Latest news with #KimberlyAtkinsStohr
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Originalist sin
But the opinion in Advertisement This is important: The Constitution's Equal Protection Clause prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and challengers argued that the law is unconstitutional because it bars certain treatments (for example, hormone treatments) from being given to trans youths while allowing them to be given to cisgender minors. Advertisement But according to Roberts, the law contains no sex classification at all. The only classifications he finds on the face of the law are for age (applying only to minors) and 'medical use' (banned for gender-affirming care but OK to treat other conditions. I'm sorry — what?! What happened to the text saying what it said when it was said? But Roberts's approach allowed the court to dodge its obvious constitutional inconsistency. By pretending that the law doesn't classify by sex at all, Roberts avoided having to decide whether laws that discriminate on the basis of gender on their face require a higher level of scrutiny by courts in order to stand. Sex-based laws would require a state to prove it has an important government interest in enacting the law and that it is substantially related to serving that interest. We legal heads call that 'intermediate scrutiny.' If it's not a sex-based law, a state need only demonstrate a rational basis for passing the law — a much lower legal hurdle to clear. In the court's view, Tennessee cleared that hurdle. It doesn't matter that the conclusion that this is not a sex-based law defies all credulity. (It's so silly, in fact, that even Justice Samuel Alito in his concurrence declined to join that aspect of the court's reasoning.) The downside of this ruling, aside from the fact that it endangers trans kids in Tennessee and other states with similar bans: The justices opted not to use this as an opportunity to rule that laws targeting trans or other LGBTQ folks must meet a higher constitutional standard, just as any other sex-based classification. Advertisement The upshot: The majority did not hold that laws targeting trans or other LGBTQ folks never get intermediate scrutiny. But here's the chaser: Three justices — Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Alito — would have held that transgender status never triggers heightened scrutiny. The court is two votes away from that being the law of the land. Given that you can't spell transgender without gender, that makes no constitutional sense. That's not originalism. It's terrifying. This is an excerpt from , a newsletter about the Supreme Court from columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at
Boston Globe
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Brick thrown at Brookline kosher grocery store highlights antisemitism's rise
This act was, simply, antisemitic in the way it blamed a Jewish individual in America for the actions of the Jewish state in Israel. Advertisement As a state that values every resident, we must emphasize clearly that antisemitism is wrong and antisemitic actions can't be tolerated. We must work to change a culture where slogans that can be perceived as violent threats against the Jewish people — like 'globalize the intifada,' a reference to the often violent uprisings by Palestinians in Israel — are considered acceptable discourse. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up While the brick was thrown when the store was closed, any attack on a Jewish individual can spark fear across the entire Jewish community. That is especially true after two lethal attacks recently. In Washington, D.C., two Israeli embassy staffers Advertisement Earlier this month, an Egyptian man was charged with Attacks against Jews are nothing new in the Boston area. In 2021, a man was The The Massachusetts Legislature formed the Commission cochair state Senator John Velis (D-Westfield) says one challenge is the tendency to see antisemitism as someone else's problem. 'People on the left see it on the right, people on the right see it on the left,' Velis said. 'Antisemitism today shape-shifts, it mutates, it's ubiquitous. It's moved away from being only on the right or left, it's everywhere.' Advertisement Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, attributed antisemitism's rise to a culture that lets progressive groups conflate criticism of Israel with language that demonizes Jews. 'The use of Zionists as a slur has been normalized,' Burton said. 