. He did not—because white supremacy decided his life was worth less than a lie. And the system that white supremacy built decided that lie was worth protecting for seven more decades.

This is why we marched. This is why 1,000 Miles to Memphis was not just a voting rights campaign—it was an act of remembrance, of resistance, of radical hope. The organizations we partnered with on this march have risen up in direct response to atrocities like the lynching of Emmett Till. Our goal was to elevate their work, amplify their voices, and ensure that the movement he never got to be part of continues in his name.

I will have a full report on the march very soon. But today—say Emmett’s name. Say a prayer for him. And help us build a future worthy of the 14-year-old boy from Chicago who never got to see it.

Emmett Till. July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, President of Just Win Humanity, and host of Let’s Address This. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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This week, the Supreme Court issued a ghastly ruling that threatens to restrict mail-in ballots. While the Court did not outright rule in favor of Trump’s goal to end mail-in ballot voting despite the fact that he votes by mail himself, it ruled that the states challenging him did not have the right to do so. This opens the door to further challenges to mail-in voting rights, especially ahead of a critical midterm election in which Trump knows that losing the House and the Senate will lock him into a lame duck presidency for the rest of his term.

Before I dive into the painful receipts below, an observation. Isn’t it funny how “states rights” is talk of the town when the Supreme Court is restricting abortion access, expanding gun access, and gutting public education—but suddenly there are no “states rights” when it comes to states seeking to protect voting access for their residents? This isn’t a bug—but the feature of the US Supreme Court. And not just a contemporary feature, but how SCOTUS has behaved throughout American history.

A year ago this week, on a shadow docket 6-3 opinion written by credibly accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's ICE fascists can use ethnicity as a ‘relevant factor’ when furnishing reasonable suspicion to detain people, specifically citing Latino ethnicity. Notably, the Supreme Court made no mention of the ~600,000 mostly white Canadian and European undocumented immigrants in the United States.

This same Supreme Court previously stopped Affirmative Action to “ban targeting based on race.” Yet they continued to allow legacy admissions, allow white Afrikaaner "refugees," allow over-policing of Black communities, and allow bans on Afghan refugees and South Korean workers. Apparently it is okay to target based on race to give white people an undue advantage, or to discriminate against Black and brown people, but not to ensure Black and brown people have an equal opportunity.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing comments alleging that this Supreme Court has now dishonored a once honorable Court. The truth is actually far worse than that. This Supreme Court’s extremism is not an aberration, but a manifestation, of Supreme Court extremism throughout U.S. history. The receipts are devastating and ignored by corporate media, but it is critical we shed this collective amnesia if we hope to move forward. Should Democrats ever retake the House, Senate, and White House, expanding the Supreme Court to uphold justice is not just wise, but critical to protect our Republic from total collapse. Let’s Address This.

A History of Injustice

In reality, SCOTUS has (almost) never reflected the will of the majority of American people. In fact, it has most often blocked what Americans want and voted for. And while no one article can do justice to a history that began on March 4, 1789 when the Supreme Court was first established, this snapshot provides a clear picture of what we’re up against, and why this is unsustainable.

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19th Century Injustice

Let’s start in 1857, with Dred Scott v. Sanford. SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that Black people are subhuman and therefore cannot be citizens. This ruling prevented a peaceful or legal solution to ending slavery, and historians cite this case as one of the final straws that likely enabled the eventual Civil War. At least 600,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. The subsequent Jim Crow laws and the harm they cause reverberate to this day.

In 1883, the Court advanced this racist policy with The Civil Rights Cases. Most Americans don’t realize that some 90 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to mandate equal justice for Black Americans. Instead, SCOTUS ruled 8–1 that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, and that the 13th and 14th Amendments did not actually provide equal protection to Black people. Hence Jim Crow laws were not only valid, but now had full mandate to strengthen and advance as Black Codes. This barbarity would stay on the books until 1964, devastating generations of Black Americans.

In 1896, the Court further enforced Black Codes under Plessy v. Ferguson. SCOTUS ruled 7-1 that mandatory racial segregation was not in violation of the 14th Amendment. This further advanced Black codes, Jim Crow, economic, housing, and educational disenfranchisement. This SCOTUS ruling further strengthened the KKK and white supremacy. The KKK grew so powerful as a result of rulings like Plessy, that by 1920 they were 4 million member strong, and at least 1 in every 11 white Americans was a card carrying member.

Side Note: But Qasim! Some might argue. That was a long time ago in the 19th century! Surely you can’t be serious that the 20th and 21st century was that bad?

In response I’d say, I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley. And keep reading to see.

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20th Century Injustice

In 1918, the Court embraced child abuse via child labor in Hammer v. Dagenhart. SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that Congress could not ban child labor in intrastate commerce, calling it a "states rights" issue. Sound familiar? As we see labor cases come before SCOTUS today, and see GOP led states pass laws enabling child labor, remember this history of enabling child labor and child abuse. For example, right now in 2025 Florida is pushing to loosen child labor laws to allow 14-year-old children to enter the work force and even work overnight shifts. Again, what we are seeing today is not new, but a revival of yesteryear extremism.

In 1924, the court targeted Asian Americans directly in Thind v. United States. SCOTUS ruled unanimously, 9-0, that though a Sikh American named Bhagat Thind was Aryan per the U.S. then phrenological and eugenicist pseudoscience definition of white, he did not meet a "common sense" definition of white—and therefore could not be a citizen. This ruling helped uphold a 1924 total ban on all Asian immigration. That ban would remain on the books for another 41 years until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act ended these racist race based quotas. It’s worth noting that for much of American history, while Black, Latino, and Asian immigration was heavily restricted or outright banned, white European immigration was largely encouraged via open borders.

Side Note: When you hear white MAGAs scream “immigrants should come here legally,” know that their own ancestors arrived here illegally per their own made up definition of legality and illegality.

The 1927, Supreme Court continued its eugenics streak in Buck v. Bell. SCOTUS ruled 8-1 to uphold a Virginia eugenics law targeting Black people. States nationwide would then adopt this ruling and craft their own state laws. As a result, more than 60,000 Black women, men, and children as young as 10 were forcibly sterilized—which we now recognize as a textbook definition of genocide. Perhaps just as horrifying is that as of 2025 Buck v. Bell remains valid Supreme Court precedent as no subsequent SCOTUS ruling has ever overturned it. Given how the Trump regime is using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to disappear brown migrants, I do not put it past him to use the 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling to revive genocide of Black Americans.

In 1944, while American soldiers fought fascism abroad, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of fascism in Korematsu v. United States. SCOTUS ruled 6-3 to uphold President FDR's Executive Order 9066 that forcibly interned 120,000 Japanese Americans. Though America was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy—only Japanese Americans suffered mass arrest and deprivation of property. In broad daylight, our government spoke of the evils of Hitler’s concentration camps, while placing American citizens in concentration camps of our own—reminding everyone once more that Hitler got his ideas for concentration camps from the British Boer camps and from American Jim Crow. (The must read book on this topic is Hitler’s American Model by Professor James Q. Whitman).

In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick to condemn queer Americans. SCOTUS ruled 5-4 to uphold a Georgia statute criminalizing even private LGBTQ relationships. Though finally overruled in Lawrence v Texas in 2005, anti-sodomy laws still exist in several states, anti-LGBTQ violence and rhetoric remains at record highs, and it is getting worse.

Side Note:

Far from improving significantly over the 19th century, in the 20th century the Supreme Court openly supported white supremacy, abusive child labor practices, anti-Asian immigration bans, eugenics, genocide, fascism, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry. And while we celebrate the Civil Rights acts passed in the 20th century, we’ve seen a massive regression of those very laws in the 21st century. So, if you thought the 21st century Court was better than past eras, read on, because sadly, it is not.

21st Century Injustice

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled on Bush v. Gore, denying American people their vote. SCOTUS ruled 7-2 in favor of GW Bush, handing him the presidency. This was despite Al Gore winning the popular vote by more than 500K votes. Bush then bankrupted our surplus, cut billionaire taxes, left America trillions in debt, and waged two failed wars that cost more than $6 trillion and killed tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians. I bring up Bush’s atrocious record to document the consequences of the Supreme Court installing someone the American people voted against.

In 2008, the Supreme Court voted to devastated our climate and prop up corporate corruption in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker. SCOTUS ruled 5-3 to protect Exxon from punitive damages in which a drunk operator spilled 11 million gallons of oil into an ecological sensitive sound. SCOTUS dropped the fine from $5 billion to only $500 million, boosting Exxon's value by $23 billion. It is worth noting that Justice Alito owned Exxon stock and profited massively from the Court’s ruling.