'There is this willingness to absolve and minimize a rhetoric which tolerates, if not promotes, violence against Jews anywhere, as if no harm might come from that.' There are real debates about the distinctions between anti-Zionism — opposing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state — and antisemitism. Activists have every right to criticize Israel, its government, and its military. A robust debate about Israel's prolonged and deadly military campaign against Hamas in Gaza is warranted. But the Butcherie is not a political institution; it's a store that sells food to Jews who adhere to religious dietary laws. The brick was thrown through a window displaying a winery map of Israel that depicted the disputed West Bank as part of Israel. But holding a Jewish-owned store responsible for actions of the Israeli government has no justification. It would strike most people as obviously bigoted — and ridiculous — to protest for a 'free Tibet' by throwing a brick through the window of a Chinese grocery store, even if it displayed a map that included Tibet. Yet too many Americans can't bring themselves to understand that it's just as wrong to inflict violence on Jews or Jewish institutions to protest Israel. Advertisement Brandeis University Professor of American Jewish History Jonathan Sarna said historically, domestic antisemitism rises when tensions rise between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Sarna said what struck him was the premeditation involved in writing a message on the brick, which implies not sudden anger but a statement of power. 'This incident, in addition to trying to make Jews fearful … is also about an expression of power, a reminder to Jews that we, whoever the people are who threw the rock, are stronger or at least are able to inflict lots of fear upon you,' Sarna said. That's a message our society cannot accept. Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Our weird reality is killing reality TV
Now, you might be asking yourself, who cares? And I get that. But I think the reason reality TV is dying is interesting. It reveals something deeper about how our society might be unconsciously metabolizing the seismic political shifts in the last year. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Reality TV originally thrived because it offered an escape from everyday life. We indulged in epic rollercoaster romances, shameless debauchery, petty entanglements, and the guilty pleasure of rooting for 'shade-throwing' self-obsessed villains who seemed hellbent on taking someone down each season. For roughly 43 blissfully chaotic minutes, we entered a world where the worst of human behavior could be enjoyed safely, from a distance, and, most important, turned off at will. In the end, it perversely left us feeling better, even relieved, about the predictable ordinariness of our own lives. Advertisement But our current political reality — starring its own egotistical villains running amok and creating havoc — has become so chaotic and theatrical that reality TV now feels dull by comparison. Sigmund Freud, in 'Civilization and Its Discontents,' argued that our primal instincts, driven by sex (pleasure/procreation) and aggression (power/survival), are in conflict with the external demands of civilization — the social order that keeps us functioning as a collective society. In short: Our rawest individualistic urges are always brushing up against the demands of civilized living. To manage this conflict, we rely on outlets like art, literature, film, and television — forms that allow us to sublimate (to unconsciously and symbolically indulge) our primitive urges without destabilizing society or our own psychological well-being. Reality TV — because it features 'real people' in dramatized settings — gives us permission to flirt with our more primitive impulses: envy, competition, cruelty. It lets us vicariously indulge in dysfunction and chaos from the safety of our couches, without breaking social rules or causing lasting harm. And then Donald Trump, a former reality TV personality himself, made every day a real-life spectacle. Trump entered both terms of his presidency by shattering the protective barrier of the screen and displaying all the hallmarks of reality TV's genre's most notorious villains: narcissism, manipulation, performative cruelty, engineered tribalism, and unchecked grievance. What was once safely held in the collective unconscious and expressed through art now plays out in the real world — unfiltered, uncontained, and unrelenting. The primal chaos we once safely indulged in during 43 minutes of petty drama and escapism now spills into our news feeds, our laws, and our wallets. There's no off switch. The conflicts on 'The Real Housewives' and the scheming on 'Survivor' now feel like the ones between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd: cartoonish, low-stakes, and recycled. They're dull compared with our real 'reality.' Advertisement In lieu of reality TV, I've turned to British mystery series, like 'Midsomer Murders,' where the world may be grim, but order is restored and justice usually prevails. With each episode, the bad guys are caught and the community heals. It's the kind of resolution I no longer trust reality TV, or our real lives, to deliver.
Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The guy helping to ‘bring hell' to Boston? He's from Boston.