In 2010, the Supreme Court helped ensure we’d never have a free and fair election again by ruling on Citizens United v. FEC. SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that the First Amendment protects political donations as "free speech," opening elections to billions in dark money to buy and sell politicians. Though an astounding 83% of Americans—Republicans, Independents, and Democrats alike—want corporate money out of politics, SCOTUS does not care. As a result of this overt power to buy elections, billionaires spent $1.2B in the 2020 election, which is an astounding 70 times more than what they spent in the 2008 election—pre-Citizens United. In the 2024 election, maniacal billionaire Elon Musk spent $175M of his own money to elect Trump, and is now wielding that influence to gut life critical departments including HHS, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and more. The Supreme Court’s ruling ensured corrupt corporate funded politicians stay in power with ease, State and Congressional level gerrymandering becomes the norm, and gave the wealthy a nearly insurmountable advantage to stay in office.

In 2013, the Supreme Court further eroded our elections in Shelby County v. Holder by stripping down voting rights. SCOTUS ruled 5-4 to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1964—specifically provisions that prevented historically discriminatory states and counties from disenfranchising BIPOC voters. Unsurprinsgly, after Shelby, red states closed thousands of polling locations in disproportionately BIPOC neighborhoods, affecting turnout and flipping elections red. GOP states have subsequently introduced hundreds of voter suppression bills, passing dozens, further marginalizing Black, brown, and low income voters. In fact, since the Shelby ruling, red states have closed more than 100,000 polling locations in disproportionately low income, Black, and Latino neighborhoods. Modern day Jim Crow by any other name.

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In 2016, the Supreme Court advanced government tyranny in Utah v. Strieff. SCOTUS ruled 5-3 to permit police to admit evidence in a criminal trial even if it was procured by illegal searches—despite 4th Amendment ban on illegal government searches. This ruling particularly targets BIPOC communities who already face at least six times higher charge/arrest rates than do white Americans. Now, police officers can more easily procure evidence through illegal means, blurring the line between the right to privacy, and making it more difficult to stop bad police actors from planting evidence or even targeting citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment. This ruling was a boost for fascism and for the private prison industry.

In 2018, the Supreme Court advanced religious bigotry in Trump v. Hawaii. SCOTUS ruled 5-4 to uphold Trump's racist and discriminatory "Muslim Ban." A ban he admitted was designed to cause as much harm as possible, and one he could not prove had any national security value. So much for US Constitution's ban on religious tests.

In 2021, the Supreme Court shockingly defended child slavery in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe I. SCOTUS ruled near unanimously, 8-1, that children kidnapped, enslaved and forced to go to the Ivory Coast to produce for American corporate giants like Nestle, could not sue Nestle for damages for enabling child slave labor. Yes, it is as horrific as it sounds. Nearly 175 years after ruling in Dred Scott that enslaved Black people are subhuman and therefore unworthy of protection from exploitation by American corporations, the Court found a way to rule in Nestle that enslaved African children are unworthy of protection from exploitation by American corporations.

In 2022, the Supreme Court undid half a century of precedent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that women do not have autonomy over their own bodies. The Court repealed Roe—despite 72% of Americans favoring Roe, despite all the data that abortion bans do not decrease abortion rates but increase maternal mortality by 24%. The Court repealed Roe, despite four justices—Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—affirming that they viewed Roe as settled law, settled precedent, and the law of the land.

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In 2023, the Supreme Court repealed Affirmative Action. The SCOTUS ignored the clearly racist Legacy Admissions policy which disproportionately benefits wealthy white people, but gutted Affirmative Action because it marginally helps Black and brown people (even though the single largest demographic of people who benefit from Affirmative Action are white women—more than Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Asian people combined).

In 2024, the Supreme Court granted Presidents virtually unlimited immunity. SCOTUS ruled on the question of whether Trump has immunity as President from accountability for otherwise criminal acts, and essentially granted him near unlimited immunity. So much for no Kings?

And now in 2025, the Supreme Court tacitly approves the destruction of Due Process as Trump disappears immigrants. Justice Sotomayor wrote in her scathing dissent of this fascist ruling:

The Government takes the position that, even when it makes a mistake, it cannot retrieve individuals from the Salvadoran prisons to which it has sent them. The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.

The Future of SCOTUS Injustice

Indeed, the 21st century SCOTUS has largely continued the SCOTUS trend of the 19th and 20th centuries of ruling against the will of the American people, and in favor of the wealthy and powerful. In addition to overturning presidential elections, stripping down voting rights, destroying our climate, devastating the right to privacy, and destroying personal bodily autonomy, SCOTUS in the 21st century has also further enabled wrongful incarceration, further dissolved religion/state separation, further decreased safety from gun violence, further enabled discrimination for being Queer, stripped down affirmative action and racial justice in education and the work place, and further harmed economic justice for students suffering under predatory loans.

Again, I could go on.

But I believe I’ve made the point. And history reminds us what’s at stake. I’ve long argued that we must enforce term limits and expand the Court—and indeed Biden could have made that push but chose not to.

Conclusion

When the Court overruled the 1875 Civil Rights cases, it took nearly a century—until 1964—for those rights to finally be codified once more. Now, only 60 years later those rights are once again being stripped down piece by piece—by the Supreme Court no less. Who knows how long it will take us to recover? Indeed this is why the late great John Lewis said:

Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.

Whether by organizing, donating, volunteering, voting, or by subscribing to this human rights newsletter to help me combat disinformation, or all of the above, let us do our part to protect and preserve our democracy for this generation, and the next. Because far from protecting our rights, we can tragically only count on the current Supreme Court to be among the greatest obstacles to justice in America.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the fight against the disinformation and hate that corporate media refuses to name. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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Some of the most breathtaking places in America are not the ones on postcards. They are the ones you have to earn — trails that wind through old-growth forests so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat, rivers so clear they look like glass, ridgelines that remind you this country is extraordinarily blessed with natural beauty.

Those forests, rivers, and mountains are not luxuries. They are part of the shared inheritance of the American people.

That is precisely why the Roadless Area Conservation Rule — more commonly known as the Roadless Rule — is one of the most important environmental protections in the United States. And today, it is under threat of being gutted, an act that would cause irreparable harm to America’s national forests for generations. Let’s Address This.

What Is the Roadless Rule?

Adopted in 2001, the Roadless Rule protects nearly 25 million acres of national forest lands — roughly one-third of the entire National Forest System, managed by the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture. These lands represent some of the last remaining large, intact forests in the country — places that have not yet been carved up by logging roads, industrial extraction, and fragmentation.

The rule does something deceptively simple but profoundly important: it prevents new road construction and most large-scale logging in these remaining roadless areas.

That protection matters more than most people realize.

Roadless areas contain over 9 million acres of old-growth forests, including places like Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth. Old-growth trees are not easily replaced. They take decades, often centuries, to grow, and they play an outsized role in storing carbon, stabilizing ecosystems, and protecting biodiversity.

These forests also serve as critical habitat for wildlife. Roadless areas support more than 300 species of conservation concern, including iconic animals like grizzly bears, wolves, and salmon. For these species, intact forests function not just as homes but as migration corridors and climate refuges in an increasingly unstable world.

But the importance of these forests extends far beyond wildlife.

If you like drinking clean, fresh water, know that roadless areas protect the headwaters that supply drinking water to more than 60 million Americans. Forest ecosystems act as natural filtration systems. When forests remain intact, they filter pollutants, regulate water flow, and protect watersheds that communities rely on every day. When forests are stripped for logging and fragmented by roads, that natural filtration disappears — and the cost of water treatment rises dramatically. The watersheds protected by roadless areas save Americans tens of billions of dollars in water treatment costs each year.

They also support recreation for millions of people who hike, camp, fish, hunt, climb, and paddle through public lands that belong to all of us. This is why the Roadless Rule has remained one of the most widely supported environmental protections in the country.

Yet today, those protections are under direct threat.

The Trumpian Threat to the Roadless Rule

The Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture, under Secretary Brooke Rollins, has moved to gut the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, effectively opening these national forests to logging and new road construction. The justification offered is the familiar language of economic development and resource extraction. But the reality is much simpler: powerful corporate logging interests stand to profit massively from dismantling protections that have preserved these lands for a generation.

And 99% of citizen input opposes doing so.

That raises a deeper question about the direction of our country.

At a time when wealth and income inequality are reaching historic extremes, we are watching billionaires purchase media companies, social media platforms, banks, retail chains, and increasingly every commodity imaginable. Corporate consolidation is reshaping nearly every aspect of public life.

Our natural landscapes must not become another asset class for exploitation.