Over the past weeks, many Americans have taken to the streets to protest the deportation of coworkers, family, schoolmates, and neighbors — and in some cases to protest the existence of ICE. At the same time, Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up For Lyons, the mission remains simple: enforce immigration law. Advertisement While criminals are the priority, 'everything's on the table,' he told me in a conference room at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C., this week. And it appears he means it. From The agency is acting more broadly than it did under President Joe Biden, who banned collateral arrests — detaining illegal immigrants who were found while in pursuit of migrants with criminal records. 'If more agencies had just turned people over in a confined setting [law enforcement custody], we wouldn't be out in the community. We're going to bump into more people. We can't walk away from them,' Lyons said. That was the same justification ICE used last month when its agents Advertisement Trump officials have zeroed in on progressive-led places like Boston and Massachusetts in an effort that partially feels like political retribution for sanctuary policies. The president's border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to But Lyons, who worked in immigration enforcement in Boston for four years, sees the pressure less as political, and more as self-inflicted. Massachusetts often releases immigrants charged or convicted with serious crimes instead of handing them over to ICE, authorities often But that isn't Lyons' only gripe. 'Lunn just says you can't hold anybody on our detainers,' he said. 'But that doesn't mean the Mass. State Police can't pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, we got this guy on the side of the road.'' Advertisement He claimed that some of the state's political leaders obstruct this cooperation. But sometimes police unofficially give ICE their support. He gave an example from Joint Base Cape Cod, which served as a temporary migrant shelter. Lyons said that a State Police official claimed they found a 'guy that's wanted for murder in Venezuela,' but that they weren't allowed to turn him over to ICE. But a law enforcement official told him: 'If you magically show up at the front gate, we'll give him to you.' Other local police departments have quietly reached out for help, he says, leaving ICE to take the heat when they detain people. That is what Lyons told me happened during Martha's Vineyard has six different police departments, and doesn't have one police chief. The county sheriff Robert Ogden told me that he didn't have any prior knowledge of the recent operation. I reached out to Lyons after the interview and was told that some police departments on the Vineyard 'cooperate, a few don't.' The ability to cooperate with local officials to track down criminals is personal for Lyons. He says he lost a family member some years back to a fentanyl overdose. When investigators tried to pinpoint the source, it was 'tracked to a Dominican drug dealer that had been previously deported from my office,' he said. 'Night after night after night, Lawrence PD, Lowell PD, Methuen, Boston, have [custody of] these fentanyl dealers, three or four times,' Lyons contends, and many of them have reentered the country after deportation. Advertisement Can this system that both parties claim to hate be fixed? Any ICE director 'would say we are totally open to congressional rewrites of the law,' he said, and that streamlining would make it easier to focus on criminals. Too many Biden-era migrants were promised a chance at asylum – which he called a 'false hope' because many are in a state of legal limbo. A better system would allow some migrants to apply for asylum from their home country rather than making the dangerous trek to the US, then waiting years in immigration court. But until reform comes, Lyons is sticking to the law. He gave an example from his time as a police officer in Florida: Stopping a dad on the way to work with a busted taillight only to find he also had a warrant on him for being delinquent on child support payments. 'You feel bad for that person, but it's still a law,' he told me. 'That's kind of the predicament I'm in.' Carine Hajjar is a Globe Opinion writer. She can be reached at
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
The unwitting poster child of the Vietnam War has forsaken bitterness for grace
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Her name is Phan Thị Kim Phúc. Advertisement When I recently found myself in the Toronto area, where Kim Phúc has lived for more than 30 years, I reached out to her. We first spoke by phone for two hours. Having been used as a propaganda figure by the Vietnamese government for years after the war, she sought asylum in Canada in 1992. In that call, she spoke with clarity about June 8, 1972, when the South Vietnamese Air Force — and not, as was and is still wrongly believed, the US Air Force — dropped napalm on her village. Advertisement Kim Phúc was 9 years old. She remembers the blast and seeing the fire and watching civilians and Vietnamese soldiers burn to death. 