Our public forests are not the private property of corporations. They belong to the American people. The lands protected by the Roadless Rule are part of a national trust — preserved not for short-term profit but for long-term stewardship, administered by the Forest Service on behalf of every American.

As a human rights lawyer, I have spent much of my career arguing that certain fundamental principles must remain beyond the reach of political convenience. The same principle applies here. Public lands are not merely economic resources. They are shared inheritances that carry ecological, cultural, and moral significance.

Once old-growth forests are cut down, they do not come back in our lifetimes. Once ecosystems are fragmented by roads and industrial development, the damage often becomes permanent. And once we allow corporate interests to dismantle protections that have safeguarded these lands for decades, the precedent becomes far easier to repeat elsewhere.

This is not an abstract policy debate. It is a question about what kind of country we intend to leave to future generations.

Do we preserve the forests, rivers, and wildlife that make this nation extraordinary? Or do we allow them to be sacrificed for short-term profit by industries that will move on long before the environmental damage is repaired?

The quiet trails, the towering old-growth trees, the clean rivers running cold through intact watersheds — these places exist because previous generations chose preservation over exploitation. They understood that some things are too precious to sell. We must understand that today, and fulfill our obligation to the next generation.

What You Can Do

The Roadless Rule is one of the policies that has helped protect America’s most sacred wild places — not through the National Parks Service, but through the U.S. Forest Service, which manages over 190 million acres of national forests and grasslands on behalf of the American public. It is not radical. It is not partisan. It is simply a recognition that some landscapes must remain intact if we want our children and grandchildren to experience the same beauty we have been fortunate enough to witness.

The question before us now is whether we will defend that principle.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is part of a broad coalition leading the effort to defend the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, and you can add your voice. Leave a public comment before the deadline on September 21st using the link below. It takes minutes and it matters.

Send your message NOW.

Our public forests belong to all of us. Protecting them should not be controversial. It should be the bare minimum we expect from a nation that understands the value of stewardship.

And if we want these forests to remain standing — if we want the wolves, the salmon, the grizzly bears, the clean rivers, and the quiet trails to endure — then we must raise our voices and insist that the Roadless Rule remain intact.

Because once these forests are gone, no amount of money will bring them back.

Leave a public comment

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, environmental justice, and the accountability that corporate media refuses to deliver. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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On Episode 237 of The Qasim Rashid Show:

I sat down with David Morales, Rhode Island state rep and candidate for mayor of Providence, about his plan to cap rent hikes at 4%—the same measure the current mayor vetoed after taking corporate real estate money. We also talked about the surge of ICE activity across Providence, and David laid out his plan to take legal action against these ICE fascists, pointing to Philadelphia's DA as proof the approach actually works.

Learn more about his campaign

And I break down the math nobody in corporate media wants to talk about: as Luigi Mangione pled guilty to killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a new Yale study finds universal healthcare would save 100,000+ American lives a year—meaning roughly 171,000 people have died preventable deaths in the 624 days since Thompson's killing. As I said on air, a single murder by gun is illegal, but mass murder by pen is just increasing shareholder value.

The Qasim Rashid Show has now surpassed 325,000 downloads. Thank you for tuning in each week.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, host of the Qasim Rashid Show, as well as Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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By popular demand, rather than a monthly subscription, you can now make a one-time contribution to support our human rights platform at any amount that fits your budget.

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Some 31 days ago we launched an ambitious journey. A 1000 miles to speak up for voting rights. Today we are in the final four days. More than speak, we sought to walk the walk, literally. Today, 868 miles into our journey, we face a tumultuous final few days. Memphis is without power. City officials are working diligently to restore it to 100,000 people. Meanwhile, Gary, Indiana has been without power for nearly two weeks. It is not lost on us that while we are marching for voting rights stripped from Black Americans, Black majority populations are also being denied basic access to electricity.

These painful events are a stark reminder that if we cannot protect voting rights, we cannot protect any of the other hard fought rights we need to survive. As I’ve said before, these injustices mandate that we persist.

So, nevertheless, we persist.

To date, thousands of you have helped us build a movement for voting rights and justice. We are beyond grateful to the thousands who have participated. Here is how you can help us bring it home in these final 4 days. Let’s Address This.

Passing Through Mississippi

Today’s march took us through Clarksdale, and the iconic Riverside Hotel, birthplace of the Delta Blues. Originally a hospital for Black Americans in Jim Crow America, Mrs. ZL Hill purchased it and transformed it into a Green book hotel.

We had the privilege of receiving a personal tour from the great grandson of Mrs. ZL Hill, Justin Hill. Just Win Humanity also made a contribution to continue to repair and build the Riverside Hotel, and thus preserve this historical icon and national treasure.

The Riverside Hotel is but one of the dozens of organizations we’ve had the privilege to work with so far. I provide a direct link to each of them below, and encourage you to support those you are able to support.

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The Organizations Leading the Charge

And along with the thousands of ordinary people who have supported this march, dozens of amazing orgs have led the way. We are deeply grateful to the organizations that have partnered with us on the ground and will continue to work alongside us as we march toward Memphis. While Just Win Humanity will be directly supporting these orgs, I link each of them and encourage you to support them directly as well.

The Equity Alliance • StandUp Nashville • NAACP Nashville • Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition • The Apex Museum in Atlanta. • Dreaming Justice Project • Georgia Alliance • The Voting Rights Museum and Institute • League of Women Voters • Fair Count • The Riverside Hotel • Tougaloo College Student Government Association • Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable

Without each of these organizations, this march would not have been possible. They have led by example for years, decades, and longer, and continue to do the work every single day. We are honored to march alongside them and elevate their work.

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How You Can Get Involved

ONE: Show Up. Walk a mile, a day, or a full leg of the route.

March in 1000 Miles to Memphis

TWO: Donate. The 1,000 Miles to Memphis march is a project of Just Win Humanity—a 501(c)(3) public charity. Small dollar tax deductible donations make all the difference in the world.

Donate to 1000 Miles to Memphis

THREE: Register Yourself and Your Network. You do not have to be in Nashville or Memphis to register voters. You can do it right now, from wherever you are.

Register to Reach 100,000 Voters

The Organizations Helping Fund This Voting Rights March

Moreover, we are profoundly grateful to our sponsors who put real resources behind this movement when it mattered most:

• ActBlue—our Gold Sponsor—whose support made this launch possible and whose commitment to voting rights infrastructure is unmatched.

• Congressional Black Caucus Pac—our Gold Sponsor—whose support further exemplified their focus on elevating the cause of voting rights and voting access.

• Feel Good Action and Common Defense—our Bronze Sponsors—whose early investment sent a signal to the entire movement that this march was real, urgent, and worth backing.

These organizations are not sitting on the sidelines. They are leading by example. And we are asking you to do the same. If you are reading this, I am asking you commit to at least one of the following. Ideally two. And if you can, all three calls to action.

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A Final Ask

Sign up to march, donate if you can, and register yourself and at least 10 friends to vote. As you post online, use hashtags #1000Miles and #CourageNow on every post. Follow and tag @JustWinHumanity on Instagram so your community can find us. Partner with us in whatever capacity makes most sense for you—we are grateful for every bit of the support. Let us persist, together.

I will continue to provide updates as we wind down this march. Thank you for your incredible and continued trust. It is truly making all the difference.

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Join our 1,000 Mile March to Memphis & help protect voting rights in the South!

A 36-day organizing campaign across the American South with 35 community stops, focusing on local engagement & voter registration. TN → GA → AL → MS → AR. Beginning in Nashville and wrapping in Memphis on August 27.

We need you to join us: 1000milestomemphis.com

Join us, register to vote, donate

Let’s Address This on the State Level

Your support has helped Let’s Address This continue to grow. Especially if you live in these states, please subscribe to our local chapters:

Subscribe to Let's Address Georgia

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Your ongoing support helps us continue to expand. We have ambitions to expand to at least 4 more states in 2026. Join us as a free or paid subscriber.

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Interviews & Articles from This Week

1. Monday

2. Tuesday

3. Wednesday

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4. Thursday

5. Friday

What Is The Public Thinking?

This week, prediction markets put Democrats' odds of winning all four core Senate seats—Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Maine—holding steady at 53%. A big win this week out of Florida's Senate election: against the odds, Angie Nixon upset establishment favorite Alex Vindman for the Democratic nomination, and will face Republican Ashley Moody in November.

Dad Joke of the Week

Going camping and everyone’s telling me about bearspray.

Look—if I see a bear I’m not waiting to find out who it worships, I’m getting away as fast as possible. #DadJokes 😅

By popular demand, rather than a monthly subscription, you can now make a one-time contribution to support our human rights platform at any amount that fits your budget.

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the fight against the disinformation and hate that corporate media refuses to name. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.