'I lost my future. I lost my freedom. I lost my dream. I lost my hope,' she says of that day. Even now, after years of treatment, she is still in pain. Kim Phúc did not see who took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of her, but she believes Nick Út captured the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of her, despite She has identified the South Vietnamese squadron that dropped the napalm on her village, and she has spoken with living witnesses. Surviving veterans have given her a detailed timeline of the events that precipitated the bombing, for which they were ordered to clear sections of Tây Ninh province, notorious for housing Communist guerrilla fighters. They told her of their lasting shame over hitting civilians and fellow South Vietnamese soldiers as they fled a Cao Đài temple where Kim Phúc and others had been seeking refuge. But after all this time, one mystery remains. For 53 years, members of the unit have refused to reveal the name of the pilot who dropped the bomb. 'Why do you need his name?' they would say, reminding Kim Phúc that knowing it 'won't change anything.' They assured her: He feels guilty. He's in America. He became a vegetarian to atone for his sins. Advertisement While Kim Phúc respects the pilot's privacy, her greatest wish is to find him or his descendants. 'I do want to know who the pilot is — not because I'm angry,' she told me. 'I want to tell him: I survived. I forgave a long time ago. I don't hate you. I would give him a hug. He changed my life without knowing it.' She seeks neither justice nor publicity. Just a private meeting. Kim Phúc says she longs for one final opportunity for closure and, perhaps, to offer peace to someone — be it the pilot or a family member of his — who might still carry guilt. How and when did she find such equanimity? I needed to know. The morning after we spoke by phone, I joined Kim Phúc for her weekly Sunday service at Faithway Baptist Church in Ajax, an Ontario town about 45 minutes outside Toronto. Despite having been raised in the Cao Đài faith, which combines Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, among other spiritual beliefs and practices, Kim Phúc says she finally found the solace she craved when she discovered a copy of the New Testament in Saigon's central library. Against her family's wishes, she converted to Christianity. (Years later, her parents followed her.) So there I was in mid-May, sitting in the pews beside the now 62-year-old Kim Phúc and her 91-year-old mother, Nữ, who put on headphones as her son-in-law, Kim Phúc's husband, Toàn, translated the pastor's English sermon into Vietnamese. That morning's message touched on the themes of forgiveness and restoration. Advertisement 'War makes everyone a victim,' Kim Phúc told me many times. 'Even the ones we think are strong.' Her life embodies this truth. After resettling in Canada, she channeled her suffering into purpose as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and through Kim Foundation International, the nonprofit she founded in 1997 to support international projects that offer medical, living, and educational assistance to young victims of trauma. 'When I see children in war today, I feel their pain like it's mine,' she told me. 'I want to use my voice to help protect them — because I remember what it's like to be them.' When we discuss our home village — a place I've only visited and Kim Phúc's family was forced to leave as the Vietnam War raged — our connection grows. My father has told me that my uncle, Tân Thúc Hưng, a first lieutenant in the local defense forces, ate regularly at Kim Phúc's family's food stall. Over lunch after service, I asked her mother if she remembered him. 'Ông Hưng? Of course,' she said. 'He was practically family. I remember the last time I saw him. He died the next day.' That was in 1971. The details surrounding his death have never been clear to my family. We know it happened at a cantina or pool hall on the town's main street, where his duty in psychological operations was to win the hearts and minds of the people. As the story goes, the Viet Cong sent a child into the venue with a grenade disguised as something else. The explosion maimed or killed everyone present. I immediately wanted to call my dad to tell him: 'Someone else in this world remembers your beloved brother. She might have fed him his last meal.' Advertisement Meeting with Kim Phúc and her parents drove home to me the impossible choices of war: those of the South Vietnamese pilot following orders to stop Viet Cong atrocities; those of my uncle trying to protect his community; Kim Phúc's family's decision to feed even those who might kill them. Everyone was trying to survive forces beyond their control. Such fragmented memories, passed down through the generations, teach us that history lives in people — in food stalls, shared meals, and the quiet act of remembering someone loved and lost. The hard reality is that 50 years after the end of the Vietnam War, children still flee bombs across the world. We scroll past images of their suffering, numbed by the endless stream. Kim Phúc's story cuts through that numbness because she lived to tell what comes after the photograph: the choice between bitterness and grace. Now a mother and grandmother who still bears the scars of the napalm attack, she has refused to let trauma define her. While the world remembers her as the ultimate poster child of war, it's her will to forgive rather than seek vengeance that I will remember her for. She is so much more than the girl who ran from napalm and became the unwitting subject of a famous photo. Phan Thị Kim Phúc survived terror and chose inner peace.