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Per Gallup, trust in national media is now close to 25%—meaning three in four people no longer trust national media. Moreover, since 2002, 75% of local media has failed, crumbling under the pressure of costs, the Internet, and social media. And now, fascists are planning to seize on this information gap and fill it with white nationalist and Nazi propaganda. We do not have to concede the public discourse to those who would rather see our nation burn. Here’s the state of where we are, and the tools we must employ to fight back. Let’s Address This.

The White Nationalist Agenda

As historian Greg Johnson reported earlier this month, white nationalists had a private meeting in Italy to celebrate a plan to advance fascist media in rural America. A summary of the meeting was posted on Twitter, with lead white nationalist Kevin Deanna stating:

Local media is dying all over America, which means there’s essentially no way to hold local governments accountable and they can do whatever they want. We should be fantasizing about this, this is a good thing. It takes very little money and very little time to win these elections. Local government still has the ability to direct where all the state money is going, especially for things like higher education.

He goes on to state that through sheriff’s races, they can “have 10 people take over an entire county,” and “even arrest FBI agents” who get in their way.

The core of this hostile takeover begins with their intent to capture local media. Let’s be clear—this is not a conspiracy. They are so bold in their hateful agenda, that they are proclaiming it loudly and publicly for all to see, and dare anyone to do anything about it. They are bold because they know a media gap exists, that no one is really working to fill that gap, and because Donald Trump is greasing the wheels on the national front. This includes, for example, his attack on Public Broadcasting.

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Public Broadcasting’s Mission: Uplifting Truth and Humanity

The Trump regime has made clear that it views truth, diversity, and shared humanity not as values to be upheld but as obstacles to be destroyed. One of the most alarming fronts in this battle is its campaign to gut the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). For decades, the CPB—through PBS, NPR, and local stations—has sought, with all its imperfections, to provide a baseline of truth, inclusion, and education to Americans. It’s been a place where children learned empathy through Sesame Street, where communities could access reporting free from corporate chokeholds, and where diverse voices found platforms they were denied elsewhere.

Public broadcasting was not perfect. But it was designed to serve the public interest—to give all Americans, regardless of wealth or power, access to culture, history, science, and storytelling that connect us to one another’s shared humanity. Likewise, our public school system isn’t perfect, but it is grounded in fact and truth—and constantly improving to be more inclusive and representative.

And that is precisely why Trump and his enablers want to kill public broadcasting and public education. Because authoritarianism cannot tolerate diversity or dissent. Fascism thrives on fear, division, and ignorance. Public broadcasting has long-served as an antidote to these poisons by shining light where authoritarianism thrives in the shadows. Today, Trump’s movement follows the same script as past authoritarian regimes: silence the voices that expose white supremacy, corporate greed, and state-sanctioned cruelty.

Unfortunately, as Trump guts public education as a whole, entities like Prager “University”—a right-wing, unaccredited propaganda machine that cloaks itself in the language of education while spreading anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-woman lies—seek to fill that void. This isn’t an accident. It’s a strategy.

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Enter Prager “University”

Prager “University” (PragerU) is not a university at all. It has no accreditation, no peer-reviewed scholarship, and no legitimate academic standing. What it does have is dark money from far-right billionaires and political operatives who understand that controlling the next generation’s worldview is the surest path to consolidating power. Yet, it is quickly replacing factual information and reporting, on the taxpayer dime no less. PragerU reports on its own website how its an official approved educational resource in at least 10 states, and growing.

PragerU churns out slick, deceptively packaged videos designed to look educational—but which instead indoctrinate children with whitewashed history, anti-science rhetoric, and bigoted stereotypes. It tells students that systemic racism doesn’t exist, that climate change is exaggerated, that immigration is a threat, that feminism destroys families, and that LGBTQ people are a danger to society. It is only a matter of time before the White House and the Federal government under the Trump regime try to push Prager propaganda nationwide.

Indoctrination Masquerading as Education

For example, Prager portrays icons like Frederick Douglass as a man who celebrated white Americans for allegedly ending slavery, refusing to ‘live in the past,’ and even defending slavery as a ‘compromise.’ Prager portrays Columbus—a genocidal sociopath and rapist—as a magnanimous and thoughtful person. It portrays the Founding Fathers—many of whom were enslavers and rapists—as flawless individuals.

This isn’t education. It’s indoctrination. By diverting funds away from Public Broadcasting and into PragerU, Trump’s allies are ensuring that instead of a child learning kindness from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, they are taught suspicion and hatred of their neighbor. Instead of being exposed to diverse authors, musicians, and scientists, they are funneled a single, toxic worldview designed to protect the wealthy, punish the marginalized, and entrench authoritarian rule.

Make no mistake—this is not about budget cuts. This is about replacing truth with propaganda.

How We Fight Back

The white nationalist agenda to capture local media, the Trump agenda to gut public broadcasting and public education, and the PragerU agenda to fill the airwaves with fascist propaganda represent a three-headed monster of hate and disinformation. It would be fatal for us to give up hope, or to sit idle in response.

The first step to curing any cancer is to recognize that cancer—in this case the cancers of Nazism and disinformation. The second step is to take meaningful action, invest meaningful resources, and utilize the power we have to effectuate meaningful change. Here are two examples of what that looks like.

1. Support Independent Media

I launched Let’s Address This to loudly and clearly confront injustice while demanding accountability. More than 900 articles and 55 million readers later, we’ve built a movement. A movement is never one person—it’s a community. In addition to our national platform, we are hyper focused on local media.

This is why we have launched Let’s Address This out lets in Georgia, Illinois, and Texas, and we’re launching Virginia soon! Fully manifested, we will have a local chapter in all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, reporting on the hyper local issues that impact that particular state and locality. But that only happens if we continue to build a subscriber base to ensure we do not collapse the way local media previously collapsed.

The challenge is this—we do not and will never have a paywall. We believe a model that ensures free and full access can inspire those of means to invest a cup of coffee a month ($6) or an annual subscription of $50 to uplift our entire network. Our vision is to appeal to the innate desire of the American people to combat disinformation and hate, and ask them to invest in us.

So, if you’re already a subscriber, thank you. You have helped us get this far and with your support we will continue to expand. If you are not yet a subscriber, please join us. No paywalls. No billionaire backers. Just people-powered media. Every subscription, every share, every read chips away at the disinformation machine.

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2. Use Ground News to Cut Through the Noise

With at least 10 states adopting PragerU as it’s “official” indoctrination machine, we need to be ready to fight back. It is not ironic to me that Trump, a man who was forced to pay $25 million in damages for a fake Trump University curriculum targeting young adults, is now embracing another fake university to indoctrinate young children. So, given this reality, how do we know the article we’re reading is grounded in fact, not government talking points? Here, as I’ve shared a few times before (and will no doubt remind you again at some point in the future) I invite you to look at what Ground News has to offer. This is not just news website or app—it’s a critical tool in a disinformation age. If you care about combatting misinformation and disinformation—and I know you do—you need Ground News. Here’s how it works.

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Ground News gathers related articles globally in one place, then it reveals their source bias and factuality. This helps users cut through partisanship and sensationalism to focus on the facts. Ground News lets you know who is funding a media outlet—is it a legitimate organization or some dark pac with a right wing agenda?

So even if you didn’t know a media outlet was funded by the same right wing billionaires who fund “PragerU,” you would be able to discover that with ease. If you didn’t know that a white nationalist outlet was targeting rural America, Ground News would help you uncover that bias. Because Ground News shows you where media funding comes from. This helps you ensure your information consumption habits are good habits, not at the mercy of propaganda.

And finally, Ground News itself is subscriber supported. It is not billionaire funded. So by subscribing, you do two important things. One, you directly support my independent media platform. And two, you contribute to keeping the media transparent.

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Conclusion: This Matters Now

We’ve seen this movie before. History tells us exactly where it leads. When leaders dismantle independent sources of truth and replace them with propaganda mouthpieces, democracy itself becomes the casualty. The battle I discuss here is about far more than funding or programming. It’s about whether America remains a democracy rooted in truth—or slides further into authoritarian rule built on lies.

We are being tested. Do we allow fascism to rewrite reality for the next generation? Or do we fight back to defend truth, justice, and shared humanity? This exactly is why I created Let’s Address This. If you believe in that mission—if you believe in integrity in media that doesn’t flinch when power roars—then now is the time to act.

👉 Subscribe to this human rights newsletter.
👉 Share this with someone who may not be aware of the spread of racist propaganda.
👉 Join Ground News, and reclaim a media narrative grounded in verifiable facts.

Sitting idle is not an option. Let’s act and continue to fight for a media grounded in facts and integrity.

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